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The Badger just took a phone call from our electricity supplier pressing to fit a smart meter. It’s all part of a government programme where providers must roll out smart meters to >26 million homes across the UK by 2020. Home owners are, however, not obliged to have them. These calls happen regularly. Unsolicited cards and letters pressing for installation appointments also arrive frequently by conventional post only to find their way quickly to the recycling bin. It’s all very irritating.

The call centre staff are normally pleasant enough; they are, after all, just doing their job and following a script prepared by their company. The Badger is never belligerent with callers and always responds in the same way, namely to politely decline an installation because the Badger has the right to do so and because there’s no real benefit to the Badger’s household. The Badger has lost count of the number of times the same conversation has taken place, so following today’s call the Badger sat back with a coffee for a long objective think. Does the Badger’s standard response underpinned by a personal intransigent to change, a reluctance to embrace modern technology, or is it just driven by frustration at a company that just don’t seem to listen to what their customer says or wants? Should the Badger capitulate and just take the Smart Meter?

Well, the Badger’s thoughts were influenced by the film WALL-E (watched with children recently), and by items about which there’s been some publicity over the last week. Examples of the latter include the usage of social media which an average person consults ~150 times a day, addiction to computer games being recognized formally as a mental health issue, obesity in younger generations, and the benefits or otherwise of Artificial Intelligence. The outcome of the contemplation – perhaps predictably – is that the Badger will not be changing his stance or response regarding Smart Meter installations!

Why? Because the Badger is very technology, environment, health and budget aware and is already doing the right things to balance household, country and planet needs. The Badger’s wife put it rather neatly. She doesn’t want another app on her phone to adjust the hot water or central heating or any other device in the home. She wants to have to get up from the sofa, make needed adjustments, and exercise her limbs to avoid being a couch potato! The Badger’s sentiment is similar. The Badger senses that the ethical, human, and public policy aspects of technology adoption are lagging well behind the speed of the technological advancement itself. Which brings us to WALL-E. If you haven’t seen this film, then do so and note the depiction of humans. Are we already and accidentally on the slippery slope where the WALL-E depiction of humans becomes a reality? Hmm. Perhaps I’ll use this on my next call regarding Smart Meters.

Staff and their cost is important for any organisation. This gets lots of attention to ensure an organisation’s staff profile not only aligns with strategic ambitions and objectives, but also remains competitive, financially viable, and market-relevant. Discussions on the topic often take place under strap-lines like ‘outsourcing to drive efficiency’, ‘realigning the pyramid to support our strategy’, and ‘juniorisation to save costs and free up seniors for more valuable work’. There’s nothing wrong with having such discussions; they, and the subsequent decisions and actions, are crucial for ensuring an organisation continues to thrive. No more so is this true than in the IT services industry where ‘juniorisation’ has been an almost perpetual subject, and become a well-used word, for the last two decades.

The Badger’s first experiences with ‘juniorisation’ involved moving roles in Western geographies to India, and the replacement of experienced staff on a major contract with cheaper staff from the same territory to increase profitability. Looking back, there were many hidden challenges, things were not straightforward, and not all the intended benefits were achieved. One thing is certain, however. Staff whose roles were ‘juniorised’ – typically older, very experienced, loyal people who had worked hard for their company for a decade or more – became disgruntled, quietly disaffected, and suspicious. Loyalties to the company they’d materially helped grow successfully were shaken. Many found that promises of new roles or retraining were hollow, and some voted with their feet for pastures new. ‘Juniorisation’ – rightly or wrongly – became a euphemism for a devaluing of long tenure staff, dilution of the organisation’s overall capability, and an increased likelihood of being made redundant.

Many organisations handle those affected by ‘juniorisation’ respectfully, well, and with the utmost integrity. Sometimes, however, ‘juniorisation’ is handled deviously and disrespectfully, and can be just a smokescreen for ageism and exiting older, higher paid staff using back-door methods. Regardless of the country you work in, the Badger feels that if you’ve many years tenure and ‘juniorisation’ appears in the organisation’s rumour mill, or indeed in coffee point gossip, then you should always quietly prepare yourself appropriately! Always remain objective. But if it looks like you’ll be affected then re-read your employment contract, your organisation’s published staff policies and processes, and know your rights under local employment law. If you think age-discrimination is relevant, then formally complain using your employer’s formal processes. Hard-working, loyal staff with long tenure often place more trust in their organisation than is warranted. There is, however, only one thing to do if ‘juniorisation’ comes your way. Look after No.1. Put past loyalties and priorities aside because No.1 is not the organisation you work for, it’s you!

People’s attitudes are fundamental to an enterprise’s, or country for that matter, success. The Badger’s experience from working with very talented and diverse people during a long career is that where people have personal pride, want to do things, want to be the best they can be, and have an inner resilience, then they will solve whatever problem is put in front of them and their enterprise will benefit by thriving. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to be a demanding leader or egotistic extrovert! Far from it. These attitude attributes come from upbringing, family ethos, education and culture rather than personality, privilege or wealth.

Maybe it’s a generational thing, but the Badger has wondered lately whether attitudes experienced over many years have evaporated in the modern generation. After all, the media seems full of why things can’t be done, tales of upset and woe, political doom and gloom, and Armageddon scenarios of one sort or another. The snowflake generation also seems less resilient and more emotionally vulnerable than the Badger’s generation, so it’s easy to feel that the ‘right stuff’ in today’s youngsters is very diluted. The Badger, however, is now more optimistic and encouraged that the right attitudes are still there! Why? Because the fog of negative media content and commentary is largely just that – fog. Under the fog there’s much cause for optimism, as illustrated by two recent items that caught the Badger’s attention.

One was an interview with Creative & Media Studies students who were asked if Brexit would negatively impact their prospects. No, they all said. They all passionately said they were – an intended to remain – the best anywhere, and that they intended the UK to be a global creative powerhouse come what may. The Badger felt a surge of pride!
The second was an interview with a professor representing the Royal Academy of Engineering who articulated with passion that UK engineers were – and intended to stay – innovative world leaders in Artificial Intelligence (AI) with a clear vision, direction and understanding of the future. The professor conveyed real belief that the UK is and will remain a powerhouse of capability regardless of Brexit. Engineers were, rightly highlighted as the miracle workers who take technology and put it into real use for society, and people who are not afraid to start businesses. The UK is, and will always be, at the forefront of innovation come what may. The Badger experienced another surge of pride!

The people in both items spoke from the heart. The positive attitude that the Badger is familiar with from times past shone through. They all conveyed determination and an inherent desire to be the best they could be, regardless of any constraints or boundaries in front of them. Some of the younger generation clearly still has the right attitude! Great stuff! Because any country whose people don’t have enough of it will decline, and it feels like us Brits, no matter what others might think, haven’t quit lost it yet.

You’re a hermit if you’re unaware of the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) that came into effect on 25th May! GDPR is about privacy and harmonisation of regulations across Europe for the safeguarding of personal information. It impacts all organisations that process your personal data. Corporates, government departments, charities and even small businesses have spent lots of money getting ready. The Badger, like you no doubt, has experienced one manifestation of this, namely a plethora of emails from organisations asking the Badger to take one action or another, sometimes simply to confirm they can still have the Badger’s email address in a mailing list!

The Badger thinks GDPR is a good thing. Why? Well, a few years ago the Badger had some responsibility for security and data protection and, to be frank, it was an uphill struggle to get data protection high up on executive priority lists. GDPR and a number of highly public data breaches have changed this, mainly because the business, financial and reputational consequences of being found wanting are now very onerous.

GDPR, the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica affair, and Zuckerberg’s rather bland sessions with US and EU committees have brought the importance of personal information, its use by social media platforms, and the power of those that control them into rather sharp public focus. Awareness of how platforms can use what you do on a platform has risen very significantly, and the public is realising for the first time just how much these platforms know about how they go about their daily life. Millennials and children at school seem to run their lives through social media platforms, and the Badger has often wondered if they ever stop to think about the wider ramifications of their posts and the insight their posts and usage provides to organisations that do not appear in their circle of friends.

The Badger isn’t anti-social media. Far from it. The Badger uses various platforms, but always carefully and selectively. So what point is the Badger making here? It’s simple. We are the public, and – regardless of age, wealth, ethnicity, culture, or social standing – our personal information is just that, it’s ours. This means we all have some personal responsibility for who we give it to, what we post and share, and for understanding how it might ultimately be analysed and used. GDPR reinforces this point! Privacy education from an early age is crucial and will, no doubt, be boosted by the new regulations and the fact that politicians have woken up to potential manipulation of your social media data for anti-democratic purposes. So, the Badger hopes that we – the people at large – not only become more thoughtful, caring and protective of the information we share, but also use the power granted to us by the new regulations. Long live Getting the Disparate Public to take more Responsibility for its personal data and for holding organisations to account via the new regulations…

The Badger listened to a radio interview with David Coulthard this week. David is an ex Formula 1 racing driver and now a commentator for the sport. The Badger’s ears pricked up when he told the interviewer that he wished he knew what he does now when he was 20 years old. Don’t we all! David felt it was important to pass on his knowledge gleaned from experience to help his young son when he had to join the workforce in due course. David believed that younger generations were finding it more and more competitive to join the workforce in their chosen career, and that having knowledge passed on by their parents could be nothing but helpful. This resonates well with the objectives of this website, which is now 1 month old. The Badger took some comfort that the site’s objectives are not misplaced!

Immediately after the Coulthard interview there was an interview with a politician who was articulate, precise, remarkably objective and very clear about what they said. Later in the day there were snippets from this interview in the media. The Badger sighed at some of the distortions and wondered if anyone had really listened rationally and objectively to what was said!

There’s a famous saying attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus. It says we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we can speak. Indeed, one of the Badger’s leadership colleagues often used this saying in meetings with direct reports and wider presentations to staff to remind people of the importance of listening. The Badger, however, believes in an extended version of the Epictetus saying, namely ‘we have two ears and two eyes, so we can listen and see twice as much as we speak’. The Badger’s experience is that people who listen closely, observe behaviours and read the facts, and rationalise all these inputs before they open their mouth to speak, make quality decisions, tend to succeed in their task, and build reputations for objectivity, integrity and fairness. Those that shoot from the hip often struggle to build trust and respect and ultimately fail.

Of course, business, politics and project delivery are full of situations to be handled. So, if you want to get to the bottom of, and ultimately turnaround, whatever situation you’re facing, then always devote twice as much time to listening closely, observing behaviours and assimilating the facts, before analysing the right thing to do and speaking to direct the correct action. That way you’ll do the best for your organisation, yourself, and for others. The ‘others’ bit is important – business and project delivery difficulties are, after all, rarely the fault of one person.

At some stage in our working lives we’ll all have rolled our eyes and wondered how someone in a senior or executive position reached those lofty heights! This often happens if we see or hear behaviours, judgements, and decisions from leaders that seem crass, political, self-centred, and out of alignment with realities seen by the wider workforce. Gossip becomes rife, leaders become disliked and distrusted, and coffee point conversations speculate that leaders’ motives are driven by their own personal rewards.

The Badger has certainly had these thoughts over the years! However, the Badger has learned never to jump to conclusions about a leader, their credentials for their role, or their personal motives until you’ve worked for them directly. Until then they should be given the benefit of the doubt. After all, people rise to positions of power in their organisations because they have a hunger to progress their career and do so, and the wherewithal to take the opportunity when it arises. This doesn’t mean they are the most capable people on the planet, and the best leaders know that!

The Badger vividly remembers being appointed into a senior position reporting directly to an executive leader responsible for a number of businesses. The general perception in the workforce at the time was that the executive was an oddball. They chain-smoked, always looked scruffy even when wearing a suit, and looked and spoke like one of Barry Humphries alter egos. The executive was not a good communicator either. Coffee point conversations across the workforce often gravitated to wondering how the individual ever reached the position of running a business, especially when folklore had it that the executive often had one too many drinks at social events, gravy stains down their shirt, and neck ties that appeared to come out of the side of their neck rather than from under their chin!

At first the Badger was cautious. However, it quickly became evident that behind the popular caricature was a highly educated, intelligent person with exceptional business instincts who was great fun to work with. They were dedicated, worked exceptionally hard, and had an absolute passion to do their best for the company, its staff and clients. The Badger quickly realised this was a capable and successful leader who deserved their position; they just needed some better internal marketing!

The Badger learned too that the old saying ‘Never judge a book by its cover’ applies just as much to people as it does to books! Don’t take things at face value, regardless of widely held perceptions. Form your opinions of those with power based on what you see of the real person and their motives when you engage with them personally. In most cases you’ll wonder less at how they reached such lofty heights. If, however, you see that the cover is the best thing about the book, then roll your eyes with abandon and worry…worry lots!

Clients always want more and more for less money. Who doesn’t!

In an era of globalisation, social media, automation, speedy technological developments and fragile economics, this is certainly not going away anytime soon. Indeed, the need for enterprises to be modern, efficient and ‘digital’ is more profound than it’s ever been. Comfortable but cumbersome business processes and ways of delivering services to customers are being rattled to the core, not least by millennials who’ve grown up with technology at their fingertips and expect services to be available anytime, anywhere, any place….and immediately. Change is happening at pace, and earlier this week, triggered by comment from a friend and Capita’s recent well-publicised difficulties, the Badger wondered if outsourcing is now ‘old-fashioned’ and thus ripe for overhaul as a concept.

Over the last couple of decades many organisations have used outsourcing to reduce costs, increase operational efficiency and improve service quality. Service providers bent over backwards to help and rubbed their hands with glee given the multi-year nature of the contracts. However, outsourcing is now a mature concept and service providers face the same challenges as their clients plus the need to deliver the profits they expected. The Badger’s experience has been that modest, compact and focused outsources are more successful for the client and the service provider than major, wide-ranging, and often transformational ones with big headline contract values. These days there’s a view that many outsource service providers struggle to achieve their financial objectives from the latter, and Capita’s recent difficulties – and Serco’s before that – certainly provides some support for this view.

So, is outsourcing an ‘old-fashioned’ concept? No. Like all concepts it has its place. It isn’t, however, the panacea it was once often perceived to be, or indeed the gravy train that service providers expected. With digitisation, artificial intelligence, speedy technological developments, and IT commoditisation, the concept of outsourcing is now seeing more pressure with some client organisations consciously taking services back under their own direct control. Recent events with Capita (and Carillion) seem to have raised the scepticism and scrutiny of politicians, government authorities, stock market analysts, and the media. Scepticism that ‘all is what it seems’ with companies with a large portfolio of major outsource contracts is common. Any company with major outsource contracts can, regardless of the merits or otherwise, therefore find itself appearing in gossip circles as the next potential Capita!

The Badger’s nose is twitching. Why? Because ‘Things are never what they seem to be’. Outsourcing is under pressure and it seems unlikely that we’ve heard the last of wobbles on major outsource contracts.

The Badger, like many, has been following TSB’s recent very public IT difficulties in moving from the Lloyd’s banking systems to new banking platforms that have their roots in TSB’s parent, Banco Sabadell of Spain. The reasons and economics for the move are well documented in the media, and a quick Google will provide you with all the background. TSB told its customers well in advance that its banking systems would be out of action for a weekend for the move to happen. When the Badger heard this, there was a big twitch of the nose and a surge in the Badger’s business and IT delivery instincts!

Right from the early planning stage there was never any doubt that this was going to be a large, complex and business critical endeavour that must be a success for TSB. Well, to say the move has been calamitous is an understatement! It’s been an expensive mess and a public relations and customer service disaster. Almost two weeks after the migration the bank is still struggling to regularise its services, and TSB executives have been called to explain what’s happened to a parliamentary committee.

The media is, of course, full of commentary on what went wrong, with lots of the normal ‘an insider says’ snippets. If you’ve worked in IT you’ll already relate to snippets like ‘inadequate testing’, ‘architecture of the new platform not up to it’ and so on. You’ll also know that technical staff in IT often work their socks off and go well beyond the call of duty when it comes to these types of move. The Badger’s nose didn’t twitch because of the inevitable technical and data complexities of the migration. It twitched because moves of this business significance require extremely high levels of confidence in a) business and IT readiness, b) the approach to handling failure, and c) enhanced post-live customer service mechanisms before taking the formal ‘Go’ decision. An enterprise’s business imperatives can often get in the way of objectivity and create a climate and momentum where no one wants to say they aren’t ready.

The Badger has seen many formal ‘Go-live readiness processes’ that haven’t been as business and IT comprehensive, rigorous, or evidentially based as they should be. If the readiness and decision-making process and the associated internal climate  were flawed – and events certainly raise questions in this respect – then there’s likely to have been a wide-ranging leadership and judgement failure at multiple corporate, business, service and IT levels within TSB and Banco Sabadell regardless of specific IT technical issues.  Time will tell, but no doubt TSB’s move from Lloyds will become a case study on MBA courses in due course. And in case you’re wondering…the Badger is not a TSB customer!

Have you ever reflected on the path of your career and realised that in your formative years someone senior not only saw capabilities in you that you didn’t know you had, but also provided an opportunity for those capabilities to blossom that you did not expect? Have those capabilities been the bedrock of your working life and personal development ever since? If you can relate positively to these questions, then you’re likely to have experienced some success in your chosen career. Why? Because at a formative point early in your career you overcame your trepidation and fear of failure to take the opportunity that presented itself, and you’re likely to have retained that ‘I’ve never done that before, but I’ll give it a go’ attitude ever since.

The Information Badger’s formative point was at a photocopier producing handouts for a presentation. The company CEO, who the Badger had met a few times in meetings, walked by, said hello, then paused and enquired about the Badger’s current assignment. After being told the CEO grinned broadly and said the Badger’s talents were better suited to a leadership role on a major project widely known to be in severe difficulty. The Badger had no previous relevant experience, was somewhat taken aback, and cautiously voiced some concern about failing. The CEO chuckled and just said:

‘My dear boy, we are all frightened of failure, but just think how good you and the rest of us will feel if you succeed’.

The Badger joined the failing project the next day – in at the deep end with responsibility, accountability and authority never previously held. The Badger didn’t look back! The capabilities the CEO saw, and the Badger had no self-awareness of, blossomed generating great personal satisfaction, real career direction and benefits for the company.

The CEO’s words are remembered to this day. Why? Because they’re founded on insight, experience, and an understanding of what makes people tick. The latter is key because everyone has protective ‘I’ve never done that before and I can’t do it’ psychological wiring as a first response. Everyone has an inner fear of failure. If you’re able to recognise and overcome this, then you’re likely to ultimately maximise your personal and career success.

Everyone is different, of course, and success comes in many forms, but if you’re presented with something that’s out of your comfort zone then just remember that you’re wired to think you can’t do it! Parents often use the saying ‘There’s no such word as can’t, try!’ with their young children. Always strive to use this mantra as the starting point for your thought processes when presented with an opportunity beyond your comfort zone or experience. Remember…you’ll never really know your own capabilities, even if others can see them, unless you overcome your fears.