Best thing last week

Monday morning.  Manila.  I'd asked the group for any opening thoughts.  A Filipino sales manager stands up and recites an obscure passage of my book verbatim.

I'm big in Mindinao.  No one can take that away from me.

Not an elephant. Not in the room

I finished up in Seoul on Friday afternoon and will be back in London for dinner with friends on Saturday night. The programme, a 'how to coach' session for a sales team's first line managers (FLM's), went better than I dared expect.  The translation on slides and workbook wasn't risible and whilst interpreters unavoidably lessen my impact this one, despite an unedifying pre-game battle of wills, wasn't too bad.

The long-term efficacy of the session won't be determined by the guys in the room but by the one who wasn't.  The newly appointed National Sales Manager (NSM) didn't grace us with his presence for more than a few minutes over the two days.  The subliminal damage to the supposedly high priority given to my project is potentially fatal.  As engaged as the actual attendees were, some corner of their collective brain registered the absence as commentary of sorts.  When I ran into him in the corridor (the session was staged in the client's offices) he didn't look especially busy and his English was certainly on par with anyone's in the room.  He declined the offer to close the session on Friday afternoon even before the General Manager, a far more assured character, jumped on the opportunity.

I'd say that he's either totally contemptuous of my project or shit-scared of his FLM's.  Manipulating your new boss such that he's wary of you is a necessary skill in many organisations and low-ranking sales managers often hunt as a pack in this regard.  Korean sales teams have an uber-masculine sensibility and the NSM missed the perfect opportunity to assert the necessary alpha male status by either: -

1. Taking total ownership of my ideas, which is of course fine by me; or, 
2. Openly challenging the foreign 'expert' over how little he understood the local market. This would have been less fine but nothing I'm not paid to deal with

Instead he stayed in his office down the hall whilst his subordinates challenged me anyway.  He stayed away, seemingly unnoticed, as his boss loped in and claimed the last word.  To be fair, his is a lovely office.  He should enjoy it while he can.

Full of bile and venom

Last night's sleeplessness, Manila traffic and the ambient chaos of Niño Aquino International Airport had me arrive at the departure gate chock full of bile and venom.

Of the myriad vestigial rituals clinging to 'luxury' travel the procession of interruptions that are supposedly the hallmark of good service pisses me off the most.  As pointless as airline safety demonstrations may be I accept that a legal logic is in play.  But tell me why I must hear from multiple crew members on other topics?  Why is the captain as well as the purser compelled to make an announcement before take-off then again 'once we're airborne'? Why interrupt the inflight entertainment (wishfully claimed as a USP) to tell me that you're going to interrupt me again later?

Am I alone in measuring good service in terms of the least number of staff intrusions? Who was the last person actually pleased by hotel turndown service?  I don't understand the logic: if I'm out I most likely won't notice the alteration in bedlinen when I return.  If I'm in then whatever I'm doing is interrupted whilst I answer the door and say, "No thanks".  Not all porn channels have a pause function you know.

The threat of a hovering proprietor is the main reason I shun the English Bed & Breakfast.  Once you price in the energy expended gushing over the farm fresh eggs and the wasted ten minutes being shown the frankly troubling collection of objets d'art on the mantlepiece that country house hotel down the road looks like a bargain.

But whereas creepy B&B's can be avoided air travel is inevitable.  Scripted platitudes droned out in multiple languages (I've been on Korean Air lately) and of course the seatbelt sign is illuminated before it starts so we can't even bury our ears in headphones.  Any airline that starts from the assumption that I don't need to know by name the captain, first officer, whoever else is assisting them on the flight deck, the person heading up 'my' cabin service team and the rest of the crew will get my business.

Wow. One solitary solid week of travel and I'm whining like Tyler Brûlée.

Pricing jetlag into the fee

1am in Ortigas City, the affluent precinct of Manila where I've been staying since I arrived in the Philippines exactly 72 hours ago.  I'm wide awake and out of Stilnox (aka Ambien).  I've only eaten lightly, used the hotel gym and self-medicating with red wine will only make the waking hours harder.  I'm 50% through the project.  Tomorrow I fly to Seoul to repeat what I've just delivered only this time via a (client-sourced) interpreter who claims, but only when chased, that she still hasn't received my slide presentation.  Interpreters are often hard to deal with and this augers poorly for the rest of the week.

I tell myself to suck it up.  Self-employment means that in the end every problem belongs only to you.  The only sane response is to price interpreter angst and the inevitability of jetlag into the fee.

Being present. In Manila

It's 5am in Manila.

This is the time I usually wake up but jetlag has had me in its throes for about 90 minutes already.  I've doing the calculations: two hours until breakfast with the client, three and a half hours until we start the session and at least 12 hours until we wrap up Day One of this two-dayer.

'Twas always going to be thus.  I got to the Philippines at midnight Saturday and spent all Sunday sleeping and searching out the least sweetened food the hotel had to offer.   I went to the gym and I reviewed the programme.  I gave the project my complete attention.  I was the epitome of professionalism.

This is what business travel is: an exercise in discipline.  And the rules are as obvious as they are simple: don't go crazy at the starch'n'sugar-laden buffet breakfast, say no to (at least some of) the free alcohol, decline those Sunday night drinks with ex-pat pals, don't kid yourself that you can get away with being a tourist for a day.  And never complain about the horrors of the flight or its attendant jetlag.  The job can only really begin once  you've made a connection with your audience.  Why would go out of your way to remind them that you live on the other side of the world?

I have been brought here because I am the best person to communicate certain specific ideas to their people.  If they believe they could achieve the same thing with a local or even Asia-based speaker then I wouldn't be here.  So my goal is simple: minimise all the factors competing for my attention and concentrate all available energy on being present.

Harder than it sounds.  I'll let you know how I get on.

Don't pack drunk

Summer is done and I'm traveling again: Madrid, Edinburgh, Manila, Seoul and Zurich to begin with. No complaints: if I'm not on planes I'm not getting paid.

Travel means packing and packing always makes me feel stupid. Specifically, packing is an exercise in imagining my future self and experience has taught me that that guy is an idiot. Indeed most travel planning could be described as 'negating your inner idiot'.

These oh-so-unimpressive alternative selves exist inside each of us. Stress brings them out. As does fatigue, distraction brought on by overwork and alcohol.

I've learnt to mitigate these minor demons with low-level paranoia. Printing out and filing the limo pick-up instructions for Ninoy Aquino airport now means one less thing for the idiot-me to forget to do later.

In pre-travel mode I become a parent to myself. Lists are made and checked off. I run semi-conscious wargaming exercises like, 'If the programme was pulled forward to tomorrow would you be ready?' I update the weather app on my iPhone to flag destination cities (Manila, 30C, thunderstorms, if you're wondering).

And don't pack drunk. Turning up in Toronto in January equipped for summertime Sydney taught me that. Not unless you want fur-hatted Canadians pointing you out in the street.

Authoritative rapid Spanish

Some jobs lurch so far outside my control that any pressure to perform simply evaporates.

The other week I was booked to deliver an afternoon workshop for a Spanish sales team that was running two hours behind schedule after two hours.  I was due to follow the presentation of marketing plans for the rest of the year, which was essentially the centrepiece of the entire meeting.  As the morning dragged on it was obvious to everyone in the room that short of wrapping up around midnight something in the agenda would have to give.  And as often happens in such situations the client was forced to choose between delivering vital information (the marketing plans) and recouping a large sunk cost (my workshop).  The big boss chose me and instructed the marketing guys to 'just talk faster'.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I speak no language other than English.  Even under normal circumstances I find Spanish a daunting language to listen to; staccato and without the tonal range of French or Italian.  To my ears the demand that a Spanish speaker speed up was like putting a machine gun on fast forward.

For me at least, the effect was extremely compelling.  In the words of Elisa, Selma Hayek's wonderfully sexy nurse character on 30 Rock: -

I find that authoritative rapid Spanish subdues white people

Big bites in Big Pharma

As this next, even scarier phase of the Global Financial Crisis takes hold it appears that Big Pharma is much of its implicit losing political patronage.

The Spanish government is looking to cut its drug bill by €1.3B by demanding price reductions in both the off-patent and soon-to-be-off-patent medications.  By hitting branded drugs as well as generics (i.e. those already off-patent) a signal is being sent by the Minister for Health & Social Policy: -

The pharmaceutical bill rises to nearly €15 million annually and the government becomes the largest customer in this sector...  We demanded a lot to the industry and we believe enough is enough

In the UK the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has decided that none of three leading treatments for metastatic colorectal cancer are good value at their current pricing.  This will effect Roche (Avastin), Amgen (Vectibix) and Merck Serono (Erbitux).  The NICE statement said that it was: -

Disappointed not to be able to recommend cetuximab (Erbitux), bevacizumab (Avastin) and panitunmumab (Vectibix) for this stage, but we have to be confident that the benefits justify the cost of the drugs

This is especially bad news for Roche as Avastin, the world's largest selling cancer medication, is under ongoing FDA scrutiny as a treatment for metastatic breast cancer in the US.

Boehringer-Lilly have been scared off launching diabetes medication in Germany due to legal-administrative changes that place a greater onus of the company to ensure that a new drug is value for money: -

Reorganisation of the Pharmaceutical Market (AMNOG), (which) was established in January this year to regulate the pricing of newly approved drugs within their first year.  This means that Germany's NICE equivalent IQWiG and a new Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) now assess a drug's cost-effectiveness against a suitable comparator and if the drug fails to demonstrate its cost-effectiveness, then its manufacturer may be liable to refund the government's Statutory Health Fund, which originally paid for the treatment.

It looks as if the German government called Boehringer-Lilly's bluff.

And all of this in the (somewhat) solvent north of Europe.  As I've mentioned previously, further south the picture is different.  In Greece the government is issuing zero-coupon bonds to pay its pharma bills.  Roche said that the conversion of their debt to a bond amounted to a loss of 26% when the bonds was converted to cash.

Of course as Greece racks up more debt a 26% 'haircut' might look like good value.  Assuming that Greek bonds of any value are still deemed to be assets in the months ahead.