The Daily Networker

I once presented an investment opportunity to Luke Johnson and believe you me, it was a disasterclass in how to pitch an idea.  To say that Luke was underwhelmed would be to define new depths of whelming thus far unplumbed by man or beast.  Silk purse it wasn’t.  Pig’s ear, it was. 

On a more positive note, and over seven years later, The Telegraph has some inspiring words from Luke, now Chairman of Channel 4;

“I spent a very enjoyable day last week in the company of a number of powerful company founders at an event organised by Jonnie Goodwin of LongAcre and Brent Hoberman, formerly of Lastminute.com.

It was an exhilarating occasion; one really felt that the high voltage brainpower assembled was capable of anything. Certainly I have far greater confidence in our inventors and entrepreneurs coming up with solutions to perceived problems such as global warming than the politicians and pop stars.

The online explosion has triggered waves of enterprising activity, and Britain has benefited from all this effort and investment disproportionately, thanks to our command of the English language. The size of the internet economy here is 20 times that of the French internet economy.

In the long term, our future is dependent on the ingenuity of individuals, not the giant corporates or government. We need the troublemakers who have impossible dreams and yet make them reality. 

They create new industries, employment and prosperity – almost as a by-product of their mission to make things happen”

This reminds me of the wonderful Apple advert which pays tribute to ‘The Crazy Ones’, first shown to me by the amazing Rich Mulholland in Capetown.  Well worth a watch when you have time this week. 

Word reaches me that Bruno Giussani may be in town this weekend.  As the European Director of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), the highly rated conference, Bruno’s blog, Lunch Over IP is well worth a look. 

The main TED site is worth spending time on too, and the videos of TED talks have been downloaded over 50 million times.  I reckon that a link to these talks should be sent to every school and university in the country. 

One (amongst many) to watch is this speech by the British conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, Benjamin Zander (pictured, and also in town this week). The point he makes at the very end is so powerful (and worth waiting for) that it had me thinking all weekend.

“Children are not acquiring basic moral values because today’s generation of adults are such poor role models”

So reports The Times, quoting new research by the Children’s Society. 

The idea that ‘adults are poor role models’ must be the understatement of the year so far.  Children and retired people must despair at the behaviour of people from their 30s to their 50s.   

Kermit Love is dead, and I’m not talking about amphibian affairs.  I’m remembering the life of Kermit Love, creator of Sesame Street’s Big Bird, who has died, aged 91. The Times obituary calls him a costume designer and puppeteer, whilst the Guardian gives him the rather more marvellous moniker of ‘designer of entertainments’.  Well, as you may remember, Big Bird was over eight feet tall and was 6 years old forever, which must have made him stand out terribly in those sensitive early years at primary school (”Isn’t he tall?” “Yes but he’s six, so he’s a bit older than your Ben” “Oh, I see”).  Once, he flew to Beijing, where he was given his own seat, and charged half price as he was only six (keep up).    One can only hope that he wasn’t sat next to a Brit, who would quite possibly have ‘tutted’ throughout the journey, introducing themselves just as the plane was coming in to land.

Roman Carel is an extremely charming and likeable French entrepreneur. Therefore he did not have to wait until the cabin lights were dimmed, to introduce himself to the equally charming Pamela Hartigan. They found themselves sitting next to each other several years ago, which is a stroke of luck as it ensured that last week, I meet the woman who for 8 years ran the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Before our dinner at Home House, (where fellow guests included Image Source’s Duncan Grossart and Firefly Tonic’s Marcus Waley-Cohen) I read a recent speech of Pamela’s.  In it she quotes David Green, founder of The Hearing Company and one of her favourite ‘unreasonable people’.  Asked what motivated him, David had replied;

“My reasons are purely selfish.  I figure I have been put on this earth for a very short period of time.  I could apply my talents to making piles of money, but where would I be at the end of my lifetime?  I would much rather be remembered for having made a significant contribution to improving the world into which I came than for having made millions.”

Big Bird would have LOVED this kind of thing. 

Unreasonable people will be thick on the ground at the Intelligence Squared Festival on Climate change, co-directed by the excellent Edie Lush, and taking place on the 27th and 28th of September here in London.  The line-up is looking good, with session titles including ‘How Long Have We Got?’, ‘Green is the New Black’ and a debate led by secondary school children.  I met Nick Pisani this week, who has recently joined the team at IQ2 (clever, see?).  The former editor of Question Time has the political rolodex needed to trigger a connected and controversial conversation, so pencil those dates in your diary for two days of (increasingly) heated debate.  After all, it’s not easy being green. 

A quick rush through yesterday’s inbox, reader, to flag some organisations which you may not have heard of;

BusinessSummaries  - Great summaries of business books

Editorial Intelligence - Run by excellent Julia Hobsbawm, the Daily Digest email is terrific

Policy Exchange - Well worth getting on their list for stimulating events

New York Times - sign up to their breaking news email 

Enternships - top source of graduate talent from Oxford for entrepreneurial internships

Realisers - Charles Handy spoke at recent launch.  Pass on to loved ones looking for next adventure.

Finally, Daily Networker favourite Henry Warren who runs leading charity Gemin-i sent me this cracking list of 99 web apps which I think you’ll like.

“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.”

JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Carole Stone’s superb salons are back, and about time too.  Great events need great hosts and that means going beyond inviting people and leaving them to ‘get on with it’.  That’s why so many business events are so utterly terrible.  Carole is the hostess with the mostest and flies around room in her element, making introductions and pointing out links between people.  Her Covent Garden flat was bursting at the seams last night as musicians rubbed shoulders with politicians, journalists and the odd speed networker.

Speaking of being in one’s element, that’s the theme of Sir Ken Robinson’s new book, which will be out at the beginning of next year. Sir Ken remains one of the world’s leading communicators on the subject of creativity and education.  I say communicators as he is such a wonderful speaker, as well as writer.  Rather than sending his audiences to sleep, a technique I have seen a few times on the education scene, he makes them laugh. At the Edge sponsored RSA  lecture this month he was on flying form, although I wasn’t laughing half as much as I used to.  You see, it’s a little bit like when you hear a stand-up deliver a particularly great piece of observational comedy.  Even if you don’t know the subject, you can still  laugh (as I did, when I first heard Ken on the Speakers for Business web-site back in 2001).  If you DO know the topic that is being lampooned, and even if it’s you that’s the subject, it’s even funnier. You howl with laughter, shaking your head and saying;

“That’s so true. So true”

So Ken’s words were music to my ears when I heard his now legendary TED talk a year or two ago.  But time went by and some things changed…and some things didn’t…

As people (including me) forwarded the link, sniggering away at how we’re screwing things up for the world’s next generation, I’m thinking some of them may have found the humour a bit dark after a while.

Heh Heh.  Schools are so fundamentally badly designed for the 21st century!  What fun!  We’re educating our children from the outside in, rather than the inside out - HAH! We have a completely warped idea of what subjects school pupils see as ‘useful’! Stop it!

The reason that the joke eventually wears thin isn’t that it isn’t brilliantly delivered, and it isn’t that Ken isn’t cymbal-smashingly right.  It’s because more isn’t happening to indicate people waking up and listening to what he has to say.  Like taking the mickey out of someone’s badly fitting trousers for the fifth comedy night running, you’re left wondering - why don’t you (or we in this case) just SORT OURSELVES OUT? 

Luckily, from my seat, I could see the broad frames of Darius Norell and Daniel Snell.  From where I’m sitting today, they are two of the most interesting thinkers and doers around education meeting business in the UK.   Even more fortunately, I don’t think that they see the funny side of keeping things as they are.  That’s certainly the impression I got when I dropped in on one of Daniel’s Arrival Education sessions this week, hosted by Ogilvy.  He’s an incredibly gifted communicator (and I don’t bandy that phrase around), and as he spoke to the group of over 20 school pupils, I was busy thinking about how you (and I mean you) could  take his amazing set of messages (about personal responsibility, goals and careers) to millions, not dozens of  people. 

They say that one man’s fish is another man’s poisson.  And it was over tuna sandwiches this week at the Institute of Directors that a small group of us, chaired by Rebecca Harding of Delta Economics, reflected on what some would call ‘bad news all round’.

Three of the gloomier bits of the ‘economic outlook’ that we picked over included falling house prices, banks being less willing to allow entrepreneurs to remortgage their houses, and people spending less on the high-street.

As I reached for a handful of what may have been Kettle Chips,  I began to realise that by shaking my head in despair, I was actually being a bit of a hypocrite.  So, reader, my confession has to be made, several days later;

Firstly, in a country where millions of young people struggle to get on the housing ladder, falling house prices will be greeted, by them at least (and in many cases by their parents), with relief.

Secondly, I have yet to meet the entrepreneur who told me of their house-remortgaging with a great big grin on their face.  Instead, it only seems to bring stress, a lack of sleep, and a pressure on their family and colleagues.  By contrast, those who have managed to secure angel funding, for example, have enjoyed, comparatively, sunnier times.

Finally, if I told you that I had personally spent less this year than last year on the high street, I think that you’d probably see that as a good thing and I doubt you’d offer me a comforting rub on the back. 

This is not to make light of the turmoil faced by thousands of retailers, and it isn’t to be flippant about the challenges faced by estate agents.  Both of the above categories make up my very nearest and dearest.

The way I see things, the British chancellor cannot come bounding out onto the steps of the Treasury and say;

“You know what, I think we’re all spending much too much money on tat which we don’t need and which, frankly, makes us less happy in the long run”

Nor can he shrug his shoulders and point out;

“Hey, look on the bright side, it’s good news if you’re a first time buyer”

In a ‘nice weather for ducks’ sort of way.

We seem to be given the ’news’ by too many of the wrong people and perhaps if we had a more balanced set of messages, we wouldn’t despair so readily at the ‘way things are going’. 

At the risk of this turning into a parody of Thought For The Day, if we found a way at school to let people know that stumbling on happiness was more about relationships, well being and a sense of achievement, than about owning the latest iPhone, maybe that would be a start.

After all, give a man a fish…

Scott McNealy has four sons and he named the first one Maverick.  That gives you a clue as to what to expect from the co-founder and chairman of Sun Microsystems , who was on fine form today, as he shared some of his top tips with a group of entrepreneurial Brits, gathered at London’s Le Meridien Hotel, facilitated by the excellent Stewart Townsend of Sun’s UK Start-Up team.

Scott’s first hope for the assembled group was that they were busy being controversial.  If most people weren’t looking at their businesses, predicting they were crazy, then they were probably doing something wrong.  This hope was followed swiftly by the next guideline;  needing to be correct.  The scene was set, and with a final exhortation to ‘Go Big’ and to use ‘Somebody Else’s Money’, the brief opening remarks were over and the floor was open for questions.

Today, Sun has revenues of almost 14 billion dollars and employs over 33,000 people. Scott McNealy co -founded the company in 1982, at the age of 27. To this day, his best advice to budding entrepreneurs is to “do it while you’re single and don’t yet have kids”.  On a touchingly personal note, he reflected that “your choice of spouse is the most important decision you’ll ever make”.  Asked about the biggest obstacle he’d faced in business during the early years he replied “staying awake” and, at the time, he would joke that he “led an extremely balanced life.  I spend time in sales, marketing, manufacturing…”

Some of Scott’s most interesting insights related to his views on management.  He’s a great believer in what he calls the ‘rule of 11′; that is that every executive should have 11 reports, rather than the 6 so often prescribed by so-called management gurus.  His rationale is simple;  With 6 reports, you’re tempted to manage - with 11 you have no choice but to lead.  He remembers that one of his greatest realisations was that “you work for the people who report to you, not the other way round”.  As Sun grew, keeping in touch with the staff became more and more difficult and so his friday night beers evolved into a regular radio show to all employees.  Unlike Sun’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz, who is a highly regarded blogger (”I’m not a great writer”), Scott found that radio worked even better than video, where people can get distracted looking at someone’s face.  “With radio, they can concentrate on what you’re saying.”

Another great insight was the idea that “meetings are not the place to make decisions”.  He described how he would often use meetings to become clear on each person’s perspective before thanking them for their input and telling them that he would be making a decision within the next 48 hours. 

On the subject of risk, Scott’s view is that “the biggest gambles are always people gambles” and in one of the more serious answers of an often light-hearted session, he concluded that, in all of his time with Sun, he “never took any, legal, financial or ethical risks”.  He is careful here, to distinguish these from business or engineering risks, which he sees as entirely healthy and continues to take and encourage.

With his statesmanlike presence, it is easy to imagine Scott McNealy chairing the board of a multi-billion dollar company.  What makes him different though, is that it is equally easy to imagine him chilling out, holding a hotdog and a beer on a Saturday afternoon.  He smiles easily, and tells stories with a likeable degree of self-deprecation.  Throughout, it was clear that he is an incredibly smart communicator who would make an incredible mentor for a CEO of any stage in their business.  From the heights of his role today, he seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time with a roomful of Brits from companies including Last.fm, GlassesDirect and Favor.it.  He encouraged all of us to write to him and, as he shared his email address, he told us that he was “almost all caught up on email”…

The chairman of Sun, with 33,350 employees, who is on a business trip to London on GMT, and has spent the last twenty years with “just email me” as one of his catch phrases, is ALMOST ALL CAUGHT UP ON EMAIL. This, reader, is a man who walks his talk.  And his talk ended on a suitably ambitious and inspiring note.  Moving towards the door, he bade us farewell with the words;  

“Good Luck, kick some butt.  Google aint the last answer here”

I’ve just popped into my local branch of HSBC.  After withdrawing some cash, I was presented with a list of options, most of which I normally ignore.  Today, I was after a mini-statement, so my eye was drawn to the list, one of which was;

“Give Money To Charity”

Sure enough, a few taps later and a small donation was winging its way towards Help The Aged.  Food for thought as I strode out into Covent Garden, past no less than half a dozen vested collectors for a range of national charities.

Speaking of charities, last night I dropped into the Mandrake Club to listen to a motivating and inspiring speech by Sir Nicholas Young, CEO of the British Red Cross.  He made the point that, when weighing up any purchasing decision, he would think long and hard about how many collecting tins would need to be filled to match that amount of money.  After the speech I quizzed him about bringing money into organisations using business methods (creating products or services) rather than by asking for donations.  Of course the Red Cross already does this through its chain of shops, as well as selling a number of things through its website.  We ended up discussing the fact that, in Make Your Mark with a Tenner, the average return (in one month) from the top 100 teams was £120, and yet none of them had asked anyone for donations, even though they could have done if they had wanted. I would love to talk to the Red Cross (or other organisations) about how they set their own members a form of ‘ten pound challenge’ which raises money by unleashing enterprise.

I helped the aged in a tiny way today by saving an older man as he fell down some steps in London’s Covent Garden.  As it turned out, he was on his way out of a Grand Masters luncheon and was a Freemason.  One set of pamphlets later, picked up from the Grand Lodge nearby, and I was suitably intrigued.  Did you know that there are 330,000 members of the Freemasons in England alone?  That’s how many members the Conservative Party had at the turn of the century…Anyway, the grateful Mason pushed a crisp fiver into my and which, after refusing half a dozen times, I accepted. 

Ten minutes later my fiver was winging its way to Help the Aged.  And until posting this entry, I’d not spotted the connection between those two random events…

Which reminds me, I must do a refresher course in First Aid.