Theatre production

As I've mentioned previously, I am going to produce a theatre show in Camden, North London next year.  Theatre is almost always a collaborative process.  Improvised theatre, which is the nature of this show, always is.

'Playing nicely with others' will be one of my big challenges for 2009.

Everyone's having my career but me

An old friend of mine has recently decided to 'go it alone' and start his own consulting business. He's already had a hugely successful career over twenty years culminating in running one of Australia's largest marketing research firms. Now, after a six-month sabbatical, he's going to start all over again.

Once upon a time my heart would've leapt at the news. Another smart, experienced and articulate mate to bounce around ideas, to celebrate the wins and laugh off the losses. Now I'm not so sure. What if he surpasses in two years what I've built over twenty? I'm wary of a mindset that an acting buddy once described to me as:-

Everyone's having my career but me

I think that a big part of healthily working for yourself means avoiding Gore Vidal's curse ("Every time a friend succeeds I die a little inside").

I need to be secure enough in my own achievements to be able to genuinely celebrate his. What manner of friend am I otherwise?

Off to Sydney

Today my wife and I leave for three weeks in Australia.  We're girding our loins for a flight that's near enough to 24 hours but at the other end is family and friends, sunshine and laughter.

2008 was a great year for my business, both consulting and comedy and I have huge plans for 2009 so the break is both warranted and needed.

But what sort of break?

My clients have been warned to expect as much as a 12-hour response time to emails and to avoid unscheduled phone calls wherever possible.  This is as much as I can offer myself without stressing that my business will suffer.

Headcount = 1 means I actually relax more when I can check emails than when I leave the BlackBerry at home.

Showing up

Woody Allen, the patron saint of all cerebral comics, once said: -

"80% of success is just showing up" 

Earlier this week I was scheduled to meet with another comic about a 2009 project.  Fifteen minutes before we were due to meet he sent me a text message citing problems with an ex-girlfriend to cancel the meeting.  This is a talented and funny guy who has committed to a career in stand-up comedy.  In other words, this is what he does for a living.

Maybe he was telling the truth or perhaps he had more 'professional' reasons for ditching our meeting but didn't want to hurt my feelings.  Either way he didn't seem to approach the appointment as part of the job.

If your impulse towards self-employment is driven by a desire to blur the lines between work and hobby then you're probably better off treating everything with the seriousness of work.

Future-proofing 2

I've heard nothing further following a meeting ten days ago when I was asked to guarantee the validity of my current thinking for a period of 10+ years.  At the time I made no promises and I'm still happy that I took that option.

Right now I'm finding that people who should have a 12-18 month focus (ie sales managers) are making sage predictions about their needs in 2018.  Perhaps it's because the spectre of the billions wasted in obsolete IT investments has gotten into the water supply and in these straitened times waste is unforgivable.

Most of my pharma clients have an annual staff turnover within the team of about 15%.  Anything under that makes you a genius sales manager.  So even if you're very, very good at staff retention you'll still have no more than 1 in 5 of your team members in ten years.  Any investment in training needs to account for this as well as the fact that the individuals within the team will change and grow as well.  And one of the quickest ways to raise that turnover is to insist that intelligent, productive people undertake useless training that vaguely promises to address a need that may or may not arise over the next decade.

I'm not suggesting that an organisation doesn't need a ten-year horizon but it also needs a one-year one.