Blindingly obvious (when you think about it)

Last night I caught up with a few performer types for some year-end pints.  I was introduced to a guy who described himself as a film maker.  He'd recently set up a production company and we had a very interesting discussion about the challenge of getting stuff to screen, in particular the difference between film and television.  He shared an insight that had never occurred to me before: - 

To make a film all you need is money.  After that it all comes down to the quality of the work

To make TV you usually need a programming slot before you begin

Whereas film production companies focus on making films, TV production companies devote all their energy to the pitch before the creative process can even begin.

The patron saint of Australian expats

This is a bittersweet time of year for expats, especially those of us from the Southern Hemisphere and if we have a patron saint it is Clive James.  I was given his wonderful Unreliable Memoirs for Christmas years ago and its influence is obvious.

The second volume covers James' relocation to England and it ends thusly: - 

As I begin this last paragraph, outside my window a misty afternoon drizzle gently but inexorably soaks the City of London.  Down there in the street I can see umbrellas commiserating with each other.  In Sydney Harbour, twelve thousand miles away and ten hours from now, the yachts will be racing on the crushed diamond water under a sky the texture of powdered sapphires.  It would be churlish not to concede that the same abundance of natural blessings which gave us the energy to leave has every right to call us back.  All in, the whippy's taken.  Pulsing like a beacon through the days and nights, the birthplace of the fortunate sends out its invisible waves of recollection.  It always has and it always will, until even the last of us come home. 

Next year in Sydney?*

*With apologies to the Seder

In Warsaw

No city is so boring that it cannot amuse for two days. No airport is so amazing that it does not begin to pall after two hours.

My wife and I have been stuck in Warsaw for 48 additional hours and counting. We're now a long way past both the two-day and two-hour marks.  It's the shortest day of the year and it's back out to Frederic Chopin airport to sit at a gate or perhaps even on the plane itself hoping that Heathrow deigns to allow us entry.  Time will doubtless crawl; not a great way to spend the longest night of the year.  And across the world passengers just like us will be doing exactly the same thing.  No longer in Miami or Barcelona or Oslo we're reduced to generic tubes of people, 100% interchangeable in the eyes of air traffic control.

Last night we sat around the airport bar with a crowd of twentysomething fellow passengers waiting for the flight to finally cancel and cooking up crazy schemes to hire a minibus and drive round the clock for Calais.  Aren't all the best long-distance driving plans are made whilst drinking heavily with perfect strangers?  We snuck out through immigration and back to our hotel.

Just down the street from where we slept is a nondescript plaque, one of hundreds around the city. It commemorates the fact that nine Poles were summarily executed on that spot by 'Hitlerite' troops on August 1, 1944.

Horrible as this memorial is I find something optimistic and forward looking about the fact that the troops are identified historically as 'Hitlerite' rather than racially as German.  And I love the fact that Poland's national airport is named not for a monarch or a president or a general or an explorer but rather for an artist.

A grim game of pass the parcel

For me a consulting project is typically built on a bilateral relationship: there's just me and the customer. This is not to say that I don't expect to have a number of contacts within the client organisation, only that there's usually a clear vision and a single, one-way financial flow (them to me).

I've been spoilt. For years I've been spared the ongoing, low-level, zero-sum-game aggravation of multilateral relationships that a complex, event-driven project entails.

Next year a piece of my work is the centrepiece of a large meeting that apparently also requires an advertising agency, a graphic design firm and a special events supplier. On the far side of this triumvirate is a necessary array of translators, printers, airlines, hotels and so on. A complex situation is thus made even more complicated by flagrant jockeying for position over interminable teleconferences.  I like to think I play nicely with others (despite years of sole tradership submitted as evidence to the contrary). No, the conflict hasn't arisen over personality but due to billing mechanisms.

I have long charged a high day-rate that acts as a sort of whole-of-project fee. Once we agree on a number I'm committing myself to everything necessary to drag the project over the line. This is works very well for my standard project-driven bilateral relationship.

Contrast this with the more typical agency relationship where fees are generated based on hourly billing but where there's a ceiling to the total fee. This means that the agency's agenda is to eagerly volunteer for all work on offer up until the fee ceiling is reached and then either negotiate an elevation of that ceiling or be compelled to decline any excess tasks. The ability to negotiate this elevation without displeasing the client is the mark of a good account service person.

What happens in a situation like the present; a large, multi-player project where there is a substantial but very finite budget? Fee structures drive behaviours in evermore obvious ways. The early days were a gold rush; everyone magnanimously volunteered to take on each new task without regard for the actual competency of the volunteering company. Agencies were organising travel and graphic design firms were commissioning translation services.  This is when strong clients are invaluable; they see what's going on and put a stop to at least the most flagrant overreaching.

Why aren't there more strong clients?

Now the seam is tapping out and there's a growing list of fiddly, unpleasant tasks are being shifted from supplier to supplier, in danger of not being done at all. We've suddenly gone from gold rush to a grim game of pass the parcel and the project is beginning to suffer.

My fee structure (and personal philosophy) leaves me especially exposed; my inclination is say, "Oh for goodness' sake just let me do it." which, is of course what everyone else is waiting for.  It's all horribly demotivating but what can I do?

When the big day comes I'll be the one standing up and speaking whilst everyone else is already back at the office drafting their invoices.