First of all, thank you.
As many of you will know, it was my birthday on Sunday. Thank you for all the cards, messages and general good wishes. I had a wonderful weekend in Northumberland – although the British summer did dictate that a few best-laid plans went aft a-gley…
Back to work. And given last weekend’s weather – especially if you wanted to see England wrap up the test match – this article in City AM seems more than a trifle optimistic. ‘Should we change our working patterns as it gets hotter?’
As I write this on Tuesday, the rain is coming down in stair rods, and the answer is ‘no.’ But the climate is clearly changing. It could be our turn soon, with the Met Office now suggesting that by the turn of the century, last year’s heatwave will be seen as relatively cool.
When I was at school, an optimistic rumour surfaced every winter. ‘It’ll be too cold. They’re not allowed to teach us if it drops below…’ Feel free to insert your own temperature because it never happened. The school heating clanked, groaned and made it through another winter.
But is the world of work now going to ask the opposite question? Will it be too hot to work? Anyone who’s been to see a client in London any time after April knows how hot our capital can get as the sunlight reflects off all the plate glass – and the traffic adds its six penn’orth. Leeds has its moments as well – so should we consider a siesta?
The article in City AM speculates about a working day running from 7:00 to 11:00 and then from 17:00 to 20:00. If you’re commuting into the office, that’s clearly a non-starter. But if you’re working from home? If you have an employer who understands work/life balance – and knows that it’s a results business, not a ‘time spent’ business…
The UK won’t adopt the ‘siesta model’ in my working lifetime. We most certainly will see much more aircon, solar blinds and employers recognising the importance of flexibility – not simply to give Millennials and Generation X what they want from work, but to make sure they’re working when they can be at their most efficient.
Having touched on efficiency, let me develop the theme. Big companies – and effective monopolies – stifle innovation and act as a drag on the UK’s productivity.
That was the key point of another article in City AM – and you won’t get any arguments from me. The article specifically mentioned the ‘big beasts of banking, the supermarket sector and tech’ – but I think it applies in any sector.
It was based on a book by Stanford professor Mordecai Kurz, arguing that rapid advances in technology have enabled large companies to increase their monopoly power. And once they’ve established a monopoly, there’s no more need to innovate.
Facebook? Netflix? Amazon? It’s very hard to disagree with the central thesis of the book. All those companies could now be considered effective monopolies. You might argue that Facebook/Meta’s introduction of Threads – as a competitor to Twitter/X – is innovation. The cynical might suggest that we’ll end up exchanging one tech monopoly for another…
I’ve always believed – passionately – that real innovation comes from smaller firms. It comes from SMEs like the members of TAB UK: companies that are nimble, agile and quick to react. Companies that have to be innovative in the face of competition from big business. Companies that genuinely understand their clients and customers and give them exactly what they want or need.
…And, of course, that have access to the very ‘best advice.’ I’m not using ‘best advice’ in the financial services sense here: I’m talking about the magical moment that happens occasionally in TAB meetings. When the ‘collective mind’ of the seven or eight people gathered around the table produces a genuinely innovative solution to a seemingly-intractable problem.
When there’s a moment of silence, and everyone realises it’s the exact answer. When no one’s quite sure who said it: when there’s a real breakthrough, and it’s come from the whole group.
That doesn’t happen in every TAB meeting. It doesn’t even happen in every ten meetings. But the majority of people reading the blog will have witnessed it. A significant number will have benefited from it. It’s the right answer: it’s the exact answer – and no single person would have come up with it on their own.
I remember the first time I witnessed it.
And yes, it still gives me goosebumps…