Happy Christmas and New Year

It’s been a quiet month for Getting to Excellent. A week away in the beautiful land of Norway, marvelling at their vast acres of twinkling Christmas trees, has thrown my blogging schedule. And now it’s Christmas.

2010 has been an interesting year in all sorts of ways. As social media and email marketing has taken off, so it has become more important than ever to remember that marketing is all about people, and relationships. Technology is still just an enabler in building relationships, not a replacement for it.

But Christmas and New Year is really about getting in touch with friends and family. As well as business colleagues you haven’t seen for ages. At least there is one time in the year when we all make the effort to re-establish contact.

So as 2010 draws to a close, I’d like to wish all Getting to Excellent readers a very happy Christmas and New Year. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read the occasional post, and agreed or disagreed with what’s been written. I look forward to seeing you in 2011.

Happy Christmas

Getting to Excellent has survived a tempestuous year – with the economy taking a nose dive under the carpet and refusing to come out, and now the weather being a little over enthusiastic here in sunny Berkshire. But in between there has been much to discuss, debate, agree and disagree on.

But now Christmas is dawning across the world. The ultimate deadline is making the most determined business person stop and draw breath. And rightly so, because no matter what your religious beliefs Christmas is a time to catch up with old friends, see family and make time for being with people. There are no performance charts, no KPIs, no need to do anything except relax and share with those most important to you.

So Getting to Excellent is taking a break and will be back in the New Year a few pounds heavier and a little better rested. I’d like to thank everyone who has visited fleetingly, those that have visited regularly, and those who have entered into the debate. Happy Christmas!

Floods and power cuts – just another day on the London Underground

I have been in London twice this week and I have been delayed on the underground twice. First it was flooding that closed a bunch of stations (including one I needed to use), and today it was power cuts that closed the Circle line for I don’t know how long. Readers outside the UK won’t recognise the details, but will certainly recognise the frustration this adds to the already arduous task of moving around a capital city.

Thankfully, in the London of 2009, this is a relatively rare occurrence. However, London of 2019 or 2059 might tell a different story. Scientists tell us that we need to prepare for climate change and that climate change is going to mean more extreme weather conditions occurring more frequently. Temperatures will get uncomfortably hot more often - perhaps 70 days in the year instead of the handful we experience at the moment. We will have less rainfall in the summer, and more in the winter.

This is the pioneering work being presented by UKCIP, leading the world in trying to predict what the effect of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will have on our climate. UK Climate Projections 2009 is a brand, spanking new report that uses the best scientific and statistical techniques available to predict what the UK climate will feel like in 10, 20 or 100 years’ time. What I find particularly impressive, however, is that all of the data is being made available, including the assumptions of, for example, how much CO2 we continue to pump skywards.

They have included, for the first time, the full range of confidence levels that can be extracted from the data. This is good news for all those journalists who write for The Sun – plenty of headline grabbing scare mongering to be had for those who go in for such things. But also a wealth of valuable data for professionals who want to make the best of available data to look 50 – 100 years into the future. Which is, coincidentally the life of a building or a railway track for example.

Unless our tube and railway infrastructures are upgraded The Sun’s headline writers will have had it about right – we will be in for summers of misery and winters of cancelled train services.

All this was hosted at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers – perhaps the very people we should be blaming for getting us into this CO2 pickle in the first place. It was engineers who taught us how to use carbon-based fuels with such efficiency. But let’s not quibble – they are making up for it now with some intelligent and thought provoking debates about how to move forward. And we have to face facts – there are not too many of us prepared to give up our washing machines or cars for the sake of the planet.

With a bit of luck, however, and some critical analysis of the data, policy makers will have a better view of what’s in store going forward. Which means I will be much less forgiving when they close underground stations for either “unexpected” floods or power cuts due to a certain type of leaf on the line.

In the meantime I’m resting my tired feet after having trekked half way across London to get home. All that, and it was a hotter day than the weather forecasters had predicted. Ironic, non?

UKCP09 is published by UKCIP and is available to download from

www.ukcip.org.uk.

Little by little

I met up with a good friend last night. She has been having a rough time recently, so we went for a run to raise our spirits. Afterwards we sat and admired her beautiful garden in the evening sunshine. As we chatted it occurred to both of us that it is the little things that make all the difference; the seemingly small things we do every day that have such a big impact on our lives and our work.

Not going for a run, not doing the things we should do, day after day, ends up being a bigger problem than they were on any one particular day.

Performance management is based on exactly that principle. By deciding where you want to get to, and the actions that are needed to get you there, bit by bit you work towards the goal. It works just the same whether you are a giant corporation, or an individual.

Because it was me, and because performance management works so well, and because it was such a beautiful day, we decided a chart was needed to log walks and runs. The chart would keep things on track and keep the feel good factor flowing. Of course we felt great after the run so were tempted to make it a daily goal, but we are realists so for now it’s a weekly goal. Come rain or shine. Hail or snow.

So if you see two particularly gorgeous women running (OK – jogging) round the Oxfordshire countryside, look out for a performance management chart full of positive marks. Little by little, achieving goals, and getting to a better place.

Reach for the stars

“When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.” Leo Burnett

Leo Burnett was a copywriter who built a successful world-wide advertising agency that was still going strong during the time I worked in the business. Much has changed since the heady days of the ‘80’s but I’m sure one thing hasn’t – the reliance on data to drive decisions and create value for businesses.

I find the giant personalities of advertising an inspiration – David Ogilvy has a well earned place on my bookshelf and was a real advocate of data-driven marketing. But I digress already – because Leo Burnett’s quotation captures the essence of what is on my mind this morning – that of excellence.

I was at the ballet last night. I saw a production of Romeo and Juliet that I had not seen before. There were some magnificent dancers and dances, but there were also some little slip-ups. Of course, the joy of a live performance is just that – you live the highs and lows with the performers; it is not sanitised as it would be for television.

For me, ballet is a treasure trove of riches. It pushes the human body beyond what should be possible to produce a spectacle so lovely that it takes my breath away. And last night it was all set to Prokofiev’s magnificent and memorable music. It is still going round in my head now.

The creation of a ballet reaches for the stars. But not all ballet companies are created equal. Not all have the same standards. Some reach, and attain, higher standards than others. Which was what got me thinking about Performance Management in relation to the performing arts. Ballet companies rely on businesses and business people to bring their productions to paying audiences. And those businesses also have standards as to what they accept or do not. Last night there were many empty seats – a crying shame considering the expense of the production.

This is where data and analytics meet star-reaching. I am sure there were many more ballet fans who might have been tempted out in the snow with the right offer. And the ballet company and theatre would have benefited even if the tickets were sold at a reduced rate. The right business intelligence system could have done that – to the benefit of so many.

I regularly go to see the ballet at another venue where there is just about never an empty seat. Do they have different standards or a different data-centered culture? Maybe both. Business Intelligence is a way of thinking. Maybe it's where ambition meets analytics …