There is another way....

Nothing ever happens where I live. Nestling at the foot of the Chilterns escarpment, about 40 miles north west of London, Princes Risborough is a pretty town, with a pleasant, slow-paced High Street where the largish retirement community conduct their daily business.

But at 4.30am today that all changed.

Three hooded robbers turned up outside Nat West Bank in a JCB and a flat-bed pick-up. They ram raided the bank and attempted to rip out the ATM. They'd clearly planned the raid, taking a trip up to the police office first to slash all the tyres on the police vehicles parked outside. However despite their planning, it all went pear-shaped.

Actually, quite a few people live on the High Street and the sound of a JCB, a van and a lot of masonry falling all over the road - together with the smashing of glass, grinding of metal and several high-pitched alarms - made a fair bit of noise. Curtains twitched, more than the odd camera phone flashed.....and stubbornly, the ATM wouldn't budge!

The felons took flight, dumping their van a few minutes later, but leaving a large, bright yellow JCB propping up the bank front.

Of course I missed all the action, and arrived back this evening to see only a large hole where the bank front used to be. Clearly there's going to have to be another way of doing business with Nat West in the next couple of weeks....

Now, what was that song about the JCB???....

A poser...

Why are diversity officers never middle class white men?

Out with the old

The year is finishing at an unexpected pace - it's December 29 and I'm sat at my desk judging a communications competition and planning no fewer than three projects, all of which kick off next week.

The competition judging has proved very interesting - I'm judging three classes in a business communications awards scheme. I spent last night judging the writing category. About a third of the entries were engaging, well written and deserving of recognition. From those I was able to pick my winners. Another third were solid efforts, but nothing exceptional while the remainder were really not very good. Had I been the publication editor I'd have been sending them back to the writer for significant reworking. What I wouldn't have been doing is entering them for awards. Is this a sign of me getting old - or are we beginning to see the outcomes of the age of 'deferred achievement'? Perhaps those who have only recently moved from education into work are so used to getting a certificate for anything they do that they expect one for a mediocre piece of work. Well, they won't be getting a pat on the back from this curmudgeon.

Two more classes to judge today and this morning's effort has made me smile. I have to judge special issues of existing publications - but none of the entries has sent me their standard efforts to judge the special editions against.....

Anyway, I'm gearing up for a busy January with three projects around change. One is long-term as a company transforms its IT function into a global, customer-led entity, while the other two are tactical, covering a head office relocation and a factory relocation. It's great to be involved in all three, but so noticeable that communication has only rated any interest when the big changes are upon them. Somehow that ramps up the temperature far more than necessary. Had communication been part of the culture of these organisations prior to committing to transformation, I'm sure the waves created would be significantly less seismic.

Anyway, ours not to reason why - ours to get in, do a good job, and enjoy the benefits.

Famine or feast

Flippin' eck - it really is famine or feast in this business. All that crossed my business viewpoint in October/November was tumbleweed. So what did I do? Write, phone or turn up on the doorstep of virtually everyone I know to see what work - if any - was around. Luckily Jac has got locked into one client on a six month project, so there was still some money coming in. As for me it was a case of making some very thin work stretch a very long way.

And so we headed into December and I was sufficiently worried to start looking at roles working for other people - not something I want to do after almost six years of running my own show, but there appeared to be a creeping inevitability as the days clocked up, but the work didn't.

However, the knocking on doors seems to have paid off. I was invited to become part of a project at Cadbury Schweppes, and that will really step up in gear after the New Year. I've now just heard that I've won another pitch - and the client wants to get cracking on Jan 3 - and there's another project from a longstanding client that'll also ramp up in early January. Suddenly I'm not going to have sufficient days available to meet all the demands on me. But that's what evenings and weekends are for. January looks as though it'll be a demanding month - but no doubt by the time I'm three or four months into 2006, the feast will be abaiting agin and I'll be looking for the next bite.

The moral of this little tale? Enjoy the half full glass, because something will always turn up.

Random

Having had a euphemistically 'quiet' November, December has really taken off, and the pipeline looks good for the New Year too. Typically, as the work hots up so has the social front with Christmas approaching and all that.

Last weekend was one of contrasts - Saturday morning L-B completed her swimming levels (and knocked off 72 lengths of the pool to celebrate!), Saturday night saw Jac and I foot-stomping away to the saw Doctors at Shepherds Bush Empire, and Sunday saw Rory and I undertake our first and probably last pilgrimage to Stradey Park.

My 12 year old has always been a bit of a fish in the water and over the past couple of years she has worked her way through a set of levels that test everything from stroke to speed to stamina via agility and courage. I'm immensely proud of her - she has a towel full of achievement badges and is far and away the best swimmer in the family. I'm also delighted that I'll no longer have to get up at 7am on a Saturday to take her down to the pool for an 8am start! Anyway, she now has a term off, and then is going to train as a lifesaver - and I'll bet she'll be a good one!

Having already been up for more than 12 hours when we got to the Empire on Saturday night, I was waning a bit and could have done with a sit down. But Saw Doctors gigs aren't like that. This is where the folky end of country meets punk in a football crowd.

It was the first time Jac had been to a SD gig - and she confessed to being a 'little too English' as 2,000 members of the diaspora communed in all things Irish. There's more than a sentimental edge to the SD's lyrics, with plenty of hand-wringing over leaving the 'oul country' and heartfelt commitment to the green and red of Mayo and the claret of Galway. But it's done with such fun and such energy that it's impossible not to be swept up in the football song refrains that infuse just about every slab of Saw Doctor material.

So for about three hours drinks passed overhead, strangers hugged and jigged and we were all back on the N17 (stone walls and the grass is green) - a great night.

Up early again next morning to hit the M4 and the 360 mile return journey to Llanelli. Now with Wasps having drawn one and lost one of their opening Heineken cup fixtures, this was a must win occasion. They didn't. They lost....tamely.

Still I'm glad to have visited Stradey Park, the west Welsh acre that spawned Carwyn James and Phil Bennett. To tell the truth, it's not very impressive - less intimidating than Bewery Field in Bridgend for instance and with a softer, friendlier crowd than some other Welsh venues. Like so many historic sporting homes, it's set to disappear under a housing estate in a year or so as Scarlets move to a new home on the edge of town.

It was a long drive back in the fog, but good to spend a day chatting with Rory - even if the rugby lived down to expectations.

Little vices

Chocolate is my vice.

I do a reasonable amount of sport, eat my vegetables and have fewer than the allowable number of units of alcohol each week. But for the last five or six years I've gradually gained weight - virtually all of it around my stomach. I have a terrible sweet tooth and could live on Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

Today I won a new contract for what could be an interesting and relatively long term asignment..........with Cadbury Schweppes.

Sonmehow I don't think the waistline's going to be shrinking much in the next few months.

First impressions

You only get one chance to make a first impression - and it can make or break a relationship.

Having spent 90 minutes this week with a prospective client, whom I don't expect to become a client, not least because of the impression I made by wearing a navy cashmere blazer accompanied by a mis-matched pair of black and brown suit trousers (the result of dressing in the dark), I began to think about occasions when first impressions had made a negative impact on me.

The one that sticks most in my mind was turning up to the first day of an interim contract that I knew two others befopre me had turned down.

I arrived at the office and was met by....no-one. Having kicked my heels for a good 15 minutes in reception, a project co-ordinator turrned up and signed me in. There were no passes ready for me to get through the security doors or use the canteen or vending facilities - and no steps were in hand to get me the passes.

The project office had one small window at one end - I was shown to a desk at the other end. it faced the wall. No-one looked up when I came in or made any attempt to greet me. They just carried on doing what they were doing. My boss and her boss were both going to be out of the office that day - and possibly the next. There was no induction planned for me and everyone else on the team was pretty busy doing whatever they were doing.

I had no laptop. I had no phone. I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

I was given a few reports to read and diligently did so until lunchtime - when everyone else disappeared into a meeting. Later in the afternoon I started going up to my new colleagues and trying to get their take on the project's communications. This continued on the next day when there was still no plan for induction or in fact anything much to get me involved. All of my colleagues were painting a fairly depressing picture of the project - and a couple confessed they were on the point of leaving.

At the end of day two, I felt like joining them! Despite finally spending time with my new boss and indeed her boss over the next fortnight, I never got over that initial feeling of joining a failing project. I conducted a diagnostic which suggested that communication wasn't really the issue and that the project itself was on somewhat shaky ground. My boss agreed - her boss didn't. But I still felt like a square peg in a round hole, and decided not to continue past the diagnostic phase.

It could, of course, have been so different. If the employer had made it easy for me to be part of the team in that first few days, I think I would have entered into the work whole-heartedly. Had there been an induction plan; had people made time to get me up to speed; had my colleagues given the impression they valued what I - and they - needed to do, then I'd have gibven it my best shot. But my first impression stuck.

Those first impressions so often do.

One of those days

Yesterday was just one of those days. It was a Monday, of course, and I seemed to be suffering from the effects of a busy weekend where L-B had turned 12 and we'd seemed to have people in, out and through the house absolutely all of Saturday and Sunday.

Anyway, I learned two lessons yesterday: never get dressed in the dark, and don't go into pitch meetings when you have a migraine.

With L-B heading off for the school bus shortly after 7.30am each morning, we're all up a bit earlier now. It was still dark outside when I crawled out from under a very warm duvet and opened the wardrobe to inspect what was a) clean b) businesswear c) vaguely matching.

To my mind I'd selected a blue jacket, blue stripey shirt and grey trousers. Anyway, more of that later.

The effects of a non-stop weekend had left me with the seeds of a migraine. Sophie and Rory fighting just before we left for school brought the first shoots of pain and vivid colour, and by the time I got into the office and sat down at the PC, my brain was somewhat disconnected from the rest of me.

Anyway, a couple of migraleve later, I was printing out a credentials pack for the three people I was meeting as I pitched to take on the PR for a hotel/conference centre. Now external media relations is stretching our skills a little - I have done it, but not for a while. However, this potential client approached us and this was a call-back following an initial meeting.

I was driving over beyond Oxford for the lunchtime meeting, my head now settled into a dull throb, when I glanced at my grey flannel trousers. They were, of course, not my grey flannel trousers, but a pair of suit trousers, black with brown pinstripes. Funnily enough, they go great with the shirt. Also the shirt goes really well with the jacket. But the jacket and the trousers actually don't match up at all.

By now I was past Oxford with just 30 minutes to get to the meeting - no chance to nip home and change or even into a shop to get something more appropriate. No surprise them when the headache began to kick back in.

I arrived at the potential client and met not three but four immaculately dressed execs. I'd explained by e-mail that my pitch style was conversational and that I would rather talk with them than merely do a show-and-tell presentation.

For the next 40 minutes they sat stony faced; hardly an interjection; no signs of emotion really either way. It also seemed that the brief I was working to had moved on, so much of the basis for my PR plan was on very unsteady ground. One person in the meeting grew openly hostile, another said absolutely nothing in the who 90 minutes I was on site. Meanwhile a small team of navvies was alternately drilling at the back of my eye sockets and then hammering at the inside of my temples.

I alternately wanted the ground to open up and swallow me and to slap the new marketing manager whose role seemed only to score points at my expense. Of course I just smiled, was polite and carried on climbing the north face of Everest.

I know we could do the job and do it very well for the client. Our prices are keen and our ideas - based on the brief - were sound. However, I came out of the meeting feeling that our chances of success are about the same as a snowball in my oven lasting through Christmas.

I'll wait and see for the client to come back......But the blue jacket/brown pinstripe combination was NOT a good idea.

Mucked around

I really enjoy most of the aspects of being part of a very small company. We get to work on some really nice projects and there's no opportunity for the corporate politics and back biting that occurs in larger organisations. The downside is that clients and others know we're small - and simply don't give us the respect they'd accord a larger business.

At the moment this is manifesting itself in several ways: we're owed money by a couple of large clients, but their payment processes are so Byzantine - plus the fact that we hardly register on their radar - that it's proving very difficult to get anywhere with them. The sums involved aren't large, but why do the biggest companies take longest to pay the smallest?

Secondly we're suffering from re-book fever. So many meetings have been cancelled or shifted recently that it's now becoming hard to balance the time we actually spend meeting clients to getting the job done. Most people have had the good grace to phone to postpone, but on a couple of occasions I've driven across London only to be told 'Oh, sorry he's in a meeting and will have to cancel' once I've arrived - and that's an existing client, not someone we're merely pitching to.

Still, on the upside, there's some new work coming in that will stretch us in a new direction, and a couple of promising partnerships beginning to gain pace too. 2005 has been a tough year, but the prospects for 2006 are brighter.... so long as we can pin down those meetings, and cash the cheques!

Coining a phrase

By chance, I think I coined a phrase the other day to describe the normal workings of a small business. Certainly it fits Leapfrog and the rollercoaster working style we've come to love in the past five and three quarter years.

The phrase is 'manic to panic' - manic for those times when there are seemingly more projects on the go than hours in the week to fulfill them, and panic when there are clearly more than 24 hours in the day and very little on the books to fill that time.

We're always aiming for somewhere in the middle - though often veering towards one of the extremes.