Monday, November 28, 2011

Keep it Simple Stupid

On Saturday, I visited a Vodaphone shop to try to my a mobile phone and a contract. This was because of the sad demise of my previous mobile phone, a wonderful Siemens device I had bought for 15 Euros.

The mobile phone died in a very Dutch way. Last Wednesday evening, I had a concert and a party to go to, on either side of a small forest in The Hague. I had often walked in this area, so I decided to get from one engagement to the other on foot, even though it was dark.

Then I took a wrong turning. I could go back to get on the right route, but, hey, I knew this forest, so I ploughed on. Up ahead was a path I knew well. My mum phoned so I was a bit distracted, as I jumped down onto the path.

Only the path wasn’t a path at all, it was a canal. The call to mum was the phone’s swansong. Mum says she heard some strange noises, probably me screaming. I wish someone had been nearby, it would have made a great video, grown man in concert clothes walking straight into a canal.

Walking into a canal is not something I recommend. There is a lot of gunk in Dutch canals. They are quite deep, very cold, muddy and slimy. It was very easy to walk in, but quite hard to climb out. Lesson learned – walking in forests after dark is a silly thing to do.

So that is how I ended up in the Vodaphone shop. And what a beautiful shop it was too, with sexy lighting, fancy equipment and tasteful marketing everywhere. I got the feeling that the store in The Hague was replicated in cities around Europe, or even the world. That company has a powerful brand department and plenty of money to invest.

But the senior managers and brand managers have plainly never been in any of these shops. For the customer, it was horrible. They could afford lots of equipment, but not enough staff. Of the staff that were there, half of them were wearing blue shirts, which seemingly disqualified them from actually dealing with customers. A blue shirt met us, listened to our needs, and told us that we would have to wait for a red shirt to be free, although he could offer us coffee while we waited. So half the staff were actually waiters, while the other half were overloaded.

When we finally reached the front of the red queue, we came to realise why we had to wait so long. It seemed to be impossible to conclude a transaction in less than twenty minutes. By the time we had explained our needs, listened to the array of contracts on offer, and linked these to physical phones, we were more confused than enlightened. Even when we were able to make a decision, there was still the long process of contracts and validations, and the simple expedient of keeping the same phone number added further complication.

The red team guy was excellent – perhaps surprisingly so, since he is probably paid a meagre wage and had to deal with many interruptions. Even the blue team guys seemed very willing and motivated, even if their only roles were greeter and waiter. Yet, as a customer, I came very close to just walking out and abandoning the whole process more than once. I felt frustrated, intimidated, and un-served. Are these the emotions that the Vodaphone brand managers aim for in their customers? Probably not.

The nearest equivalent retail experience I could link this to was the old fashioned way we all used to book holidays. The tour operator shop still exists, though most of us rarely set foot in them these days. It used to be the same, with long, long, transaction times and waiting times, staff of mixed motivation, and more often than not frustrating outcomes.

I find it ironic that the travel industry has reinvented itself through the internet. Most of us now do everything online and have better service and outcome as a result. The industry itself has not always reaped the benefits, as poor old Thomas Cook demonstrate. Yet the customer has won, and well-managed providers are still in business. But here we have a modern industry, mobile communications, invented around the same time as the internet, which has the most old-fashioned customer interface.

Surely someone should do an Easyjet or an Ikea on mobile telecommunications? There must be a way to reinvent things around the customer. Please let me know when it happens. I hope at least that occurs before the next time I walk into a canal.

Other modern industries have similar problems. Computer interfaces are still created by geeks. Surely those older people who only want to use google and e-mail could be served by now by a simple device with one large button advertising each, together with a keyboard of large letters, big buttons and no symbols? It would sell so well, even my dear mum could be a customer.

And what about other electronic devices? Philips, a fine Dutch company, is onto a winner with its slogan emphasising simplicity. Spot on. Yet my alarm clock cum CD still resembles the potted face of a teenager. No-one else can use mine, and I can’t use anyone else’s. That is not simplicity, my friends from Eindhoven, that is the result of too many application-loving geeks. No doubt some customers love the applications, but many customers would value something simpler.

Then there are banks. Ah yes, banks. But I want to be happy today, so I won’t dwell on banks.

I think part of the problem is often the distance between departments in large companies. The designers and the marketers live in different worlds from the shopkeepers. This is especially true for business models relying on in-store experience, like mobile phones. McDonalds and Starbucks and others have shown it can be solved. None of the petrol companies have. Nor has Vodaphone. Or banks. Sorry, I wasn’t going to dwell on banks.

When it goes wrong, the marketers emphasise standardisation, often internationally. That usually leads to stores where the staff have little discretion, and customer experiences with little regard to local needs. The most important management choice is often where in the chain to place the power and discretion. McDonalds has it right, each store feels like a motivated and tailored business. Same for Ikea. But many brands have forgotten the importance of the local interface.

Perhaps this is also the answer to the conundrum I asked myself last time, about democracy. WE should think first about the best level to make each decision. Currently, individuals have too much say about climate policy and fiscal policy, but not enough about their local schools. Democracy is mainly conducted at national level, with a few morsels left to a local level. This suits national politicians, but leads to weak outcomes.

So now we have a partial answer to the question: how is the euro crisis like Vodaphone? I’ll explore this further, so long as I can also answer the question about how to stay out of canals.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The End Game for Democracy?

What a mess Europe is in politically. Last week two governments fell, as a direct consequence of the Euro crisis. This sort of thing usually only happens during wars or in the run up to wars. And the impotence of the political leaders is stunning. They can all see where they are heading. Most of them can see how to escape. But collectively they are unable to stem the tide.

How did we get here? One thing that caught my attention was the Greek prime minister’s call for a referendum. The poor chap had his career finished over this call, and, to be fair, his timing could be questioned. But wasn’t this one of the few honest acts in the whole charade? He had a democratic mandate from two years ago. He had used it to its limit, trying to find ways out of an inherited mess and to do deals with creditors and partners. It was clear to him that his mandate was expiring, since the packages he came up with were not accepted on the streets and were leading to slow paralysis of the state.

So he called a referendum, in an attempt to shore up his mandate. He had a good question to ask, since he had just negotiated a landmark deal. He had something to gain, since a yes vote would have enabled him to face down the protesters and start reform properly. And the people should have been able to see the consequence of their choice.

So he took a brave step. And was immediately vilified by his so called democratic partners, with a stunning hypocrisy. The British press call for European referenda all the time, about the most ill- defined issues, yet someone else calling a referendum was not acceptable. In the end the elites completed a coup, and followed it up with a second coup in Italy later in the week. In both cases, the new leaders are bankers. Ah, bankers. The very people who got us in the mess in the first place.

In the short term we will all probably muddle through. Pundits and politicians lazily refer to the abyss, or meltdown, or some other term for a disastrous endpoint from which there is no return. Yet no one really tries to describe what such an abyss would feel like. Argentina had such an abyss ten years ago. Anyone with savings got badly burned, and for a while it was hard to find a job. Then the country started to recover, and now is arguably better off than it would have been if it had muddled through. I am not sure that such a thing as an abyss exists, and one of the reasons the Greeks were not allowed to have their referendum was that they knew it.

In the longer term, the casualty may well be democracy. It was also struck by an Economist quote this week, where it was made clear that there was never any democratic intent behind the EU, even when it started as a small trading block. “Ordinary Europeans see Brussels as remote and elitist. As it happens, the European project was like that from the very beginning”. What a statement that is. The article defends the project as inspired statehood, a way to defend the people from themselves and to avoid a third spiral into war. Fair enough, but let’s not call it democracy, then.

And the long term consequence may be the very spiral it was trying to avoid. Look at the anti-elite parties all over Europe now. Surely these will all grow as a direct result of the crisis. Look at the protesters on our streets. They will surely find a voice in anti-elite parties eventually. This is not a movement of some thugs any more, it is people like us, the 99%.

Yet the politicians continue to lie, and to make no attempt to win over their citizens with any logic. Virtually every elite party in Europe queues up to blame Brussels, at the same time as knowingly ceding power. They have their cake, and they eat it. But in the end there will be no cake left for anyone. They consistently champion democracy, while eschewing it.

Is the US any better? Arguably, it is worse. Their economic fundamentals are even worse than ours, only hidden away by the elites because an abyss for them (at least the elite them) would even be more unthinkable than an abyss for us. Their social fundamentals are clearly worse than ours. And their politics is even more cynical and even more dysfunctional, dominated only by money and media access. And the cheerleaders for freedom invade others at will, and have intelligence agents undermining societies globally. At least they have to answer for their wars in their sham elections every so often, the clandestine stuff is wholly unanswerable. Should we be pleased or scared by the Americans managing to stymie the Iranian computer systems? I am not sure.

So our system is dead, while our leaders still champion it. I am not promoting other systems of national governance, since they all seem to fail too. There is still wisdom in Churchill’s quote that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried. But let us at least start being honest about it. There are alternatives, and soon we will need them.

We don’t run companies by democracy. We don’t run Churches by democracy. We don’t run families by democracy. Those institutions have lasted as long as most countries. We now have such powerful technology available, and education is so widespread, that models that were previously infeasible become interesting. We could probably take the best from the models used by each of those institutions and create something strong.

Perhaps this is what the 99% are saying, much derided by the elite for being directionless and without coherent solutions. They (we?) might simply be declaring the imminent end of the current Western system, called democracy, but in practice rule by an elite and high finance. I get annoyed when multinational corporations get blamed for everything, for they are usually quite honest in their methods and their goals. But finance as an industry is another thing. Banks and bankers have not come through this era well. Nor have politicians.

A friend last week told me to stop observing and stop moaning about this crisis, but to come up with some ideas. Now that is a tough ask. But I’ll have a go, next blog. As long as there is time, before we all fall into the abyss. All ideas are welcome.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

I know what you are thinking

Technology continues to make breakthroughs to change our lives. I like the cover of the fiftieth anniversary of Private Eye. The shields at the top show what has changed between 1961 and 2011. Mainly it is communication. A typewriter and telephone have become a mobile and printer. Everything is much faster now, and many things are more reliable. This is generally good, though the blackberry 24/7 addicts choose to become slaves to progress.

A leader in this week’s Economist suggested what might be coming next. Seemingly, mind reading technology is getting closer. We might soon be able to look inside each other’s brains and be able to tell what we are thinking. No doubt the facility is many years away from being generally available, but fifty years ago we couldn’t really imagine the internet or wi-fi.

Just imagine the changes this technology would have on the way we lived. Start with relationships. The whole vocabulary would be thrown open. We could no longer quietly leer at someone we fancied without being exposed. Our professed loyalties would be called into question. Our small lies in the interest of harmony would no longer work. Many bums would suddenly look big in many outfits, and have nowhere to hide. A man is supposed to have a sexual thought every eight seconds or so. Imagine if such thoughts were transparent to all.

Things would change, but no doubt we would adapt. Adapting is what humans are very good at. And would it be worse? Initially, it would be very difficult for everyone, but, once things had settled down, perhaps things would be easier. How many women really believe the harmony lies anyway, or believe their man is the only one immune from the eight second urge? The worst thing in any relationship is a lack of trust, and the technology would have the potential to banish that completely. Most of us are more anxious about the fear or what someone is thinking about us than the sure knowledge of what those thoughts are – and most of us are thinking better thoughts of most of our acquaintances than they think we are anyway. We would adapt. The game would change. I sense things would be better.

Then look at illness. The earliest application of the technology would be to improve the lives of the disabled. People with the inability to communicate would suddenly be able to, and lives would be improved immeasurably. Maybe there are other creative brains like Stephen Hawking out there that could be liberated. I also suspect the technology would be decisive in breakthroughs against diseases primarily of the mind, such as addictions. All the junk in our minds could be freed. In most cases, I suspect that could be decisive in helping people to move onto better lives. True, counsellors would lose their capacity for professional dishonesty, but again the advantages would be enormous.

Now take politics. Again, things would change, and change a lot. But for the better or the worse? Many of the more intractable problems in the world start with casual misleading of people. The EU, a good thing, was set up by the elite without really explaining the truth to the public, who were deemed too dumb to understand. Ditto the euro. Such lies are coming apart right now. Cameron doesn’t really want a referendum, just votes. Such lazy lies are coming back to haunt him. The true reasons for the US invasion of Iraq are either justifiable – so we should hear them – or not – and the invasion might have been avoided. Discrimination would be out into the open, and perhaps eliminated by a rare dose of honesty, or at least cast to the outer reaches of society.

The same with firms. When the CEO makes his Christmas speech about his staff being his most important asset he might find himself the turkey, and quite right. Effort would be moved from the dark arts of misleading marketing and lobbying, and invested in innovation to create genuine customer benefits. No more fraud. No more tax avoidance. No more value-destroying confidentiality. I have no problem with any of this.

What surprised me was the tone of the Economist leader, which feared the change. Generally, this magazine embraces technology and innovation, and especially likes things which eliminate inefficiencies. Well, here is a chance to eliminate perhaps the greatest inefficiency of all, and how do they react? They worry about their eight second urges, predict problems with adaptation, and fear misuse by the governments. The internet had all these problems too. Should we have resisted it? I expect better from my favourite magazine.

Perhaps the leader writer, like me, has been spooked by his or her computer lately. I have seen a step change in the last six months at the ability of my computer to know everything about me, and find it scary. Do you feel the same? When I reflect on it though, I find this technology exciting. True, it can be misused, and I like to have a few secrets, even from my computer. But we will adapt, we will move on, and the benefits to society can be huge. Bring it on.

One last argument in favour of mind reading. I read a different article this week about Amanda Knox, in the Guardian weekly. Seemingly, most of us found her guilty because of her face. Her features make her look a bit foxy. We were a bit titillated by the stories of what may have gone on in Perugia, egged on by our tabloids, and jumped to conclusions about poor Amanda. According to the article, we do this sort of thing unconsciously all the time, making judgements about people based on how they look. I knew this before, and understood it as a reason for some discrimination and a need for caution against bias, for example in job interviews. But this article took it to a new level, for indeed a part of me had done exactly as the article suggested, and found Amanda guilty, despite any real evidence available to me.

Once we all have our personal mind readers as an app in our mobile phones, we won’t make such mistakes again. This will be scary. Probably it will be after my time, but at the rate things progress these days who can know that for sure? Personally, I hope the technology comes sooner rather than later. By then I’ll be so old that eight seconds will have become at least a minute anyway.