Master of the Universe crashes to earth

Bob Diamond joined Barclays in 1996: so did I. That's pretty much the only point where our careers coincided. He headed into Barclays de Zoete Wedd to add oomph to a rather moribund investment banking offering, while I spent two years in a change team reshaping Group Planning, Operations and Technology. By the end of 1998 he was heading up Barclays Capital, the streamlined successor to BZW, while I was packing my bags and heading to my next change project - Forte's 'Commitment to Excellence'.

Being in a completely different division to Bob Diamond, I had little exposure to him. I attended a couple of staff conferences that he spoke at; he came to one group communicators meeting that I was part of and he was a 'client' during a couple of our Y2K (remember that?) presentations.

He was smooth, incredibly assured - and the people I knew who'd inherited him as a boss were scared of him. He brought in a raft of new people, new methods and new ways of working. The slightly clubbable BZW disappeared; replaced by a harder edge. He made money for the bank: lots of it. And the investors loved him.

I next crossed Barclays' path in about 2005, when asked to work on a project in Barclaycard. I'd known the cards business quite well during my spell in the operations side of the bank. Barclaycard was the industry leader in the UK - first into many markets and with an enviable customer base. But it faced the problem that many pioneers have to live with: younger, nimbler competitors were coming into the market and chipping away at Barclaycard's dominance. Good customers were defecting and that presented a huge issue for Barclaycard. They were the cash cow for the Group and suddenly that cash wasn't quite so forthcoming. Barclaycard had prided itself on never having to take on risky business, but now they were having to trawl the murkier card waters, offering cards to customers who never before would have fitted the profile, and having to work harder to claw back bad debt and make money from interest on outstanding borrowings.

It was a time when the business had reissued its Values - the usual stuff: we put our customers at the heart of everything we do; we value our staff highly......it felt 'motherhood and apple pie'. I was brought in on the back of the staff survey as morale had dipped. The view of the HR team was that they needed some communication to get staff back on board and feeling more positive.

For me, the next few weeks were a culture shock. Barclaycard had changed a lot between 1998 and 2005. The management team was very different with a strong BarCap presence and even stronger BarCap mentality.  What was most noticeable was the divide between the long-serving, generally more junior staff and those managers parachuted in from elsewhere in the business or recruited to fit the new mould.

Generalising, for those who'd grown up in the Northampton HQ, the values mattered; customers mattered; relationships across the business mattered. For the new breed, profit mattered. End of.

Having spent several weeks interviewing around three dozen people (on both sides of an increasingly obvious divide), for my diagnostic, I fed back my findings to HR as preparation for presenting a plan to the Barclaycard Board. My simple conclusion was that no amount of tactical communication would change anything at this stage. Quite simply, the management culture bore no relation to the espoused Values. All the nice words about customers and colleagues were just posters on the wall.

The real work needed to be about deep cultural change - to move management into a more truly customer and employee-focused mode of operation or, more likely, to move staff towards the emerging management model.

My 'killer' line was on values and had been given to me by a senior Barclaycard exec in the interviews. He'd said: "Those values on the wall mean nothing. If I was really to sum us up I'd say: 'We're short-termist; a bunch of hard-nosed bastards who are ruthless on costs and entirely focused on delivering our profit targets. No-one stands in our way."

I told my clients that there was no benefit whatsoever in running a series of events with supporting whistles and bells advocating a set of values that the senior management team clearly weren't living and had no intention of buying into.  They'd be better off being honest and putting the 'short-termist bastards' message on the walls.

I never got to present to the Barclaycard Board (and was never invited to become a diplomat) but did get to send my report to the CEO - Gary Hoffman (who's currently being touted as a potential replacement for Bob Diamond.). I have no idea if he ever read it, since the comms project was quietly cancelled soon afterwards.

I've subsequently done work for the European retail banking business and enjoyed the experience much more. But what struck me most thinking back to my 2005 involvement was how BarCap's tentacles were stretching out, creating a culture where the ruthless pursuit of profit - no matter who was struck down along the way - had become endemic in large chunks of the bank.

Yesterday, Bob Diamond delivered a long and seemingly passionate promise of intent to staff a triumph of corporate communication at odds with corporate actuality. But he was too late.

The culture he has created in the bank has come back to bite him. There's a point where greed is no longer good - even to investors. Bob Diamond has gone because of one thing: shareholder value. Rather than boosting the share price, his association with Barclays caused it to plunge. However good an operator you are, as soon as that happens, you're out. End of.

The Freelance Rules #14 - keep juggling

Looking back on the actuality of my last few weeks against the 'plan' highlights the reality of freelance life - and shows why you need to be the consummate juggler to succeed in this game.

Looking at my white board, I - theoretically - had three key projects on the go in June. One was a sensitive piece of change comms; one a piece of work around an intranet launch  and the third was a series of magazine articles. Each had been costed, planned and scheduled - there would be crossovers, but no significant clashes.

The reality of June was: the 'sensitive' piece happened pretty much to plan. It attracted no external coverage and landed as well as it could internally. I was then involved in a second change announcement for a different client. This time my unexpected involvement was sideways-on. I was called in late in the day and the brief was 'organic'. At first, I was about as helpful as a chocolate teapot. My second input was more useful and by the end of last week I felt I was providing something of value to the client. As ever, it would have been great to be in earlier - but that's not the way it works for freelancers.

The intranet piece is suffering from classic delays. I've crafted my small cog in the wheel, but some of the bigger cogs have jammed. It's a great client who has allowed me to bill all my planned time up front, despite the larger project potentially having ground to a halt 'til the other side of the summer holidays.  After a sustained few days of effort, I've been thumb twiddling on this one for a week or so. Not my fault; not my client's fault - but technical troubles further into the guts of the project means there's no point in us progressing further quite yet. In my early days as a freelancer I'd have got quite worked up about this. Now I try not to worry about things outside my control - and just work on the stuff in front of me.

The magazine 'stuff' has worked as so many magazines do - interviews have been rescheduled; contacts have changed (or disappeared) and I've had to find new angles and new contributing voices. But that's the beauty of a magazine: it evolves and reshapes as it moves from an editorial plan to the finished product. So far, the client seems happy though we're still lacking a couple of pieces and the  deadline is approaching at high speed.

So what has actually happened over the past few weeks is some periods of intense focus - head down on one project and motoring full speed at it at the expense of everything (and everyone) around. Other times have been a juggle between clients and competing pieces of work - and other stretches - a day, two and even three days - have been barren with little opportunity to progress.  Everything on my white board will be completed - plus a couple of other small but important tasks....and a client pitch; two proposals; invoicing and other admin - oh, and my annual review on my PhD.

I'm not an elegant juggler - but the balls are still in the air. But, if you like regularity in your job, and struggle when deadlines compete and work lurches off piste, then freelancing - at least in my line of work - may not be for you.

Ripples on the industrial/academic nexus

For the past 27 years, after leaving university first time round, I've worked in journalism and latterly, organisational communication. For the past five years I've been back in academia; collecting an MA and working towards a PhD. For the past two I've been teaching in a university history department - part-time and on a short contract basis. This year in particular, my module has proved popular. The feedback has been good and students have become very engaged in the subject.

I've been able to bring all my experience of corporate communications to bear on designing and delivering my lectures and seminars. There's a huge parallel with the kind of training I've done for years in industry and the facilitation work I've done with corporate and industry leaders over the last decade.

It helps too that I'm the father to teenagers not far short in age of the young adults I've been teaching. I'm beginning to understand their on-line linked up world where the old style of lecturing from my first university experience simply wouldn't cut it any more.

So, my lectures are bracketed with music chosen to have some relevance to the topic. I use You Tube and other video sources extensively to bring to life the people and events we're covering. Much of the seminar work is based around primary sources - and generally I prefer the students to find and introduce at least some of those sources.

It's a first year group, and as well as getting a good grounding in the subject, I want them to get enjoyment from our Thursday afternoons together and come out feeling they want to learn more - to scrape beneath the surface view. I don't claim that my sessions cover all the bases; I don't claim that they give more than a partial view - and at times I'll deliberately go out on an extreme to drive home a point. But I want the students to leave the lecture room sufficiently engaged with the subject to go and find out more: to read deeply and get the full story - if only to disprove the line I've taken.

In the UK system of little contact time and much space left for private study, it's all I can do. I'm not yet a great teacher and still have a huge amount to learn. But finally, I think I've found my metier. This student engagement in subjects I'm passionate about is what I do best. I hope I can always work it alongside my engagement work.

My approach in attempting to connect the students to the subject matter through some side-on angles isn't revolutionary - indeed I'm aping the best of my experience through my Masters. Where I am perhaps hard wired slightly differently is in bringing my experience of the world beyond academia to bear from lecture one term one in making students think beyond their three or four years of academic study to the harsh working world that will be waiting for them in a couple of years' time.

I want them to immerse themselves in their subject: to begin to think as historians and to move beyond the narrative I can share with them to question why things turned out as they did. But equally, I want to help them develop good habits: to turn up on time; to participate in class; to be generous in sharing views; to accept and deal with constructive criticism; to organise their thoughts cogently and present them coherently, on time and within the expected standards. That may sound like a no-brainer, but it's not the case for a number of reasons.

On the student side, they've come through a school system designed to enable them to get the right grades in exams. That means spoon-fed learning, narrow-cast around fulfilling exam criteria. Having only 10 hours contact time with staff at university per week; being asked to research subjects without a feeding spoon; and simply being away from home for the first time is perhaps a bigger ask of students than ever before.

And on the staff side, frankly the system has become too lax and simply doesn't demand sufficient discipline from students. We don't make lectures and seminars compulsory and equally don't have enough support in place to help those sinking students learn to swim. The latter point comes in part from a lack of funding; the former is merely a hangover from more freewheeling liberal approaches that first permeated campuses a generation ago. Yes, we have to respect that our students are adults who choose to be on our course. But my view is that many don't arrive from school with sufficient structure in place to make the right decisions on their own. At first year level, I'd make contact time compulsory. It builds good practice that won't just carry through their study time, but will be invaluable in landing and keeping a job after graduation.

It's at this point that my 'day job' and academic life collides most. For over a year I've been working on Adecco's Unlocking Britain's Potential initiative. This is looking at why Britain's workforce isn't as effective as it could be - and one of the key findings is that young workers simply aren't ready for the world of work, whether they emerge from education at 16, 18 or in the early 20s. Of course, it's a huge generalisation, but the majority of the employers I spoke to during the research spoke about the issues they have both with managing young people's expectations (the 'entitled' generation was a recurring theme), and instilling the discipline and loyalty necessary for that young person to be a productive and contributing member of the organisation.

Industry blames the education system for not producing the 'finished work-ready goods', while the education sector bemoans the lack of industry support - from shaping curricula to offering the work placements through education that will open young people's eyes to the reality of work. They're both right, and I hope UBP will help cement some of the links that are clearly lacking.

For me though, one of the most disconcerting aspects of the past two years has been the disconnect in what academia is, and should be, about. For me, teaching the next generation and opening their minds so that they can make the bridge into a career is the vital aspect. I put everything of myself into that part of university life - yet it actually counts for nothing on my PhD.

While internal student satisfaction and, increasingly the National Student Survey play a part in grading the department and attracting students, our funding is based on the quality of published research - written by academics for academics and largely read by three old men and a dog. Teaching is secondary and lecturers are recruited into the department on the basis of the the funding their research will attract. There's a fundamental dichotomy here. True, some great researchers are also great teachers but it's by no means always the case. At the moment, great teaching doesn't attract funding and so there's little incentive for departments to recruit staff members who will make the student experience truly memorable. If it happens now, it's by luck not judgement.

The next generation is not attracted to study in our institutions by the scholarly articles we publish (ok, I've only published one...and a review) but will increasingly be attracted by the electronic word-of-mouth of social media - the views of current students - and by tracking where our graduates end up in their working lives. We are not an end in ourselves. For the next generation of students, employability will be far more a pressing reason to choose or reject a department than the research interests of the faculty.

So where am I heading with this? Well, I'm beginning to draw my conclusions. In brief, they are:

• Providing funding to departments only on the basis of research devalues the teaching experience and is unsustainable in a new era of growing student choice
• Students want good teaching and more informed contact time - most don't give a toss about the department's reputation for scholarly research
• The university experience has to add another layer: subject specialist excellence has to remain at the forefront, but especially in non-vocational subjects, there needs to be a far greater emphasis on supporting students across the transition from school to university and then from university into work
• Industry/university partnerships are not a dirty concept - they will become ever-more essential and need to break out of the narrow confines of law firm - law department and 'big four' - business school and embrace all departments and all types of industrial and commercial organisation
• Teaching experience and skill should be a measured and rewarded aspect of PhD study for any researcher contemplating an academic career
• We need to instill greater discipline in students at university level - not to do so is bad for everyone.

As liberal in thought and voting practice, my views surprise even me. Cripes, I'll be advocating 'Victorian Values' next....

i/O, B&C Connections and more

I've written a lot of content for Adecco recently. Much of it has been for their revamped client magazine which is now being issued in a number of versions tailored to their brands. First off the deck is i/O - produced for the technology recruitment brand: Modis.

The magazine is being produced in both a print format for those brands where people still like a physical publication and an e-version, while some brands are strictly electronic. I'll link to more versions as I get hold of them.

Generation IT 2012

The report I compiled for Modis on if and how the UK can become an instigator of future technological revolutions is now available to download here. I'm facilitating round-table events in London on March 8th; Manchester on March 20th and Edinburgh on March 27th for senior IT professionals to take the conversation forward. If you're interested in taking part, please let me know and I'll put you in touch with the organisers.

Key points are:

• IT is moving ever more from back-office to the business driver
• In some organisations, IT is the business
• The CIO is increasingly a business role
• Hybrid business/technical skills are most in demand
• Technical specialisms still matter: but what makes the big difference is their marriage with analytical skills, a business understanding and great communication
• IT is a great contributor to unlocking Britain's potential - the focus has to be on training, education and innovation.

I'd welcome any feedback on the report.

Unlocking Britain's Potential

The Research Report I wrote for Adecco - Unlocking Britain's Potential  - was launched at the end of their Conference on employability and unlocking the 'Lost Workforce' at the Grosvenor Square Marriott in London on Tuesday. It was an absorbing event and I hope it, plus the report, really does spark some action to bring educators, employers and government together. You can download the report here.

The Freelance Rules #13 - Don't get discouraged

Friday was terrible: five interviews lined up for a magazine that's already running late. Of those five, I landed just one. One guy was on holiday - I interrupted his boarding at Stansted Airport - one bumped me for a more important meeting and two just weren't on the end of the phone when they said they would be. I also spent far too much of the day (indeed of the week) chasing payments for work completed last November while also dealing with lost emails and a conference clash.

It was a horrible day summing up all it can be when you're a microbusiness on the margins of importance to those I was trying to connect with. But sometimes that's just the nature of the beast when you're freelancing.

In this case, my client hasn't prioritised the project I'm working on, and getting support from within his business has been painful. It's not his fault: the project's a new area for him and he's being asked to do more with less as the downturn continues to bite. I'm just glad the magazine is still running. In terms of the interviewees, an almost cold call from an organisation they know for something other than as a commentator on business issues is never going to outrank their day to day tasks.

Yes - interviews could have been set up earlier; we could have had a stronger brief on client requirements and and there could just have been more client oomph behind the project. But, we are where we are and the task of the freelancer is to make the best of it. Come the end of last Friday I just had to park what occurred during the day and prepare for a better Monday.

Today didn't start brilliantly to be honest - but not for immediate work reasons. I've been bumped off a flight in the US in April which rather mucks up some well-crafted travel plans, and then I found out I'd missed out on the ballot for England v South Africa tickets this summer. So, not the nicest first two emails to greet me.

But, since then, things have looked up. One client has paid me; I've conducted three useful interviews for the magazine and have another one lined up this afternoon. The magazine isn't quite where I'd want it to be, but thanks to the persistence of my co-freelancer and myself, and some energy from the client, it's getting there.

As microbusinesses we tend to work in a little bubble and it's too easy to let high dudgeon rise when our best-laid plans are derailed further up the supply chain. But if you want to keep pulling in the jobs, there's no point acting like a prima donna. Sometimes the only way to operate is just to plough on: to take in a huge breath, count to ten and focus on what you can do - not on the aspects of the project outside your control.

Expending all your energy on issues where you have little or no influence will lead only to further discouragement.  That way madness lies!

End of Year report

I'm supposed to be doing some report writing today, so picking up the blog after a few months of inactivity probably isn't a bad way to get back into the swing after a few days' break. I realise I haven't written anything on here since September - not through lack of interest, but through having been too busy both on the comms side and on the academic side to have the time to put the thought into making any sense on here. Now though, we're just a few days from the end of 2011 and it's not a bad time to reflect on a curious year.

Business-wise, I'm finishing the year strongly. Unilever has been a fantastic new client this year, the Adecco Group has kept me busy across several of their brands and agencies such as ArtHaus and Gatehouse have both put interesting work my way. I've picked the odd one-off piece up too - with a small piece for World Vision sticking in the mind. On the flipside, Diageo has been very quiet and some of my regulars from the past few years either are no longer in existence or have reduced their comms work significantly. While there are some signs of growth and recovery in some industries, it's patchy and inconsistent.

My year has definitely been one of two halves. The first was pretty poor, with a lot of scratching around for new work and a rather linear flow to what I was involved in. The second half has been much stronger with a mix of facilitation, training delivery, writing and editing for a range of electronic media and even a few smallish pieces of consultancy work. For the first time in about two years I even had to turn some work down as I didn't have the capacity to deliver it. That's always bittersweet, but at least this time I was able to pass it on to a connection.

I have been courted for a number of interim projects and came close mid-year to taking on a year's contract that looked as though it would have a foot both in comms and in academia. However, the actuality didn't really live up to the billing and the prospect of working with the most unctuous person I've yet to come across in the industry convinced me to stay clear.

I've built on my teaching at Brunel University and am convening a module on US History this academic year. This is tremendously rewarding (other than financially!) but probably has held back my PhD work as I strive to keep at least a week ahead of the students. That said, I've just had my first full academic paper published, and the reaction so far though minimal, is positive.

Looking ahead to 2012, I have one retained, client which is always good, though we're still negotiating what that retainer should be! There's the prospect of both a White Paper and a corporate magazine to keep me busy through January and February, but after that, who knows?

I feel that business-wise I'm in a slightly better position than a year ago, but still feel a month or two behind where I should be to feel comfortable. It has been a tough 12 months with the prospect of another toughie to come. But, in March, I'll celebrate a dozen years outside corporate life - and I'm not about to give up yet!

The Freelance Rules #12 - Be of strong constitution

You'll get plenty of knock-backs as a freelancer and to make a real go of it, it helps to have the constitution of an ox.

I've been at my desk since about 7.30am today. My elder daughter, off school with an Autumn bug, has kept me company for some of the time, though she has headed back to bed now. To be honest, I'm not feeling great at the moment - the kids go back to school each Autumn and bring home every virus and infection going. And they're very 'sharing', my kids. For the last couple of days I've had a dull headache and have a lovely scratchy throat to accompany it. But as a freelancer, you simply have to rise above such man flu.

Back in the day when I was a magazine journalist, I thought nothing of missing the odd mid-week day after a big night out. When I moved over to corporate life, my work ethic improved, but if I didn't feel 100%, I would call in sick knowing full well that I'd still get paid. Once, when I picked up horrendous food poisoning in Paris and was off for a fortnight (and lost a stone and a half in the process), I was particularly glad for that payment security blanket. Though, as the symptoms recurred over the next year while I struggled to finally get the bug our of my system, my boss was less impressed by the additional half dozen days I racked up in sick leave.

When I started working for myself, everything changed. I have insurance that covers me if I can't work, but it's very restrictive and kicks in only after six weeks. So, the equation for me is simple. If I don't work, I don't get paid. It's amazing the change that understanding prompts. In 11 years, I've only had to cancel work appointments twice. I've never been ill for more than a couple of days (and try and save those for weekends) and regularly work through the minor illnesses that would have sent me in search of my duvet in 'employed' days. Okay, I have coughed and spluttered through a few meetings; attended one where I couldn't sit down having been bitten on the backside by a big bug who didn't wipe his feet; and pitched for a new account in a mis-matched suit jacket and trousers put on in a migraine haze. But the upshot is, the fear of not earning is a fantastic medicine.

There's nothing unusual in my situation - just about every freelance I know operates in the same way. We all know that if we're not around to take on the work, someone else will.

So, if you're thinking about taking the freelance plunge, think about your health and your ability to work through the sniffles. If you're a bit of a fragile flower, you probably won't last long working for yourself.  

The Freelance Rules #11 - Trust your gut

I'm in the very nice position at the moment of having a number of projects to juggle - that's great after a tough couple of years but throws up its own challenges of prioritising, keeping clients happy and generally having enough hours in the day to take part in the meetings and deliver the work.

I recently had the chance to cut the stress by focusing on one project for one client for a year. Okay, the pay wasn't going to be fantastic, but the project sounded great. The spec was to support the internal and external comms needs of a new CEO in an industry I enjoy for one of its biggest organisations - and one that was both new to me and would be a very good name to have on the CV. Stakeholders would be in the UK and International and would cut across the private and public sectors and include considerable government liaison. The call was to create a new strategy and then be a key player in implementing it.

There was a pretty time-consuming procurement process - which saw me spend the day I went on holiday writing a speech among other activities - but it looked like a project worth getting on board.

At the first selection meeting, I didn't meet the guy I'd be supporting. That rang an alarm bell, Instead, I was asked to do some more pre-work (which was never mentioned again!) and then grilled by a panel of four. One actually said nothing; two I took to, but the other managed to come across in turn as unctuous, officious, pompous and overly alpha-maleish. My answers didn't seem to be ringing his bells, and I left the room really not expecting to be asked back to sell-in my services - and not sure I wanted to return anyway.

Within 24 hours, as other client worked buzzed about me, I was asked back - and they wanted to see me pretty much immediately. My gut said let it go - but their obvious (though slightly surprising)interest in me probably flattered my ego a little too much. The lack of chemistry in the first meeting; their forensic interest in what seemed to me not so important issues; and a certain friction when I outlined my preferred way of working should have alerted me that this was not going to end happily. But, it's nice to be flattered and I shifted a couple of appointments and headed for this potential new client.

Again, I didn't get to see the person I'd actually be working for and was faced instead with the gang of four. They drilled into my preference for effective over efficient communication (they seemed to want things the other way round) and pointed to their CEO as being the 'expert' whom I should take my cue from without challenge.

At that point, I was seriously thinking: 'why have a dog and bark yourself?' My gut was telling me to get out of there - but that's not what we do in pitch meetings. Too often we sit there giving the answers we think the other side wants rather than what we actually believe to be true.

By now, Mr. Unctuous had turned particularly pompous. He was virtually going line by line through some other client work I'd been asked to provide to demonstrate the breadth of my work. I didn't take to his school master tones and finally woke up to what my gut was telling me.

These people didn't want a creative, challenging communication partner - they simply wanted a speechwriting powerpoint jockey who wouldn't rock the boat. The package they were selling bore little resemblance to the pretty picture on the box.

Politely but firmly I piped up: "You know what, I don't think I want to take this any further. I obviously don't fit what you're looking for and don't think I need to take up any more of your time."

It would be an understatement to say they were shocked. I think I shocked myself. But I honestly could not see any point in going through the polite rituals for another hour when I knew that there really was no meeting of minds. A few coughs, splutters and uncomfortable minutes later I was walking back to the car.

I should never have gone to the second meeting. It merely confirmed my concerns and wasted the time of five people - and I never did get to see the head honcho......probably a sign in itself.

I feel I dodged a bullet. Myself and Mr. Unctuous would never have got on. But I also feel that potential clients should be more honest in their project specs. If you advertise for a creative challenger and set a process that plays to those strengths, that's what you'll get. If you really want a skilled packager, make that clear on your tender.

Anyway, my gut has stopped rumbling. Since that slightly painful hour in the Midlands, two clients have come by with new work and the pipeline's looking particularly perky.

I'm very far from perfect, but on this occasion I felt vindicated in walking away from a poor, over-engineered process. Chemistry matters, honesty matters and respect matters in project negotiations. When any of those factors is out of kilter, it can leave a particularly painful - and long-term - gut ache.