Professionalism

Seth Grodin on professionalism. I flatter myself in seeing this as another angle on what I was talking about recently.

Professionalism has a different connotation in the world of stand-up comedy. You're doing a 'professional gig' when you get paid (when you're starting out this happens rarely). You get to call yourself a 'professional stand-up comic' when your comedy pays your bills. Every professional comic I know brands themselves thus with pride:-

I made it. I turned my dream into a reality. I get paid to do something I love doing

I suppose that this is the stuff of modern life: to be the guy who followed his dreams. Still, I'm reminded of a quip made by Marko Mustac, a good friend and an amazing performer and director of improv theatre: -

If you want to get amateurs to behave properly you accuse them of being 'unprofessional'

Works every time. Just don't try it on actual professionals.

Interviewing

Andrew Watts is a thoughtful man

Two days is how long?

I'm working in Helsinki this week. It's a two-day follow-up on a sales skills programme I delivered in August last year and I've been given all of Monday and Tuesday to work with the team.

This begs what may seem like a stupid question: -

How long is two days?

When designing a programme I usually work to a schedule of 830am to 530pm: 7 hours of work + 1 hour for lunch + 2 x 30 minutes for coffee. So a two-day programme should mean that I roughly have 13 hours to work with (I allow 30 minutes a day for latecomers, birthday cakes, senior managers dropping in to 'say a few words' and participants mysteriously booked out on earlier flights).

I get nervous when my usable time drops much below 6 hours / day. Not only is it harder to deliver financial value (I charge a day-rate) but also my programmes are like stories that take a while to tell and aren't helped by rushing. At a pinch I can take you on a 13 hour journey in 11 hours.

So when my Finnish client blithely told me that we'd be starting at 9am and finishing at 430pm I got worried, especially as her team has no real culture of punctuality. And although there's a temptation to finish later on Monday and start earlier on Tuesday I have to account for the fact that some participants got up long before 5am in a Nordic mid-winter to make it for the 9am start. My ability to deliver value drops to zero if my audience is weeping with exhaustion.

To address this I've shortened the programme, truncating some exercises and dropping others altogether. Now the problem is that I'm not delivering the product I sold in. As my client is the National Sales Manager I know that in her mind this programme equates to her team being 'off the road' for two whole days not some fraction thereof.

The same person is simultaneously taking away my hours and demanding I give her days!

Is there a solution? Maybe not a comprehensive one but the following are perhaps worth remembering: -

• Avoid Monday meetings. Many companies have a very sensible policy of not expecting staff to cut their weekend short and so a Monday meeting usually means early morning travel and a later start time

• The same goes for Friday afternoon finishes
  

• I don't kid myself that I'll make up all that much time with shortened breaks. Maybe I can get away with a 45 minute lunch break and 20 minutes for coffee but any less than that and my participants won't have time to get something to eat, use the bathroom and return those urgent calls. When every scheduled fifteen minute break legitimately takes twenty minutes I really look like I've lost control
  

• In as friendly a manner as possible I'm less tolerant of discussions going 'off-topic'. Save it for the breaks please

• Finally, I commit to delivering 7.5 hours of value regardless of the actual time I end up with

As I've said before, I don't think there's a lot of point complaining to the client to subtly lower expectations. In six weeks time all that anyone will remember is that the team was off the road for two days and what to what end?

How free is free?

Of late I've had a few dealings with UK's much-vaunted National Health Service (the 'NHS').

It is an amazing institution, set up in 1948 by the Attlee Labour Government to ensure that health care was available to every Briton 'free at the point of delivery'. Millions upon millions of words have been written for and against the NHS. It is rightly seen as a sort of national glue that protects against the health-driven inequities of the US. Equally it is described as a bloated and wasteful bureaucracy, said to be the second largest employer on the planet after the Chinese Red Army.

What I'd like to focus on is the word 'free'.

As a system, the NHS is only free in a monetary sense. And what the customer saves in pennies is extracted from him in time and frustration. It's in the system's interest to keep me waiting. It's also in the system's interest to have me wait in as uninviting an environment as possible, but that's perhaps a lesser point. It is not in the system's interest to treat me as a 'professional'; as someone whose time has a monetary value.

This is why we like dealing professionals, be they individuals or organisations. If there seems to be an unspoken awareness that your time has a value then you're probably in good hands.

Mister Godot says he cannot come today but surely tomorrow

I normally reserve my thoughts on politics for other places and other media but as this is what I woke up thinking at 530am on a cold and rainy Monday morning in London hopefully you'll indulge me.

It occurred to me this morning that perhaps the reason why the Global Financial Crisis doesn't yet seem as real and as nasty as it undoubtedly should is that at some level we've all been focused on something, someone, else.

Over the weekend I read that Obama's Inaugural Address tomorrow will be the most watched speech in history. So the question is this: -

How will we all feel on Wednesday?

Collaboration as 'enablement'

As mentioned previously, 2009 is going to be my 'year of playing nicely with others'. I will be staging at least three different theatre / comedy shows and I've already started meeting with potential collaborators. And already there's frustration: meetings postponed at short notice, late starts and no-shows.

It's vital that ground rules are lain down early where 'creative' projects are concerned, especially where the relationship is supposed to be a collaboration of equals. Otherwise a strange version of 'enabling' (in the addiction therapy sense) can take hold.

I've been a comedy performer of sorts for 20 years. In that time I've had any number of really talented writing and performing partners. Many of them frankly more talented than me. Yet it's rare that they're as organised as I am and therein lies the rub. The dynamic becomes one where I'm looking after more and more of the practical aspects of the project and my partner's role is just to turn up with the funny.

This damages me because I slip into a quasi-stage manager / producer role. The relationship becomes an asymmetric one where I'm the boring den mother controlling the unruly creative children or else I'm the corporate greedhead with some as yet unseen angle to exploit the honest but naive performers.

In other words, I have a history of 'enabling' other performers' inability to get their shit together such that it affects my ability to look after my own creative career. I end up as the bad guy and that's just no fun.

There is an obvious caveat: I am writing about collaborations that start out as 'symmetrical' then mutate. There are any number of highly successful teams where different people take different roles, which is fine as long as those roles are defined clearly and preferably in advance.

In Sweden

I just delivered my first training day of 2009 at a conference in Are, Sweden.


View Larger Map

Of course I had to return to London immediately after the session. Sometimes the only way I can stay sane with all the business travel is to promise myself that I'll return to that beautiful place at my leisure and on my own dime.

Updating my resume

My last job interview was in 1990 so I've had no reason to write a resume in almost twenty years. Yet in that time I've provided hundreds of 'biogs' to both consulting clients and comedy promoters. There is an obvious difference between the two: -

A 'biog' is an invitation to tell a selective story about yourself whereas a resume must be comprehensive

Each of us has a variety of stories about ourselves and we're continually forced to choose which one to tell. Anyone who's ever joined an online dating site has agonised over which personal details to include in the written profile and what to exclude until first impressions have been made.

The same dilemma presents itself when I first meet a new client: what information do I offer up and in what order? My tendency has always been to keep the two broad themes of my life (comedy, consulting) quite separate; just as I don't want my pharma clients to see me as frivolous, I want to avoid coming across as too 'corporate' on stage.

I have decided that this is a mistake.

It underestimates my clients and my audience. A huge part of my ongoing attraction to pharmaceutical clients is the uniqueness of my background. Implied in my brand premise is that if you're looking for an MBA then call McKinsey. Similarly, the first rule of stand-up is 'talk about what you know'. If I leave corporate life out of my comedy then I'm left with the same list of topics (airline security, the Daily Mail, American tourists in London) as every other comic and my ability to differentiate myself is massively diminished.

Write out an unflinchingly comprehensive resume. Now look for convergence. As a small-shop consultant that's where you're most likely to find your USP.

Marking time

I've always examined the past in years but measured the future in months. It gives me a greater sense of urgency: '2 years' is a milestone but '24 months' is time not to be squandered.

Yesterday I got back from three fantastic weeks visiting friends and family in Sydney. Sitting at my desk in London (outside temperature: -1C!) I get a resounding sense that the clock is ticking.

London affords me career opportunities that no other place on earth can offer, certainly not Australia. I have European and American pharmaceutical clients where I have entree to the Head Office rather than a National or Regional branch. I am a regular on the world's best, most vibrant, stand-up comedy circuit with nigh on automatic access to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And producing theatre here counts in a way that a Sydney show never will.

We've lived in the UK for 3 1/2 years now and in June I'll be 42. The time back in Sydney has reminded me that we won't be here forever. We've probably got 18 months left here, 36 at the outside so 2009 has to count.

Don't they all?