Musk takes a divergent path (again)

Elon Musk just replaced the Twitter brand name with X, leading many experts to fume.  My feed is full of disdain for the move, particularly from Marketing and Brand experts calling out his grave "mistake". How could he kill the bird, the “tweets”, the brand, with an odd symbol of dark negativity?

One article put it this way: “Twitter is only just getting back on the straight and narrow, and not forgetting that he obliterated the workforce, "X, the everything app" looks set to remain but a twinkle in a flaky entrepreneur's eye, not to mention that it's in all likelihood completely unworkable.”

As “flaky entrepreneurs” go, Musk’s record for the past two decades has been nothing short of extraordinary, with PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink and more.  Often the moves are contrarian – easy payments that don’t require a bank, early mover advantage on electric cars (with dedicated charging points), space rockets that can be re-used, global internet connectivity that does not require a local ISP.

The ‘X’ itself (long cherished by Musk since he registered “X.com” twenty years ago, even naming one of his children!?) is the clue: a deliberate contrarian play – visually an intersection of divergent points.   That divergence was always the plan for Twitter.

In 2022 Musk paid $44billion for a social media platform, full of anger and discord, saying “let that sink in”, but his real reason was acquiring 200 million active subscribers, not its brand or dematerialising advertising revenues. At the time, he was transparent enough: "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app", he said.

His ambition is to  build a WeChat for the rest of the world.  When I was in China you could not rent a flat, buy an ice-cream, or travel cross-country without WeChat.  His new CEO  Linda Yaccarino (once in Advertising herself) certainly shares that ambition, so "X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities” she tweeted.

Maybe some befuddled marketers and brand experts will follow those who hated Musk’s libertarianism, and quit the platform.  But somehow, I doubt it. Threads unravelled pretty quickly, so people it seems will continue to Tweet or 'Xeet" [a real thing] in their millions.

In a decade Musk may well have built an 'everything' platform that manages half the world's regular day to day spending/transacting – like a behemoth Monzo or Revolut, ubiquitous on a billion phones.  Or maybe not. Many are predicting Musk’s move is doomed to fail and the future can have divergent paths – even with a maverick billionaire at the helm.

As Banquo said in Macbeth "If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.”

A book about Glue - three months to go

A BOOK ABOUT GLUE IS RELEASED on THE 4th OCtOBER 2023

My new book GLUE: Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World is released in less than three months.  The launch countdown has begun, but the frustration of waiting has also generated a number of thoughts, reflections and reactions to some of the ideas already locked-into the book. A recent trigger for this was Peter Hinssen, who mentioned a rather dense book called Hustle & Float by Rahaf Harfoush. Her argument is that we have become so obsessed with the “hustle” of work and the demands for greater productivity that we have forgotten how to “float” – negating our full potential and innate creativity. Her thesis reminded me of JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, who after the lifting of pandemic restrictions, took a dim view of homeworking: “It doesn’t work for those who want to hustle. It doesn’t work for spontaneous idea generation. It doesn’t work for culture.”  There are many pressing issues in the world, but as I scan the newsfeeds, the topics and themes in GLUE seem more and more relevant every day. If you are not yet convinced, I have shared here something of my current obsession with the future of work, the strangeness of the hybrid world, and the acute need for GLUE.

 #1. The future of work: hardcore and hustle, or purpose and meaning?

What does the future of work look like in an evolving hybrid and flexible world? Balancing the needs and expectations of the organisation, customers and employees is an increasingly complex puzzle. The challenge is how you deepen engagement, increase productivity, and retain talent in this new paradigm?

Organisations are rapidly adapting and evolving their models of work as they wrestle with a number of societal dynamics; the growth of the gig economy, an employee appetite for flexibility, the normalisation (post-COVID) of hybrid working, remote technologies, and differing generational attitudes to work, collaboration and the purpose of the office.  This means greater complexity for leaders who are already wrestling with a perennial challenge, which pre-dates the pandemic disruption.  How do you improve productivity, while also improving employee engagement?  None of the indicators look good:

• Productivity. Despite the enormous adoption of digital technologies, worker productivity has hardly improved the UK, Europe or the US this century.  Even before the pandemic disruption, between 2010 and 2015, UK productivity growth flatlined at 0.2 percent a year.

• Engagement. Despite flexible working, improved benefits provision, and many imaginative employee-relations initiatives, Gallop report that measures of employee-engagement continued to flat-line too. 

• Dis-engagement. According to the same organisation, it is even harder to develop engagement with ‘next generation’ employees, who are likely to change jobs as many as ten times between the ages of 18 and 34. 

In the past three years, the response of different leaders and different organisations to these trends has been marked.  Some leaders think autonomy and freedom is the best way to engage talent and engender ideas. Others believe productivity only increases when workers are in the office together.  In June 2021, Deloitte made a bold move and told all its 20,000 UK employees, “you can work from home forever”.  Many employees cried freedom from the commute! Others took a different view, notably the “hardcore” presenteeism mandated by Elon Musk, and J P Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, who said home-working “doesn’t work for those who want to hustle”.  The tide seems to be following, with even Google last month threatening to clamp down on staff, warning office attendance will be included as part of their performance reviews.

Studies have shown that improved employee collaboration and alignment with a common purpose is key to improving productivity and engagement. But what is the best way to make that happen in the way we now wish to work and live our lives?  Some suggest that the emergence of generative AI and new work tools improve productivity regardless of the workplace setting?

But perhaps a different approach is needed? The future of work should be less about an obsession with the "mechanics" of hybrid working - the where, the when and how of work. Instead, it should be about a new leadership model for the hybrid age, so organisations are more concerned with the who, the what and the why of work. A leadership approach that "coheres" employees to feel less remote from one another, around an organisational purpose that embraces disparate hearts and minds.  Have you embraced a more meaningful future of work, or are your still wrestling with the mechanics of the past?

#2.    An Englishman’s castle is now his garden cabin office

The saying goes “an Englishman’s home is his castle.”  Well, since 2020 it has increasingly become his and her workplace of choice as well.  We have pulled up the drawbridge, reinforced the moat, converted garden sheds into offices, and signed up to Starlink.

According to the Munich-based Ifo Institute, it seems now that Britons work from home more than any other European nation.  In the UK, the average worker spends a day and a half at home each week, well above the one day average in Germany and more than double the 0.6 in France and 0.7 in Italy. It also puts the UK above the US, where the typical worker spends 1.4 days per week at home.

Among the 34 countries studied, only Canadians are more likely than Britons to work remotely.  But apparently, we Brits still want more with the survey finding “2.3 days at home would be ideal”.

I am not sure that the dynamics that have made so many of us embrace working from home will change.  It is time consuming, exhausting, and inefficient to commute into cities like London and Manchester.

But if employers want to reverse the trend - and many do - what are the “pull factors” they might use; the redesign of the workplace, the leadership value placed on in-person meeting, the provision of childcare, the investment in face-to-face development, and some attempt to off-set the costs of being there? They will have to, if we are to avoid being teased by the French for 'slacking off' at home! Surely not!  Sacrebleu!

#3.    Two dreary reports about “de-socialising” trends

With working patterns changing, I mis-understood that Thursday was the new Friday: a time for colleagues to clock-off early and have a drink together? Well apparently not. A recent survey of UK social habits says that post-work drinks have fallen out of favour, as six in ten Brits say they shun end-of-day pints with colleagues.

An organisation called Togather surveyed 2,000 workers and found that 35% say they avoid going to workplace socials "as they are boring and feel like a waste of their time". A report cited office worker Glen Davies, 34, of Watford, Herts, who said he 'hated' office get-togethers. "As soon as work is over I'm out of my chair like a rocket and on the bus home.'

Hugo Campbell, co-founder of Togather, said that employers should work harder to "provide meaningful experiences that genuinely demonstrate appreciation for their staff."

If this was not dispiriting enough, the next generation are following a similar path. Students in university towns are "not staying out as late as they used to", the boss of City Pub Group has said. Clive Watson, chief executive at the company, which runs more than 50 pubs across Britain, said students were coming home earlier from nights out. He said: “Students work a lot harder than they [did] at university in my day… they have a better work ethic..." Bless.

These emergent social trends begin slowly and then suddenly are endemic. Perhaps we have already heard "last orders" being called on the post-work pub social in the UK? Like Glen, we want to head to the 'burbs, and to get away from one another. We no longer cherish the noise, the cloy of sticky pub carpets, nor relish the therapy of banal post-work gossip. We prefer instead to scroll alone on the bus home. Progress perhaps?

#4. Triggered by a new report from Gartner (courtesy of UnWork)

A new report says "empowering employees to collaborate more intentionally" can make hybrid working more productive. I have read a lot of worthy/wordy stuff like this in the past 18 months and this report by Gartner - advocating the "democratisation" of multiple work modes, and allowing employees to "design their own week", all sounds fab and groovy, but it MISSES the most important point of all. Productive, innovative teams are well led, and too few firms, have equipped their leaders with the skills to create real cohesion amongst their disparate, disaggregated team members.

Great team-work is not about workplace "agility, intentionalism and equity", it is about having managers and leaders who can take others with them, irrespective of the work setting. People cohere around people, purpose and meaningful work. Organisations don't need more complicated HR policies and hybrid processes, they need leaders who create GLUE.

#5. A Disturbing Story From South Korea

The writer William Gibson once said that “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”  When we look elsewhere in the world, the future is often in plain sight, we just haven't recognised it yet. Sometimes I so wish that wasn’t true. In April this year, South Korea announced its decision to pay boys and young men a monthly allowance of (the equivalent of) US$490 in order to encourage them to leave their homes. 

The Guardian reported that 350,000 between the ages of 19 and 39 in South Korea are considered lonely or isolated. CNN said Japan has a similar problem, with nearly 1.5 million reclusive lonely young people, who are known as ‘hikikomori’. Some citizens only leave their homes to buy groceries or for occasional activities, while others just never leave their bedrooms.

In the UK, Europe and the US we have seized the post-pandemic zeitgeist, crying freedom from the commute, logging-on to remote platforms, and filling our fridges with Amazon Fresh, Deliveroo, and Just Eat. Business, political and university leaders have championed hybrid work, remote learning and social media has turned digital content creators into heroes. In 2024, Apple wants us to put on its Vision Pro headset and work, explore and ‘entertain’ ourselves through a 24-hour feed of content and connectivity. Alone. 

My head is still spinning with the South Korea story (a wealthy country where the birth rate is now less than 0.8 - the lowest in the world) because we still have time to decide if that is the mode of work and life we want to role-model for our kids. My fear is that in the next decade we are growing a culture that increasingly normalises and celebrates lives spent "scrolling alone.”  That’s my profound fear - but what do you think?

[Some elements of this post were shared on Linked-in in July 2023].

A story about a banker and why it matters

It was 2008.  I worked for a bank.  That was something of a social conversation-killer back then. Who would be part of such a heinous profession?  Instead, I could  bluff and pretend that I worked in ‘communications’ or ‘change management’ or something equally vague and potentially less offensive. 

The popular image then of a banker was already not very attractive – associated with Gordon Gekko, in Wall Street, proclaiming ‘greed is good’ while grooming his protégé to understand that “lunch is for wimps”, and if you want a friend, “get a dog”.  Then in September 2008, the world's media zoomed in on besuited young staffers exiting tall buildings, clutching a card-board box of possessions, as Lehman Brothers, and a succession of other global financial institutions collapsed around the world.

There was much gnashing of teeth and genuine alarm as the financial markets nose-dived. In shock, the world became quickly accustomed to a new innovation called government “bailouts”, as a genuine use of taxpayers’ funds.  In a world today where the word “crisis” is perhaps somewhat overused, that time genuinely felt like a real humdinger as the world’s media, politicians, and general public looked on in horror as the stability in the markets simply disappeared and the economy contracted and fell like a suddenly deflating hot-air balloon. Even the Governments’ hastily concocted parachute could not alleviate much of the real-world pain felt in the disrupted markets, emptying workplaces and crowded benefits offices.  

This summer, I find myself immersed in a new book called Trust, by an American author called Hernan Diaz. The focus of his book is not the financial crisis of the early part of this century, but the financial machinations that caused the Great Depression in the 1930s, a crisis initiated by market crashes on Wall Street in 1929, with reverberations around world. Against that backdrop he tells the story of Andrew Bevel, a Rockefeller type who bestrides the financial world accumulating astronomical wealth, like a 1920’s Warren Buffett, but with an emotional vacuity and mystique even amongst those who felt they knew him well.

Suitably then, the story of Bevel’s wealth and his relationship with his young wife is told from four different perspectives; as an adapted novel, by Bevel himself, by his hired researcher Ida, and by Bevel’s wife Mildred. The opening section, a succinct third-person narrative is written in an elegant style, with a brevity of language and tone that is worthily one of the most compelling pieces of storytelling I have read in years.  When Ida, Bevel’s brilliant researcher and scribe reads it she is similarly stunned. Then in a claustrophobic nexus of acute illness, big pharma and high-stakes finance, it ends in horror, and personal madness and pain. The next three sections re-tell the tale very differently, of the man, of the money, of the strange genesis of the Bevel’s relationship with Mildred, of her music, patronage of the arts and the intrigues of New York high society.  A strange imaginative blend then of Succession, and The Great Gatsby.

But as Diaz takes us deeper down a rabbit hole of mystery and of phantasmagorical wealth - and all the allure that money creates, he ensures we struggle to come to the get to grips with the truth. Quite literally, who do we Trust? The idiosyncratic and contradictory narrative is like John Fowles’ A Maggot, a jigsaw puzzle like Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, or Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost.  As the reader we have to join the dots, distracted by the contrasting perspectives on the destructive power of unfettered capitalism, set against a caricature of militant anarcho-socialism, literally told from across the Hudson river, far removed from Bevel’s life, as a dirty kitchen sink story.  It would be inappropriate and an enormous spoiler to give the game away, but as Diaz lets us dig deeper into the psychological drama of Bevel and Mildred, Diaz reveals the very specific and shocking reason for the Wall Street Crash of 1929, what caused it and why.   

Which brought me back with a veritable bump to the recent economic travails – and stories again of Banks being “bailed out”, merged and ‘absorbed’. It is almost a hundred years since Bevel built his great fortune, riding a wave of pulped prime markets, and of governments printing money, amidst a world of oligarch style tycoons avariciously grappling for wealth, power and influence, and here we are again, facing the consequences, of what happens when that bubble inevitably bursts.

So, did Peter Gabriel predict AI almost 40 years ago?

It used to be the philosophers, poets, playwrights and priests who shaped our understanding of the world around us.  The highly educated would lean into Sartre, Locke, Keynes, Shakespeare and Donne to illuminate our thoughts about the human condition.  But, as you know, no one reads books in school anymore, and universities (other than a very tiny ancient elite) are too enormous, amorphous and commercially obsessed with student numbers to impart very much deep learning.  So, we absorb and pertain to the world though our shared popular cultural experiences – TV shows, movie characters, influencers and via social mediums, we are connected by musical artists.  Billions of people on planet earth know all the words of Bohemian Rhapsody, but don’t much care whether Galileo was magnificent or not.  I went to School, graduated from university and tried to read a few books, but I have increasingly found that another modern-day poet, The Boss, was right when he said he “learnt more from a three-minute record, than I ever learnt in School”. 

Well Springsteen is on tour in Europe again.  But at a price point that made even investment bankers pause before booking.  So is everybody else.  And So, after too long away, is the amazing Peter Gabriel.  Three things then about the extraordinary artist.  

1. Gabriel as a Creative Artist

Forty years ago, as the front man of Genesis, Gabriel dressed-up on stage as Fox in a red dress and sang 24-minute-long songs, while jerking in 9/8 time, as if in a fit, hitting a tambourine and shouting about “a flower!”  He has, to say the least, moved on some way from that early incarnation in his career, with a series of moody innovative solo albums, a massive global hit album ‘So’ (with its humongous world-wide hit Sledgehammer), written several film scores, produced a millennium show, championed civil and human rights, embraced world music and co-founded the Womad festivals.  He has also been at the cutting-edge of embracing technology, pioneering digital distribution methods, built Real World studios, and his recording techniques, music videos and live shows are an extraordinary fusion of creative imagination and digital adoption.

2. Gabriel as a Technology Trailblazer

Recently his technology fetish has also embraced AI and, despite what he described as something of a “backlash” within the music and arts community, he recently ran a competition with a firm called Stability AI called the ‘Diffuse Together Challenge’. Entrants could use six songs from Gabriel’s catalogue, including Sledgehammer, to create AI generated animation videos.  Gabriel’s response to the negative feedback, and concerns over copyright, and financial dues to artists, is posted here, but, in essence, he argued that creative artists should not fear the adoption of technologies like AI, but embrace it. “Like the wheel, or the industrial revolution, I believe the changes coming with AI are unstoppable,” he said.  You can find out more about the project and extraordinary results on Gabriel’s website.   

3. Gabriel as a Revolutionary

The amazing thing – and I mean spookily amazing - is that Gabriel in 2023 is wholly consistent today about his confidence in the adoption of new disruptive technologies as he was, way back in 1986 when he similarly talked about the adoption of computers in music recording and production as a new “industrial revolution.”  Many readers here will be familiar with a popular clip of a 1999 interview that David Bowie did with the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman. In that interview, Bowie, talking in the early days of painfully slow ‘dial-up’ internet, describes the internet like an “alien life-form” that has landed amongst us, and none of us had yet realised what that impact would be.  To quote the great man:

“The actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can really envision at the moment, where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in-simpatico, it's going to is going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.”  David Bowie, 1999. 

Bowie’s vision, and notably, his way with words, was light years ahead.  But some 13 years before that interview, Gabriel was asked by a journalist about his adoption of “new technology, gadgets and computers”.  Gabriel was starting to use digital recording techniques, a Fairlight sampler, sequencers, and creating stop-motion animation ideas for MTV videos that would change the way the world viewed music and artists. The clip is posted below from the same artist now co-creating music videos using AI.  It’s pretty remarkable and you could copy it from the past and paste it into his response about the dangers of AI today.  

“I think that it is like seeing a Revolution take place that is this fundamental as the Industrial Revolution and it and, it's only just beginning. So I think the opportunities that it presents to anyone in all areas, and it shouldn’t be underestimated at all. I mean either the technology has made our ally, or it's our enemy, and I think life will be a lot happier if we make it our ally and come to grips with it.”  Peter Gabriel, 1986. 

Gabriel back in Greenwich

Gabriel is remarkable and at 73 seems as vivid and compelling as an artist today as he was in the 1980’s when he became a global star.  In 2000, he produced the ‘Ovo’ show for an ill-fated millennium exhibition under a huge canvas on the Greenwich peninsula. He invited Paul Buchanan and Liz Fraser to sing the closing song, Make Tomorrow Today, which sums up much of his approach for half a century as a creative artist. Gabriel is on tour with his new album i/o in June, before heading the States in the autumn. 23 years later, he will be back in Greenwich, under that same Canvas, in what is now called “The 02”.  I think this time, worth the ticket price. 

Groundhog Day: life lessons for today, not tomorrow

I am just back from seeing Andy Karl in Groundhog Day at The Old Vic theatre in London.  I had seen the show before in 2016 when Tim Minchin and Director Matthew Warchus first collaborated with writer Danny Rubin to revitalise and reimagine Rubin’s original 1993 movie, starring Bill Murray.  Karl plays a TV weatherman called Phil Connors, whom we meet grumpily reporting on the quirky festivities of Punxsutawney, a small American town in the middle-of nowhere.  Desperate to leave, Connors gets stuck in a time loop and awakens everyday on 2 February, endlessly trapped with the same people, in the same place.

In order to prevent being forced to live the same day over and over again, Connors must change the way he approaches life, and the world around him, divesting himself of his cynicism, narcissism, and misogyny.  It’s quite some arc to achieve in just over two hours and although The Old Vic bills the show as a “zany musical” their blurb undersells the impact and quality of the human story that unfolds.  Yes, the show is hilarious, full of visual jokes, corny tomfoolery and drunken fun, but in the behaviour of the risible Connors it also holds up a mirror to ourselves; obsessing about tomorrow, not today, neglecting old friends, avoiding our neighbours, shunning the homeless, denigrating colleagues and undervaluing those who serve us in jobs we would detest to do ourselves.  The second half is deeply moving, thought provoking and profound.  The show’s finale is a beautifully crafted expression of some enormous truths about people, relationships and the meaning of life.

Connors finds that personal change is tremendously hard, if not impossible. In this repetitive parallel universe he is not even given the option of seeking oblivion.  Poignantly and pathetically he still wakes in Punxsutawney, living again without purpose.  The audience knows what he needs to do (change himself) but he still cannot do it and so knuckles down to hard work, in an endless attempt to work his way out of the problem.  He learns to fix cars, memorise the almanac, learn French, recite poetry, become a virtuoso pianist and a doctor, waking every day and working hard at fixing stuff, and others and things - but not himself.  Despite his own immortality and his boast “that I am some kind of God”, he cannot stop the homeless guy from dying, he cannot deceive his colleague Rita into loving him, he cannot change tomorrow despite (in his words) “knowing everything”.  It is not until he realises that he “knows nothing”, that the dawn breaks in a different way.   

An addiction to futile pursuits is difficult to shake and Connors’ commitment and work ethic is admirable, but also familiarly insane.  Albert Einstein was once (implausibly) credited with saying “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  Using the original 1993 film, some eminent online-film nerds have spent much effort trying to calculate how many days it takes Connors to re-awaken, a new man, on 3 February.  I was too busy laughing in the theatre to count the number of times Connors experiences the same day, but in the film he appears in, or describes his experiences of some 64 different days.  But he also learns numerous new skills while stuck in the time loop.  He confesses it would take him 'six months, four to five hours a day' (244 days) to become an expert card thrower.  In an article for WhatCulture, Simon Gallagher cites Gladwell’s hypothesis that it takes anyone “10,000 hours to become an expert at any one subject” and Connors becomes an expert in many, including delivering babies, bank robbery, piano  playing and ice-sculpting.  Simon surmises that since Connors “is an adult learner, a conservative estimate, based on the idea of him taking lessons every day, it would have taken somewhere around 12 years to become completely fluent bringing the running total to 12,315 days”. That is some 33 years stuck in an endless loop of futile self-improvement.  Sound familiar?

Well, here are three applications for the modern world of work:

1. Self-improvement is futile

The corporate world seems obsessed with a similar reliance on self-improvement, encouraging you to dedicate time to build your professional credentials, harness your authentic self, learn to communicate with radical candour, grow a diverse network, and act out, while leaning in.  As you progress towards the top team, you are expected to become better equipped, using influencing skills, showing yourself to be both resilient and agile, navigating cultural and intergenerational minefields, while remaining entrepreneurial, inclusive, emotionally intelligent, and ensuring that psychological safety flourishes in your wake. It is exhausting, unreasonable and mind-boggling to even consider the hours of time and sheer bloody dedication needed to manage and lead these days. Ultimately though, no matter how many hours we put in, we still risk continuing to appear a complete jerk like Connors.

2. Flunking is the new achieving

A new generation of workers see the world differently.  The current vogue is to disregard the competence addiction of the past, embrace Einstein’s advice and take a more entrepreneurial approach, dreaming big initially, but failing fast forwards, learning and pivoting again.  Modern careers can seem an episodic pursuit of not being great, realising it, and quickly moving on to the next thing.  Spending 10,000 hours on anything sans-purpose, let alone spending that amount of time with the same firm, is now anathema.  Some more heartless than I would call this a new emergent culture of mediocrity, but now the fail fast, or more caustically put, ‘faff around and find out’, is the early twenty first century mode du jour of working.  According to Gallop, new employees entering employment are likely to change jobs as many as ten times between the ages of 18 and 34. Perhaps the contemporary early career path is less a ‘squiggly’ drawn one and more akin to something painted by Jackson Pollock? 

3. Being inexpert is the goal

But being inexpert is not be sniffed at.  It is one of the most intriguing dimensions of future talent and people management.  In the world of the ‘never normal’ where generative AI can write your presentation, design the images and draft the cover note to the CEO in minutes, the key to a professional career is no longer about knowing everything, it is about knowing nothing.  Peter Hinssen argues you actually need more people in your organisation who “don’t know what they’re doing.”  His is not some ironic plea for the virtue of ignorance, but for more of your very best people working on ideas and projects and plans where the outcome is unknown and not discovered in the algorithm.  Experience matters less when future innovation is to be found where there is no well trodden path to follow, where there is no blue-print that can be downloaded, or co-opted from a well paid consultant.  This is a mission for talent that takes them off the garden path into the wilderness and the rainforest.

After the show

As is my tendency, I have somewhat clunkily navigated out of the snow drifts of Punxsutawney into another muse about the “future of work”.  But I think the learning from Groundhog Day is hugely relevant for the humdrum world of modern work.

I have been working for the past couple of years trying to decode the current trends of workplace dissociation and dislocation. There are many fault lines; flat-lining productivity (despite everyone working longer, harder), poor employee engagement (despite hybrid working and an employer arms race of flexible benefits), work itself not working (as an inflation and the cost of living clobbers any sense of reward), a misalignment between older and new entrants to the workplace, and an over-reliance on remote-working tech to somehow create the magical collaborative juice, that was once found serendipitously by colleagues who often became personally close and cohered to one another.

Given this context, I have become convinced that we need a different type of leadership for the way we now work and live our lives. I have written some structured thoughts on that (with some substantiated evidence) in my book called GLUE.  One of the punchlines of the book is similar to Connors’ own revelation; when he takes a moment to pause, look over his shoulder and open his eyes to fully see the people around him.   The last act of Groundhog Day explores Connors’ literal awakening to the importance of others near to hand, and the enormous value of taking the time and effort to get to know them as people.  The same insight was found in my research about those “glue creating” leaders who galvanised others, engendered loyalty and created lasting collaborative networks.  These leaders spent less energy obsessed with self-improvement, trying to acquire knowledge, or insider-smarts, or political power, but invested themselves in getting to know their people well by listening, respecting their views, knowing their names, celebrating their achievements, remembering their kids’ names.

Towards the end of Groundhog Day, Connors is challenged by Rita, and he spends a day getting to realise the value of the people he has been gifted to be amongst everyday.  Now, rather than be treated dismissively and seen as a series of caricatures, costumes and nameless ensemble cast members, they become Ned, Nancy, Freddie, Debbie, Joelle, Ralph, Gus, Doris and Buster. 

The next morning, Phil (Connors) and Rita watch the sunrise, and Phil is transformed.

---

Groundhog Day with Andy Karl is playing at The Old Vic until 19 August 2023.

GLUE: Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World is published by Routledge and is available for pre-order now and released on 4th October 2023.

Employee Surveys: They're still digging in the wrong place!

The notification pings on your desktop. Your employer has invited you to take part in this year’s Employee Opinion Survey!  Your face makes a strange involuntary shape and you sigh as you hit delete. You already know that this will be the first of numerous chirpy head-office reminders that “your opinion really does count”, so there is no need to leave the invite festering in your inbox.  Even if you neglect to complete the Survey, you are bound to receive an invite for some unconnected "pulse" survey to determine how motivated you are and gauge your propensity to “go the extra mile”. 

I am assured that there is well proven correlation between improved employee engagement and increased productivity and revenue growth. (Often though the correlation of that data is provided by the major Survey providers themselves, but that’s a petty quibble.) The problem is not that seeking to measure employee engagement is wrong. The real issue is that the design of employee surveys often concentrates on measuring the wrong things. They’re digging in the wrong place.  

Often these Surveys are based on employee engagement measures that neglect any focus on the customer, client, or other external stakeholder. Typically they look at employee satisfaction, future retention, how comfortable the working environment is, how the employee feels rewarded, praised or encouraged. Most have numerous questions to gauge how motivated we are, how we regard the senior team, and whether, or not, “we understand the strategy”. 

This is all helpful and interesting for the senior leadership team and, no doubt, is difficult to consistently score well against. But, by their very nature, the question set is too internally focused, often more likely to create discussion and feedback around hygiene factors [often literally!] about the workplace itself, rather than about how well supported employees are to serve and delight our customers. 

The most powerful item for any CEO and senior team to review together is the employee’s view of how well the organisation equips and supports the goal of meeting and exceeding customer expectations. Existing Surveys can be easily adapted to consider this so that employees can provide feedback not just on how they are served by their organisation, but how well the organisation serves them to provide extraordinary service to clients and customers. Focusing the Survey with this different emphasis would provide a more powerful, purposeful insight for the organisation than a bi-annual audit of internal factors.

This article updates a Linked-in post first written in 2016. Since then, nothing much has changed. The image is a cartoon by Hugh McLeod, from Gaping Void. You can buy prints like this at: www.gapingvoid.com

Culture: An f##ing great British success story

While Hollywood blockbusters are no longer, you know, busting blocks, new music that sticks seems too rare, and what is left of the social media I dare still touch has become a bot infested Chat GPT generated swamp of dystopia, it needed some inspiration to relieve the creative gloom at Wave Your Arms this month. 

So thank you then to the UK, to Blighty, this Emerald Isle, and the good citizens of this rare corner of the planet for restoring much faith.  The evidence follows, and it is compelling. 

Exhibit #1: Hytner and Hockney

I am just back from Nicholas Hytner’s revival of Guys and Dolls at The Bridge, which took centrally staged immersive theatre to new levels, exploding with song, dance and joy.  While the vibrant production in a great venue was life affirming in the moment, a more lingering thoughtful time of affirmation was found at the new Lightroom venue in Kings Cross, where Hytner (again) has curated and produced a three-dimensional audio-visual wonder; in a retrospective, self-narrated by David Hockney.  The show called ‘Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)’ transports you through the thoughts, inventiveness and imagination of the greatest living artist in the world, via canvas, iPad paintings, and photography. We are moved from LA to East Yorkshire, via the Opera to Northern France, on floor and walls, in front, beneath, between and behind.  The music score written by Nico Muhly is also profoundly good.  If you were underwhelmed by a similar recent attempt to make an immersive ‘Van Gogh’ exhibition work well, then this show will reassure and revitalise your sense of the possible.  The fact that Hockney was personally involved in its creation has clearly and creatively paid off, and I understand that it will extend its run to October 2023. 

Exhibit #2: Forsyth’s Gold   

The BBC was once an undisputed cultural crown jewel export for the UK.  Unfortunately, it now finds itself increasingly at a nexus of the ‘culture wars’, amidst arguments over social media ‘censorship’ (benching a football host for a weekend and then capitulating almost as quickly), and just this week embroiled in a row with Elon Musk about its funding and a perception of “bias”. My own view (humbly) is that for the intact full-service BBC to survive, or thrive, it will need to continue to tread an enormously difficult tightrope of impartiality, so should neither genuflect to the left or right.  As soon as it editorialises on social issues, it risks aping the progressive CNN and NYT.  If it feels compelled to berate like the upstart GB News, or Fox News, it merely becomes just another “voice”, or opinion promoter, not a reporter, or news broadcaster of record.  But wherever it goes editorially, in a world where there are already a myriad of other channels and online services, it will only have any chance of surviving into the next decade if people continue to tune-in, tap, swipe, or request the BBC out of choice, not obligation.  If the future model for the BBC’s survival ends up being voluntary subscription (rather an archaic television license tax) then it will have to continue to produce shows like The Gold.  It does not have to compete with others to produce hundreds of hours of low common denominator rubbish, just make more productions like The Gold.  The six-part TV series, written by Neil Forsyth, is a wonderful piece of television drama, on a story rooted in a part of London (and Kent) I have lived in throughout the past thirty-odd years.  It was brilliant, particularly in how its sense of “period” setting in the mid-1980’s was so precisely and evocatively done.  As a bonus, in Jack Lowden’s brilliant enigmatic portrayal of Kenneth Noye, the director and production team had casted genuine gold of their own.   

Exhibit #3: Armstrong’s Succession  

HBO’s Succession, barely three episodes into Season 4, just had its ‘Red Wedding’ moment, with a shock akin to the Game of Thrones massacre that curve-balled a global audience who hadn’t managed to wade through two-thousand pages of George R.R. Martin’s voluminous source material, to already know that they were about to see the violent demise of protagonists aplenty.  In Succession, Logan is an ignoble king in his own modern world, amidst a market tempest, but does not react like Lear, bemoaning his lot and howling at the skies, while his kids battle for the spoils.  Here, months after surviving a stroke and a similar haemorrhage of just about every close relationship he’s ever touched, he strides the stairs to his private plane, whimsically engineering another humiliation of one of his kids and a loyal executive, and calls out for a more “aggressive approach” in his business empire.  He then simply dies, off-screen, on a toilet, fumbling for his mobile phone.

Succession is often singularly credited to Jesse Armstrong, a British author, screenwriter, and producer. He is even younger than I am, and clearly a genius, but he is also terrific at harnessing other British writers like Georgia Pritchett and Lucy Prebble and a US based production crew to create something distinctively set in the US, about a great American dynastic family, running a US media empire, but infused with something that reeks of British comedy.  It is their fusion of a peculiarly British sarcasm (born out of the sweary political masterpiece that was Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It) and some imagined (but I understand deeply well researched) unpacking of billionaires’ psychological hang-ups and psychosis that works so well.    

The episode formula is in a way simple enough, and yet distinctive for not being driven by the predominant emphasis of modern screen-entertainment, which is overly issue driven and message fuelled and too often sincerely, but awfully written.  Succession is the combination of great writing, acting, direction and production, in a creative combination that makes the drama fizz and the flawed characters pop. Over the four seasons the plot splutters, then stutters, repeats again some similar refrains (just like our own real less-high octane versions of life) but we root for the broken protagonists because the stakes are enormous.  The writing is visceral, and cruel, and almost Shakespearian in its iambic-pentameters of f-bombs, innuendo, sarcasm and sibling on sibling disdain. It’s a show about hurtfulness and emotional harm. If like me, you persevered through the dullness of the pandemic inhibited Season Three, sit back because now the gloves are really off, the bullying patriarch is grave-bound, and I cannot wait to see how this mess pays off in the final seven shows.

A book about Glue - the Cover Story

View fullsize

Someone once said “you should never judge a book by its cover.” Which is, of course, wise advice, and at the same time, complete nonsense. I once bought an unreadable tome on the basis of a cover that looked like a gorgeous Roger Dean album cover, but the book had all the spark and imagination of the reverse of a box of cornflakes. Then I read The World for Sale, by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, which has a great enigmatic, intriguing cover and the book was fascinating, gripping and I learnt much from diving in and staying with it. It looks great on the shelf too. The new novel by RF Huang, called Babel, looks just fantastic. Even the title is cool. It’s now a Sunday Times and NYT global bestseller. Getting the cover right for online scrolling, or bookshop browsing is an imprecise science and a strange kind of artistry. So, for my humble attempt at a new business book called GLUE: Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World, I have agonised over how to get it right. Do we go quirky, playful and eccentric, or ballsy, serious and high-minded? In the end, we decided to simply double-down on Glue. Not everyone I spoke to loved the title Glue when I first pitched the idea, but if they read two pages, they said it made perfect sense. If they get 150 pages further then, hopefully, the Glue idea will be found addictive, and will even “stick in the mind” afterwards. Anyway, Glue is coming out later this year. There will doubtless be a few bumps in the road, possible delays, and inevitable tweaks to be made, but I am delighted that Glue has come this far. I can’t wait to be able to share more sometime soon.

A book about Glue - update two

I have been sending out excerpts from my new book ‘Glue’ to reviewers for comments, and hopefully, some endorsements. The responses so far have been really heartening, with many saying that they felt the broad theme is topical and timely, ‘of the moment’, and something important for managers to wrestle with. In fact, we recently commissioned some insight work amongst the Alumni of London Business School and the second most important topic flagged amongst that respondent group (after the issue of turbulence and geo-political uncertainty) was the broad topic of “the future of work’. There is an appetite for clear ideas about leading an organisation that has adopted hybrid working, the future role of physical offices/buildings, and maintaining a productive corporate culture in a hybrid working world. It seems we are in the right ballpark with Glue, I just wish I could get into many hands more quickly!

Somone wrote and asked me to provide a short summary of where the idea for Glue came from, and what I mean by “glue’. Well, all will clearly be revealed when the book finally gets printed and distributed, but ahead of that, here is a 100 words or so, that will hopefully set scene.

A back story for Glue

In 1998 the late Sumantra Ghoshal, a Professor at LBS, developed a compelling theory about why some firms thrived and others faltered.  He proposed that those firms which cultivated social capital amongst employees, created more intellectual capital, which in turn created an ‘organisational advantage’ for that firm compared to its peers. He argued that managers should actively seek ways to configure and encourage collaboration, connections, friendship, reciprocity and trust amongst talented colleagues.  But over two decades later, in a world of remote, flexible and hybrid working, those critical interpersonal bonds seem more tenuous and harder to maintain.  Glue argues that leaders need to rethink the way they make working with others inclusive, involving, collaborative, energising and productive.  People cohere around people (not strategy, or products, or mission statements) so who you work with, who you are led by, and who you serve, is critical to creating the right organisational glue. So, this new book sets out some ideas about glue: what it is, where to look for it, how to use it and, most importantly, how to cultivate glue amongst your most valuable people.

I hope that helps, and I look forward to sharing more very soon.

A book about Glue - update one

I am delighted to share with you that my new book, ‘GLUE: Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World’, will be published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis) in 2023.

Many of my colleagues will know of my long-term addiction to glue.  Not for sticking, or craft, or sniffing, but as the crucial ingredient you need to cultivate amongst talented people in your organisation. The past few years have seen a seismic shift for many in the nature and form of work, with remote, flexible and hybrid working the new normal. Despite this transformation, the prognosis for the modern firm is not good, with engagement still poor, low productivity and close personal ties on the wane.  The already tenuous bonds between organisations and their employees are becoming increasingly flimsy.

I began to wrestle with a crucial question: in a world of flexible, remote and hybrid working, how do you create and maintain deep engagement with, and amongst, employees who are often working apart from one another?

Most of us have relied upon two resources as a response: focusing on our own personal skills and behaviours, and by relying on a way of leading and managing learnt from the past. Both approaches are now either defunct, or much diminished in their effectiveness. The new ways we work and live our lives requires a very different leadership approach.

Leaders urgently need to refocus, not on themselves, but on harnessing relationships, making their organisations more humane, and finding new ways to engage and unleash talent. We need to transform leadership for the hybrid age, not just in a way that makes us feel less remote, but one that coheres disparate hearts, minds and souls.  To do that, the single, most impactful thing leaders must do - and it’s not easy - is to create and nurture an intangible yet essential factor called glue.

So, my new book sets out some ideas about glue: what it is, where to look for it, how to use it and, most importantly, how to cultivate glue amongst your most valuable people. It explores the approach of some unusual leaders, and of firms transformed through the ‘organisational advantage’ of smartly configuring and harnessing talent.

I have drawn upon stories from firms such as Alibaba, Apple, Barclays, Sky, Husqvarna Group, HSBC, Space X, Zopa, and Richer Sounds, to show how leaders can shape the effectiveness of teams, reimagine the workplace, and reinvigorate the business to retain the loyalty of customers through the talents, ideas, and energy of their best people.

I have written Glue for anyone who has a genuine interest in leading others with impact and wants to better unite, transform and elevate their business.  Whatever your role, function, sector, or seniority, I hope when you read it you will be energised about a new distinctive vision for leading in a hybrid world.

The book is in the hands of the lovely people at Routledge, and will be published later in 2023. I’m as excited as I am nervous, and will share an update here when I am more certain of the timings, and I know how you might pre-order a copy. I will also share a small preview when it is ready. JD

Arthouse films and rock nirvana - a year in review

THE TRIANGLE OF SADNESS: TRAVEL WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS In 2022

In one of my favourite films, Shawshank Redemption, Red offers some world-weary advice to new prison inmate Andy Dufresne.  “Hope,” he says, “is a dangerous thing.  Hope can drive a man insane”.  This week I was scrolling back through some of my gloomy journal and blog posts from 2020 and 2021, which sent me back into my own mental Shawshank, frustrated and trapped amidst the sheer bloody awfulness of lockdown, travel restrictions, social distancing; observing the near death of cinema, theatre, live music and many beloved business and cultural venues.  My hope inducing madness then was simply for a return to the nostalgia and freedom of 2019 - of live music, culture, travel, and all the joys of a bustling, interactive, creative world.   Now as we enter 2023, there are different “perildemics” which abound.  Some are the inevitable result of policy makers’ doubling down on Covid restrictions in 2021, and so, the “law of unintended consequences” was empirically proven; with economic harm, soaring inflation, impaired public health, psychological damage, and continued disruption from an older, more familiar virus, called flu. Plus ca change! #ffs

Anyway, back to that maddening need for hope.  And a new Happy New Year!

Film

2022 was a million times better than the preceding two years, with airports and hospitality overwhelmed with pent up demand for freedom, normality and fun.  Businesses were rebooted and the creative sector re-opened. London has been bursting at the seams. Movies also became fun again. Tom Cruise was smarter than the average, and left his already completed flick Top Gun Maverick, in the locker until 2022, making over 1.5 billion dollars and filling theatres with a remake of the original movie from over 30 years ago.  James Cameron did the same trick, releasing Avatar 2, as a longer version of his 2010 global blockbuster, adding an ‘Attenborough would be proud’ whales sequence to an already bladder challenging long film.  Other than The Batman, all the other blockbusters were pretty tame, terrible, or too confusedly issue driven to excite many out of their homes. Though, like much else, cinema is a now a hybrid business, so Daniel Craig’s Glass Onion [another ‘sequel’], was only in cinemas for a week before release on Netflix (and smartly timed over Christmas) and in an outstanding performance by musician Janelle Morae, it gave us a genuine new movie star.

I wrote earlier in the year about the enduring allure of the arthouse flick and I loved Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World.  It’s an art-house film with sub-titles and it’s a wistful meditation on adult life, motherhood, modern family relationships, faltering careers, fidelity, mortality and sex.  Going a little more serious ‘arthouse’, but without subtitles, Triangle of Sadness, by Ruben Östlund [who did Force Majeure a few years ago], went down a storm in Cannes in May, and literally has its cast of beautiful, but ugly, vain, and fantastically wealthy grotesques go down in a storm aboard a luxury yacht.  It also has one of those strange +/- ambiguous endings that infuriates, but also serves to make the film something you just have to talk about on the way home. Another work of creative class came from Andrew Gaynord’s All My Friends Hate Me. Starring an increasingly paranoid Tom Stourton, who co-wrote the script, it’s a terrific, nervy, cringe inducing small British film - like a Get Out, though psychologically, not bloody, violent. I could not stop thinking about LCD Sound Systems’ song All My Friends: “You spent the next five years trying to get with your friends again…It comes apart | The way it does in bad films, Except in parts | When the moral kicks in.” See it with friends and I suggest you watch it from behind the sofa. You may have repeatable-cringe injuries by the end.

Bridging arthouse levels of creativity and genuine homage to greatness, the David Bowie biopic Moonage Daydream is a must buy and must repeat when released on 4K UHD. For sheer narrative genius, and a new take on the world of action blockbusters, my film of the year was Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Directed by ‘Daniels’, theirs is one of the best films I have seen for years; an absolutely belter; imaginative, funny, sad, thought-provoking, and head-spinningly odd. The hero is a middle aged Chinese laundry-mat owner struggling with the exhausting demands of her tax-defaulting business, amidst broken relationships with her father, divorce-seeking husband and errant daughter. It’s that good you will want to tell everyone you know about it all at once.

Music

In the summer I did peak gig at the Taylor Hawkins tribute.  Nothing will surpass it.  This was the twenty-first century version of Live Aid, but turned up to 11, rock 'n roll style.  Dave Grohl, the founder and frontman for Foo Fighters, is an extraordinary human being, musician, communicator, and genuine rock-music legend, harnessing Liam Gallagher, Josh Holme, Stuart Copeland, Brian Johnson, Justin Hawkins, Sam Ryder, Lars Ulrich, Roger Taylor, (his son) Rufus Taylor, Travis Baker, and Omar Hakim, as well as Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush.  It was a sad occasion, to mark the loss of a great drummer, but as a nostalgic, joyful shot in the arm of astounding rock music, then there was no better way of moving on. I also saw Kings of Leon, The War on Drugs, C2C at The O2, James Taylor, Verdi’s Requiem, Steve Hackett, and David Gray playing White Ladder. All great gigs, but all pale compared to the rock-behemoth that Grohl created.

Looking forward

There are very many joys to look forward to creatively in 2023.   Peter Gabriel is releasing new music and touring live, Springsteen is too (though probably too pricey). Groundhog Day is coming back to The Old Vic, The Bridge are reviving Guys and Dolls and also The Bridge’s Nicholas Hytner is launching a new audio visual show with David Hockney, which should brighten up a new venue in Kings Cross in the early part of the year. I have recently become hooked on reading R.F. Kuang, who wrote The Poppy Wars, which will keep me busy for much of the year. For, me, all being well, I will have a new project called Glue that is coming to fruition in 2023. Lots to look forward to. I hope.

Films of the Year

Everything Everywhere All At Once
Triangle of Sadness
Glass Onion
All My Friends Hate Me
Moonage Daydream
Top Gun Maverick
Boiling Point
The Northman

Records of the Year

Somethings Never Change, Priestgate
Wild Front, Wild Front
Angel in Real Time, Gangs of Youth
Life is Yours, Foals
Better With You, Kamala
An Hour Before it’s Dark, Marillion
Since the Dog Died, and others, Fuzzy Sun

A great tragedy in China unfolds

A great tragedy is unfolding in China and there seems no end in sight for the misery of its people. Just three years ago, much was different. China was exciting, buoyant and (relatively) open to the West. Now borders are effectively closed both ways, major cities are in lockdown, universities are closed, and protests have been curtailed, with snatch squads, and the fast mobilisation of even more oppressive and fearsome measures. A million Chinese are in quarantine huts, with hundreds of thousands more being built in camp-cities near Guangzhou and other major centres. The full economic impact is hard to discern from official sources, but any westerners still left in Shanghai, are exhaustedly leaving and are unlikely to return. China is, whether deliberately so, or not, turning in on itself. They are pulling down the blinds and bolting people metaphorically, and literally, into their homes. The shutters are also closed in other ways. Chinese authorities are even ‘blurring’ TV coverage of the World Cup in Qatar, so citizens cannot see 80,000 unmasked people in the stands getting on with living their lives like it’s 2018.

Despite the emerging economic and healthcare disaster, President Xi and China’s local officials remain indefatigable in their commitment to Zero-Covid. As the FT reports today: “In late 2020, Xi extolled China as the “first major economy to have recuperated from the crisis and achieved economic recovery, a testimony to its resilience and vibrancy”. Now though, cases are close to record levels, economic vibrancy has been clobbered by rolling urban lockdowns and a large cohort of insufficiently vaccinated elderly people remain at risk.”

I first visited about 15 years ago and returned numerous times. My son studied Mandarin at Jiao Tong University.  I enjoyed watching world-class golf there, as a guest at 150th anniversary celebrations of HSBC. Just four years ago, we enjoyed a family holiday in China, climbing the Great Wall, travelling by bullet train, visiting the Forbidden City, and glimpsing something of the history and culture of this amazing country. I have in recent years led learning programs and discovery visits with large groups of western executives to Hangzhou and Shanghai. Those visits were inspiring and unnerving in many ways; leaving us amazed at the sheer ambition, appetite and invention of the Chinese. I have written elsewhere about visiting The World Expo and the headquarters of Alibaba in 2010, and of the profound impact that trip had on me and many others. The view from The Bund (or back towards it from Pudong) remains one of the most extraordinary nighttime city-scapes in the world, etched in the mind. We have always experienced great hospitality, warmth and civility from our hosts in China. But any prospect of a return seems many years away, if ever.

Zero-COVID probably made sense in the early days of the pandemic. Three years later, as the whole world watches agog, it looks like perverse lunacy, like King Canute, stood before the waves. 

There is a tragedy unfolding in China, and for those of us who have glimpsed something of this remarkable nation, it's heartbreaking to watch.

Reboot storytelling to build belonging

Once popular, storytelling in business has fallen out of favour.  But the power of a human story is hugely underestimated. It may be the modern default approach, but business leaders seldom win hearts and minds with their usual communications toolbox, of well-presented slide shows, data analysis, carefully crafted e-mails, or glossy corporate comms.  Leaders should learn to use stories, which are more memorable, emotionally resonant and speak volumes. 

The stories your people share say much about what your organisation does, what is important, and how people are regarded.  Such stories can give indications of culture in action; team accomplishments, memorable wins, new product launches, tackling villainous competitors, celebrating heroic successes, as well as sharing the pain of failure.  Storytelling can be a smart way of you communicating culture; in the way you talk about your business; highlighting examples of collaboration, innovation and experiments, and the outcomes achieved. The hero of the story does not have to be the usual suspect, but may well be an unusual, or unsung contributor. The outcome of the tale may not just be a financial goal achieved; it could more likely be a contribution to the wider community, lessons learned, and values shared. 

For stories about culture, the key narrative device ought to be one that uses the pronoun “we”.  But the typical hero in the story is almost always the entrepreneurial genius; a Jobs, Ma, or Musk, and others.  But it is the teams they brought together that designed and built the Mac, brought e-commerce to China, and sent rockets to space and back.  The leader often takes the limelight, but 53 were credited inside the Mac, 18 men and women-built Alibaba from scratch, and Musk succeeded because he was avaricious in his recruitment of talents from other firms.  Musk’s former head of talent as SpaceX describes the brief like this, and it sounds like a scene from science fiction adventure movie: “SpaceX is ‘Special Forces’.  We take on the missions that others deem impossible. We told them, this will be the hardest thing you will ever do in your life.  We sought the kind of personality that wants to a Navy SEAL - the engineering equivalent of that.” 

Once Upon A Time in a Conference Hall Far Far Away

For several years, storytelling in business seemed to be all the rage.  A decade ago, I attended numerous leadership conferences, seminars, and strategy workshops, where some enigmatic speaker would have the audience completely captivated, as they unpacked the “three beats of the leader’s story,” or espoused the value of sitting cross-legged around our imaginary campfires to explore the mystery and magic of the storyteller’s art.  In leadership workshops, jaded executives were encouraged to re-imagine their corporate resume as a “leadership journey” illuminated with moments of personal “epiphany” and hard-won life-lessons.  As a welcome relief from the usual death by PowerPoint, storytelling seemed a rich seam to explore.  I discovered at one workshop that almost all business and personal challenges could be better understood through some cleverly curated clips from movies.  Most memorably, through a deconstruction of The Shawshank Redemption, I learnt about true friendship, personal resilience, work-place bullying, and the enduring value of knowing a good accountant. 

Some of the conference speakers were as extraordinary in the flesh as they were in the best-selling books they had written.  Bear Grylls (broke his back, but then climbed Everest before he was 21), Joe Simpson (survived catastrophic injuries on a mountain, but made life and death decisions that haunt him to this day), John McCarthy (held captive in a basement in Beirut for five years, but emerged as man of great warmth and unbelievable tolerance) and Ellen MacArthur (solo-circumnavigated the world in 94 days, but emerged an articulate public champion of sustainability, before the topic was de rigour). These days, though, if I attend a business forum, the inclusion of a storyteller on the agenda is now more likely to prompt a world-weary sigh rather than a standing ovation.

The alchemists

Advertisers and marketers once embraced storytelling as the mode through which they would drive up the sales of desirable products. There were some wondrous and very memorable moments, where classic story themes were fused with brand campaigns.  Apple’s ‘1984’ Mac launch (evoking Orwell’s dystopian vision) and the Guinness ‘Surfer’ (narrating Melville’s Moby Dick) were each brilliantly done; smart, imaginative, and thought-provoking.

It is both remarkable and kind of wonderful that two of cinemas’ great directors started their careers selling colourful PCs and dark draft beer. The Surfer’s director Jonathan Glazer went on to make Sexy Beast, with Ben Kingsley, described by Martin Scorsese as the best British film he had ever seen.  Apple’s 1984 was the breakout moment for Ridley Scott, who went on to create iconic blockbusters like Alien, Blade Runner, The Martian, and the Academy Award winning Gladiator.

The idea of the advertiser as storyteller par excellence may have inspired the writers of the TV series Mad Men, where its anti-hero and creative genius Don Draper uses brilliant storytelling to pitch his campaign ideas.  In 'The Carousel Pitch’, his heartfelt epithets and tear-inducing sincerity wow the executives from new prospective client Kodak-Eastman.  Draper’s successful pitch rescues his firm’s tenuous place among the big agencies on Madison Avenue. But like many of the best stories, there is, of course, a twist.  The real magic of the pitch was that, for Don, the performance was nothing more than that - an act.  A charade.  He had left all authenticity outside in the trash, using his wife and children as mere visual assets to sell his concept. I implore you to watch it and be amazed by the power of the master (and duplicitous) storyteller.  

I am less sure the advertisers of today use storytelling with such conviction or skill.  Their objective is not the memorable story retold, but the widely distributed meme or gif. The allegorical and metaphorical wit found in adapting Melville or Orwell seems to be seldom bothered with. The advertisers’ goal is to gain a momentary mindshare, a nanosecond span of attention, and their creative solution is to treat the audience like kindergarten consumers, grasping for the screenshot-friendly marshmallows on offer. The writer and cartoonist Hugh McLeod summed up the dumbed-down approach beautifully: “If you spoke to people the way advertising now speaks to people, they would punch you in the face.”

Death of the story

Technology has played a part in making stories both unbelievably easy to access, and simultaneously, too easy to ignore.  While we can readily access more than 30 million books via Amazon, we are a mere thumb-swipe away from the distraction of instantaneous stories of global importance and/or celebrity gossip, super-condensed into a few hundred characters on Twitter. Worse still, the long-form story version of the tweet starts with the soul-destroying tease “Thread”. 

On Instagram, a story is now described as “slideshow that allows us to capture and post related images and video content, so we share more of our lives with those we are close with”. Another thumb swipe and Facebook sends us photo-montage stories of our colleagues’ enviable holidays, our half-remembered second-cousin’s birthday and our pet’s best adventures.  Not much room then for Melville’s 585 dense pages.

TED Talks have become the modern equivalent of business storytelling.  In a puritanically branded event, an over-rehearsed speaker has up to 18 minutes to enlighten, persuade and inform – and hope that their nuggets of knowledge will be worthy enough to be shared by millions online.  Depending on your perspective, TED Talks is a medium that has either saved Western thinking and the promulgation of new ideas, or alternatively, it has not.  Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo is a massive bestseller.  And the TED franchise has created a whole industry of training, books, videos and professional tutors to help you Present Like TED, Own the Room and Rock it Like TED.   Airport bookshops are packed with TED’s alum.  TED’s own editorial has a succinct take on what Storytelling is enormously helpful: “How do you foster connecting, empathy and understanding between people.  Tell a good story, of course.”

As you’d expect, in the myriad of eclectic topics and more than 3,000 official talks now available, there are duds and some gems.  But one of the very best is just five minutes in length, one of the shortest TED talks ever shared.

Save The Shoes

The story is titled ‘A life lesson from a volunteer firefighter’, by Mark Bezos, sometime more simply Save The Shoes. Like all the best stories, Bezos immediately ignites your imagination. His mode of telling has a theatrical wow factor, walking onto the stage dressed as a fireman, holding his hard hat, and with humility and great humour he shares the story.  He seems genuine and authentic, making the story both personal and universal. On a night of much drama when a house is on fire, his only contribution is to rescue the home-owners’ shoes from the fire.  In its punchline and Bezos’ brief epilogue, there is a sticky reminder of how powerful lessons can be found in real-life experiences and how great storytelling can still blow up a room.  As Bezos finishes, he brings the house down:

“In both my vocation and my avocation as a volunteer firefighter, I am a witness to acts of generosity and kindness on a monumental scale, but I'm also a witness to acts of grace and courage on an individual basis. And you know what I've learned? They all matter. So, as I look around this room at people who either have achieved, or are on their way to achieving, remarkable levels of success, I would offer this reminder: don't wait. Don't wait until you make your first million to make a difference in somebody's life. If you have something to give, give it now. Serve food at a soup kitchen. Clean up a neighbourhood park. Be a mentor. Not every day is going to offer us a chance to save somebody's life, but every day offers us an opportunity to affect one. So, get in the game. Save the shoes.”

Exploring strategic challenges

At LBS, we sometimes build some form of storytelling element into our Executive Education learning programmes.  At its simplest level this might be in the way cohort members are encouraged to introduce themselves to one another (by sharing their story), or at a more sophisticated level, it might be around building a strategic challenge into a compelling narrative that engages and excites others. We use expert facilitators, often writers themselves, as well as actors, stand-up comedians, filmmakers and improvisers to enthuse and build confidence.  There are also some very simple ways you might use storytelling in your teams to make better sense of business problems.

Business ‘models’ are not always very memorable. We more easily recall Star Wars’ The Force than Porter’s Five Forces8. When doing team exercises, familiar tales, tropes, and characters are good ways to instantly connect ideas and minds.

Why not use a familiar story (movie, or book) and get your team to think about a business challenge using a metaphor from that familiar tale? Rather than plot some actions from a hurried SWOT, ask the team: “What if you had Harry Potter’s magic wand and three spells you could cast, what issues, fixes or gaps would you choose to use them on in your business?” Get them to discern and rank their choices. Alternatively, use a film like Back to the Future as a launchpad to discuss what your organisation would look like 10 years from now and the actions you need to take now for it to survive and thrive in the future.

Storytelling glue

There is something both democratic (we can all tell a good yarn, right?), as well as refreshingly human about exploring a business challenge through the format or metaphor of a story.  Stories are familiar, memorable, and easily shared.  Great stories cross borders and can be translated and adapted for different tastes and cultures. They resonate more than business theory, purpose, vision and the features of a product or service.  In the words of Mad Men’s Don Draper, using stories creates a “sentimental bond” with your audience, and much deeper and potent connection.  Stories are a good way of reinforcing glue.

A richer purpose at work

Many mature organisations still spend much thought, time, and money, wrestling with defining their organisational purpose. Some new start-ups begin trying to solve that conundrum, before even shipping a single product, holding to Sinek’s memorable refrain; “people don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” A true, inspiring, story from the UK shows a different way of defining purpose; nurturing from day one and being true to that purpose for 40 years.

Julian Richer started buying and selling hi-fi separates at school when he was 14. He co-founded Richer Sounds in 1978 and led and managed the business for 41 years until he divested ownership of the business in 2019, in an unusual way.  Richer is in many ways, an unusual leader, with a view of business, and a perspective on life and work, which is shaped by his deep conviction about ethical practice, and in later life, by his Christian faith.  He was just 19 years old when he opened his first shop near London Bridge, selling hi-fi, TV, and audio-visual kit. The store was a hit and became listed for over 20 years in Guinness World Records as achieving the highest sales per square foot of any retail outlet in the world.

The business grew across the UK and today it now trades from 51 stores across the UK as well as online and through a telesales and business to business operation. Many employees have side-hustles as DJs, are musicians and music producers, and through Richer Unsigned, a not-for profit unit, it provides a free platform for over 3,000 unsigned bands and artists. By 2019, Richer had built what he calls a “responsible business” to a turnover to over £200 million a year. The whole business shared the value created, with reward fairly shared amongst employees, and also with 15 per cent of the company’s profits donated to some 400 charitable causes.  His belief on treating staff well is not just a moral choice, it’s a business imperative:

“There is, of course, a cost involved: paying your people above the minimum and going the extra mile for customers, and even paying your suppliers on time. But the financial payback is huge. I am talking about savings from recruitment and training because your labour turnover will be tiny. Your best people who have the most experience will stay — they are a valuable commodity you surely want to hang on to. Your staff will take less time off for sickness and your shrinkage will be minuscule.”

Richer was interviewed in 2016, and announced, with some wit, that he had made plans to hand his entire business to his employees when he dies, saying he lacked a “spoilt child to run the business”. Three years later, then aged 60, he announced that he had transferred ownership to his employees by passing 60% of his shares to a trust. Each of his 500 employees, excluding directors, received a thank-you bonus of £1,000 for every year of work, with 8 years’ service being the average tenure.

He continues to be a vocal proponent of ethical business, writing a column in The Sunday Times, publishing a book in 2018 called The Ethical Capitalist, and regularly speaking about business ethics, employee engagement, fairness, and transparency. His legacy remains a firm that still makes much of its unusual ownership structure, and distinctive culture, recruiting based on natural friendliness, rather than high-pressure sales skills. The ethical approach was a founder passion, but it is also one that secured commitment and loyalty from staff and remans ingrained in the business today.

The “responsible business" is an unusual model, but by retaining an employee-owned structure, clear convictions, and explicit values, backed by generous giving, it creates a particular kind of glue between employer and employee, which in turn wins loyalty and recommendation from customers, securing numerous Which? Best Retailer awards.

Richer believes that leaders should put business in the service of society, and provide a new kinder, fairer form of capitalism. In his book he argues “ethically run businesses are invariably more efficient, more motivated and more innovative than those that care only about the bottom line.” There are many areas on which a business should choose to focus; growth, profitability, sustainability, but for Richer it is more fundamentally a choice about doing the right thing, and at the heart of that is the leader's role in treating employees well.  "Our philosophy is that staff should come first.”

A Richer legacy

Richer did not delay opening his first shop until he had defined precisely what he meant by a truly “Responsible Business”; he started by selling consumer electronics, and then spent 40 years building, cultivating, and reinforcing the right way to do that, ensuring his staff were well treated and that their achievements were celebrated along the way.  But because of that distinctive culture, and a deepening shared sense of doing things differently, employees stuck around for many years, and those remaining when he retired, received more than just a cash bonus as the founder’s legacy.  He passed to them the firm. It is quite a story built around an inspiring leader, but is also one delivered 7 days a week, in 52 high-street shops, and on the web, by the concerted effort of over 500 committed people, somehow imbued with a kind of common glue.   

Elon Musk - A Man in Full

For those in the UK, or with access to the BBC iPlayer, there is an absolute ‘must watch’ series just started, called The Elon Musk show.  It is a smartly produced documentary, with episode one introducing an array of characters; his former-wife, his mother, various rocket scientists, early investors, exhausted colleagues, and his first wife Justine.  From the off, there are some psychological truth-bombs that are jaw-dropping.  Early in his days as CEO of SpaceX and the Chairman of Tesla, Musk is interviewed about the work-life challenges of being a father of five (he and Justine had twins and triplets) and his candidness is profound; “actually it impairs my ability to execute here,” he says.

Not long after this, he confirms that he is filing for divorce from Justine, his college sweetheart, by efficiently leaving a message on their marriage therapist’s phone.  His work ethic is remarked on by everyone and his mother explains why he finds settled relationships so difficult; “He compartmentalises his brain…when you date or marry Elon, you don’t see him much.”  His commitment to his enterprise is unquestionable though.  When there is delay to delivery of the first Teslas, he throws himself at the minutiae of the supply problems: “I’m available 24/7, call me at 3 am on a Sunday, I don’t care.”

As you watch, there is the sense of a man of incalculable genius and entrepreneurial vision; and a rare human-being with profoundly odd behaviours and some strange emotional vacuity.  It would be easy to watch the show and grow a sense of moral outrage, as I am sure some commentators will, as the PayPal millionaire becomes the billionaire, and then within two decades, the richest man in the universe.  But for me, it is the business insights that are most illuminating.  He obviously had a profound sense of the future; a vision for a more sustainable planet, and the opportunity for human exploration beyond this earth.  We also discover some small nuggets about how he sought to galvanise and lead others with a team-philosophy that is Steve Jobs-like in its brevity and acuity.

Thomas Mueller is a Rocket Propulsion Engineer at Space X and was “employee number 1” when hired by Musk.  He talks of Musk’s determination to get the whole team wholly focused and completely committed to the success of the venture.  After an early rocket explodes on an island in the Pacific, Musk exits some engineers and others he feels are not fully committed. Mueller describes Musk’s approach like this:

“I noticed that if people were negative, they were not in the next meeting. He said a company is a bunch of vectors, each person is a vector, and they need to point in the direction you want to go. Bureaucracy and office politics and low morale, it’s almost random vectors. He was always about making all the vectors, which are all the employees, pointing in the right direction, moving forward.”

There are, I hope, more gems and jaw-dropping moments to follow in the series.  Musk’s story is, in a way, very familiar, but here in the details of the telling, and in the warmth, amazement, and openness with which his family and colleagues tell the tale, a fascinating picture emerges of what Tom Wolfe might have termed “a man in full”.

Dave Grohl creates the greatest show on earth

I am just back from the Taylor Hawkins Tribute gig at Wembley Stadium.  I have now done peak gig.  Nothing will surpass it.  This was the twenty-first century version of Live Aid, but turned up to 11, rock 'n roll style. Dave Grohl, the founder and frontman for Foo Fighters, is an extraordinary human being, musician, communicator, and genuine rock-music legend. For some 6 hours yesterday, he curated, played and hosted the most extraordinary tribute gig for his bandmate Taylor Hawkins, who died earlier this year while on tour in Argentina. The performers were numerous (over 40 musicians name-checked), many legendary in status, and amazingly well-rehearsed. The show made sense, built momentum as the evening grew, and was coherent and at times moving, delivering so much more than seemed possible from what initially appeared a random potpourri of the musical heroes who had inspired Hawkins.  It was also the surprise formats and combinations that provided the magic. Liam Gallagher, who opened, is not everyone’s cup of tea, but with The Foo Fighters as his backing band, he was literally a rock n roll star revitalised, trying hard to be all sour puss and snarly, he nearly smiled amidst the ovation, throwing his maracas away into the crowd. American indie-rocker Josh Holme (new to me and amazing) boldly sang both Bowie and Elton John classics in their own back-yard. Stuart Copeland played The Police with the Foos, Brian Johnson of ACDC then fronted the band to play Back in Black, and relative newcomer Sam Ryder fronted Queen like it was the role we had been prepared for all his life.

This gig was nirvana (forgive me) for a fan of great rock drummers. Stuart Copeland, Lars Ulrich, Roger Taylor, (his son) Rufus Taylor, Travis Baker, and (12 year-old prodigy) Nandi Bushell, all swapping places on the drum riser. Hawkin’s own 16 year-old son Shane, smashed his way through My Hero, which set the waterworks off amongst many of the 75,000 punters packing the stadium.  Omar Hakim [who famously played for Bowie on Let’s Dance in 1983, and Kate Bush’s live band in 2014] played with both Nile Rogers and Paul McCartney, and then most astonishingly of all, followed Dave Grohl (who had thundered his way through two early career classics) to form a triumvirate with Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush.

Yes, Rush. It is nearly three years since Rush’s Neil Peart died (and Lee mentioned the loss of his own “brother’), but over seven years since Lifeson and Lee had played together in a three-piece. The sound, musicianship and virtuoso skills are still there for Lifeson and Lee, and with such an extraordinary performance, then surely they must ponder if there is a way they can record and play live again?  The whole sense of the show was about a celebration of Hawkins, and musicians from across generations (aged 12 to 80) covering different bases, collaborating, jamming, noodling, and rocking hard, in time, together. And making that happen, always at the back (be it Grohl, Hakim, Copeland, Ulrich, etc.) someone seated, literally watching everyone’s back, staring out at the crowd and using their feet and hands with precision, deploying a physical conviction and commitment that a world-class boxer or athlete would be humbled by.

There are many clips I could share, and the Rush segment with Grohl and Hakim will live long in the memory, but for the sheer wonder and life-affirming joy of being a drummer in a rock n roll band, please see below this clip of Nandi Bushell. She is so small, she had to clamber on to the rises, but then bosses it like the best. Drummers, huh?

Philip Larkin - 100 Not Out

Today, the 9th August 2022, is the 100th anniversary of the poet Philip Larkin’s birth. A national treasure, not without some controversy, he was also the Librarian of the University of Hull. I ‘read’ Larkin’s Whitsun Weddings at School, which I still cherish, visited his grave in Cottingham, and considered having “All night North” tattooed on my arm, while drunk one time. There are better written eulogies online today about this peculiarly English genius - and much concern that he is being 'cancelled' from school curriculums, but I could not let the moment pass without sharing one of the best moments of my time as a Hull graduate.

A literal fire-side chat with Hull Uni Alum, journalist, former hostage, and brilliant human being, John McCarthy, talking about an unwanted encounter with Larkin. Enjoy. 🚬

Tell Everyone About This All At Once

I noticed this week a stage production of The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe is being revived in London. I remember seeing it a few years ago and being absolutely floored.  There is something about that wardrobe.  A gateway, a portal, a doorway, a time-machine, a bridge between there, and elsewhere.  As a narrative device, it has simply never been topped, in any literature or film. Audiences love that sense of escape, of pushing through nervously, and emerging from the darkness into the landscape of an unfamiliar and magical world. Most of the movies and tales I have discovered, loved and returned to again and again, feature a similar ‘wardrobe’ motif; be it a souped-up DeLorean, a Time Bandits’ map, a Tardis, a Stargate, Neo’s red pill, or a Subtle Knife that cuts through time and space.

For millions of cinema goers, the movie equivalent of that wardrobe; transporting the viewer to another dimension, has been the Marvel logo graphic, unfolding across a cinema screen. Now, unostentatiously, called the Marvel Cinematic Universe (‘MCU’), the production studio, has now clocked up some 29 films since 2007, with at least 11 more in various stages of development. These titles have already grossed nearly USD30billion.  The films ‘transport’ two sorts of the viewers though; the casual cinema goer, often fairly new to these characters, super-heroes and fantastical worlds, and a second smaller segment (including me) who bought and devoured the comics in the 1980s, on which much of the world-building is based. For these aficionados, crossing into the MCU from the world of the comics, is not a trivial, or passive experience.  Their regard for those original comics is held with a kind of religious fervour. They call it ‘canon’ and you mess with it at your peril.  The starting point for any fandom is a mild form of fanaticism, often formed in younger years, when emotions and reactions are most visceral.  The best of the MCU movie makers have adopted a sense of responsibility in adapting comic to screen, from costume design, to dialogue, to character arc, and casting choice, which for the comic-book fans are profoundly important decisions. When the Directors have nailed it, the outcomes at the box office are astounding. When the Russo Brothers directed the two-part Avengers saga Infinity Wars and Endgame, they collectively made over USD5billion, with Endgame becoming the highest grossing movie of all time.

But after nearly 30 films, it seems something is going awry.  Film forums, fan groups, and online discussion boards are in meltdown.  The problem for the Hollywood producers is that if you transport a modern audience into the comic world of the 1980s, it now somehow doesn’t work: returning to a culturally alien landscape that feels awkward, patriarchic, not just patriotic, where female characters are (often) sexually objectified by the cartoonist, not drawn as self-determined, independent, fully formed characters.  So, here on the 21st Century side of the Marvel wardrobe, the women take the lead; Thor and the Hulk become female, Iron Man is killed off; the lead titles are Widows, Women, and to their critics, overtly Woke.  Marvel has suddenly stumbled (or deliberately hurtled, depending on your view) into the modern culture wars, of identity, sexuality, and diversity.  Which is in some ways no surprise, when the original comics were written by men for boys, full of machismo heroics, masculinity, power, strength and wars.  For more articulate insights on this transformation, there are much better sources than mine, with everyone from The Guardian, to The New Yorker, The Telegraph and others, taking a relatively high-minded perspective on the cultural tensions being played out. Or you could look up former comic book retailer, Gary Buechler, whose online show Nerdrotic, garners half a mission subscribers, whom I guess agree with him that the MCU is now a Disney owned woke-promoting media monster from hell.

So in a most extraordinary plot-twist in this emerging ‘conflict’ came to our screens this spring.  MCU recently released Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness. Now, any title as convoluted as that bodes ill for any sense in the telling of the tale, and having watched it, it is indeed an over-wrought, complicated, CGI over-heavy nonsensical mess, that has little heart, purpose, or surprise (other than the antagonist being a nasty badass version of a character we have cheered for in pervious MCU films). In contrast, the Russo Brothers, MCU’s most successful directors, have produced their own non-MCU movie, Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was released almost simultaneously.

Directed by another creative pair (monikored ‘Daniels’), theirs is one of the best films I have seen for years. Like the Doctor Strange movie, it is a story about a hero’s ability to be transported to different ‘multiverses’, places where there are different versions of the self, each with different traits, powers and purposes.  But while the MCU movie is a dud, Everything Everywhere All at Once is an absolutely belter; imaginative, funny, sad, thought-provoking, and head-spinningly odd. The hero is a middle aged Chinese laundry-mat owner struggling with the exhausting demands of her tax-defaulting business, amidst broken relationships with her father, divorce-seeking husband and errant daughter, who has fallen in love with a woman. I will not even attempt to do a full review, please just see it and be genuinely wowed.  I have not seen anything as imaginative, bar Christopher Nolan’s recent run of escapism movies, or the original The Matrix made over 20 years ago. Empire gave it 5/5, Rotten Tomatoes has it 95% and IMDB at 8.2…for a movie about a failed laundromat owner having a bad day. It’s that good you will want to tell everyone you know about it all at once.

Post-Credit Scene

Meanwhile, MCU’s most recent slate seems to be faltering. The title that achieves a billion dollar gross seems long gone. Recent releases have none of the gargantuan take of the Russo’s Avengers’s franchise.  The movie press and rumour mill is rife that MCU’s head Kevin Feige is desperate to get the Russo brothers to return and make movies for them again.  When asked what they would want to do, if a deal could be struck, they said Secret Wars; a story full of shape-shifting violence, insurrection and a macho dystopian war. Comic book fandom would go nuts.  It will be interesting to see if Feige signs the cheque. It will be a pay day to top all movie paydays and a return to an alternative universe few thought we would see again.

A short post about drummers

It’s been a horrid few years if you love your rock drummers, so it was a great to see The War on Drugs and their stickman Charlie Hall at the top of his game in London this week. In recent months, we have lost Charlie Watts, Neil Peart, Ginger Baker and now this month, tragically we hear of the death at the age of 50 of the brilliant Taylor Hawkins. Drumming looks easy, compared to the “musicality’ of the lead-guitarist, or virtuosity of the keyboard player, but the compelling mix of purpose and power is the key. You also don’t need to have the technical pyrotechnics and seventy-piece kit like Neil “the Professor” Peart. Charlie Hall, like his name sakes Watts, keeps it simple and he keeps thunderous time. He stays out of the limelight during a War on Drugs show. Only for thirty seconds does the lighting engineer even focus on him, and that’s when he is playing a simple hi-hat double-handed during in a moody interlude in Under The Pressure. As it builds and builds, he looks a man in his element, and when he suddenly bounces back off the tom and floor tom, to bring the band back together as one, it is one of the best sights and sounds in live rock music. I have caught it before on Wave Your Arms, but not before this close and personal. After a time of much mourning for drummers, see below and see what joy!

The enduring allure of the clever auteur

I’m just back from seeing The Worst Person in the World, an Oscar-nominated Norwegian romantic drama starring Renate Reinsve, as our heroine Julie, and Anders Danielsen Lie as Aksel, her cartoon drawing lover. Directed by Joachim Trier and elegantly shot by Kasper Tuxen, it’s an art-house film with sub-titles.

Trier has produced a wistful meditation on adult life, motherhood, modern family relationships, faltering careers, fidelity, mortality and sex, and it wrestles at the end with a heated debate about whether an artist should be allowed to offend. TWPITW covers four years in Julie’s life, but is also “about” very many other different things, episodically imparted though 12 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. Bridging these chapters, cinematographer Tuxen keeps our gaze fixed on the sunsets across Oslo, or settles for long minutes on the wonderful Reinsvre, who is captivating throughout, even when just sat silently, thinking, looking a bit sad, and yet hopeful. She does that a lot, as it’s an art-house film with sub-titles.

The last time I was in the cinema, it was to see Spiderman - No Way Home, which was about a new version of Spiderman, self-referencing some other recent Spiderman movies. I won't necessarily endorse Martin Scorsese’s claim that superhero films “aren’t real movies”, as I love a multi-plex SFX heavy blow ‘em up spectacle as the next guy, but he does have a point. Movies can also be art as well as entertainment. At one point, Julie and her dying ex-lover talk about the movies they could watch time and time again; “David Lynch, The Godfather II…Dog Day Afternoon?” In art-house movies, the characters are suitably absorbed and ennobled by watching, reading and consuming others’ art, not binge-watching a box set.

At various points Trier goes on a cinematic homage to others. A photo montage sequence of mothers, accompanied by plaintive music reminded me of the best moments of British director Stephen Poliakoff. Films like Perfect Strangers, or Shooting The Past (for me, mesmeric TV movies that have never been bettered in the subsequent twenty years). When Julie leaves her lover, she flicks a switch that freezes the residents of Oslo in time, as she skips through the streets to kiss a charming Barista; as romantic and as fanciful as Terry Gilliam’s Grand Central sequence in The Fisher King. Less successful is an over-wrought scene of a drug-fuelled hallucination, but Trier redeems himself throughout with an idiosyncratic soundtrack to counterpoint the story, using dozens of artists including retro throw-backs like Christopher Cross, Billie Holiday and Art Garfunkel.

The film in ‘12 Chapters’ approach seemed unnecessary, though just this week there is a literary reminder that auteur’s like the artifice and the discipline of such structures, with Julian Barnes publishing a new novel. Memorably, Barnes’ The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, remains one of the few books I have read more than once and then loved it more the second time. Barnes’ early novels are the literary equivalent of the art-house flick, without subtitles, and I am sure his books would not be out of place on Aksel’s well-stocked shelves.

In a world where the online box-set and endless streams of mindless content dominate producers’ slates, it is a joy to see something like TWPITW actually get made. With enough imaginative backers, creative film makers can still produce thought provoking, memorable storytelling that moves you enough to immediately hit the keys and share a recommendation with others. It’s an art-house film with sub-titles worth seeing.