The Management Mythbuster

Chaptography part 4...Axson has left the building

Both Sides Now is a superb song and I admit Joni Mitchell has grown on me over the years. There is also a lovely version by Clannad and Paul Young.

Cold Hard Bitch is by a band called Jet, the best group to emerge from Australia since AC/DC.

Eleanor Put Your Boots On is a track from the album You Could Have It So Much Better by Franz Ferdinand and is one of three songs containing my daughter’s name that I love. The other two are, Lady Eleanor by Lindisfarne and Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles.

Money for Nothing by Dire Straits, with vocal contributions from Sting, seemed to define MTV in the 1980’s―British of course.

Wild Thing by The Troggs is a great rock anthem from 1966. Sung by the “other Presley” Troggs front man, Reg!

Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy. I prefer The Boys Are Back in Town but this song still rocks.

London Calling. Forget the Sex Pistols, The Clash were the best British punk rock band, bar none.

White Wedding. Billy Idol, former lead singer with the punk group Generation X, made it big in America as a solo artist.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want was the perfectly ironic title for a chapter about Las Vegas. I love the Stones and this is my favourite Mick and Keith composition.

Texas by Chris Rea has a great driving beat, perfect to accompany a long cruise across the Lone Star state.

Merry Christmas Everybody is the best Christmas song ever. Images of Noddy Holder and Dave Hill still make me smile at the memory.

Wake Me Up When September Ends is from Green Day’s album, American Idiot, which was the original title of this book. It’s the most melodic song on an excellent album.

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For comes from the U2 album The Joshua Tree that elevated the group to superstar status. Listening to this track it’s easy to hear why.

Chaptography part 3...rock on

Getting into the meat of it now and the music just keeps on coming...

Drive by The Cars will be forever linked in my mind with Live Aid, when it was used to accompany film clips of starving children in Africa. The concert took place two weeks before my wedding.

Two Pints of Lager and a Packet Of Crisps a classic from 1980 by the British group Splodgenessabounds, the best name for a group―ever. The title offers a wry look at my standard diet in my pre-American days.

Name of the Game is an Abba song, however I recommend the version done by a group few have heard of, called Any Trouble.  I like it for two reasons: first, it’s a good song; and second I went to school with three members of the band. As an aside my wife slept in the lead guitarists’ bed as an eleven year-old. By way of explanation, he was not there at the time; his sister was one of her school friends.

Jerusalem is close to being an alternate British national anthem. This version by Vangelis comes from the soundtrack of the Oscar winning film Chariots of Fire.

Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer was accompanied by a video that symbolized MTV at its best.

On The Border by The Eagles. You cannot write a book about living in America without an Eagles track. So enjoy.

It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me. I have always thought of Billy Joel as America’s Elton John and when this song came out it confirmed it for me.  At the time he was also married to Christie Brinkley … how did he ever lose her? Silly man.

New Religion by Duran Duran. I remember taking my wife who was then my girlfriend to see Duran Duran at the height of their fame in the early-eighties. I was surrounded by thousands of screaming girls who all seemed to be experiencing intense sexual pleasure at the same time; probably the closest I have come to experiencing Beatlemania.

Chaptography part 2...turning up the volume

Half The World Away or HTWA to those in the know was written over sixteen years and rejected by more than 30 publishers! I think The Beatles were rejected by about the same number of record labels so that must be a good omen. Here are some more classic chapter titles - try and guess the subject matter - its not that hard!

Calling America by ELO is a guilty pleasure -- you're not supposed to admit to liking ELO. Their 1976 song Livin’ Thing topped a UK magazine poll in 2006 as the number 1 “guilty pleasure” as in the un-cool record it’s okay to love. Well no one has ever accused me of being cool.    

Main Street is classic American rock and no one personifies that genre better than Bob Seger. His lyrics accurately describe the typical Midwest town–my home for last nineteen years.    

Davy’s on the Road Again by Manfred Mann is all about my working life.    

Sweet Child of Mine is the definitive Guns n’ Roses song; it should really be Sweet Children of Mine since I have two of them.    

Eight Days a Week by The Beatles. Written by Paul McCartney based on one of Ringo’s absurd comments, think also of A Hard Days Night. The Fab Four were my first musical love as I apparently used to sing She Loves You while sitting in my high chair, as a three year-old back in ’64.    

I’m Going Home is 11 minutes 40 seconds of over the top R’n’B by Ten Years After and their lead guitarist, Alvin Lee—Brits who rocked at Woodstock.    

You’re so Vain could be the theme song for modern America. Whether Carly Simon wrote this about Warren Beatty remains unknown, but it accurately describes the cult of personality that pervades America.

I Can’t Stand the Rain is Tina at her best. Surely the sexiest 40, 50 and 60 year-old ever? Those legs set atop the towering stilettos…

My new book is on the presses! Witty, poignant, uplifting - it's none of these!

My new book, Half the World Away is rolling off the presses as I type these words - its sure to be a blockbuster! Dan Brown won't know what's hit him. Not only is it supposed to be funny, its also got a killer soundtrack - every chapter title is a classic.  So here is the first part of the chaptography - stay tuned for more ...

First the book’s title, Half the World Away is a lovely song by Oasis one of the top British bands of the nineties. Led by the erratic Gallagher brothers, Oasis emerged from Manchester not twenty miles from where I grew up and I shared a Concorde flight with them back in the mid-nineties.    

In the Beginning is the first track from the Moody Blues 1969 album On Threshold of a Dream. The album reached number one in the UK and number twenty in the U.S. The Moody Blues were the first band I ever saw live in Stafford, England and remain a favourite.  A sound start I think.    

Celluloid Heroes is a great Kinks track, at 7 minutes 21 seconds it is long by Kinks standards. The story Ray Davies tells captures the sadness that lies just below the surface in LA.

California Girls by the Beach Boys is an obvious choice. Does any group or song better capture the image of Southern California?

San Francisco by Scott McKenzie is another no-brainer. The song represents the time when San Francisco acquired its reputation as one of the most tolerant and laid back cities in the world. Much has changed but this unique city still retains some elements of that calm.

Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me is one of Elton John’s classics.  A sad song, sung beautifully.

Leaving New York by REM is from the group’s 2004 album Around the Sun. The title suggests my preferred state while in the Big Apple--leaving!

Coming next ELO, Bob Seger, Guns 'n Roses and much much more...

Dell & Perot--too little too late?

So Dell is buying Perot systems for $3.9 billion.  They are only eight years behind IBM's purchase of PWC and one year after HP bought EDS.  When your core business becomes a commodity the standard strategy is to move into services - higher margins but a very different management model.  Can Dell make the transition?  It will be a challenge as they are far more a single product group company than either IBM or HP were.  As Vinnie Mirchandani comments in his deal architect blog "At best Perot will allow Dell to gain a toehold in verticals Perot is good at. At worst, it will distract Dell from the big services chain optimization opportunity."  Perot was never a player at the EDS, Accenture or IBM level so Dell is going to have to drive real organic growth in Perot's business if it is to drive any real scale or synergy. 

It is interesting to compare Dell with Apple. Who was the favorite for glory back in 1997 when Dell was "THE" company and Apple (sans Jobs) was fading fast?

One year on - greed, arrogance, anger or stupidity?

On the morning of September 15th, 2008 I awoke in my hotel room in Prague feeling quite cheerful.  An early autumn morning in Prague will do that to you, so despite this being my 47th birthday I felt good and then I switched on CNN.  In New York it was the early hours of Monday morning and news was filtering out that Lehman Brothers was filing for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch was being bought (or was it rescued?) by Bank of America.

It all sounded rather surreal as I gazed out over the grand old city before me. My mind flashed back to another birthday seven years earlier when my 40th fell four days after 9/11 and I had just managed to return home to Ohio after being stranded in LA for three days. While one cannot compare the financial losses of 2008 with the human losses of 2001 and the sacrifices of so many soldiers since, it does give further support to the fact that we live in a world where extraordinary events are now quite normal. Through some combination of arrogance, anger, greed, and stupidity mounting pressures are ignored only for them to explode with devastating results. Just as technology has connected the world is their some hope that technology can allow us to communicate more effectively and release tension before it all gets out of hand? 

I suspect it can - if we let it.

Don't Cry For Me Argentina

Back from a whirlwind 36 hours in Buenos Aires. Great city but showing the signs of economic strain just like everywhere else.  Numerous stores, particularly at the high end are failing (see picture) and foot traffic seemed light.

 

Prices are good as the peso is weak against the dollar (there are not many currencies you can say that about) with each dollar buying 3.9 pesos - a grande latte at Starbucks is $3 and McDonalds value meal is $5.50.  Better value is the local fare. Excellent dinner with two glasses of wine was $27; my hotel in the heart of Recoleta (perhaps the nicest district in the city) was $145 including breakfast and free internet - try and find that in most major capitals (See my review on Trip Advisor); and taxis are clean and a 45 minute ride to the airport is only $20.

I did enjoy the job creation scheme of having "manually moving" advertising boards (see picture) that are presented to drivers as they stop at a red light (obviously would not work in Boston!). 

Of course the best things about Argentina are the steaks and the wine and based upon my unscientific sampling - all is well.

A warning for the US? Taxes could drive 1 in 10 UK businesses overseas.

More than one in ten UK businesses may relocate overseas in response to the "punitive" tax system http://tinyurl.com/m2v3yw.

Thirty years ago Margaret Thatcher started a decade long process of making the U.K. a much more attractive place to do business - exchange controls were removed, taxes lowered and the public sector shrank as government owned assets like British Gas, British Airways, Rolls Royce and British Telecom were privatized.  Capital and jobs flowed into the U.K. and a long economic boom took hold - now it is all at risk. Britain is seen as a less attractive place to do business and the price could be high. 

With a fluid global economy it is much easier to relocate both businesses and jobs as the growth in offshoring and the globalization of many industries (autos, technology, pharma) shows.  Is the the UK experience a warning for the US? Already the bureaucratic burden of doing business in many states is penal and the tax burden is heading in one direction only.  The US needs economic growth to raise tax revenues without raising tax rates. That requires incentives to build and grow businesses here.  The alternative is higher rates, less incentive to grow and more incentive to relocate overseas.  This is exactly the scenario that forced the UK to be bailed out by the IMF in the 1970's. I remember the three-day week and the endless strikes very well.  Let's hope today's leaders don't ignore yesterday's lessons.