Guess what? There's a general election looming. Lots of Joy and fun. Or rather not if all we are going to get are Mr Ed Balls and Mr Michael Gove repeatedly refusing to answer questions that, not only are reasonable, but easy to answer. If hectoring and obfuscation appear the two games in town for the main parties then the main result I think will be a lot of stay at home voters which does no one any good at all
The Labour pledge card was a cracking idea- can they please now follow it up with some detail- I think they do have some of the answers; I just wish they'd stop using some of their more senior politicians who do their damndest to avoid engaging with what they are.
Sunday 28 March 2010
Friday 26 March 2010
Gene Genius
It used to be said that if you wanted to understand the nature of a people and its culture all you had to do was take a look at what they were cooking and eating. Actually, I think you can get a much better understanding from what they are reading and watching. This must mean that Wales is a nation of murderers, rapists, extortionists and bank robbers because what we are reading and watching is crime fiction and drama. By the bloody bucket-load.
According to data firm Nielsen, the biggest selling author last year was Dan Brown, who is clearly a crime writer masquerading as a conspiracy theorist. In the top 10, you’ll also find James Patterson, John Grisham and the late Stieg Larrsson whose tattooed heroine, sleuthing her way through a distinctly Ikea-unfriendly Sweden, has captivated readers across the globe.
It’s not just the written word. The biggest television show on the planet is the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) franchise. In its original guise, set in Las Vegas, CSI is not strictly a cop show but in every other respect it sticks entirely within the set framework of crime drama. Its combination of crime committed, evidence gathering, witness interrogation, plot twists (of subtle and not so subtle varieties), chase and dramatic conclusion has been a successful formula since Dragnet in the 1960s, through the honourable Streets of San Francisco, Hawaii Five-O and Starsky & Hutch in the 1970s to the glorious success and espadrilled excess of Miami Vice in the 1980s. In many ways CSI is a fabulously old fashioned programme albeit with higher production values and more glamorous settings.
Crime drama has clearly become the critics’ darling too. The argument over “The greatest television show of all time” has vacillated between “The Sporanos” and “The Wire”. Neither of these are crime dramas in the traditional sense. Both David Chase (Sopranos) and David Simon (The Wire) have written extensively of how they were looking to challenge the existing paradigms of crime drama on television. Simon in particular has written about how The Wire was deliberately designed not to have the classic leitmotifs of likeable protagonist, linear storytelling and satisfactory denoument.
Tellingly, fans of the Wire will often tell you that it is the characters who are the supposed “bad guys” that are the most sympathetic and compelling to watch whilst the law enforcement officers often have personal failings that make them difficult not just to like but to merely engage with, which makes the drama itself so much more rounded, dense and textually rich. It’s still a crime drama though.
So why do we love this stuff so much? C.Day Lewis thought the detective story was a twentieth-century folk tale. Nick Elliot, once the head of drama series at the BBC, believes "Crime fiction satisfies in us a secret yearning for justice, the unappeasable appetite for a fair world, which begins in childhood and never leaves us. It satisfies our need for conclusions, both moral and narrative." Before the war, both the detective story and the thriller reassured the middle classes that all would be well: nothing to fear from criminals and lower orders.
Crime drama is designed to entertain. Crime drama and fiction may have literary and higher aesthetic aspirations, and often achieves them, but its emphasis on entertainment ensures that these aspirations do not intimidate potential viewers and readers.
We also use crime drama to reflect and, often, laugh at ourselves. In his “Aberystwyth” series of novels, Wales’s own Malcolm Pryce has created a very knowing pastiche of the hardboiled detective. Pryce’s protagonist, Louie Knight, is Humphrey Bogart via Ceredigion. There are constant in-jokes to movies and novels but it’s the black humour and pointed vignettes of a fading West Wales that linger longest. He writes:
“How many other people, honeymooners and young families, had made the same journey as the rain swept in from the sea and pounded on the plywood roof of their shoebox on wheels? Families who had driven for two or three hours, stopping occasionally for puking children, to the world of gorse and marram grass, dunes and bingo and fish and chips."
For me this evocative portrayal of holidays past rings uncomfortably true and proof, were it needed, that crime writers can often transcend the limits of the genre in different and often surprising ways.
Likewise, witness the popularity of the Life on Mars/ Ashes to Ashes shows. The emergence of Gene Hunt, a “man’s man” or “copper’s copper” has resonated in ways previously not envisaged by the show’s creators. What was originally a character to loathe has, thanks to the tremendous acting of Philip Glenister, become an anti-hero for our times. His moral certainty, sense of purpose and penchant for the politically incorrect one liner has made him a household favourite. But it is not simply a sense of nostalgia that Hunt invokes in us. He very cleverly holds up a mirror and says “look at this stuff- wasn’t it completely daft?” and we nod our collective heads in agreement and recognition. Gene knows that life is serious but it doesn’t always have to be.
It has been suggested that its appeal has a psychological dimension. I think much of this is a simple fascination about what lies beneath. We hear about crime but rarely see it. We cheer watching the gangsters get away with it. We’re appalled by their duplicity. We cheer when they get caught. We’re sobered to see that crime doesn’t pay.
The best crime dramas do not suggest a remedy for crime or reassure us that all in the end will be well; but they can help us to understand our society, and they also allow us to hope that evil will not go unpunished. Crime drama fascinates partly because it entertains, partly because it enables us to understand who we are, where we are going and what we could become. Crime drama has the ability to shine a proverbial torchlight into the darker aspects of the world in which we live. We are allowed to stare into the abyss and know that it will not stare back. Don’t have nightmares.
According to data firm Nielsen, the biggest selling author last year was Dan Brown, who is clearly a crime writer masquerading as a conspiracy theorist. In the top 10, you’ll also find James Patterson, John Grisham and the late Stieg Larrsson whose tattooed heroine, sleuthing her way through a distinctly Ikea-unfriendly Sweden, has captivated readers across the globe.
It’s not just the written word. The biggest television show on the planet is the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) franchise. In its original guise, set in Las Vegas, CSI is not strictly a cop show but in every other respect it sticks entirely within the set framework of crime drama. Its combination of crime committed, evidence gathering, witness interrogation, plot twists (of subtle and not so subtle varieties), chase and dramatic conclusion has been a successful formula since Dragnet in the 1960s, through the honourable Streets of San Francisco, Hawaii Five-O and Starsky & Hutch in the 1970s to the glorious success and espadrilled excess of Miami Vice in the 1980s. In many ways CSI is a fabulously old fashioned programme albeit with higher production values and more glamorous settings.
Crime drama has clearly become the critics’ darling too. The argument over “The greatest television show of all time” has vacillated between “The Sporanos” and “The Wire”. Neither of these are crime dramas in the traditional sense. Both David Chase (Sopranos) and David Simon (The Wire) have written extensively of how they were looking to challenge the existing paradigms of crime drama on television. Simon in particular has written about how The Wire was deliberately designed not to have the classic leitmotifs of likeable protagonist, linear storytelling and satisfactory denoument.
Tellingly, fans of the Wire will often tell you that it is the characters who are the supposed “bad guys” that are the most sympathetic and compelling to watch whilst the law enforcement officers often have personal failings that make them difficult not just to like but to merely engage with, which makes the drama itself so much more rounded, dense and textually rich. It’s still a crime drama though.
So why do we love this stuff so much? C.Day Lewis thought the detective story was a twentieth-century folk tale. Nick Elliot, once the head of drama series at the BBC, believes "Crime fiction satisfies in us a secret yearning for justice, the unappeasable appetite for a fair world, which begins in childhood and never leaves us. It satisfies our need for conclusions, both moral and narrative." Before the war, both the detective story and the thriller reassured the middle classes that all would be well: nothing to fear from criminals and lower orders.
Crime drama is designed to entertain. Crime drama and fiction may have literary and higher aesthetic aspirations, and often achieves them, but its emphasis on entertainment ensures that these aspirations do not intimidate potential viewers and readers.
We also use crime drama to reflect and, often, laugh at ourselves. In his “Aberystwyth” series of novels, Wales’s own Malcolm Pryce has created a very knowing pastiche of the hardboiled detective. Pryce’s protagonist, Louie Knight, is Humphrey Bogart via Ceredigion. There are constant in-jokes to movies and novels but it’s the black humour and pointed vignettes of a fading West Wales that linger longest. He writes:
“How many other people, honeymooners and young families, had made the same journey as the rain swept in from the sea and pounded on the plywood roof of their shoebox on wheels? Families who had driven for two or three hours, stopping occasionally for puking children, to the world of gorse and marram grass, dunes and bingo and fish and chips."
For me this evocative portrayal of holidays past rings uncomfortably true and proof, were it needed, that crime writers can often transcend the limits of the genre in different and often surprising ways.
Likewise, witness the popularity of the Life on Mars/ Ashes to Ashes shows. The emergence of Gene Hunt, a “man’s man” or “copper’s copper” has resonated in ways previously not envisaged by the show’s creators. What was originally a character to loathe has, thanks to the tremendous acting of Philip Glenister, become an anti-hero for our times. His moral certainty, sense of purpose and penchant for the politically incorrect one liner has made him a household favourite. But it is not simply a sense of nostalgia that Hunt invokes in us. He very cleverly holds up a mirror and says “look at this stuff- wasn’t it completely daft?” and we nod our collective heads in agreement and recognition. Gene knows that life is serious but it doesn’t always have to be.
It has been suggested that its appeal has a psychological dimension. I think much of this is a simple fascination about what lies beneath. We hear about crime but rarely see it. We cheer watching the gangsters get away with it. We’re appalled by their duplicity. We cheer when they get caught. We’re sobered to see that crime doesn’t pay.
The best crime dramas do not suggest a remedy for crime or reassure us that all in the end will be well; but they can help us to understand our society, and they also allow us to hope that evil will not go unpunished. Crime drama fascinates partly because it entertains, partly because it enables us to understand who we are, where we are going and what we could become. Crime drama has the ability to shine a proverbial torchlight into the darker aspects of the world in which we live. We are allowed to stare into the abyss and know that it will not stare back. Don’t have nightmares.
Tuesday 16 March 2010
Business Lessons from the Egg Chasers
Analogies between sport and business are commonplace. I'm not pretending that this blog piece will be any different but a couple of things struck me whilst watching both the Ireland v Wales and England v Scotland games which I thought were worth sharing.
It's not been the best Six Nations tournament for Martin Johnson and his men has it?
Critics of England point out that they aren't sure what the game plan is for the English side.
On the contrary, I think the England problem is that they know EXACTLY what the game plan is. England's real problem is one of leadership.
On the pitch it is so obvious that Steve Borthwick- nice man though he is- is his master's voice in that he appears be be utterly unable to make any decision other than those that were previously agreed upon in the classroom or the training pitch.
This means that the team are bound together so tightly around "the plan" that they do not know how to deal with matters that happen on the pitch that don't accord with their own plan- this is either supreme arrogance or supreme stupidity. What it isn't is a plan to win international rugby matches.
Likewise the sheer lethargy of the English set play was emblematic of a wider absence of speed of thought, leadership and decision making. Apart from Borthwick bleating at the referee- again- there was a noticeable absence of anyone prepared to make a different decision, be spontaneous or change tactics. The result: a stifling, trench warfare and a shoe in for this week's cure for insomnia. Following plans and processes are all well and good but this adherence matters not a jot when the opposition are cutting darting runs through your flat defence and you can't scrummage for toffee.
Lesson: it's important to have a strategy but the strategy is meaningless unless you have either a) a back up or b) the right personnel to deliver it.
Although it pains me greatly to admit it, the Welsh have a similar problem. Although their play is intermittently sparkling, they have made little progress this year.The extraordinary win against Scotland was simply that- extraordinary. Poor against England, simply not at the Ireland game, the Welsh can take some comfort in an excellent second half against France. But that's it. Again the problem can be traced back to leadership. Ryan Jones is palpably not the man who, was once suggested as a Lions captain. The rush defence tactics employed so well by Shaun Edwards two years ago is now being used by opposing teams to devastating effect. In stark contrast to England, where invention flair and lateral thinking would add to their game plan, for the Welsh it is the need to get the basic plan right that currently is their major flaw. The lineout has been woeful, the scrummage workmanlike, the turnovers unacceptably high.
For Wales, the long discussion with the drawing board is about to begin. Lets face it: although rugby is a simple game made complicated by its rules, the default position of "Give the ball to Shane" is not a long term strategy that will pay dividends.
Lesson: Don't assume that doing things the same way will bring you dividends; often the competition has moved on. Refresh your strategy regularly and don't be afraid to try something new just because you've always done it "your way". As Einstein said, the true sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
It's not been the best Six Nations tournament for Martin Johnson and his men has it?
Critics of England point out that they aren't sure what the game plan is for the English side.
On the contrary, I think the England problem is that they know EXACTLY what the game plan is. England's real problem is one of leadership.
On the pitch it is so obvious that Steve Borthwick- nice man though he is- is his master's voice in that he appears be be utterly unable to make any decision other than those that were previously agreed upon in the classroom or the training pitch.
This means that the team are bound together so tightly around "the plan" that they do not know how to deal with matters that happen on the pitch that don't accord with their own plan- this is either supreme arrogance or supreme stupidity. What it isn't is a plan to win international rugby matches.
Likewise the sheer lethargy of the English set play was emblematic of a wider absence of speed of thought, leadership and decision making. Apart from Borthwick bleating at the referee- again- there was a noticeable absence of anyone prepared to make a different decision, be spontaneous or change tactics. The result: a stifling, trench warfare and a shoe in for this week's cure for insomnia. Following plans and processes are all well and good but this adherence matters not a jot when the opposition are cutting darting runs through your flat defence and you can't scrummage for toffee.
Lesson: it's important to have a strategy but the strategy is meaningless unless you have either a) a back up or b) the right personnel to deliver it.
Although it pains me greatly to admit it, the Welsh have a similar problem. Although their play is intermittently sparkling, they have made little progress this year.The extraordinary win against Scotland was simply that- extraordinary. Poor against England, simply not at the Ireland game, the Welsh can take some comfort in an excellent second half against France. But that's it. Again the problem can be traced back to leadership. Ryan Jones is palpably not the man who, was once suggested as a Lions captain. The rush defence tactics employed so well by Shaun Edwards two years ago is now being used by opposing teams to devastating effect. In stark contrast to England, where invention flair and lateral thinking would add to their game plan, for the Welsh it is the need to get the basic plan right that currently is their major flaw. The lineout has been woeful, the scrummage workmanlike, the turnovers unacceptably high.
For Wales, the long discussion with the drawing board is about to begin. Lets face it: although rugby is a simple game made complicated by its rules, the default position of "Give the ball to Shane" is not a long term strategy that will pay dividends.
Lesson: Don't assume that doing things the same way will bring you dividends; often the competition has moved on. Refresh your strategy regularly and don't be afraid to try something new just because you've always done it "your way". As Einstein said, the true sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
Monday 8 March 2010
End of the Pier Show- of sorts
Anyone who works in a large, blue chip organisation will know the pain and agony that comes with the end of the financial year. Huge amounts of stress will be built up as lots of potential sales are converted, lots of orders processed, lots of expenses claimed and lots of debt chased down.
For those who work in corporate HR functions, their experience is largely similar as the year end headcount targets are scrutinised and the year end performance process/annual review gets underway.
This is the time of year that many colleagues will tell you that its probably the worst time to be an HR practitioner. On the one hand, everyone wants to be your friend, as they think you have some influence over their pay review- on the other, you are public enemy number one, reminding everyone that there is not a limitless pot of money for the annual bonus round or that Steve in sales should not be rated as "amazing" when he failed to deliver any new business.
So what to do? Actually, this can be the best time of the year. If HR's job is to help motivate and engage the business then now is absolutely the right time. Either through coaching, providing advice or just doing your job damn well, its now that HR can truly have an influence- in setting strategy, ensuring standards and driving for the goals of the organisation at large. It's a great time of year to be in the HR function. Time to embrace the chaos, not avoid it.
For those who work in corporate HR functions, their experience is largely similar as the year end headcount targets are scrutinised and the year end performance process/annual review gets underway.
This is the time of year that many colleagues will tell you that its probably the worst time to be an HR practitioner. On the one hand, everyone wants to be your friend, as they think you have some influence over their pay review- on the other, you are public enemy number one, reminding everyone that there is not a limitless pot of money for the annual bonus round or that Steve in sales should not be rated as "amazing" when he failed to deliver any new business.
So what to do? Actually, this can be the best time of the year. If HR's job is to help motivate and engage the business then now is absolutely the right time. Either through coaching, providing advice or just doing your job damn well, its now that HR can truly have an influence- in setting strategy, ensuring standards and driving for the goals of the organisation at large. It's a great time of year to be in the HR function. Time to embrace the chaos, not avoid it.
Sunday 7 March 2010
Navel Gazing isn't a Business strategy
Apparently it's people that are the most important part of any organisation. If that's the case, and I'm almost sure that it is, why is it that the function that is supposedly the one that has the expertise and insight around managing this commodity- HR- is in a constant state of crisis about what its supposed to be about?
Much of HR still remains stuck in a self-serving-hide-behind-process dogmatism which does the function nor the businesses it is supposed to support any favours whatsoever. Running businesses are all about the management of risk- not the avoidance of it, which has been the modus operandi of many poor HR functions.
There is undoubtedly a lack of commercial acumen amongst many HR practitioners: knowing employment law, recruitment policy and how to run a consultation with employee representatives is important. So is reading a balance sheet, understanding return on capital employed and knowing what it is your company does in the marketplace.
The sooner the profession gets this and moves out of chin stroking and navel gazing, the better for the function, employees and shareholders alike.
Much of HR still remains stuck in a self-serving-hide-behind-process dogmatism which does the function nor the businesses it is supposed to support any favours whatsoever. Running businesses are all about the management of risk- not the avoidance of it, which has been the modus operandi of many poor HR functions.
There is undoubtedly a lack of commercial acumen amongst many HR practitioners: knowing employment law, recruitment policy and how to run a consultation with employee representatives is important. So is reading a balance sheet, understanding return on capital employed and knowing what it is your company does in the marketplace.
The sooner the profession gets this and moves out of chin stroking and navel gazing, the better for the function, employees and shareholders alike.
Friday 5 March 2010
Jonathan Ross and his salary
This article also appears on the redoubtable www.waleshome.org website
Earlier this month whilst holidaying in Snowdonia, I was watching BBC’s Question Time. I was struck by the emerging political consensus on that evening’s programme that there was now a public “right” to know exactly how much BBC “stars” earned, as this would make the BBC somehow more “accountable”. This isn’t a new story but it’s one that’s starting to irritate. I think an alternative voice needs to be heard.
Media and current affairs junkies will recall that much of this came up last summer during the ongoing furore over politicians’ expenses. At a much trailed and reported McTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh television festival, that renowned champion of civil liberties and public sector broadcasting (ahem), Sky’s James Murdoch, took the opportunity to coruscate OfCom and the BBC in what can only be described as Orwellian terms.
Readers of the Daily Mail will also be aware (as their journalists seem to spend every waking moment finding opportunities to repeat it) that broadcaster Jonathan Ross will, in June of this year, end his contract with his employer. It’s a development that is largely being seen -by those who see things this way- as a victory for the silent moral majority over a supposed, crumbling, morally bankrupt edifice called the BBC.
I do not understand the logic that knowing how much a particular BBC “star” is paid somehow makes the BBC more accountable to the licence fee payers. It seems to me that all it does it create copy for the Daily Mail and their ilk, increase the blood pressure of “disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” and keep green ink manufacturers in business.
Ask yourself this: would Wales Today’s avuncular Derek Brockway be a better weatherman if you knew how much was transferred into his bank account every month?
Would Jonathan Davies have screamed any louder at Shane Williams’s winning try against Scotland the other week if he thought that his salary might be affected by his “performance”?
No, of course not. These are of course deeply silly points but they are only as silly and puerile as this debate has become.
I’m not arguing that the BBC should not be accountable. On the contrary, its original Reithian message seems as resonant today as it was back in the early days of the corporation. But a list of salary details is not accountability: it is the politics of the curtain twitchers.
Be under no illusion: there are many in this debate who have a more pernicious and troubling (to this writer, anyway) agenda. This is far more than a debate about expenditure and better management of one of the UK’s most important organisations. There are many who have a clear political agenda to end the era of public sector broadcasting and to move to an entirely commercial free market.
To my mind, this is the real danger. Without a continued commitment to public sector broadcasting, we would lose the richness, variety and sheer vitality of our broadcasting output. I think it deeply unlikely that a commercial broadcaster would give over six hours of prime time television to an in depth and thoughtful history of Christianity, for example. Similarly, would we continue to enjoy local and regional newsgathering, or Welsh language programming or (insert your own personal choice here)? I doubt it. Let’s be honest-only the BBC could have done Hamlet on Boxing Day, Doctor Who in it or not. I think that’s a magnificent thing.
Proper accountability begins with a clear vision of mission and purpose; it continues with a sense of moral and community responsibility to provide a wide diversity of programming and it ends with getting the right people for the right jobs at the right price. Not the cheapest price, but the right price. This means setting salaries and contracts through a team of professional commercial directors with expertise of reward and incentivisation and knowledge of the business. It isn’t, I’m afraid, for you or I, irrespective of how well intentioned we believe we might be.
The BBC is a public sector body operating in a private sector world. The increased level of commercial competitiveness, the increased globalisation of entertainment and newsgathering, the influence and reach of internet based communications and the 24/7 demands of an increasingly hostile media means that the challenges for the BBC are greater than ever. In the end however the BBC must continue to deliver quality and distinctive programming to its audience- and if this means paying some presenters an apparent king’s ransom then this is something that not only do I think is a price worth paying, it’s a positive indication that the BBC continues to understand its mission and purpose and is brave to continue to do this against a tsunami of opprobrium.
We need to continue to have a debate about the BBC and our relationship with it. However, we need to do it in a way that recognises both its regulatory obligations as well as the very real very genuine commercial challenges and agendas, not just here in the UK but globally.
The debate over salaries may sell newspapers and start pub debates but it doesn’t make either for good governance or accountability. This is a classic case of needing to be careful about the law of unintended consequences. The only winners from the drive to know the pay of the BBC “talent” are owners of commercial channels and the anti- public sector broadcasting ideologues-I see no reason why we should help them line their pockets or write their editorials. By the way, buying the Daily Mail will cost you £40 a year more than the BBC licence fee. I know where I would like my money to go.
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