Friday, February 27, 2009

Eeee-vaaa!

Hej Eva,

Maria tror inte att du har sett Wall•E, en av förra årets bästa filmer. Hur som helst heter den kvinnliga tecknade superroboten Eva, och när Wall•E saknar henne ropar han “Eeeevaaa!” Därav rubriken på det här inlägget. Se filmen, förresten, även om barnen är för stora.

Men det var inte det jag skulle blogga om idag. Eftersom du är den enda som läser den här bloggen tänkte jag tacka dig för det. Jag förstår om du inte hinner hålla lika bra koll nu när du börjar hos bonnläpparna, men tack för den tid som har varit.

Hoppas du får en underbar sista dag hos DG-arna, och lycka till på nya jobbet!

Kram,
Henrik

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Body of Lies

Ridley Scott made an action film last year called Body of Lies. Leonardo di Caprio and Russell Crowe fight terrorism in the Middle East and justify some beautifully shot scenes of American helicopters blowing up speeding jeeps in the desert. Sort of like Spy Game, but with one big difference. Leo and Russell don’t accomplish anything. Feel free to read this again: Leo and Russell don’t accomplish anything.

I don’t know if this was Mr Scott’s whole point with the movie – to show how fruitless U.S. involvement abroad is – but that is what has stuck in my mind. Leo risks his own life over and over again, gets his best friend killed, is forced to kill a would-be ally when the man falls into enemy hands, blows the location of the safehouse he’s staking out in Amman, sets up an innocent architect in a plot that gets the bewildered man tortured and killed, gets himself tortured and almost killed, and on and on. And in the end, the cool thugs of Jordanian intelligence pick up the prime suspect.

Leo and the U.S. end up with nothing but death and destruction. All at an outrageous cost to U.S. taxpayers who foot the bill for satellites, surveillance drones and military hardware.

Piles of money, lots of arm-waving but nothing to show for it – so just like the office, then.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Daniel What’s-his-face

Am I the only person in the country who couldn’t care less that Sweden’s crown princess Victoria got engaged? People kept asking me yesterday if I had heard “the big news”. I thought something important had happened. Turned out it was just a man and a woman promising to get hitched.

Maybe it’s true love. Maybe they float each others boats. Maybe the sex is great. Good for them. But exactly why is this cause for celebration for the rest of us?

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not a raving republican. I think royalty is cute in a Hans Christian Andersen kind of way. And the royal family runs the errands of Swedish business very well, which keeps people employed and happy and alive. Taxpayer money well spent.

What I don’t understand is this pandering to royal blood, as if there were such a thing. Haven’t we come farther? Now that we have finally woken up from the nightmare of religion, why do we keep worshiping royalty?

Big news? It’s more relevant to my life if I run out of milk.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Saab

So I heard Saab was in trouble and decided to see what their CEO had to say about it. Logged on to their web site and read ...

Ok, this is a fantasy. Companies don’t use their web sites to quickly react to whatever people are saying about them. My question is why not? Why is the Saab web site not the natural place to find out what’s on Saab’s CEO:s mind when the world crumbles around him? Instead, the management of Saab (and every other traditional company I know of) relies on press releases and the uncontrollable filter of business journalists to tell their story.

Why can’t the CEO of Saab have a daily blog? Written by him – not by a corporate clone. It wouldn’t have to be long. I would even prefer it to be short and spontaneous. He can string together a few sentences from the back seat of the limo on the way to work, and upload them directly from his iPhone.

Why is this still a fantasy? I have no idea. A CEO using modern technology to talk and listen to customers would get more grassroots support than he would know what to do with.

Friday, February 20, 2009

No motivation? There's the door

Leaders like to congratulate themselves on being good at motivating people. But doesn’t this imply that their employees have apathy as their default setting? How are you at work? Do you sit around indifferent until a manager finds the time to swing around to motivate you? If so, you just might have the wrong job.

When we find the right job we motivate ourselves to do well, just because we enjoy what we do. If you’re a manager and spend a lot of time motivating your workers to do the jobs you hired them for – maybe you should face the music and admit that they are simply wrong hires?

And if you bitch about your manager not motivating you – get out of your seat, head for the door, open it and walk out. Or do you need someone to motivate you to do that, too?

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Dentists are smart

I regularly go to see both a dentist and a hairdresser, but I only get automatically summoned to one of them – the dentist. Why is that? Being a typically conflict-averse Swede, I would probably go to the hairdresser more often if she would just send me a postcard to say she had booked a time for me. But no. She lets me decide, and loses out.

Would this business strategy work for anybody but dentists? Like therapists – “It has been a year since your last mental check-up. I have booked an appointment for you on Wednesday to come and talk about things that might be bothering you. I will bill you 200 dollars if you don’t show up.”

Alas, only dentists get away with this. I have decided that it’s time for you to come and give me some money. In fact, could you bring a friend? We’re thinking of going to the Maldives for Easter. Thanks!”

Friday, February 13, 2009

Astroturfing

Just want to assure you that you didn’t get “astroturfed” yesterday. Astroturfing is the practice of faking a grassroots movement to ship your merchandize on the web. Writing a blog post, for instance, celebrating your company’s products but pretending to be Average Joe. It’s the phony thing you would do if you’re an over-eager beaver trying to get a raise or you want to boink someone in the marketing department.

Keeping yesterday’s entry about Grandma and Handelsbanken in mind, I would like to declare that I don’t work for Handelsbanken, don’t own stock there and don’t have a crush on their CEO. I just think they do a good job. All sorted, then.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Grandma and Handelsbanken

On the day I was born, November 1st, 1965, my dear late grandma Emmy walked down to the Handelsbanken office on Baggeby Torg on Lidingö, where she opened a savings account in the name of her latest grandson and deposited 25 Swedish kronor.

Thanks to that simple act, I have been a client of Handelsbanken every single day of my life. Not that grandma knew one bank from the other – Handelsbanken was simply the closest one to her apartment – but it feels as if she managed to pick a winner.

To this day, Handelsbanken is the only Swedish bank not to have needed to raise new capital in the current crisis. And if I’m not mistaken, they were the only bank not to do so in the financial meltdown of the early Nineties, too. (Please correct me if you know.) In fact, Handelsbanken just announced a four-percent increase in operating profit for 2008.

Meanwhile, in Incompetentland, Nordea is raising 25.8 billion kronor (I want to spell it out to get a good feel for the insane amounts), SEB is raising 15 billion kronor and Swedbank 12.4 billion kronor.

All I know that separates Handelsbanken from its fumbling competitors is that they don’t work with budgets, but I’m not schooled enough to judge if that’s a sufficient reason. Maybe they just really put grandma’s 25 kronor to good use.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Why are bosses crap?

There is much self-congratulation from the top of the corporate hierarchy concerning the merits of superior management and leadership skills (which they all judge themselves to possess). At the other end of the spectrum, all the people I know with regular jobs think their bosses are dysfunctional jerks.

Isn’t there a huge discrepancy here that needs some light shone on it?

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

High school

This from Seth Godin: “Do you work with people who are still in high school?”
He means mentally still in high school. Trying to please the boss like they pleased the teacher. Only speaking up when they feel they’re expected to. Not rocking the boat.
Why are we like this? It used to be to protect our job security, but look around – there isn’t much of that going around anymore. When it starts blowing, your boss cares as much about your life situation as you care about hers. And why should it be otherwise? You have different agendas.
A former colleague used to say you should ask forgiveness, not permission. While the rest of us fumed over not being allowed to do stuff, he just did it. And then apologized when things went wrong. Promised not to do it again. Then did.

Monday, February 09, 2009

“I want my phone call!”

Do you have the right to make a phone call if you are arrested? Not in Sweden. In fact, not in most countries. So how did people come to believe that the American Miranda rights (“You have the right to remain silent,” etc) apply across the globe?
Hollywood, of course. Isn’t it time Swedish crime film directors set us straight?
Or even better, isn’t it time arrested Swedes were also permitted a phone call? Swedish Moms get worried too, you know.

Friday, February 06, 2009

Dehumiliation & Redignification

Thomas Friedman wrote two words in “The Earth is Flat” that lodged themselves in my mind. He advocated the “dehumiliation” and “redignification” of people. He was talking about the Middle East, but I think it applies to humans everywhere.

Less humiliation and more dignity – are you up for it?

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Darien Gap

They say the Darien Gap – the sliver of land between the Panama Canal and Colombia – is a lawless stretch of impassable, gangster-infested jungle. But if it’s impassable and nobody ever goes there – who do the gangsters rob?
And are they stupid? Why don’t they rob people where there actually are people?

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Stern on CSR

Stefan Stern has a go at CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) in the Financial Times today. “Thank goodness,” he writes, “now the recession’s here we can forget all that nonsense about [CSR] and get back to trying to make some money.”

Consumers will buy cheap, unethical stuff anyway, he says. Not because they are evil, but often because they have no choice. And the notion about businesses and consumers coming together as one big happy family to save the planet belongs in fantasyland.

But how about seeing the main social responsibility of companies to a) pay taxes, b) treat their staff well and c) do no harm. Is there room for that idea here on Earth?

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Month one check-in

So a month has passed – how is that New Year’s resolution coming along?
That’s what I thought.
I think part of the problem is that we promise to get better at something we’re crap at, which is often a sign that we don’t enjoy it much in the first place.
What if we promised to try to excel at something we’re good at instead? Chances are we would actually improve, stick to our resolution, feel successful and end up spending time doing stuff we enjoy doing?
I hereby promise to watch more TV and not get distracted by writing blog entries and stuff.

(No, this isn’t my original idea. Not much on this blog is. It’s a thought from the Happiness Hypothesis, which I get a dose of every day.)

Monday, February 02, 2009

“Daddy, no!”

I know we’re supposed to trash Armageddon, but I saw it at a memorable time in my life, in an amazing theater with a great friend, so I have fond memories. Mainly, though, I like it for that scene towards the end where Bruce Willis says goodbye to Liv Tyler when he knows he is going to die. It’s one of the few scenes in movie history that makes me choke up, and I know I’m not the only one. Who wants to confess first?

So I guess what I’m trying to say is – do we have to trash stuff (or love stuff) whole-heartedly, or can we admit there are magic gray areas? Someone said ignorant people prefer to see things in black and white, but the wise can see nuances. So can we give Bush credit for anything good? And can we allow Obama to be bad, uninformed or just confused now and then?