The world according to Panto…….

 As I get increasingly older, Christmas traditions become more important. No I am not going to refer to the British failure to deal with snow and ice. I am thinking of something much closer to my heart, the peculiar British tradition known as pantomime. You know the sort of thing, girl falls in love with girl, transvestites abound, ghosts creep up behind you, fairies wave their wands and it is all deemed suitable for a family audience.

Traditionally (that word again) we at Orchard Growth Partners have offered our contacts an early Christmas present in the form of some tips and ideas to help businesses improve their performance in the year to come. This year we have decided to look at the lessons that can be learned from those familiar pantomimes that we all know and love.

Pantomime has many lessons for business leaders (oh no it doesn’t! Oh Yes it does! Isn’t that a bit tenuous? Oh no its not….). For example King Arthur demonstrates the value of leadership, Snow White examines the benefits of leftfield collaborations, Cinderella shares the secrets of successful rebranding and Dick Whittington  shows how simple tried and trusted solutions can crack new markets.

Of course there are many of you who are of the opinion that the world at present is one gigantic pantomime or at the very least a farce. Incompetent business leaders, bungling bureaucrats and bickering politicians have caused many of us to hold our head in our hands and wonder at the craziness of it all.

And yet that does both these forms of entertainment a great disservice. Good pantomimes, like good businesses, require skill, imagination and hard work in order to succeed i.e. put on a great show and get punters to part with their hard earned money. A pantomime that was put together by the incompetents, bunglers and bickerers above would not be funny and would fail as totally as everything else they seem to do in their day jobs.

I guess there are many people out there who are looking to put the year of 2010 “behind them”, even though 2011 will bring its own worries. To them and everybody else out there I wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Santa’s Little UK Based Helpers…..

As Santa gears up for his annual global trek bearing gifts for children young and old, my thoughts turn idly to the elves that spend all year busily manufacturing the products that are loading on the sled. Contrary to popular belief many of these elves might actually be situated in the UK. To borrow heavily on the words of Mark Twain, rumours of the death of UK manufacturing have been greatly exaggerated.

UK manufacturing is on a roll. According to the November Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) the sector grew at its fastest rate for 16 years. There has been record growth in employment in the sector. The Engineering Employers Federation have said that the manufacturing sector will outperform the rest of the economy next year and that firms were powering ahead, recruiting staff and investing in their businesses. Manufacturers were ending the year on a high and expecting to enter 2011 on a strong footing. Very impressive indeed.

Manufacturing currently accounts for 13% of UK GDP. OK in Germany it is 24% but the figure in France, which is fiercely protective of its indigenous industries, is broadly the same as in the UK and in the US it is lower. We are unlikely to get back to the 30% level of the 1970s, but given that the last ten years has seen manufacturing output fall by 11%, the rebalancing that we are starting to experience is very welcome if long overdue.

Historically UK manufacturing has always been about harking back to the past rather than looking to the future, an approach characterised by forlorn attempts to protect the heavy industries of the past. This attitude has led talented graduates looking elsewhere for their career options. With the tarnishing of the financial services industry, and a touch more glamour surrounding high tech specialised manufacturing hopefully we are starting to see a real change in attitude towards the sector.

So as we struggle with the packing and wire ties that seem to accompany our Chinese made toys this Christmas morning, we should also look forward to a gradual increase in “Made in Britain” goods emerging from wrapping paper in future years. A little ray of sunshine to offset the wintery conditions the country is facing at present.

And the point is……?

 I am sure my fellow Enterprise Britain blogger Tony Drury will sooner or later have some fun with the Wikileaks revelations by discovering one or two that may have eluded the press thus far. However the one that particularly stood out for me was the revelation that Bank of England governor, Mervyn King had criticized the Prime Minister and Chancellor, prior to their election, for their lack of economic experience and their tendency to think of economic issues in terms “of politics and how they might affect Tory electorability."

And his point is? That it is a surprise that Dave and George thought only in terms of politics clearly reflects more on Mervyn King than our leading political duo. They are first and foremost politicians and in today’s world that means their focus is tomorrow’s headlines and staying in office. I am not saying that public service and making a good fist of running UK plc doesn’t fit with their objectives but these are likely to be secondary to their main goals.

That does not mean the current set up has a lot to recommend it. No management book would advocate the cabinet structure that runs UK plc. To have somebody with no real knowledge or experience of their departmental activities or suitable financial and management skills being expected to manage an organisation spending billions of pounds and employing tens of thousands of people seems mad when you think about it. Add to this the likelihood that they will be moved on at just about the time they have garnered a sense of understanding as to what their department is actually all about to another department and you have a system that seems totally bonkers.

OK I will accept that leadership, communication and interpersonal skills are important qualities that many politicians have. There are also career civil servants to provide some stability although senior civil servants are often be promoted based on administrative experience rather than departmental expertise. That still does not make it right.

Having said that is such a situation that unusual outside of politics? Perhaps large corporate bodies with their frequent internal reorganisations are not a lot better and these will also lack the steadying continuity that the civil service is there to provide. One of my ex-bosses noted as he departed that in his four years with the company he had had three bosses, so the law of averages dictated that he would get one with whom his face did not fit.

We are constantly told that when recruiting to fill a role in a business, we are looking for competence, aptitude and ideally some relevant skills and experience. And yet at the very top of the UK we are managed by people with little relevant experience whose main concern is and always will be getting re-elected. And you sometimes wonder why we’re in the mess we’re in?