Here We Go!

On Friday the books finally arrived at my and Lane4's door. Exciting times. The formal launch is on Tuesday night at the Lane4 Client Conference.

It's been a pretty wild ride so far, and when the dust settles I'll look to recount some of the highs, lows and amusing moments along the way. There have certainly been a few!

In the interim, you can click here to get a little more info on the book....
Britain and the Olympic Games

Two Years and Counting.....

Two years to go. On one level it seems like only yesterday that the Annexe at Lane4 with the small TV in it was full of employees awaiting the decision. I will never, ever forget that moment when Mr Rogge read out the word ‘London’. I remember thinking all sorts of things...’will I have kids by then, it would be fantastic to be able to take them.....what on earth will this mean for Lane4, it could be hugely important...I bet Adrian is glad he went to Trafalgar Square, and I bet he doesn’t make our meeting this afternoon now!’ Many other things besides.

Two years to go and I have kids, two now, and they are very definitely coming. Conor even made it out to Beijing with my wife Claire and I. It has certainly been hugely important for Lane4. And Adrian definitely didn’t make that meeting!

From a Lane4 perspective things are really hotting up. We have a wealth of talented colleagues taking some part in 2012, whether aiming to compete – Greg Searle and Clare Strange – or in a coaching capacity – Wil James, Jeremy Cross, Dominic Mahony and Charlie Unwin. Also, Adrian will be commentating on the swimming Commonwealth Games and European Champs warming up his vocal chords for London. More details about what each of these people are up to are at http://www.lane4performance.com/Lane4-on-the-road-to-2012.html#first 

Away from the actual field of play, many of us remain involved on other levels. A group of us support a Bucks County Council, GE and Lane4 CSR initiative in local schools called Inspire Motivate Achieve. We are actively supporting the engagement and learning agenda of five sponsors on their journey to bring alive the opportunities presented by the next few years present to support meaningful change in their own organisations through their employees.

On a personal note, I have finally finished a book with my Dad which builds on some of the themes from the session I ran with Rob Clarke from London 2012 at our Lane4 Client Conference last year. This is due to be released in November.

 Two years to go. It hardly seems possible....and yet this London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games has already given me, my family and Lane4 more in terms of a legacy than I could ever have hoped for.

Economics, Leadership and My Friend Stephanie

If I am ever lucky enough to get the chance to study again, the subject I would like to study is Economics. While the recent crisis has revealed that actually nobody holds all of the answers in this space, I think I would definitely enjoy the journey. Strategy consultancy after University taught me the real basics, and not a day goes by where I do not return to that grounding as the building blocks of my current working life. At some point I would love to top that up with some more detailed learning.

Of course, the reality is that some top line theory from a few years ago is not enough to lead in the current environment. I try to take as lively an interest as I can in all things economic, both in terms of news but also pushing my ongoing learning along. This is not easy because I am lucky if I get a spare minute in a busy day, let alone time for attending a lecture or two. Fortunate, then, that I have my friend Stephanie to rely on!

Stephanie Flanders is the BBC Economics Editor. Actually I have never met her, and I rarely even get the chance to hear her broadcast. I find the car en route to work a little early, and the end of the News at Ten a little late for me to really process complex information. Fortunate for me, then, that she writes a fantastic blog called Stephanomics. This provides me with all the economic news and opinion anyone would need to lead a business in short, concise chunks.

One of Stephanie’s blogs last weekend, ‘Damned if They Do, Damned if They Don’t’ brought home to me once again the challenges our leaders currently face. The truth is, nobody knows which way the economic pendulum will swing, and there is a fine line (or even no line) between too much and not enough fiscal stimulus. Stephanie relays our expectation that leaders will meet this this challenge head on and deal with ambiguity in an agile, proactive way.

Leaders of any business are confronted with their our own version of this tightrope. Over-investment might be risky to the long term health of any business in the current environment, but no more so than under-investment. Our Lane4 approach throughout has been to favour positive, forward movement – launching our broader service offer being the outcome of this approach. We move on remaining confident but not complacent.

http://mattrogan.blogspot.com/2010/04/lane4-our-new-world.html

While I am no more likely to be able to predict the medium or even short term economic picture than the next man, my responsibility as a leader is to have my ear to the ground. My friend Stephanie is by no means the only strategic input to my work at Lane4, but personally I do value the context she sets.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2010/06/damned_if_they_do_damned_if_th.html

Greg Searle and Bobby White - If Not Now, Then When?

Yesterday I was invited to an Entrepreneurs' Lunch run by the Bucks Economic and Learning Partnership which had a focus on the challenges and opportunities presented by London 2012.

The highlight of the day for me was meeting a guy by the name of Bobby White, the goalkeeper of the Great Britain Handball team. Bobby and the team aspire to compete in London in two years time.

It will not surprise you to know that Bobby did not grow up aspiring to be a handball goalkeeper. He started his senior sporting life as the semi professional goalkeeper for Newport Pagnell FC, and has actually only been playing Handball since January 2008. Bobby, along with seven of his team mates, was selected from over 2500 athletes that applied for the 2007 Sporting Giants Talent Identification Programme (TID) which was led by UK Sport and the English Institute for Sport. After a series of fitness and skill based trials he was eventually offered a full time contract starting in January 2008 at a sports academy in Denmark where he joined the existing GB squad members. The aim of the programme is to create a competitive Handball team to compete in the 2012 London Olympics, targeting a top eight finish.

It has not been an easy path for Bobby and the team, principally because news of a significant reduction in funding has meant immediate changes to the set up of the programme. UK Sport funding is remorselessly focused on delivering podium athletes, and this coupled with squeeze in Government funding means that handball effectively needs to be self sufficient at a time when it is investing heavily. Bobby is currently trialling to join a Danish League side which would give him senior League exposure at a crucial time in his development.

When I was talking to Bobby about the moment he decided to give Sporting Giants a try, it reminded me of listening to Greg Searle at Lane4 talk through his decision to go back to competitive rowing. On the face of it both seemed ridiculously tough challenges - to come back to rowing ten years after retirement and at the age of 38, and to learn to play a completely new sport to Olympic level in four years. Both of the guys talk about their decision making ending by them saying to themselves something along the lines 'if not now, then when?'. If I do not make the jump and push myself now, when do I see myself doing it?

I am very fortunate to have the chance to mix with people like Bobby and Greg. It is hard not to be genuinely inspired by the bravery of the decisions they have made, let alone what they may ultimately achieve. 

Our New Coalition: Real Leadership and Motivation!

One week on, and the decisions are made. We have a coalition Government in Great Britain.

I am fascinated by the energy and motivation levels of our leaders, Messrs Cameron and Clegg, at the moment. I cannot easily imagine what it feels like to be flat out for six months on the closest election campaign for decades and then have to transition overnight into running the country for five years. There was not even the chance for a quick weekend away to recuperate. It reminds me of the M&A situations we have found ourselves in supporting clients at Lane4 whereby a deal is struck to acquire a business late at night after weeks of negotiation, and the 100 day integration plan kicks off the following morning!

Britain is certainly in need of strong leadership at the moment. Lane4's Co-Founder Professor Graham Jones recently recorded a podcast for the American Management Association where he talks about the distinction between real and safe leaders. He suggests that real business leaders are, among other things, those who are prepared to take the tough decisions for the good of their organisation; who thrive on pressure in doing so and who are highly visible in tough times. They make things happen. They are mentally tough, and their motivation is principally intrinsic rather than extrinsic. The podcast is available here if you would like to listen in.

http://podcast.amanet.org/edgewise/strategic-planning/193/dr-graham-jones-on-mental-toughness/

Real leadership feels a great synopsis of what we need in Great Britain in the months and years that follow. Time will tell!

Back to the lack of a weekend off for our political leaders. Actually we are conducting a study at Lane4 at the moment which looks at the current state of motivation in the workplace against the backdrop of a relentlessly challenging economy. While we might have not all fought an election or bought a business, the last eighteen months have certainly been a roller-coaster ride for all of us. You can take part by hitting the link below. All respondents will receive a free summary report once we have compiled them. Thanks in advance for taking the time!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Lane4motivationsurvey

Lane4: Our New World!

Those among you who have been on the Lane4 website in the last twenty-four hours or so might have noticed some changes. The link is here if you have not seen it. http://www.lane4performance.com/Home.html

In the central panel, you will also see a story which gives a little more  context.http://www.lane4performance.com/Lane4-extends-service-offering.html#first

Some of my veiled hints in this blog may now be making a little more sense! This is the week that Lane4 launches a broader service offer to the external market.

We have spent the last twelve months or so developing, planning and testing these ideas, encouraged along the way by clients and friends who we have bounced ideas around with. I have the responsibility of leading these business streams, which I am doing alongside my Commercial Director role. I am really enjoying the variety this brings, and fortunate to have great teams in each one of the business areas to make this possible.

The most critical part of the jigsaw has been to ensure that we can deliver the same quality in these new areas (Training, Communications and an extended Diagostics offer) that we deliver in the Consulting space. The same rigour around research-driven insight, recruitment, development, delivery quality and client service have been par for the course from the start. This doesn’t necessarily make it easy to launch a new service offer quickly into the market (we started planning these changes last August) but it will make it easier to do it right.

My favourite week on this journey so far came 3 weeks ago. In the course of the same week, we delivered the design of a performance management process to a pharmaceutical client and started to help them think through how they might land this in the business in a more engaging way (‘Diagnostics’); we kicked off the first module of a significant programme of work for a retailer with twenty cohorts in one week across the country (‘Training’); and we supported a financial services client with aligning their sponsorship to their group values (‘Communications’). We also proposed a three year plan for a sponsor of London 2012 which cuts across each area of our service offer.

Another step along the road for Lane4 as a business. It's great to finally be able to 'go live'. I'd love to hear your feedback.

Sponsorship, Employees and London 2012

This week Lane4 hosted an informal event for those clients of ours who are focused on employee engagement through sponsorship. Our session took a specific focus on the forthcoming London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It felt like a very meaningful step not only in Lane4’s journey in this space, but also the awareness of the sponsorship industry as a whole.

Three years ago 'employee engagement through sponsorship' meant, to put it simply, ‘free hats for every employee, offering tickets for the sales teams to win through incentive programmes and hospitality for key clients’. There is nothing particularly wrong with those areas of an internal activation programme, but they are scratching the surface of what is possible. The danger if this is all tha you do is that they risk disenfranchising all but the lucky few. How on earth can you hope to rationalise an £80m spend with an intelligent employee by giving them a free hat? What else might you be doing to help your employee base understand how the Games is relevant to their own daily working lives? How can the Olympics help them understand what their own organisations are all about?

Our conversation this week was focused on that final question. Very tellingly, thirty people from more than ten organisations were working it through together. Richard Lloyd – Head of Brand, People and Culture at BT talked compellingly about BT’s work in the area of cultural and behavioural change. The Games offers a metaphor for the journey BT and many other partners are on.

If this is an area you’re interested in, you might like to pop along to Sadlers Wells Theatre in London on 15th April at the Think Sponsorship event where we’ll be sharing more of the BT journey so far.

http://www.thinksponsorship.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=131

Best Companies 2010 - The Results Are In.....

It is Awards ceremony season, and tonight is the real big one – the announcement of the Top 100 in the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For list. Lane4 is in the 'small and medium size businesses' category. This Sunday the results are announced to the general public as a supplement in the Sunday Times.

Lane4 has been invited along tonight, which means that once again we have made the Top 100. We are delighted. An increasing number of organisations enter each year hoping to make the grade. Of course this year we have the extra spice of having experienced one of the toughest years on record for British industry generally, and certainly the toughest on record for our industry. Best Companies provide a feel for individual organisations’ scores in advance of the evening awards, and it was very gratifying for us to see that (as per our own internal data) our data is as strong as in previous years when we have made the top 10.

The first year we entered Best Companies I remember being surprised by the robustness of the diagnostic which underpins the assessment process. On a professional level I am particularly interested by some of the extra questions which Best Companies have begun to ask participants – in particular around how they feel about their organisation’s brand as well as its values, leadership and culture.
  
I would like to think that this evening in itself is a barometer of some of the things that put Lane4 on the list. Of course we have a table at the Awards Dinner tonight. Places were ‘’won’’ via the Lane4 internal lottery. Many others who did not win the Lottery are going to be gathering just down the road at the ‘’Unofficial Lane4 Awards Ceremony’’. Arguments persist every year over which group had the better evening. A brave few manage to meet up at the end of the evening – although Fatherhood has put paid for that level of stamina for me!

It is interesting to see how many of our clients proudly tell us now that they have made the ‘’Best Companies’’ list. We are increasingly party to many discussions around this at FTSE Board tables. Ten years ago references to the ‘’Best Companies list’’ would have been citing the list of ‘’Top Stock Market Performers’’ in the Financial Times. No longer. In fact bestcompanies themselves (the organisation behind the diagnostic) have data which correlates ‘’Top 100’’ status with sustained outperformance of the Stock Market. 

Tonight I am heading along to the Unofficial Lane4 party. We will be celebrating being together  today, and also reflecting informally on how we aim to evolve over the next few years. More on the latter point in the next few months. 

Balancing Personal and Professional Goal Setting

I mentioned in December the need to lead Lane4 with a balance of optimism and realism. That is an important line to tread as we set goals and objectives for 2010.

Of course, an additional challenge for all of us is not just to find appropriate balance in our goals at a Lane4 level, but also our aspirations as family members, friends, sports team members and so on. Sometimes balancing the personal and the professional is easier said than done. It felt particularly tough at times in 2009 to keep that balance.

I spent time last week finalising my own set of goals for the year…setting the personal alongside the professional. It is the first time I have really set about making sure I look at both together. I would definitely recommend it.

Initially it can feel a little odd to have life ambitions (write a book), sporting goals (which I hope will include a sub 40m 10k run and a return to competitive tennis) next to working aspirations and most importantly some family and friends goals. That is why it is such an interesting and thought provoking process.

Obviously there are tensions between the different areas, which is where the thinking really begins. It leads me to reflect that goal setting professionally in the absence of the personal dimension just isn’t being honest with yourself, your colleagues or most importantly your family. It’ll be a busy year, but hopefully very rewarding one.

Unfortunately this busy year starts with a shoulder op on 13th Jan. That will mean a period in a sling and a crash course in one (left) handed typing …so please accept my apologies if my blogs are somewhat less frequent for a while!

2010 (or 'Why Robert Peston Reminds me of the Ribble Valley 10k')

And so to 2010 – Happy New Year!

I started to rev up for the New Year this weekend. The first thing I ended up reading was the blog of BBC Business Editor Robert Peston. The usual under-stated Peston approach : ‘A cheerful first thought for the New Working Year.

Viewed across all economic sectors, the UK and the US are still submerged in debt: the aggregate borrowing of households, companies and government is equivalent to more than three times the value of everything we produce, still greater than at any point in peacetime history.

We have all read and heard several variations of the same story told in the Business Press. In the absence of any real news, time for the media to become crystal ball gazers. Predictions of hung parliaments; loss of AAA ratings; costly government borrowing; resultant cuts in state and household spending..and a second dip to make the first look like a hiccup. All this by the end of Q2. Looks like the business journalists have had a nice break and are all revved up to talk us into more financial difficulty.

As I have said in previous posts, we have focussed Lane4 not just to cope with the challenges of any future dip, but also to capitalise on any steady recovery. I’ll say more about how we are doing this in the next few months.

On the subject of a steady recovery though, as befits the return to work I have included a festive holiday snap (of sorts) below. This picture was taken by my wife Claire during the Ribble Valley 10k on December 27th. It shows some of the 900 hardy souls (me included) making their way across the freezing Ribble on their way out to a snowy adventure in the Lancashire countryside.

 I include the photo because the way I felt when it was taken - 800m into the race - mirrors pretty well how I feel today starting the working year. It was already clear that the conditions were going to be a bit tricky underfoot, and I definitely wasn’t sure how I would fare on a course I had never seen before. But I also knew I had done my preparation and was ready for a tougher workout. At least I thought I was.

As it turned out the race went pretty well in the end, but only after I struggled badly in the first half. It was not until I realised at the 5k mark that I had been going just slightly uphill since we crossed the Ribble that I began to understand why. When we turned for home, things really picked up for me. I actually went quicker in the second half than the first - which is very unusual for me.

So – back to 2010. The training and preparation is done, and the gun has just gone off. The Robert Pestons are talking up the course, and we sense the first few kilometres might well be tough. For all we know, the whole race might well be uphill. But here is hoping that the Q4 2009 hill repetitions will pay dividends!

That Was the Year That Was - My Learnings from 2009....

It’s been some twelve months. Almost everyone I have talked to over the last two weeks or so has said something like, ‘this year of all years, I need a proper break’. I feel the same.

December 2009 certainly feels a very different place to be than December 2008. Twelve months ago we were in the eye of the storm. Northern Rock, Lehman Brothers and Bank of America were in the very recent past. There was a general view going into Christmas that there was worse to come – although no consensus about what that would actually look like for a business like ours.

Twelve months on, we have lived through a very challenging twelve months in business. This has also been the first recession in Lane4’s lifetime, and we leave 2009 a wiser business than we entered it. The uncertainty still exists of course (are we over the worst, or likely to see another dip?) however we have reasons to remain optimistic but not complacemtn. However, it doesn’t feel anything like as uncertain as this time last year. I was thinking when running this morning about what my top 3 lessons would be from this year. This would be:

• Leading a professional services firm in a bear market is very different to a growing one. Balancing optimism with realism is not always an easy thing to do, but over-playing either is very dangerous. As a running coach told me last week, ‘Your head needs to be far enough up that that your bodyweight is carrying you forward. However it can’t be held so high that you trip on something straight in front of you. Your chin needs to be up and your eyes fixed a few metres forward’. That feels spot on to me.
• I have also needed to challenge the way I manage. This has probably meant less breadth, more depth. I have tried to focus on the elements that we can control, and delivering against them. As Sir Keith Mills said at our conference, ‘’There are hundreds of dials in a cockpit, but you can fly a plan with just six if you know how’’. I’ve been lucky enough to borrow the brains of some fantastically insightful external to Lane4 who have helped me firstly confirm that I am using the right six instruments, and then interpret their readouts correctly.
• Finally – this year was proof that tougher times are an opportunity, not a threat. An opportunity for the talent in your business to stretch themselves quicker than they might otherwise do. An opportunity to gain advantage in a market which will be changing faster than before. An opportunity to catch the wave of the upturn. An opportunity to learn which of your own team will dig in and fight when the going gets tough. I never learnt a thing about the collective character of my football team when 3-0 up at home against the bottom of the league.

It’s always tiring learning a new skill – whether trying to learn to run with just a little bit of technique, flying a plane or leading and managing a business. No athlete trains without down-time to let the muscles recover, and a break is definitely a good thing.

It’s been the first three months of this blog. I hope you’ve occasionally found something interesting or thought provoking. I’d certainly welcome any feedback. Have a great Christmas and New Year.

Cheers

Matt

The Worst Kept Secret at Lane4!

The Daily Telegraph carries ‘exclusive’ news today that Greg Searle is returning to competitive rowing. He is aiming to compete at London 2012. He would be 40 years of age at the time of the rowing finals. There is also a strong chance that the final could be 20 years to the day since he won gold at Barcelona.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/rowing/6818615/Greg-Searle-on-comeback-trail-to-date-with-destiny-at-London-2012-Olympics.html

This is not quite as ‘exclusive’ news within Lane4. We have known Greg was getting back in top class shape ever since Greg romped home to victory out of the blue at the Lane4 Grand National – our 5 quarterly mile handicap running race. There is still a long way to go of course, but we know Greg well enough to know he will leave no stone unturned.

 Happily Greg will continue to work at Lane4 and with his clients as he moves along his journey – just as our Paralympian Clare Strange does. I have had the pleasure of being with Greg when he has shared his news in confidence with groups from two London 2012 sponsors. It has been fascinating to see their reactions. Although several of the individuals in the room work in and around the Olympic Games every day, the personal connection this news has created in the room was really compelling. Greg and London 2012 are already part of these organisations’ everyday working lives – Greg’s journey will bring these two elements together on a very personal level.

Sport meets business elsewhere in today’s Daily Telegraph. The header in the Business section has a shot of Tiger Woods, and reads, ‘With Friends Like Accenture…Tiger finds out the Hard Way’. The article criticises Accenture’s decision to pull out of their relationship with Tiger on the back of recent press revelations. It suggests Accenture’s investment has been spurious, and yet also that Tiger does not now deserve to be deserted. Whatever you make of the recent news, this is lazy and naive journalism. Accenture’s investment in Tiger to date has reaped Accenture massive dividends, but they are smart enough in a competitive market-place not to shout about it. They also have a brand to protect. They were right to be in the deal, and they are now right to pull out.

Modern sport at its best and worst in one edition of the Daily Telegraph. Good luck Greg - but don’t expect the same handicap in the Grand National next time mate!

HR, CIPD 2009 and the Nonsense of the Employer Brand

After the Lane4 Conference on 11th, last week I was at the CIPD Annual Conference in Manchester. I have been to the conference most years since joining Lane4 just over 5 years ago. On one level it was a little sad to see the accompanying Exhibition this year – probably around 50% of the size of the event at its height. We are definitely seeing a market-place in transition. Jim Collins was discussing ‘How the Mighty Fall’ in the plenary session. Quite.
On one level I could take consolation from the fact that there were far fewer outplacement providers than recruitment providers unlike the HR Director Event in January. However, this time recruitment solutions were mostly delivering the search process online. James Caan was sharing ideas around how to maximise your online recruitment search. Ironically for an HR exhibition, it did a good job of communicating a feeling of ‘commodity trading’ people.
Against this fairly depressing backdrop, Wil James from Lane4 did a cracking job talking through the TUI Travel (Thomson and First Choice) merger integration process with Jacky Simmonds, TUI Travel’s Group HR Director. This was anything but a transactional piece of change management, as I will come back to.
Beyond the Lane4 session, the highlight for me was probably seeing an introduction of the CIPD’s ‘Next Generation HR’ work shared by the likes of BT and Nationwide. This picks up among other things on an emerging trend towards the blending of HR and marketing functions. To quote Andrea Cartright from Nationwide

“Over the past six months you might as well have called me a marketer. I have been wholly immersed in the marketing team redeveloping what the Nationwide brand is going to look like.”

This is a much needed development which our thinking and work in the sponsorship space plays directly into.
It was ironic given this to see that the latest CIPD report published is ‘The impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on the Employer Brand’.

http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/corpstrtgy/empbrand/_impact_employer_brand_summary.htm
While I think CIPD’s approach in the Next Generation piece is laudable, personally I think the notion of creating an approach for an employer brand is complete nonsense. Your company’s brand is simply the way people (employee or customer) talk about your organisation. If the HR and Marketing Directors are doing their job well, employees and customers are able to engage in a personal dialogue with your brand. If they are doing their job excellently, this results in positive word of mouth and referral. It is simply impossible to paint a different picture for employees than customers.

To this point, in the Lane4 / TUI session Jacky talked compellingly with strong supporting data about the pride with which TUI employees (whether they originated with TUI or First Choice) now talk about their organisation to friends and family. A caring and empathetically managed change process created more external ambassadors than a thousand pieces of stilted internal communications or 30 second television ads would have done. Each business has just one brand. HR and Marketing and both its custodians. Perhaps in five years time the empty stands at the CIPD Event will be filled by Martin Sorrell from WPP and his swathe of marketing agencies.

Our Lane4 Brand

It’s been a few days now since our Client Conference, ‘From Fragile to Agile’ on Armistice Day, 11th November. It was our fifth year, and our client feedback is suggesting it was our best yet.
We try to schedule the day in such a way as to offer our clients the chance to design their own day. What continues to amaze me year-after-year is the sheer variety in the individual schedules which people select. Even clients who I think know personally very well!
For example, I was part of a session on the subject of the parallels between the London 1948 and 2012 Games with Rob Clarke, the Head of HR Operations from London Organising Committee for Olympic and Paralympic Games. Rob and I spoke at the same time as our clients from CRH shared their approach to investing in leadership development in a building products sector in the eye of the economic storm, and Mark Richardson with Greg Searle (both from Lane4) talking from personal experience about maintaining self belief under times of intense personal pressure and media scrutiny. It would be hard to find a more varied set of subjects, even for Lane4!
This blend also relates to how we position Lane4’s offer in the market-place. We aim to offer a hybrid of a world class leadership development consultancy (CRH). Our approach is driven from personal insight and experience (Mark and Greg) coupled with cutting edge research which marries both our understanding of elite performance in sport and business (Rob and I).
Interestingly when choosing their day, our clients spread themselves almost exactly evenly between the three sessions. No one area of our positioning or approach is more important than the other. We have the priviledge of working with a brand which sits at the intersection of these areas. It’s really gratifying to know our clients really valued the day. Roll on 2010!

Market Trends and the Future - Retail versus Learning and Development!

Useful insight in the papers over the last few days of current performance and prospects for the retail industry in the UK. It was interesting to read about Westfield – the new high end shopping complex built in Shepherds Bush. Westfield’s UK Managing Director suggests the first three months of their year had been ‘very scary’….but cites some impressive evidence that performance has stabilised. The SVP of Louis Vuitton says their performance has ‘surpassed all expectations’.
Elsewhere, PwC’s retail director is quoted as suggesting that the middle ground of retail is becoming increasingly tough. A good example would seem to be the off licence trade – First Quench having gone into administration just last week. At the premium end, the wine clubs and consultancy-based propositions of Majestic reign supreme, and at the volume end of the market the economies of scale which Sainsbury’s, Tesco et all can achieve simply cannot be matched. Hence very tough trading conditions for those caught in the middle.

I believe we are seeing exactly the same thing in the learning and development market. In our experience the requirement for senior executive alignment and development is as high as we have ever known. Just like alcoholic retailers, quality, breadth of offer and credible experience are no longer a competitive advantage at this level – they are a given.

There is also a significant shake-out happening in the development market at middle and junior management (which I would very loosely describe as beyond the top 500 in a FTSE business). We are hearing words like ‘flight to demonstrable quality’ and ‘evidence-based value for money’ from our clients – and rightly so. For too long our industry has been oversupplied and, to be frank, a little lazy. Which feels a good description of the shelves on my last trip to Oddbins.

It is not easy of course, but this recession will be the best thing that has happened to our industry when we emerge at the other side of our V (or W!) shape.

2010 Planning - On the B of the Bang.

My good friend Steve Hacking, who writes a cracking blog at http://www.stevehacking.blogspot.com/, has just released a great post on the limitations of SWOT analysis in business planning. Steve rates the SWOT as the basic start, not the ultimate end game, of the strategy process. I completely agree.

I wrote in an earlier post that our mindset as we approached business planning for 2010 here at Lane4 was one of 'opportunity, not threat'. Steve says, ''I'm not saying that SWOT doesn't have its place at the beginning of the strategy development process; it does, especially if you start with the "O". O, for opportunity, forces you to take a moment to look around and speculate where the future pools of profit might be, which is especially useful for bringing out those areas that you're currently not doing anything about.''

We were in the 'O' phase during the Summer. Now we're making decisions. However decisions as Steve recognised should be anything but straight from SWOT to reality. We have been immersed in market insight, gathering customer feedback, financial projections, scenario analysis and like-for-like comparison between our ideas, recognising we can't do everything. Essentially September and October have involved a good dose of marrying our excitement with internal and external reality.

The good thing is that things are coming together. We are aiming to hit 2010 on the 'B of the Bang', as Linford Christie would say.

London 1948 and Rio 2016

I am researching a session for our forthcoming Client Conference at the moment on the London 1948 Olympic Games. It has been fascinating to learn how the Olympic Games provided such a major source of social, psychological and economic healing to war-torn Britain.

Fast forward to the IOC's decision this evening to select Rio as the home of the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. There is no doubt that Rio's objective of using the Games as a lever for not just a growth economy, but a growth continent struck a chord. If 2016 achieves quite as much for Brazil as 1948 achieved for Britain, the 2016 Organising Committee will have achieved their objective.

All in all, I have to admit that I am disappointed on behalf of Chicago. That's sport I guess. Given that Britain will be handing Brazil the Olympic flag, let's hope they return the favour with the FIFA World Cup!

Come on Chicago!

It hardly seems conceiveable that it is fully four years ago now that Jacques Rogge said one word, 'London', which has already made such a huge difference to my life and our journey at Lane4.

Make no bones about it - I am crossing my fingers that Jacques Rogge's first word on openning the 2016 envelope is 'Chicago'. For two reasons. Firstly, on behalf of our North American business. Actually we share our office space in Princeton with US Rowing. I am certain our experience here to date will be a major source of value for us should Chicago win out.

Secondly - whether we like it nor not, the business and health of individual sports in the US drives the global sporting agenda. We now live in a world where golf is an Olympic sport, and it is critical for the less mainstream but in my view more truly Olympic sports that the US sports market continues to find a place for each of them. The Olympics is the pinnacle of achievement in sports like athletics, modern pentathlon, triathlon, track cycling and rowing. I was lucky enough to be in Beijing, and modern pentathlon held me captive more than I can ever imagine golf doing. I want the US public to feel the same in 2016 if the viability and health of the 'traditional' Olympic sports are going to be preserved in an increasingly homogenous sporting landscape.

Here comes 2010

September, as ever, brings the start of the business planning process for the year ahead. Much as I enjoy the continual to-ing and fro-ing of a busy office, sometimes there's nothing better than a long early morning run, a strong coffee, a blocked out diary and a blank excel spreadsheet to work with. In case you're wondering (!), we start with some trend-based forecasting at group level, and then compare this with detail from each of our regions and business strands.
As we grow, our planning has become more rigorous, and planning for 2010 is a good test. The devil is definitely in the detail - exchange rates, property interest rates and so on are increasingly critical parts of our jigsaw, and yet tougher than ever to predict. Even my currency trading friends in the City don't have a clue which way things are moving. Gut feel and instinct have a place in planning even in the FTSE.

Actually this year of all years there is not a single cost line that does not have an interesting question sitting behind it. Take IT. Will it really be 2010 when we'll really be able to halve our IT costs by binning the laptops and phones to move over to one device? When will we need to move to the 'cloud'? Like all businesses our size, we're increasingly aware of the balance sheet as well as the P&L this year. The principle is to remain cautious, while also setting Lane4 up for the next six years. Opportunities, not threats.

Given this, of course the spreadsheets are only part of the planning process. There will be decisions to make in the next few months where gut feel will be worth as much if not more than a theoretical spreadsheet answer. Lane4 is a 'heart' as well as 'head' business - our job is to marry the two.