SOSPIRO Blog
THE NIGHT OUR PARTY WENT FLAT
Tim Jackaman, 1st Jan 2009
What were you doing four evenings before Christmas 20 years ago? Office party? Kids’ carol concert? Can’t remember?
It was a night that I’ll never forget – and not really my finest hour. Although I’d missed my eldest son’s fourth birthday party, I was feeling pretty smug and on the verge of great things as I sat sipping champagne in the company of Cabinet ministers and peers of the realm in the seductive glamour of the newly restored Oliver Messel suite at the London Dorchester.
How the world has changed. In the 80s it seemed acceptable, admirable even, for an ambitious young man to disappoint his kid in order to further his career and, in those innocent days, it was still OK too for British politicians to accept champagne and dinner from shameless pr men on the make. Neither was particularly clever and I know better these days. But none of this is why I remember that evening so vividly, nor why it was a personal watershed, an epiphany of sorts.
21 December, 1988, was of course the night of the horrific bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and I had been knocking back the Veuve Cliquot with the great and the good at the very moment that plane exploded into burning fragments - killing hundreds of innocent students, tourists and business people returning to their families or heading to the States for the Christmas holidays.
How many self-important bubbles were pricked in the swanky rooms which Messel’s nephew Anthony Armstrong-Jones had given his camply decadent makeover? Although the Mayfair night was freezing, we couldn’t resist milling around on the large open veranda with its uninterrupted sweeping vista of Park Lane and Hyde Park beyond. This was our world, and for those of us who possessed no real power, we were at least close to some of it. A few minutes after we were called inside to begin our meal, a message was passed to the most senior minister in our midst – cell phones were not yet universal - calling him and his colleagues back to the still sitting House of Commons for an emergency announcement. So he made his excuses and left, as the News of the World always used to say.
We were left in the dark over the reason for this enforced early departure. I could sense that my colleagues, like I did, felt gutted, robbed. We had promised our clients movers and shakers and that’s what they got; we had delivered and now our prize assets had been confiscated. We were a little nervous too, sensing that our clients would soon have recovered enough to start feeling a mite short changed.
We needn’t have worried on that score though, as we quickly switched on the TV to find out what petty political trifle had ruined our fun.
A plane had crashed in Scotland was all we could glean. There was initially no hint of terrorism – this was an ante-al Qaeda, pre - 9/11 world, remember. We had had IRA outrages in mainland Britain, but this was surely not their style. No, at that point, it was supposed a tragic accident and the evening went glumly on – the television murmuring in the corner as we pushed our food around and tried to keep the conversation going.
I have always felt that the truth about the Lockerbie bombing has never been told, that in all the investigation, handover of suspects, trial and subsequent diplomacy, justice and the memory of those who died have been sidelined in the name of the Great Game. But we all know that international power politics is a dirty business - once in a while innocent lives become tragically expedient.
So why bring all this up now? Well, the commemoration of the event’s twentieth anniversary brings back uncomfortable memories and provokes questions about whether our world is any better or worse than it was then. There are some parallels: in 1988, stimulated by some fiscal adrenaline, economies were beginning to recover from the global stock market crashes of the previous year; financial regulation was under scrutiny and standards in public life were attracting adverse attention.
But this time it feels different somehow, the stakes seem higher. Yes of course, the scale of our financial predicament is wider and deeper than it was in the late eighties; then, the world trembled on its axis, recovered and everything went back to normal; this time round, there is a sense that some fundamental change is needed if we want to come out at the other end of the tunnel.
On a personal level, at least one thing would be different now. In similar circumstances, I would not be at the Dorchester – I’d be at my son’s birthday party, definitely. He’s long forgiven me, by the way. Do dinner parties like that still take place? Of course they do. Despite all the controversy, all the hand wringing and, frankly, all the bunk about sleaze, lobbying is alive and well – perhaps on a more open and legitimate basis. Most of the time.
But the world has moved on. For me though, 21 December, 1988 was one of those incremental events which edge us toward a tipping point – and we’ve had plenty more of those in recent months. After Black Monday, we carried on doing things pretty much the same way. But as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the nature of leadership in business, politics and the arts of good communication have certainly changed. The era of spin and intelligence-insulting presentation is well and truly discredited and we are seeing the effects of that in the political process and social trends all over the world. What is demanded from leaders now is authenticity and honesty. 1988 somehow feels like a lot more than 20 years ago.
LET THEM EAT CAKE- Why Business Leaders Should Relish Being Answerable
Tim Jackaman, 4th Dec 2008
In a recent article in the Financial Times (15 October), entrepreneur and all-round business sage Luke Johnson offered the opinion that public ownership of large companies is a “failed model”, that using public markets as a principle source of capital and playing the regulated game that this entails, suffocates true enterprise and generally, is just too much of a fag for a proper business.
I could argue with that. In fact I will - it’s obviously nonsense. I’d prefer to trust that other, normally reliable sage, Warren Buffett, who knows a thing or two about these things and who, a couple of days after Johnson called the end, weighed in to the debate by announcing that he was shifting all his personal wealth into equities. Buffett wrote in the New York Times that, “Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree.” I know it’s now in vogue to present the current financial crisis as a tipping point in the history of structure of capitalism, but this failed model will stagger on for at least another 10 years, it seems.
Here too is what Johnson has deduced from his experience as a director of public limited companies: “…most such constructs were dysfunctional. Interests were not aligned and there was more focus on pointless, ritual corporate activity than underlying profitability and productivity. Everyone tries hard, but the disconnect between management and ultimate ownership leads to the profound issues our economy now faces.”
Let’s hope Mr Buffett was taking notes. There are clearly arguments on both sides – I suspect that both models will be with us for some time.
The unease I have with Johnson’s private ownership argument is the whiff of superiority. As he says : “Why on earth anyone of calibre bothers to go on a large company board is a bit of a mystery.” If you’re a company director, it all depends how you want your masochistic kicks – the consequence of failure being either ritual public humiliation from the analysts, the press and, God forbid the share-owning public – a thrill for exhibitionists – or a private equity session with the men in grey suits and baseball bats. There may “less minute-by-minute exposure to external scrutiny”, that Johnson complains of, but I don’t believe the retribution of private equity investors is any less severe. And anyway, where does he think all this private capital comes from? It is largely the savings and pensions of you and me that swells their funds – simply institutional investment wearing a less revealing dress.
I wouldn’t disagree with Mr Johnson though, when he asserts that public company directors spend quite a lot of time making presentations to shareholders. He suggests that this task takes up 20 per cent of their available hours. I’d bet that, by the time you throw in standing up in front of the workforce, big customers, government departments and so on, more than half their waking hours are spent trying to be charming, charismatic and persuasive. Like it or not, the higher you climb, the more of your time is spent in presentation.
Let’s assume he is right and that growing, capital-hungry businesses are better off with private shareholders. Even private companies outside the glare of the stock market, will still have shareholders and – in the case of large businesses – probably quite a lot of them. It would also be naive in the extreme to hope that private shareholders are any more forgiving than the investors in publicly-traded stock. Because they operate below regulatory radar and because private shareholders can be more interventionist, I would argue that the ability to persuade in presentation becomes all the more important.
The really important issue here is not how to avoid or limit the time management has to spend communicating with interested parties, but to embrace the new challenges which corporate leaders now face.
But unlike people whose careers are devoted to the performing arts, who need to show greatness in performance above everything else, how much time do business leaders spend honing this craft. I find it astonishing that any chief executive could approach a meeting that might add or wipe millions from a company’s worth, with only a rudimentary amount of practice and a script prepared by somebody else. Why would you tolerate operational risk on that scale? In such a position, or for anyone with the ambition to hold down that kind of job, practicing and constantly improving public impact and charismatic authority is a lifetime reality.
The debate I think should be more around the new requirements of leadership than how to run businesses without the inconvenience of having to tell anyone about it. The challenges are not new because of what has been happening in the global financial markets over the last year or so, but as a result of an evolving expectation of honesty, transparency and candour by both internal and audiences from business leaders. The good news for them is that charismatic authority can be learned and improved, it isn’t some rare, ethereal talent; we can learn leadership in the same way that a top musician develops greatness in performance.
BANKING
Tim Jackaman, 3rd Nov 2008
Quietly chanting to myself at Stansted a while ago, looking for the inner calm needed for boarding a budget flight to Prestwick, my stillness was disturbed by a what can only be described as a primal scream followed by a tirade which went roughly: “I can’t stand this xxxxing airline. It doesn’t give a xxxx for its customers – I’m just not putting up with it any more…”
I unwound my full lotus to get a better look at my poor fellow traveller only to find it was actually a member the ground-crew of the world’s least favourite airline who had lost the plot. She couldn’t bear the frontline stress any longer – stonewalling angry customers day after day, bearing the brunt of an aggression aimed at organisations and leaders who never actually have to face the consequences of their actions and come face to face with the punters who generate the revenues.
As I watched Gordon Brown and his Chancellor announce their rescue package, it struck me that this is what life must be like for people working in the retail banking industry now. After a dozen years or so of smiling faces and singing,surfing bankers and – apart perhaps from a few gripes about charges and zero interest current accounts – more or less happy but massively indebted customers - anyone in the industry who actually has to talk to the outside world can’t be having much fun any more.
At some point though, once they have established a survival strategy, once they have come to terms with having the government as their largest shareholder, bank leaders are going to have to focus on something which is possibly even more critical to the future of their businesses – re-connecting with their shell-shocked customers, drafting a contract which is more in keeping with the new era.
Now is almost certainly not the time to welcome customers to the new, government backed, stripped down, cautious and conservative world of post-crunch banking with outward-facing marketing and advertising strategies – even if it will be fascinating to see what it looks like. There is a distinct whiff of revenge in the air and probably many years of credit aversion to get through before the British public is ready for any kind of return to the promotion of new lending products. In the meantime, what has happened in the last months, the damaged reputations, the public incredulity and hostility has created a traumatised banking workforce.
The place to start has to be with their own people, the equivalent of that desperate airline girl. How else to begin? These banking foot-soldiers who sought a career in an honourable profession with a blue-chip employer now represent devalued brands in a discredited industry.
So what do the banks need to do to rebuild bridges, first with their own people and then, perhaps, with customers and the rest of the outside world? The thousands of honest, industrious people who populate the banking industry will be searching for clues from the top about how they are now supposed to feel and behave. A statement of new values would help - clear guidance on what are the banks’ new principles as they seek to return to doing business with a bruised and sceptical public. But unless this message is delivered by a leadership with the charismatic authority to carry thousands of employees with them as they start this truth and reconciliation process, they face a long, tough path back to anything like viability.
JOHN HARLE
TIM JACKAMAN, 14th Aug 2008
“The more I taught the performance and creativity techniques I had developed over the years, the more I realised that the underlying principles of naturalness, ease and fluency associated with ‘charismatic’ performers in all walks of life, come down to very basic, teachable skills - awareness of the self and audience combined, physical work on the body, breath and voice and insight into how to structure content to draw the audience into your world. Allied to a personal willingness to work and practice at these things, performance levels in everyone can skyrocket” - he says.
Coming from a family of industrialists, John was very aware of the need for such techniques in business and the professions, and his ‘eureka’ moment came in 2005 when he discovered that his system of musical performance and creativity techniques had applications way beyond the world of the professional stage.
In 2006, John developed the SOSPIRO System, which is a method for performance improvement for people whose work relies on connecting and communicating with others.
“In SOSPIRO, we assume that everyone at a high level in their own work in business and the professions has the technical parts of their job under their belt. They know the facts, the context and have knowledge of the people they’re dealing with. But even great people sometimes fail to persuade - to get their message across effectively to key individuals, groups and audiences. Just as a musician can know the notes and have the technical ability to play a piece but sometimes fail to perform in a persuasive and relaxed way so that the audience really understands and enjoys the music. The common failure here is a composure, self awareness and flexibility of mind and body, which is the layer of skills needed to transform a ‘technically sound’ performance into a persuasive, eloquent and charismatic performance”. The skills that John has developed to allow highly proficient musicians into great performers and communicators are not to do with the music itself. They are skills in communication that apply to anyone - that happen to have been developed from John’s experience of transforming good musicians into Maestros. These skills now form the core of the SOSPIRO System - for business and the professions.
“There is a lot of nonsense talked about ‘relaxed’ performance, as if being relaxed was the secret of success. A musician who is ‘relaxed’ in certain parts of their body and allies that to a steely resolve, practiced technical security and a heightened awareness stands a chance of success.
Certain parts of the body need to be relaxed to perform at their optimum level - to achieve effectiveness in communication with an audience. Breath needs to be practiced daily and move from something thought about occasionally into the world of ‘unconscious competence’, as we used to say.
The body, and balance need to be understood and practiced. The voice needs ‘centre’ and then practiced to attain virtuosity in expressivity, colour and dynamics. Material for presentation needs to be robustly structured and learned.
Self awareness takes two forms - at the moment of composition of material, learning to compose from the point of view what will be the audience’s experience of the material and then awareness of the self at the point of delivery of the material. Pacing, silence, variety, correct use of repetition, emotional climaxes, emotional triggers and deciding on the most effective time to make key points and conclusions - and so on, all form the framework on which we can begin to understand and practice really great communications.
In Music, daily practice of technique is a requirement. The only difference between an amateur musician and a professional is a lot of practice. The professional has to be practiced enough to confidently send an invoice afterwards”.
Even then, why is there is a clear dividing line between the good professional and the truly great. What is it that makes one person capable of infinitely higher levels of communication than another?
“You can hear two performances of Elgar’s Cello Concerto and both are technically secure, professional performances. But one moves you to tears and the other leaves you emotionally cold. The difference lies in the relationship of the performer to the material they deliver, their emotional commitment to the material, and to the free passageway of that emotion to the audience. Through a dynamically relaxed body and mind, and an intense awareness of the audiences response, the performer can affect the audience psychologically and physiologically by the controlled release of emotion over time”.
Bringing these facts to the consciousness of all performers is the goal of the SOSPIRO System.
Rumpole of the Bailey
Tim Jackaman, 24th July, 2008
“Please don’t hug me, Ballard.”
That unreconstructed old buffer Horace Rumpole begged the head of 4 Equity Chambers after he had, egged on by his new Director of Marketing and Administration, introduced the practice as a way of promoting corporate spirit and harmony in the workplace.
There’s a squeak of the sceptic in most of us when we’re faced with a new idea. We ask for proof or we look for someone serious to tell us it’s alright to take it seriously. But being sceptical is fine, so long as in the end, we have the courage to do things in a new way if we can see it makes sense.
Take John Harle’s new consultancy SOSPIRO and his ideas for transferring skills learned during an extraordinary career as a musician and composer to help people in business become better performers on their own stage. When John came to Greentarget to share his thoughts, we could see he was on to something. So much so that we’re putting our people through the SOSPIRO course and we’re beginning to build some of his concepts into our work. We also asked him to share his methods with some of our clients and friends.
We didn’t take everyone away for the whole SOSPIRO weekend – just an evening of wonderful music and a glimpse of what gives great artists and great art their presence. Why are some musicians good and some simply great? And if we can find out why, how can we use the same techniques they use to similar effect in the business world?
The answers lie in harnessing the same underlying structures that exist within all great works of art and use them to our advantage in business. That, and learning some of the techniques used by performers to achieve memorable results. We all try to develop competitive advantage, but we’re all also working in markets where most people do most things perfectly well. Where business is won or lost on small percentages, intangible factors like chemistry often make the crucial difference.
Music in business performance coaching is not new, but John takes it on to a new level and the parallels he draws between musical form and compelling speech or presentation making are compelling. Churchill’s “Our finest hour,” a sonata? Luther King’s, “I have a dream”, rondo? JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you”, theme and variations? He showed us exactly how those speeches work and why they continue to resonate.
Rumpole is an old fraud of course. He’s such a brilliantly conceived character because we all recognise him and we know he’s not the reactionary he’d like us to think. He’s open-minded and intuitive and it’s his personal strengths that make him a brilliant lawyer. It’s just that he’d rather get into a clinch with Soapy Sam Ballard than let on. Rumpole would love a SOSPIRO weekend.