10 March 2007

It looks like the EU at their meeting yesterday agreed to do something other than empty words. Incandescent light bulbs will be phased out by 2009. With that the demand will rise and prices will fall - and no longer will the shelves be filled with 99 variants of incandescent bulbs, but instead will start to take CF seriously.

While light bulbs aren't going to make significant inroads into energy usage on their own, it is at least a step in the right direction and its well past time for happening.

Now maybe some focus can be given to other big energy wasters - business energy use, transport and domestic heating.

25 November 2006

So either I have much more juice than I think I have, or others have noticed how badly the supermarkets do on walking-the-talk with regard to being green and saving energy. Either way, ASDA now sell energy saving light bulbs for 99p each. Admitedly these are only 60W equivalent bulbs, but its massively better than before.

Three cheers for ADSA

Now, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, etc. - can you match it? Or beat it?

05 November 2006

We hear a lot from the big supermarkets on their green credentials. Tesco claims to “believe in sustainable growth - it is responsible”; Sainsbury’s is “committed to investing in improving impacts”; Waitrose is taking “all reasonable steps” to “promote good environmental practice”; and Asda are “to sell products that sustain our resources and our environment”. Lots of fine words, carefully crafted by marketing drones.

However, when it comes to taking real action, it’s another story. In particular, consider compact fluorescent light bulbs. Each 100W equivalent bulb saves over 100kW of energy per year, as well as lasting many times longer. They are the ‘no brainer’ of being more environmentally aware and reducing your energy usage.

However the costs in these ‘green’ supermarkets are:
Tesco £2.78
Sainsbury £2.19
Waitrose £4.99
Asda £2.48

With the cheapest incandescent bulb costing 18p each.

That is against a cost as low as £1 each from the high street Robert Dyas. In addition there is a significant mismatch in volume, with energy efficient bulbs taking up less than 5% of display space – crowded out by cheap incandescent bulb types.

So just how much do these big companies actually ‘walk the talk’? Why if they believe so ardently in the environment do they not redress this balance? Why are CF bulbs not sold as cheaply as they could be, promoted over their energy wasting cousins? Why don’t the supermarkets use them as loss leaders?

Why, indeed, do the supermarkets not just stop selling incandescents at all?

14 September 2006

Sorry I've not been keeping up this blog (for those that asked). I've been too busy writing other things! I promise to get some newer thoughts up this weekend.

28 July 2006

The latest change programme seems to be a fact of life for most employees of large companies. Every few months there seems to be another announcement, another mug, poster, newsletter, webpage as part of that integrated communications initiative for ‘X’ change management programme. In general there are two or three such change programmes running in parallel – all fighting for attention and mindshare.

It’s an unfortunate fact that around 70-80% of change programmes fail in their aims.

For programmes which are presented as so vitally important for the future of the company, you would expect such failure to be viewed as a disaster, with deep and penetrating questions being asked about why, the consequences and how the effects can be mitigated. Strangely this doesn’t tend to happen. What does happen is another change programme, usually in a related but noticeably different direction. Often the company does continue to operate; nothing comes crashing down.

Change and development IS vital for any company. 20/20 hindsight has shown that most failures in business are as a result of an inability of the organisation to adapt to changes in the outside world, or ways of doing business internally. Often the metaphor of the lumbering dinosaur is bought into play, and not without some validity. Such organisations ‘feel’ slow, dusty, disconnected, content. Culturally they are miles from the ‘feel’ of the new, innovative startup.

In part the approach to change is to blame. The idea of change isn’t something done to the organisation, its something done by the organisation. The innovative startup doesn’t have to consider implementing a change programme – they head in the best direction they can conceive of at the time, pulling themselves towards better ideas by instinct not dictate.

Key to larger organisations performing better in this area is the well known truism that change isn’t an A to B process, its an ongoing attitude and state of mind. So often that statement is made, and so often it’s ignored by most. Rather than being the norm, change is seen as an adhoc, one time activity. The whole idea of a specific change programme implies something outside the norm.

While it’s not possible to instil the same agility and change-comfortable culture of the startup in the large organisation – it is possible to improve and instil a better attitude and approach to change. The way the organisation does business is embodied in its processes, its organisational structure and its metrics. If change is an integral part of the organisation, then it should have no less a position in its mindset.

Change needs to be managed, planned and integrated into normal business. Above all, its attitude to change as something that goes from A to B needs to move to something that never stops, never ends, and continually helps to deliver corporate aims. In essence change needs an organisational structure that takes a ‘benefits led’ view of why its needed, what the most effective way of bringing it about is, and then supports implementation as an ongoing task. Such an organisational approach would itself need to deliver on targets, show benefit and enhance its offerings. It would need to be seen as a real solution to needs, but also have the ability to limit the level and timing of change to periods when it can be accepted by the organisation.

Above all, it would need to take a whole system view of changes and organisational evolution, integrating and connecting new approaches in the context of the whole organisation. It would maintain a model of the organisation, its beliefs, behaviours, and breakpoints; predicting ahead of time the effect of new ideas and the best ‘roadmap’ for the organisation to travel.

I’ve never seen that done; have you?

03 July 2006

We benefit from, and kids would say suffer from, over a decade of education. Not only does this teach us the basics of living in today’s world, it also explores and expands our tacit understand, our interest and our intellect.

And then in one or two career interviews and simplistic assessments we are supposed to understand ‘what we want to be’. Millions of children every year are asked the question “what do you want to be when you grow up”. Most answer truthfully that they have no real idea, and the few that suggest one path or another. From then on this is supposed to guide their destiny.

Am I the only one that notices a mismatch here?

We spend billion and decades on developing and growing the potential of our young, and then less than a week’s worth of effort in pigeonholing them into dead end careers, many of which won’t really exist any more since thing have moved on since the ‘career guidance councillor’ was last trained. Sink or swim seems to be the word of the day – the first time most students have come across the idea.

At the heart of the dilemma is the mismatch between the employer and employee’s expectations and mindset. The employer is looking for the unquestioning machine, able to generate more value than they cost and forever a source of trouble. The employee is looking for ways to develop, prosper, find interest and above all share in the wealth they generate. Its no wonder that everyone is unhappy and dissatisfied – the system is broken from the word go with conflict rather than teamwork at the heart of the relationship.

To do better, to make people happier and to get people pulling in the same direction rather than against each other we need to consider more fully how we determine the best roles for each person, and how we achieve convergence between viewpoints. A start would be for the employer to recognise the employee as an asset rather than a cost, and to consider how to maximise the value of the asset, rather than use up and discard. In this the change in thinking mirrors the need to more from an aggressive growth paradigm to one that sustains and develops.

At the root, we are looking at a failure of the education system, both at kiddy and MBA level to install the right foresight and mindset. Can we not make the changes that would enable all to have better and more productive lives? Surely is worth more effort?

06 June 2006

Predictions in the field of economics are a strange beast. Unlike the real would, economic predictions generally always expect tomorrow to be an extension of today. Growth is the norm and everything is mutable to ‘money supply’ and ‘rate changes’.

At their heart is the expectation that economists, and in particular macroeconomists actually understand how things are connected, where the levers are, and how to pull them to keep everything ticking over smoothly. But this belief is based itself on the expectations that the models reflect the real world and can provide advance warning of things going wrong.

We are going in circles.

A brief trip into the real world suggests that the economy isn’t actually controlled by economists; it’s controlled by shocks, disasters, mistakes and ‘unforeseen circumstances’. Examine every change in any economic metric and you will find a shock at its heart: and many economists of the time scratching their heads to understand what’s happening.

Ironically the best prediction we can make is that such shocks will happen; will continue to happen; and will happen regularly enough that we shouldn’t be surprised by them.

At the moment virtually every economist is stating that house prices will continue a gradual upward path, with no downturns expected. However virtually anyone else looking at the historic graph would suggest that it’s only a matter of time till the market turns down sharply, and that this downturn will wipe at least 30-50% off the price of houses. It will take a shock to the system, but we can expect that since the one thing that would be truly unusual, would be for there to be no surprises.

Facing this understanding, the advice to virtually everyone should be get out/stay out, and do not invest at this time. Wait it out until the drop happens and buy at this point. Smart action such as this can be the difference between paying for a house in 10 years; or taking 25 years of hard toil – for the same housing standard.

So why are economists, real estate agents and accountants allowed to get away with such bad advice to the public that “the market is strong”? Why are first time buyers continually pushed towards the housing ‘ladder’, without being warned that it’s distinctly reptilian and hissing? Why aren’t these people and their stratospheric salaries called to account for misleading those with less?

28 May 2006

The word has gone quiet, the world has turned away. After all the reportage and the scare stories, nothing has happened. Attention turns to more immediate concerns; just what is happening to the markets?

However the progress of disease has its own pace. The slow, probabilistic mutation of genetic signatures that signals the path between ‘so what’ and ‘you what?’ Timescales which aren’t necessarily measured in the pace of front pages.

The recent obvious human to human cases in Indonesia look to signal a new twist in the bird flu saga. We are not looking yet at a pandemic, but we are looking at a disease which is beginning to be able to pass between human beings, and still be able to kill with a high probability. We are beginning to face up to the probability that an easily transmissible vector is only a matter of months away, not instead the impossible nightmare that some hope for. We are also facing up to the probability that the lethality might not drop away significantly.

We are still not prepared.

The human race has forgotten that nasty things can happen.

Human lifetimes are too short to remember the lessons that history teaches.

If the next mutation brings a deadly plague we will have been given notice, and have failed to act responsibly. We are reacting too slowly, too complacently to potential threats to dodge the bullet every time. We no longer notice the signs, and that it perhaps the worst statement – not that pandemic is inevitable, but that we have lost the foresight to act against it.

16 May 2006

It’s strange when you notice something that nobody else is commenting upon. You feel you’re not sure if it’s really there, even though it’s right in front of your eyes. That occurred recently with supermarket shelves.

We are used to overflowing supermarket shelves, to the neat lines of goods all pushed to the front, ready to be picked up. We don’t see it any more. However recently I’ve been noticing gaps, holes in the neat line up and certain goods being unavailable for days at a time. Seemingly nobody else has noticed this; and even pointing it out to people they don’t recognise that anything strange is happening. However a journey around a number of supermarkets has pointed up the same effect in all of them – the shelves are not being restacked at the same frequency.

Is this because of fuel prices? The first time I recognised it I immediately made the connection to the current price of fuel. I expect supermarkets to have everything modelled and optimised down to the last decimal place. Less frequent deliveries means lower sales, but lower transport costs as well. Has the rise in the cost of fuel made it more economical to have one fewer deliveries each day; loading the lorry more heavily for each trip? It seems plausible, but would it really make that amount of difference? Would it account for missing goods on the shelf?

Maybe it’s problems further up the chain. Maybe the deliveries from suppliers to distribution depots are now less frequent and thus there is a mismatch in availability that will get ironed out?

Maybe that optimisation program I mentioned has only just been written and this is the result of its use?

We tend not to think how food gets to our table, taking for granted that it will be there when we need it even with the just-in-time optimisation that goes on. Just how stable and secure is that system? How robust is it and how easy is it to disrupt? Given the speed with which things fly out of the store, how long would it take before the shelves could go bare and people would go hungry? Maybe it is something we should pay more attention to?

10 May 2006

In contrast to the terrible design of mobile phones, some devices just exude a sensuous touch, caressing the user with interfaces that quickly become second nature. In general these products go on to become market leaders. Kind of makes you wonder why so many get it so wrong?

Specific examples of this curvy tech includes the ubiquitous iPod; which although nowhere near first to market, so defined an accessible path to accessing your entire music collection on the move that competitors are forced to copy - and still get it wrong. It also includes the Tivo, which although a boring box draws the user into redefining what it means to watch TV with a truly intelligent interface that helps rather than hinders.

It also includes items such as the Furbie and the Mathmos lamp. Single purpose, simple, yet with an emphasis on how the product feels, rather than exactly what it does. You want to pick them up, to play with them, and to come back to them.

What are the characteristics of curvy tech? Generally the product is simple, making it possible to pick up and use immediately for instant gratification. Its design is closed, minimising compatibility problems, but with an ever-so-slight chink of open light that allows other to interoperate with it, but puts the emphasis of compatibility on their shoulders. It’s often the product that seeks to define or redefine a marketplace, and it’s rarely working from exactly the same basis as existing products. Above all the development team focuses on practical experience of the product in the real world, it’s not just something they are just told to create. All this leads to the route to wide marketplace take-up; acceptance by key shakers that brings peer community to those that follow the trend.

Simple, isn’t it?

What new products look to be treading this path? It’s difficult to say, but the Nintendo Wii (horrible name) is treading a very different path in the world of consoles at the moment. The emphasis on physical interaction and new types of game play gives it the chance of winning out over the big boys of Sony and Microsoft who are still focusing on graphics alone. Time will tell if the software can live up to the opportunities provided.