What the heck happened? And the test of real 'interests'.

Actually I'm not going to go on about the result, though it's certainly a shock and 'oh' kind of turn up for the books.
But I have to say, the really annoying thiing is the (so called) markets' reaction.
I'd venture to say that whatever the results, markets would have been slightly down. Not because there was any news to react to but because the big speculators had already taken positions that it was in their interests for the markets to decline.
It's notable that someone's "fat fingers" also wiped billions off stock for a few minutes (making one speculator a cool £350,000 in a matter of seconds) before the correction was made.
It also annoys me that 'business leaders' continually say a) "What business needs is stability" to which they now add b)"and a clear way out of this financial black hole". See RBS example.
Well...
a) They had that for a number of years with TB and GB - I didn't see them dancing for joy then or rushing to defend Labour now
b) They continually ask for the Government to show the way out of the debt crisis, but don't offer any help - and in fact squeal when it's said they may have to accept keeping less profit.
We now see clearly how in thrall we are to banks, bond and gilt traders and business interests. It's the problem of the commons writ large - private profit and public loss.
I'm now going off to sob quietly.

Wild food - guaranteed to make your mouth water

I had to share this because two days later I can still (sort of) taste the risotto with wild garlic I made after a walk in the Kent countryside - not far from Ightham Mote. It's was also the day I blogged about the School of Artisan Food so I was enthused!
The garlic starts off with a beautiful soft scent (especially in the sunshine) but then intensifies in the cooking without ever becoming acrid.

It's quite simple - if you know how to make a risotto that is. So here's my first attempt at a recipe (not including a recipe leaflet I once wrote for the Dutch Meat Marketing Board)

Wild garlic risotto (serves 2)
You will need -

• Approx 75g butter (plus a bit)
• About 125g of arborio rice
• 1 glass of white vermouth
• 1 litre of stock - vegetable or chicken
• A big handful of wild garlic leaves
• Parmesan cheese

Melt the butter in a biggish solid pan over a medium heat. When it's all melted add the rice and keep stirring until the rice appears to have absorbed some of the butter. It may 'foam' and will appear sticky.
Add the glass of vermouth and keep stirring. Again wait until it starts to appear thicker.
Add a big slosh of stock and stir.
In another pan melt a little more butter. Chop up the stalks of the garlic leaves and place in this pan to soften then take off the heat.
Keep going with the rice, stirring and adding stock. Each time wait until the stock is more or less absorbed before adding more stock.

Test a bit of the rice now and then until it is soft to eat.
At this stage, put the garlic pan back on the heat and chop up the leafy parts of the garlic (roughly, nice big peices) and stir them through the butter to wilt.
When the risotto is ready add the softened garlic to the rice and stir in. Taste and add a twist of pepper, maybe some salt if required.
Serve with parmesan shavings on top. According to the Times you could add pancetta...but it really doesn't need anything.

My mouth is already watering.

Could this be the beginning of a minor revolution?

And, of course, you can buy the t-shirt....

Put a few things in perspective

Thought I should just post this and see what happens. Probably none of it surprising, but at this time of year, when we've bee settling marks for students term papers and exams the bit about jobs that don't yet exist makes you think about the skills they're acquiring.
I'm so glad I didn't do a vocational degree!

New year, new enthusiasm

I know I introduced this idea some time ago, but now it's 2009 and a time for new brooms and all that, I thought I'd kick it off for real.
Here's the deal.
Last year, whilst writing Virtually Free I met, either actually or virtually, a lot of nice people who were enthusiastic about their businesses.
What I noticed (and indeed have noticed ever since I was teaching MBA students) was that these business-people didn't just care about what their strategy was or if they'd got their marketing mix right. They seemed to care as much, or maybe more, about their enjoyment of the business and the challenge or connecting with customers and collaborators, producing neat ideas and forging ahead.
So I asked myself; 'What gives these kind of entrepreneurs their sense of direction?'
A long time ago now, I read a paper by two academics - Andrew Campbell and Marcus Alexander - asking an even simpler question; 'What's wrong with strategy?'
I'm paraphrasing them (badly) when I sum up their argument as the following.
Strategy doesn't work as most textbooks say. The idea of a cascading structure of corporate objectives feeding down into strategies and tactics doesn't appear to happen.
In truth (as John Rossiter observed of marketing strategies) most people can't accurately recall what strategy they are using.
What happens (Campbell and Alexander argued) is that companies (that is, people) oscillate between gathering and using 'insight' and revisiting or revising their sense of 'purpose'.
Insight can be internal - how things can work better - and/or external - what those customers really need.
Purpose is, in a sense, far clearer; what are we in business for?
Between these two (which you will see repeated in our book Marketing & PR and in Virtually Free) many small businesses get a sense of direction, of what they could do to achieve their ambitions.
But, as I observed from some of the contacts I made last year, a successful business needs more.
After some wrestling - well, serious frowning - I came the tentative conclusion that organisations need the two other 'cardinal points' that appear above.
Truth can relate closely to insight, since a 'true' solution is one with honesty where any exchange is transparent. But it also relates to how an organisation conducts itself. Truth means having nothing to hide...and that makes all communications (with customers, suppliers and others) so much easier: essential in a web 3.0 world. Truth is also a test of how well you know your customers' needs - are you confident in the truth of your view of them?
Beauty may be more contentious. Again this links to the other cardinal points above; a truthful service solution can be beautiful as can a product that simply works. But I think we also have a responsibility to make people's lives better by what we do (I think Guy Kawasaki agrees) - it might just be about making the world a better place to be.
The links between all these points isn't, by the way, a weakness. Imagine these points all exerting force on the centre and you get the idea that a strong organisation exists in an equilibrium.
I would suggest that those who haven't really worked through these issues has a blind spot somewhere.
I'm aware this is all slightly esoteric so I'm asking all my contacts (and complete strangers) to flesh this out in the next few months. I'm starting with Linked-In and will gradually seek to infect other social networking platforms as we go - feel free to do it yourself and claim some ownership!
All we want is a ratio of 70% example to 30% discussion - do successful organisations have this 'compass'? Can we gather examples of good practice - insightful, purposeful, truthful and beautiful?
The Linked-In Group is called (surprisingly) 'Insight, Purpose, Truth & Beauty'. Let's see what we can do with it.

What a night!

The best man won, originally uploaded by robbroccoli.

Good morning from the UK and...phew, thank goodness for that.

For a moment yesterday I wondered if it might all dissolve in the kind of disaster of the last couple of elections.

Now I'm fearful for the next few months, the weight of expectation, the capacity of Americans to do weird things. This may be just British pessimism.

Great speeches from both candidates (far more impressive than you'd get in the UK).

But most of all...wow. An educated, intelligent, globally aware US President. Well done.

Let me tell you about this T-shirt

Since finishing the new book I’ve been thinking about how a smaller organisation can get its act together.

A great marketing strategy isn’t just about getting all the elements of the marketing mix ‘right’. As marketers never tire of telling you – it’s more complicated, deeper than that.

But complication means problems.

For a small organisation, like an SME or a charity, execution of a marketing plan is where it all happens. Because of the limited resources to hand, the basic tasks of a marketing plan can seem overwhelming and, importantly, take valuable people away from running other vital operations.

There is, in fact, a related problem for larger companies. How do they communicate what must be done – internally and to others such as agencies – in order to allocate sufficient resources?

One reason this struck me forcibly as I finished the book, and then discussed this with Nick, was that the ‘new marketing’ demanded by the web and other converging technologies gives us even less room for manoeuvre.

Even more than ever, marketing is something you have to do now and every day. And it all has to work together, day after day.

Great small organisations know and do this. Larger organisations often struggle.

So as I wrote about online promotion and the maintenance of an online brand, I emphasised ‘consistency’ and ‘integration’.

Consistency. When everything you say and do refers to your core values.

Integration. When everything you do links to everything else you do.

Since then, Nick and I have been discussing a marketing strategy ‘mantra’ that could remind us of what the rules are. I’ll go into all this at greater length in the next few posts but for now I’ll just leave you to consider…

Insight, purpose, truth & beauty.