Avoiding career or leadership catastrophes: Part 2 (Tories)

This 6 part blog uses the impact of Thursday's UK General Election result on each recognised Party to explain one of the main reasons why we are frequently blindsided by human attitudes and behaviour, and how to better prepare ourselves. 

This post explains how the Conservatives (Tories) managed to steal an extraordinary triumph from the anticipated jaws of defeat, or at best stalemate, with Labour.

______________________________________________________________________

Under the expert direction of their Australian and American strategy chiefs David Cameron and the Conservatives worked hard and got seriously lucky.  Even THEY didn't expect it.  

The Conservative Party’s impressive strategy gurus by the way are no doubt richly funded by hedge fund magnates resident in the Cayman Islands for tax purposes - that's a well-founded, not jaundiced speculation.  It illustrates the point that well spent, rather than squandered, largesse does provide competitive advantage.

Whatever your politics you have to admire, and learn from, the ruthless, dead-eye professionalism of these strategists.  They identified, and ruthlessly targeted, the Achilles heels of their major competitors - Labour in some seats and the Liberal Democrats in others.  It proved devastatingly successful. They played on the electorate's visceral fears of a Labour/SNP Coalition or Voting Agreement, its mistrust of Labour for apparent economic incompetence when last in power, and mistrust of the Lib Dems due to their broken pledge to freeze university tuition fees.

In the run-up to the election Cameron must have contemplated the feasible outcome that he would lose, or fail for a 2nd time to achieve a majority, and consequently be torn political limb from political limb by the predatory right wingers in his own party who’ve always seen him as one of the weaker antelopes on the veldt.  That could still happen if he fails to meet their agenda or contrives to lose the Union between England and Scotland, as he so nearly did last September.  His grip on power looked pretty shaky then.

The Conservative campaign was frankly workmanlike and lacklustre, with no inspiring vision, but it worked, beautifully.  Hats off to them.  They judged perfectly the brainstems and emotions of those who could be persuaded to vote for them.        

However, when observing his close colleague Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s fate Cameron must be feeling "There but for the grace of God go I".  Cameron must now deliver on Friday’s promise to govern the UK as a compassionate One Nation Conservative.  That will take guts, which he has not previously shown in abundance, humilty, the willingness to stand up (constructively) to the detractors and agitators in his Party, plus principle, dedication to the task, creativity, and a previously unforeseen ability to build bridges with a hostile Scotland that views him as the Devil Incarnate, and in Europe with fellow reformers.  In other words he needs to become an outstanding leader, exhibiting the characteristics of the Top 1% and manifestly governing for the country as a whole, not just talking about it.  It's time for the applied, brainstem-reaching Big Society.

Has Cameron got what it takes?  Has he acqired at last, at least in part, the wisdom he needs to be a truly effective leader?  If so then Nick Clegg’s incalculable sacrifice (see Part 4 of this blog) may not prove to have been in vain, though of course he will never be credited with it by the vast majority, other than dispassionate historians.  Effectively he has laid down his political life for Cameron's, and the country's benefit.  

________________________________________________________________

I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this post. If you find it helpful please share it. And make a difference - be a smart giver and do something positive for others this week. Pay it forward.

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:

Leadership - can you master it?

High business growth - gold at the end of the rainbow?

10 reasons to stick your neck out!

Do you ever think you've got it tough?

Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove

How the brain works and why you should know

Was Tesco's Terry Leahy really such a great leader?

Stop your company's demons coming back to haunt you

Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

If this blog is particularly relevant to you, your organisation, or to someone else you know, I may be able to help or advise. I strive to be a smart giver – Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take” (2013) explains why smart givers are the highest 25% of achievers in all walks of life. They go out of their way to help others, intelligently, without allowing themselves to be widely exploited. In this way they inspire higher performance and create sustained new value through collaborative exchange.

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients..

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.

Mark Ashton

Avoiding career or leadership catastrophes: Part 1 (NMT)

This 6 part blog uses the impact of Thursday's UK General Election result on each recognised Party to explain one of the main reasons why we are frequently blindsided by human attitudes and behaviour, and how to better prepare ourselves. 

The result was totally unforeseen - by pollsters, pundits, politicians or voters, except in Scotland, and even there it seems the victors hardly dared believe it.

No-one believed the exit polls at 10pm, predicting a Conservative majority.  Tony Blair's controversial former New Labour communications chief ('spin doctor') Alistair Campbell said he'd eat his kilt if they were true; Liberal Democrat campaign chairman Lord Paddy Ashdown said he'd eat his hat. Both are now contemplating a textile diet! 

So why did it happen, and what personal lessons can we apply in our own lives?

_____________________________________________________________

Instead of a hung parliament with messy negotiations to form a coalition (and we're told staff at 10 Downing Street had already booked meeting rooms and ordered sandwiches), David Cameron is the first Conservative Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher in 1983 to increase his majority after a first term.

Two electoral lions roared.  As their former leader Alex Salmond pithily put it the Scottish National Party (SNP) was one of them, sweeping 56 of 59 UK Parliamentary seats in Scotland, mainly at Labour's expense. The other lion was so-called aspirational Middle England.  It sustained the rout of the Labour Party and mauled the Liberal Democrats to a pulp.

The reason for this remarkable result was maddeningly stark and simple - right under our noses, in fact:

Politics, and life, is foremost about emotions, NOT ideas!!!

Last November I published two blogs, How the brain works and why you should know, and Why selflessness is good business.  They explained dramatic 'light bulb' revelations I'd had listening to Dr Bruce Perry, one of the world's leading specialists in child trauma psychotherapy and originator of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT).

NMT uses a 4 level hierarchical structure of the brain.  The 1st (lowest and most ancient, animal) level is the brainstem; the primitive brain. ALL stimuli enter the brain through it and are instantaneously scanned for threat.  It's the home of the hard wired, knee jerk, fight or flight response.
 
Within milliseconds the 2nd and 3rd levels kick in.  The main behavioural factors here are emotional and tribal:

• Does this stimulus make me happy, sad, angry, tense, hostile, afraid, anxious, depressed, betrayed. etc.?

• How must I react to gain approval in my tribe - my family, friends, peers, gang, boss, company, sports team, political grouping, union, religion, denomination, etc. etc.?  What is 'expected' of me?  The brain's need for affiliation (acceptance within a group) overrides rational thought and often leads to irrational action.

The 4th (highest and youngest) level is the neo-cortex, the sophisticated upper brain in which complex, abstract and concrete (rational) thought occurs.  This is the home of ideas, the place where, for example, respectful political debate is supposed to take place.

To explain the shocking chasm that exists between the brainstem and neo-cortex, and the brainstem's perilous power, I equated it to a six year old child who's found the keys to Dad's Ferrari supercar and is taking it for a ride.  You know there's going to be very serious trouble!!

Perhaps you're starting to get a sense of why political, and so many other forms of human disagreement, is so rarely rational?!  More like throwing Christians to the lions in the Coliseum!!

In the remaining parts of this blog over the next few days, armed with these rudimentary, but fundamental, neurological insights I'll seek to explain the fortunes of each of the recognised Parties in last Thursday's election and what we might learn from them if we want to increase the chances of a) success; and b) avoiding catastrophe in life ourselves.

________________________________________________________________

I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this post. If you find it helpful please share it. And make a difference - be a smart giver and do something positive for others this week. Pay it forward.

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:

Leadership - can you master it?

High business growth - gold at the end of the rainbow?

10 reasons to stick your neck out!

Do you ever think you've got it tough?

Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove

How the brain works and why you should know

Was Tesco's Terry Leahy really such a great leader?

Stop your company's demons coming back to haunt you

Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

 If this blog is particularly relevant to you, your organisation, or to someone else you know, I may be able to help or advise. I strive to be a smart giver – Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take” (2013) explains why smart givers are the highest 25% of achievers in all walks of life. They go out of their way to help others, intelligently, without allowing themselves to be widely exploited. In this way they inspire higher performance and create sustained new value through collaborative exchange.

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients..

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.

Is voting a waste of time?

In my previous blog Are 'political leaders' an oxymoron?! I asked if we get the politicians, and governments, that frankly we deserve!  

With just 3 days to go to the 2015 UK General Election I offer here a voting strategy, without stating which party you should vote for if you're in the UK.  Anyone wanting that advice can message me privately!! ;-) 

This strategy is credible because it builds on the well-researched, proven principles of Top 1% leadership and organisational behavour. 

_______________________________________________________________

One of my early blogs last August, Human weakness – a competitive advantage? highlighted key lessons from the powerful, instructive book ‘The Blunders of Our Governments’ by political science Professors Ivor Crewe and Tony King, which chronicles in shocking detail the catastrophic errors made by both Labour and Conservative UK governments over the last 35 years.  Their major failings arose from the following common, oft-repeated weaknesses:

• 'Cultural disconnect’ - the inability of otherwise intelligent people, often in small cliques, to understand or anticipate the attitudes and behaviours of people with differing cultural norms, frequently leading to dire consequences

• ‘Group-think’ – the frightening, sheep-like tendency to suppress internal disagreement that sometimes grips groups of people, even though such debate would highlight potentially serious risks and produce better solutions

• ‘Intellectual prejudice’ - the dangerous habit of using mental models and preconceptions to (over-)simplify complex and uncertain situations, usually for knee-jerk, emotional reasons

• ‘Operational disconnect’ – the ‘ivory tower’ creation of policies or strategies by a remote elite, without seeking any guidance from those who will have to implement them!

• ‘Symbolism and spin’ - the obsession with presentation over substance.

By contrast, decades of widespread research across all walks of life, allied with the lessons of thousands of years of human history, demonstrate unequivocally that Top 1% leaders and organisations:

• Are truly meritocratic, largely free of vested interests, and impervious to factional lobbying

• Largely avoid making promises they may be unable to fulfil (if they do, they learn fast and never do it again!!)

• Face up to harsh realities, and tell the truth about them without distorting, or putting a positive gloss on, them

• Use radically counter-cultural logic.  They know the purpose of leadership is not to impose top down theoretical dogma and solutions, which may be born of sincere passion but nevertheless are all-too-often ill-conceived and/or misguided.  Instead Top 1% leadership is encouraging and enabling – it creates the conditions in which great solutions can be developed empirically to difficult, complex, messy real life problems, instead of providing pre-determined, pre-packaged and/or rigid approaches

• Promote vigorous, respectful and constructive debate between people who disagree, but are nevertheless humble, and who want to see an overall advancement of other people’s interests at least as much as their own (i.e. enlightened self-interest).  These people are ‘smart givers’, not ‘matchers’ or ‘takers’ (see ‘Give and Take’, Adam Grant, 2013) - their approach can be remarkably disarming!  

• Are driven by die-in-a-ditch values and a palpable desire to make a positive difference, even though this will not be recognised or believed by their opponents and other cynics.  In business I call it a ‘purpose beyond profit’; in politics I might term it a ‘demonstrable, selfless, independently evidenced desire to improve the lives and interests of others ahead of their own, or their faction’s, interests’.  Having met MPs from all three mainstream UK parties (Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat) I am less cynical and disillusioned about them as a category of society than many folk are.  Many of them have excellent intentions and truly serve the public.  Some of them I would term misguided, but above all it is the political system that is broken. The best politicians are forced to operate with at least one, sometimes two, hands tied behind their backs!

• Understand that life is full of awkward and inconvenient paradoxes.  In other words they accept that multiple pairs of apparent contradictions can and do hold true simultaneously!  The brutal reality is that it’s both this AND that.  To acknowledge this is not weakness or indecision – it’s wisdom, as Top 1% research clearly demonstrates

• Are regularly underrated or misunderstood, do not lie, and are not economical with the truth, though they will constantly be suspected or accused of it by cynics

• Tend to keep a relatively low profile and focus on working behind the scenes to apply their principles and get the best results they can in the long-term

• Have an unusual ability to listen and learn, and accept that they don’t have all the answers, or indeed many of them at all.  When asked about strategy, they regularly say, and are comfortable saying, “I don’t know, but we’ll work it out together”

• Focus on gathering together talented performers, people better than themselves, and enabling them to succeed

• Stick to what they are outstandingly good at, and steer their organisations to do the same

• Strive at all times to do the right thing, irrespective of the personal cost and brickbats they suffer; honestly admit their mistakes and learn from them (unlike the vast majority of us, who repeat them endlessly).  Like the rest of us, they are human!!

OK, if this is the blueprint we cannot point to any political party as being clearly Top 1%.  But I do not accept the counsel of despair that all politicians and political parties are evil and selfish.  It simply isn’t true!

The UK political system is crying out for reform.  It does not represent the views and concerns of large swathes of the population, who consequently feel disenfranchised.  Their disillusionment is understandable.  People’s legitimate concerns, about immigration for example, have been swept under the carpet and submerged in politically correct, liberal (small ‘l’, irrespective of political leaning) fog.  People of all political persuasions are afraid to confront brutal realities – most of them are deeply conservative (small ‘c’, irrespective of political leaning).  

The level of debate in UK politics is invariably puerile – playground stuff, not mature adult discussion.  Vested interests prefer the current two party, first-past-the-post election system and these turkeys aren’t going to vote for Christmas.

Under these conditions it is inevitable that single issue parties and others catering to voter disillusionment have sprung up, and we should welcome this, since it forces the sort of debate that should have been taking place anyway.  The mainstream political parties have only themselves to blame because they have buried their heads in the sand for far too long.

For many years I have largely avoided politics.  However, my emerging knowledge of Top 1% leadership and organisational principles has crystallised my own political beliefs.  What I have learnt offers a compelling logic.  I have already cast my (postal) vote, and I did so on the basis of principle, die-in-a-ditch values, and hard-headed pragmatism.

My ultimate preference would be to see a restructuring of British politics in which bitter, Punch and Judy, factionalism is eventually superseded by a more effective consensus (albeit informed by vigorous debate) of the diverse majority who broadly occupy the middle ground.  The artificial polarisation which the current system engenders is neither effective, nor efficient – Parliament, and the electorate, waste the vast amount of their time fiddling while Rome burns.

I’ve written elsewhere about the Stockdale Paradox, for me perhaps the greatest single defining characteristic of Top 1% leaders and organisations:

“You must maintain an unwavering faith that you can, and you will, succeed in the end, no matter what it takes, whilst confronting the most brutal realities of your current situation, whatever they are, and however unpleasant they are.”

In politics, as in life, we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, whilst always aiming for excellence.  The good exists in British politics, and in some areas it’s very good indeed.  So if you are able to suspend your tribal prejudices and insecurities (and the habits of a lifetime) I pose the following questions:

• Where in current UK politics will you find people exhibiting traits least like those described in ‘The Blunders of Our Governments’ and most like the Top 1% characteristics I’ve defined in this blog?  Remember, no-one is perfect, or even close to it, and you won’t find people you agree with 100%.  So don't use hypocritical tribalism (intellectual prejudice) or unattainable measures of voter satisfaction.  Think calmly, don’t knee-jerk!!

• Can you embrace the Stockdale Paradox, accept that your particular faction is not going to achieve ‘world domination’ in this or any other foreseeable election, and apply a broader set of principles about what is best in this messy, imperfect environment for the country as a whole? 

Having thought objectively about these two questions, are you at all uncomfortable with your political tribe’s propaganda?  And does this suggest you might ignore the bleating tribal herds and vote differently on Thursday, either for reasons of previously unforeseen principle, or because there is no shame whatsoever in tactical voting if you’re doing so sincerely for selfless, big picture reasons?!

See through the fog, and don't let yourself be fooled because you don't want to go to the effort of thinking, or get into the deeply uncomfortable territory of changing your mind.  Let go of any unfounded old 'certainties'.  Confront reality.  Remember, changing your mind for solid reasons is a good thing - it means you're listening!

_______________________________________________________________

I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this post. If you find it helpful please share it. And make a difference - be a smart giver and do something positive for others this week. Pay it forward.

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:

Leadership - can you master it?

High business growth - gold at the end of the rainbow?

10 reasons to stick your neck out

Do you ever think you've got it tough?

Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove

How the brain works and why you should know

Was Tesco's Terry Leahy really such a great leader?

Stop your company's demons coming back to haunt you

Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

If this blog is particularly relevant to you, your organisation, or to someone else you know, I may be able to help or advise. I strive to be a smart giver – Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take” (2013) explains why smart givers are the highest 25% of achievers in all walks of life. They go out of their way to help others, intelligently, without allowing themselves to be widely exploited. In this way they inspire higher performance and create sustained new value through collaborative exchange.

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients..

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.

Mark Ashton

Are 'political leaders' an oxymoron?!

Lambasting our politicians is a democratic sport - if they're stupid enough to stick their necks out we'll knock 'em down, since by definition they must all be lying, conniving, power-grabbing harlots, surely?!

Maybe we're the problem, not them?  Possibly we get the politicians we deserve if we don't take politics seriously? 

Are you willing and able to relinquish insecurities, tribal instincts and media brainwashing, and listen objectively to a provocative take on politics, using insights into the well-researched behaviour of Top 1% leaders and organisations?  

This blog gives my thoughts on the brutal realities of the political backdrop to the 2015 UK General Election.  Hopefully the observations are relevant elsewhere too.

The second part, Is voting a waste of time?, tackles a fundamental question and uses learning from the Top 1% to try to answer it: 

In the messy, complex, frustrating reality of 21st Century politics how should you vote?!

__________________________________________________________________

Most political debate is infantile, tiresome hot air – it’s a wholly predictable Punch and Judy show.  It’s either this, OR it’s that, say the two main UK parties, as they bash each other over the head, simplistically distort and devalue each other’s contributions, mischievously fuel voters’ cynicism and mistrust of their opponents, and reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. It drives me nuts!

Politics is further discredited and undermined by political leaders’ unwillingness to admit mistakes or acknowledge uncomfortable truths.  The reason is that it’s a glorified popularity contest, and they are under extreme pressure to play to the crowd - the relatively narrow interest group(s) who support or bankroll them, and vast numbers of others who don’t understand the complex realities and want it expressed in baby talk, conveniently filtered for them through the prejudices of the journalists in their chosen tribal media.  This further devalues the debate and only serves to alienate intelligent voters – it’s a vicious circle.

The electorate as a whole are like sheep.  They basically do as they are told by the people they trust most to tell them what to do.  In their search for easy answers and a brave new (fairy tale) world where life is simple, straightforward and childlike, an increasingly large minority will vote this time for beguiling con men (and women) in distracting extremist or one issue parties who may well be conning themselves the most!  This is really scary.

The centrist portions of the Conservative and Labour Parties and the majority of the Liberal Democrat Party are far closer together than they are to the right wing of the Conservative Party or the left wing of the Labour Party.  British politics is crying out for a re-alignment in which the left wing of the Conservative Party breaks away and combines with the majority of the Liberal Democrat Party and elements of the right wing of the Labour Party to form a powerful centre grouping that could govern for years as a One Nation party if it played its cards intelligently (following Top 1% principles), which would include being visionary and inspiring, by the way, not purely pragmatic.  

Boy, do we need it right now!!

OK, but that’s not apparently going to happen anytime soon. Therefore we’re stuck with a Conservative Party constantly distracted and dragged towards the right, particularly over Europe and immigration, and a Labour Party continuing to dally with laudable but entirely impractical socialist ideals.  We have a Conservative Prime Minister who’s fairly competent and likeable in a well-meaning, doesn’t set the world on fire, smug, privileged, out-of-touch, public school sort of way, but who has consistently shown he lacks the bottle to talk to real voters (not halls filled with Conservative stooges), debate publicly with his opponents, or stand up to the conniving ideologues in his own party and LEAD from the centre. And we have a Leader of the Labour Party until recently ridiculed by his opponents and thought by many (including me) to woefully lack the qualities and experience to lead the country, who is now suddenly looking much more statesmanlike, but who, together with his party of too many inexperienced, naive idealists, represents an unwelcome hostage to fortune for the country, for multiple reasons.

History shows that nation states too often lurch from one political extreme to another in the cycle of elections, so they don’t get where they need to go as fast as they need to get there.  Exhausted and disillusioned electorates are taken in by politicians who promise change for change’s sake, i.e. change from the other lot who’ve gone before who are, by definition, a bunch of treacherous incompetents.  We keep starting from scratch and throwing the baby out with the bathwater, instead of building intelligently on what’s already there and ensuring there’s a steady hand on the tiller.  Whatever anyone tells you, politics is (too much) about emotion, not reason.  Our primitive brains are in charge - see How the brain works and why you should know.

The outcome of this UK General Election on 7th May is less predictable and more fraught with danger than for many years.  Neither of the two most likely outomes looks attractive to many, me included, though there are pros and cons.

•  If Labour are the largest party in Parliament after May 7th we get an inexperienced, idealistic bunch of policy wonks who will in my view, however well intentioned, naively commit a lot of the sins of their forefathers all over again (see the blog Human weakness - a competitive advantage?).  We may, or may not, get the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) to boot – if Labour truly is foolish enough to parley with them then the informed view is that it will render itself unelectable for decades after a single term in Government.  With or without the SNP the country will lurch in a different direction with Labour at the helm when we badly need relative stability.  Business confidence will suffer.  The respected independent economic analysis group the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said this week that the funding of Labour’s policies is not transparent.  However, the upside of a Labour-led Government is that we avoid a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, which would be the largest known, predictable upheaval to our economy and a huge distraction and own goal when we need to be focused on growing sustainably in very challenging times and addressing pressing geo-political and environmental difficulties. 

• If it’s the Conservatives we get a recklessly one-dimensional approach to cutting the deficit (austerity) in which the wealthiest don’t make a sufficient contribution, and ironically creativity and entrepreneurism is not sufficiently encouraged to generate greater wealth for the country and thus increase the tax take, i.e. the sort of balanced approach to turnaround that an intelligent business leader would adopt.  We also get a widening disparity between a shrinking set of haves, who have more and more, and the majority, the have-nots, who have less and less. This is not a recipe for sustainable growth and deficit cutting.  The IFS said this week that like Labour the funding of Conservative policies is not transparent.  Most disturbingly of all we get the colossal, unnecessary hostage to fortune of a distracting, destabilising, divisive 2 year build-up to a 2017 referendum on Europe, ironically foisted on us by the self-styled party of economic responsibility!!!  David Cameron is gambling recklessly that the referendum can be won by a pro-European campaign – look how close he came to screwing up the Scottish independence referendum, with incalculable consequences!  If we get a Conservative-led government, even with the Lib Dems in it (I can’t see them stopping David Cameron’s prospective death wish, hard as they may try) I predict that some companies will start relocating from the UK to other countries to avoid the uncertainty, and others not already here will choose to invest in other countries instead.  (I wrote this section on Friday morning, before I heard HSBC’s announcement!)  Let’s be clear, the EU needs a complete overhaul, especially the extravagant budget and the complacent, meddling fat cats in the EU Commission in Brussels.  But David Cameron has done untold damage to the UK’s credibility and influence, especially with our many allies in Europe who also want reform, through his risible, naïve, gun boat grandstanding in Europe to pander to the right wing of his party and folk who might be tempted to vote UKIP.  And he has made no compelling argument to mobilise the centre ground, or to constructively champion reform in Europe and work with allies across Europe to make progress on that agenda.

So where do we go from here?  Watch this space next weekend for a suggested solution based on Top 1% organisational and leadership principles.

________________________________________________________________

I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this article. If you find it helpful please click on 'Like' and also share it using the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ button. And make a difference - be a smart giver and do something positive for others this week. Pay it forward.

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:

10 reasons to stick your neck out!

Do you ever think you've got it tough?

Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove

Why genuine selflessness is good business

How the brain works and why you should know

Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

If this blog is particularly relevant to you, your organisation, or to someone else you know, I may be able to help or advise. I strive to be a smart giver – Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take” (2013) explains why smart givers are the highest 25% of achievers in all walks of life. They go out of their way to help others, intelligently, without allowing themselves to be widely exploited. In this way they inspire higher performance and create sustained new value through collaborative exchange.

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients..

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.

Mark Ashton

Do customers matter, or is 'customer lip service' just fine?

I'm tired of dealing with companies who trumpet their so-called customer focus and do the opposite. Over the years I've had plenty of negative experiences.

Last October I wrote three blogs about Tesco - How to make your company more resilient, Stop your company's demons coming back to haunt you, and Was Tesco's Terry Leahy really such a great leader?  You may recall that Tesco started to implode last September following the sacking of CEO Philip Clarke and the subsequent revelations that the global supermarket giant had been cooking its books, the subject of an on-going UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation.

Clarke's demise reminded me of that of David Moyes as Manager of Manchester United FC. Clarke and Moyes both made fatal errors during their relatively short tenures, but the true seeds of their downfall, and their organisations', were sown by their illustrious predecessors - Sir Terry Leahy and Sir Alex Ferguson respectively.

The fundamental problem at Tesco was the contradiction between Leahy's professed passion for putting the customer first (captured in Tesco's strapline 'Every little helps') and the company's traditional passion for profit, at the expense of its customers and suppliers.  This thinly veiled, cynical hypocrisy made Tesco one of the most loathed retailers in Britain.

However, this blog isn't about Tesco.  It's about EE, another household name corporate whose behaviour over the last few weeks is the amongst the very worst I have personally experienced from any company in my 52 years on the planet to date.

Funnily enough, the other most appalling customer treatment I can recall suffering is from BT.  What is it about telecoms companies??!!  Oh, and by the way, it's strongly rumoured that BT have been negotiating for months to buy EE - now that's a match conceived by Lucifer, if ever there was one!!

Anyway, it seems I'm not alone when it comes to EE.  I recently Googled statistics from OFCOM, the UK Government watchdog that monitors the ICT industry, and found that EE had TWICE the rate of complaints of its next worst two rivals and THREE TIMES the rate of its other rivals.

Here's a selection of some of the damning evidence for the prosecution:

http://eecomplaints.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/EEComplaint
https://twitter.com/eecomplaints
http://bit.ly/1CijsfC,

There's plenty more, I can assure you!!

So what did EE do to upset this particular punter so much that he's decided he's quitting and not coming back, after 10 years with Orange, one of the brands that EE bought out?

10 months ago we moved my 18 year old son's mobile phone account over to EE from a competing provider and put it onto my contract, to get a better deal.  8 weeks ago, bless him, my son decided he wanted a better mobile phone.  So unbeknowns to me he went into our local EE shop in Skipton, North Yorkshire.

Now you'd think, wouldn't you, that if a customer walks in to a mobile phone shop and says they want to upgrade their mobile phone then the shop would assume they had an existing contract.  That would be logical, wouldn't it?  You'd also think that they'd assume the contract must be with them?  I mean why would someone walk into a different mobile phone shop than the one through which they had their existing contract, for crying out loud??!!

Now bear with me on this - I know it's difficult.  A customer comes into your mobile phone shop. Wait for it, they have a mobile phone, of all things.  Now there's a surprise.  They want to upgrade it. First of all you would ask them for their phone number, right?  You wouldn't ask them for their contract details - most of us don't carry those round in our heads.  You would key in their mobile phone number to EE's computer system to see what sort of contract they were on.  And you would probably tell them that it would cost them to upgrade the phone, since it almost certainly would.  Of course as soon as you keyed in this particular customer's mobile phone number you would see that the contract was not in his name, so you would ask him who Mr Mark Ashton was, and he would tell you it was his father.

Are you still with me?  Yes?  Good.  Except that's not what happened.

All we know is that the EE shop proceeded to sell my son not only a new mobile phone, but a new two year contract to go with it, in his own name.  He did not need a new contract - he already had one in my name, which still had 16 months to run.  But somewhat naively, yet quite understandbly, particularly for a youngster, he was preoccupied with getting this sexy new mobile phone and perhaps assumed that EE would automatically cancel the existing contract?

I wonder if the more streetwise can work out where this is heading?!

I was aware that my son had been given a new mobile phone number - he gave it to me - but I did not realise he had taken out a new contract.  This did not become apparent until I got my next bill from EE a few weeks later and noticed that I was still paying for his now redundant, previous mobile phone number.

I called EE.  Guess what?  "We're sorry, Mr Ashton, there's nothing we can do.  You took out a 2 year, legally binding contract last June and we cannot cancel it.  You can pay an early termination fee - it's £250.  Your son was legally old enough to take out a contract in his own name.  HE SHOULD HAVE TOLD US (my emphasis) that he had an existing contract with EE and that it was in your name.  Without that information we could not find his mobile phone number on our system."

I went into the EE shop, I rang EE to complain and in each case I got exactly the same response.  It was as if this sort of thing happens regularly and they are all programmed to deal with it.  Every person I've spoken to from EE has pointed out to me that I have a legal contract with them for two years, my son now has a different legal contract with them for two years, and THERE'S NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT.

I have a phrase for it, an ironic paradox - I call it 'legalised theft'.

My son was sold something he didn't need - a new mobile phone contract, which will cost him approximately £650 over the two years.  The only sensible option now in fact is to pay £250 to terminate early the unwanted contract in my name.  The helpful customer complaints guy from EE did point out to me that there was another solution - guess what folks, I could FIND ANOTHER USE FOR THE SPARE MOBILE PHONE NUMBER!  Wow!  Let me see now - what could I use a mobile phone number for when I have no need for it?  Tough question!  No, but wait, he did point out another option.  Wait for it - I could find someone else who needed it!  Wow again!  So having created a problem for me that was none of my own making, EE now suggest I should figure out a way to solve that problem myself.  Great, spectacular in fact!  What genius!  Where DO they find these people?!

That's why I'm leaving EE after spending 10 years with Orange, and will never return.  They will lose my business mobile contract next week (as luck has it, that's when it expires), and once the contracts have expired they will lose my son's contract, my wife's contract, and my mobile WiFi dongle contract.  Oh, and as I pointed out to them, I might mention it to a few people, including at least several hundred who typically read my blog each week!

EE's behaviour is a classic example of corporate taking - see Adam Grant's 'Give and Take' (2013). Takers ultimately lose out because people abandon them so they constantly have to replace churned relationships that have gone toxic on them.  Then there is the bad press - people spread the word about their negative experiences with takers, like I'm doing now.  But most people do it privately, so takers are never aware that their dire reputation is spreading.

By contrast it's well known and well researched that companies who genuinely put customers and customer relationships first, and who handle complaints sensitively and intelligently, are rewarded with far greater, enduring loyalty and a much better reputation.

The choice is yours!

__________________________________________________________________

I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this article. If you find it helpful please click on 'Like' and also share it using the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ button. And make a difference - be a smart giver and do something positive for others this week. Pay it forward.

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:

10 reasons to stick your neck out!

Do you ever think you've got it tough?

Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove

Why genuine selflessness is good business

How the brain works and why you should know

Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

If this blog is particularly relevant to you, your organisation, or to someone else you know, I may be able to help or advise. I strive to be a smart giver – Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take” (2013) explains why smart givers are the highest 25% of achievers in all walks of life. They go out of their way to help others, intelligently, without allowing themselves to be widely exploited. In this way they inspire higher performance and create sustained new value through collaborative exchange.

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients..

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.

Mark Ashton