Twitteretter

This is at first sight completely obvious, but I still feel worth writing about. Companies have started developing, through their presence in social media, a personality, and building a relationship with their stakeholders. At first, their posts were restricted to information, such as a new product launch, a promotion or an update on a known service issue. This seems a sensible use of the immediacy of social media for communication. However, some are personalising their social media presence, engaging in conversation, expressing opinions. Users are now interacting with them in the second person, tagging them in posts, expecting a response. This may be convenient, but it is important that we realise that we are not interacting with the company, but just with one of its employees, a real person, who, best case, will be trying to act as they think their company’s philosophy would merit. But wait, companies don’t have a philosophy, they don’t have a mind. I feel another Twitteretter coming...

There are many startups which do not aspire to either of these, hefty goals. But ambitious ones often start with one of these two objectives in mind. Possibly with both, but typically, with one over the other. This is at least my observation from talking to young people interested in start up, which is something I am doing quite frequently these days. Even though I do of course think that one objective is morally superior to the other, this post is concerned with which is a better engine for success. On this, I can offer, of course, only an opinion, I do not claim to have the key, and a generally correct answer may not even exist. But it strikes me that the will to change the World, the thirst for ultimate impact, is a better ram with which to batter the many barriers that will block your path than the will to become rich which you can, of course, always do in some other way. And thus, as it often happens in life, it may be that the riches come more often to those who seek them less Le...

I had a business meeting today which mainly revolved around Star Wars, featuring my not very good Darth Vader impression and some espresso machine jokes. This may seem unusual, or even incredible, to you, especially if you are not involved in business or if you are, but have not properly understood it. Business, you see, is part of life, for those involved in it. It does not exist to serve money, an inert object which needs no servicing, but rather to serve people, its participants. If you understand this, and many don’t, you then also understand it must be fun and not taken overly seriously. A willing, cooperating, organised group of highly prepared, motivated humans, can achieve a lot. The real trick is to achieve it whilst, at the same time, enjoying it, contributing to creating a virtuous circle around willingness, cooperation and motivation, a self-feeding success. This obvious fact is often missed by those in business who, lacking the perspective of distance, miss its real purpos...

It has lately come to my attention that some corporate organisations are training their employees to help them identify internet scams. Phishing and the like. This is sensible, and these skills are eminently necessary to safely navigate treacherous internet waters. However, some are complementing this training with paying organisations to send their employees phishing emails, to keep their skills sharp. A kind of perverse ‘practice makes perfect’. I probably draw the line at this point. Most working people are already busy enough, and have to contend with enough phishing, spam and everything else. Now, you can add the low level anxiety of what might happen if you mistakenly click on a phishing link from your employer to the low level anxiety caused by what may happen if you click on a phishing link from a bona fide hacker. And, by the way, bona fide and hacker are two expressions I did not expect to ever use in the same sentence so, for this rare paradox opportunity, I am grateful Leng...

We know we have a problem with large multinational corporations not paying due taxes if they can by any means avoid it, which they indeed can. This seems immoral. When so many need solidarity, and when such huge profits are made, how can this tax avoidance be justified? But here there is a problem borne of our personalisation bias, the human tendency to personalise in order to relate and understand. Corporations don’t make a wilful or moral decision to put profit over taxes. The effort to minimise or avoid taxes is rather the result of internal incentives, for managers and financiers, which are not considered on morality but on efficacy. They are just the way things are done, the way business and management schools teach us to act. What is missing from corporations (nearly by definition or necessity) is dreamers, visionaries with the capacity to redesign received wisdom at all levels. All we need for corporates to contribute is for their leaders to focus on this, accept its importance...

The title of this post may be over optimistic. Right now, the new gold rush may be cannabis decriminalisation. But still, that specific vertical’s current popularity is extremely opportunistic and not sufficiently durable to qualify as a trend. The real gold rush with legs is tech startup. We all marvel at the success stories of the new tech giants and their unprecedentedly fast growth, which is not that unprecedently fast, as you would see if you cared to look at the previous rise of railway companies, steel makers, car and supercomputer manufacturers. Still, a successful tech start-up is the path to huge wealth today. But are entrepreneurs who succeed in new tech driven by the promise of those riches, or are they motivated by the chance to change the World, impact lives, improve processes or fix malfunctions? As a tech entrepreneur, I have my answer, which, like many things in life, follows the 80/20 rule, impact 80, riches 20. But others may have others, to paraphrase Groucho Marx L...

No. Or not only. The title summarises a common view which informs most company management nowadays. The fundamental driver of a company is to maximise shareholder value, simplistically equated to profit or, rather, dividend or yield. This is a misconception. Companies are not only a vehicle to grow shareholder wealth. They are an environment where workers spend a significant part of their day. They are actors in a community, contributing to its dynamics and impacting its environment. They are entities integrated in society and their objective must be maximising the benefit to their stakeholders. These are, in my order of importance, employees (since they spend good part of their lives there and rely on them for their livelihood), customers, suppliers, shareholders, local community and wider community. Shareholders demand continuously growing returns, which drives managers to underpay employees and suppliers, shortchange customers and community. In the midterm, it is a recipe for failur...

Most people’s understanding of business is that it operates as a highly competitive environment, where you keep your cards close to your chest, do not share any secrets and negotiate as hard as you can to win. This may have been true in the last century, but in many cases it no longer holds, most likely because of the arrival of the internet. The technological innovation challenges which hold the keys to the next great sellers, the next blockbusters, are huge (think climate change solutions, atmosphere cleaning, recovery of lost species, curing cancer,…). The internet has made collaboration easy, and it is by far the most effective way to reach these goals as soon as possible. Making your competitors your collaborators reduces risk, as you will take a part of the prize, sharing with them, rather than risking the all or nothing of competition. Thus, traditional businesses with no potential for innovation may be highly competitive but, in technology, the name of the game is collaboration...

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed, at many levels of what were perceived to be transparent and honest societies, shocking levels of corruption in the political and civil service system. UK and Spain are examples of this, where massive orders for PPE and other essential supplies have been given to organisations closely connected to the current government, costing the taxpayer huge amounts of money and shutting out bona fide suppliers who are losing the opportunity afforded by the pandemic to develop their business to the benefit of the local economy. Corruption has a high social cost. It impoverishes society, getting taxpayers less value for their money and hurting the prospects of honest businesses, to line a few pockets with fortunes which are, in the main, not spent or invested locally. These practices seem to carry on with the connivance of a large section of the population and, whilst there is no price to pay, they will continue. Citizens hold the key to cleaning their society...

It has become fashionable, in the last few years, for business people to read ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu, a war treatise by a 5 th Century BC Chinese general. I would not go as far as saying it is their favourite text, but many have told me over the last few years that they are reading it. The concept is striking for its significance. It indicates that many of these business people think they are at war and that, to do business successfully, they must understand the apparent wisdom of a warlord from 2,500 years ago. It is paradoxical that business, a discipline that is meant to move technology and human capability forward by bringing discovery and science into application, improving lives in the process, is looking so far back for inspiration. It is worrying that, at a time when we have the collaboration tools needed to foster unprecedented cooperation to faster achieve humanity’s objectives, and with them those of businesses, many engaged in this activity think they are fighting oth...