Motivational Speakers | After Dinner Speakers | Keynote Speakers | JLA Speaker Bureau - JLA

JLA: What have we learned from this recession?
JB: A few organisations decided to invest in development rather than the typical knee-jerk reaction to recession - to shrink costs. Today they are doing much better than before. Others learned that people don't just work for money.

JLA: So what has changed?
JB: Values (true ones, not those you see on coffee mugs) are starting to be taken seriously. ‘Why do I come to work?’ is becoming a more important question. This is only the start of a long quest for meaning, individually and organisationally.

JLA: What can we do to ensure sustained recovery?
JB: Align everything (processes, metrics, policies, tools, structures, careers and rewards) to add customer value. Stop reinforcing internal loops which only drive silo mindsets and result in a 'you owe me for working here' culture. Instead focus on what’s outside the organisation.

JLA: What’s the main challenge facing today’s leaders?
AC: The pace of change. Our generation has seen greater change than any generation in history. The challenge for leaders and decision makers is to make sense of it and adapt to it according to their own values. This becomes more, not less important as change accelerates.

JLA: What defines good leadership?
AC: The ability to set clear objectives and work towards them with a robust thought-through strategy, all the time dealing with whatever tactical considerations are required. The first is easy. The second is hard. The third can only be effective if the first two are clear.

JLA: How do you stay ahead of the competition in difficult times?
AC: Always challenge and disrupt your own assumptions. Test your strategy. Question it. Update it if you need to. Avoid the comfort zone. Think about yourself as your opponents might do – and remember that trust is not just about the past.

JLA: What are the biggest lessons you learned about crisis management?
AC: Don't accept you’re in a crisis just because everyone says you are. In my ten years with Tony Blair, we had six genuine crises but hundreds of situations described as such. Once you find yourself in a real crisis set clear objectives, devise strategy from the centre and pursue it with real aggression. Remember at all times that however bad it is, it will end.

JLA: Is the media too powerful?
AC: I don't believe the media is as powerful as commonly assumed. Politicians and other decision-makers have the power to make major decisions that affect everyone's lives. Too many politicians and decision-makers across the board are far too consumed by the media, and far too cowed by it.

December 2008

JLA: Do we have a problem with risk aversion?
FF: Yes – it starts with a reluctance to allow children to live, breathe and gain experiences unsupervised. We have to encourage their sense of adventure and resilience, and give them more time in adult-free environments.

JLA: And in business?
FF: Business also wants a risk-free environment where the unexpected can be managed. It seems far more interested in producing codes, guides, mission statements and rules - all to save individuals the trouble of having to think and learn from their own experience.

JLA: But business has to guard against claims of one kind or another?
FF: True – and what’s most regrettable about the so-called ‘compensation culture’ is its impact on the quality of services and community relations. The threat of litigation creates a preoccupation with risk assessment, taking managers’ energy away from service delivery.

JLA: What of employee rights – do they also produce unintended consequences?
FF: Procedures to deal with harassment and discrimination often give a conflict a whole new lease of life. The problem is that routine disputes become politicised and bullying becomes an all-purpose charge. My advice is to throw away the rule book, where possible, and come up with rules that work for you.

JLA: Where should public spending cuts be made?
Ken: Let’s have no more nuclear weapons and cut the military budget to the European average – and stop popping all over the world invading countries.

David: I agree we shouldn’t upgrade Trident. Another thing I would cut is middle class welfare. It’s perverse to give well off people the state’s money - give them lower taxes, not welfare.

JLA: Are we returning to a clear ideological divide between the main parties? 
Ken: Yes – and I loathe the crap about elections and politics being about whether or not you like someone. I disagree with almost everything she did, but Thatcher wrenched the whole debate in the direction she wanted because she believed in something and was prepared to lose rather than betray her principles. Politics is not about electing nice people, it’s about making decisions.

JLA: And will we see a reduction in the size of the state?
David: As it stands the state doesn’t respond well enough to its client base - if that happens in business you go bankrupt. The NHS budget was doubled and yet we don’t get double the service. We must do something about the tendency of the state to spend our money without delivering an improved outcome.

Ken: When I became Mayor I was able to act quickly because Blair created an executive post. Cabinet Ministers should have the same power to hire and fire as far down the chain as necessary. There are some smart people in government departments but it’s a wholly risk-averse, inward-looking bureaucracy.

JLA: So what changes are we likely to see?
David: Many people are in favour of an austerity approach, but they won’t like it when it addresses itself to them. The question is, will the government be able to hold the line and use the crisis to mould a more responsive, effective state.

Ken: At a time of crisis you get the chance to set the agenda for a generation ahead. This is a definite opportunity to remake the entire political and social structure of the country.

JLA: What are the key principles of customer service?
AM: Customer service tends to reflect an organisation’s internal culture, so treat staff as you would like your customers to be treated. You can’t just teach it and stick it on the outside of an unhappy organisation.
 
JLA: What can big business learn from SMEs?
AM: Many large organisations still need to learn what small businesses have always known: your people are your prime asset. After all, why do we always return to the same hairdresser? It’s usually less to do with price, and everything to do with the power of personal relationships. 

JLA: How can a business quickly transform its reputation for customer service?
AM: Improving unfriendly processes will make your business more attractive, but that alone won’t bring loyalty and advocacy. Only a consistently engaging experience will lead to customers identifying you as special and different. 

JLA: What about the power of social networking?
AM: Social networking is moving the control of brands from owner to customer. Type your business into Google followed by ‘complaint’ or ‘review’, and you will see who has the power over reputation.

JLA: How do you motivate people when pay rises are out of the question?
AM: In the current climate, security and working for an organisation that treats its employees as assets is far more motivating than a minimal pay rise.

JLA: What can the public sector learn from business?
AM: Huge effort is focused on activity that brings very little return. Instead of across-the-board cuts, changes in process could enable services to be maintained, or even improved, at lower cost. (Having said that, businesses can learn more from the public sector than they might choose to believe.) 

JLA: What has recession taught us about consumer behaviour?
AM: Don’t try to be all things to all people. Come up with a compelling proposition for your target customers and aim to win on perceived value, not just price.

JLA: What can the public sector learn from business?
NM: There’s more to cost control than cuts. Efficiencies mean better ways of doing things, even if up-front investment is needed to achieve savings downstream. 

We need a critical look at what is and isn’t core, a willingness to outsource some non-core functions and a determination to find synergies – a priority in business.

People aren’t motivated to find extra savings, because they’re clawed back without any benefits to the Department. Incentives are needed to share services and to stop re-inventing the wheel.
 
The twin system of politicians and public officials makes accountability confused, even where they have the same objectives. We need greater clarity, reflected in organisational structures.

Business has learned that without appropriate skills, the bottom line will suffer. The public sector has a crying need for better skills in commissioning, contract and project management.

Genuine revolutions, those that define an epoch and change societies for ever, are long in the making. They are the culmination of many different influences, pressures and aspirations that brew for decades, but then burst onto the world stage in a single convulsive moment that seems to come out of the blue. So it is with the Arab Spring.

For foreign correspondents there are the dangerous but hard to resist calls to make predictions and cast iron conclusions. I have been in this position several times before: after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the death of Yasser Arafat, the day Baghdad fell and many other times. At each of those moments I’ve reminded myself of the famous quote by Mao Zedong’s right hand man and the first Premiere of Communist China, Zhou Enlai. When asked what he thought of the French Revolution of 1789, he replied “It’s too soon to say.” The same applies with what we are witnessing now across the Arab world - but I feel there are already some things about which we can be certain.

It began in Tunis with the overthrow of President Ben Ali. I vividly remember standing in the central square watching a kaleidoscopic crowd of Tunisians from every walk of life and every generation chanting a pulsating refrain: “Freedom is ours, we will take it.” There were grandmothers in conservative headscarves, businessmen, unemployed youths and young girls with blonde highlighted hair, all voicing the same aspiration. In that instance I forgot about my assignment, whatever commentary I had to deliver to the camera, I just felt profoundly moved by what I was witnessing. For the first time in many years of reporting the Middle East, here was the other Arabia that had for so long been obscured and drowned out by dictatorship, religious dogma and an economic system built on nepotism and cronyism. So what is this ‘other Arabia’ revealed by the Arab Spring?

If there is one thing you learn from reading this, let it be this statistic: almost 70% of the 350 million people that make up the Arab world are under 35 years old. Despite the snapshots you often see on western TV news, this generation does not see itself in the way the West does. They do not have an obsession with sectarian traditions, Ba’ath party socialism and anti-western demonstrations. And there’s one very important reason for this: because before the Arab Spring, there was another seismic change in the region - the Media Revolution. 

It started with Al Jazeera in 1997, but now there are hundreds of channels across the Middle East, from MTV to racy sitcoms that mimic Friends and Frasier. The most watched programme in the Arab world is X Factor - Xseer Al Najah, which means ‘The Essence of Success.’ Before that the most popular show, at the height of the insurgency in Iraq, was Arab Pop Idol. 

An independent, brave and iconoclastic media has swept the region and given rise to new aspirations, not dictated by ruling families and dicatorships. What’s more, through the media Arabs are able to see and empathise with each others lives: Egyptians know how Jordanians live, Yemenis know how Algerians feel, and so on. Young Arabs also see the repression, corruption, dashed hopes and youth culture emerging from Iraq to Morocco - and what’s more they are able to communicate about it. This free media, from TV stations to Facebook and Twitter cannot be controlled by state institutions. That is their genius. They are here to stay, bringing to an end the ability of authoritarian regimes to hide repression - whether it’s anti-government riots in Syria, protests in Bahrain or opposition to Ghaddafi.

The media revolution has led to the other permanent change: the death of fear. Standing in that square in Tunis, that’s what I found most moving. Suddenly a nation that had been afraid of its rulers lost the crushing feeling of helplessness and dared to stand up for itself. “How many of us can they shoot,” one elderly man told me during a demonstration, “these soldiers and policemen, they have relatives, will they shoot all of us for the sake of this tyrant and his family?” The answer, of course, was no. That is the single greatest fear for all the rulers in the Middle East. When the whole nation loses its fear of you, who will continue to the bitter end to preserve your rule? Even seemingly immovable tyrants backed by the West like Mubarak found out that when your people no longer fear you - everyone, even your army and your western backers will desert you.

I cannot predict what will happen next; whether the Syrian authorities will survive or whether NATO and the Arab League will support the opposition, or whether the uprisings will spread to such critical western interests as Saudi Arabia. But what I am certain of is that this generation of young Arabs want more control over their lives. They want greater economic opportunities and freedoms of the kind they see in other parts of the world on their TV screens, and they are beginning to lose their fear of regimes that can no longer contain and control what people read and say and think. 

What I find so frustrating is when people in the West talk about the Arab Spring as a dangerous and destabilising development. “Will the Muslim Brotherhood get in? What will happen to oil supplies? Might Islamists seize power?” There is a sense that the changes are to be feared. 

In fact this is the best opportunity the West has had to remake its relationship with the Middle East for a very long time. It may take a long time and there will be many steps backwards along the way, but we must not give the impression of fearing the change. We should try to be a midwife to it.

JLA: Are there any real gains from space exploration?
CP: Absolutely – everything from mobile telecoms and sat nav to our knowledge of the ozone layer comes from what we’ve achieved in space. Even Beagle 2 made a contribution, with our technology now being used to speed up early diagnosis of TB. 

JLA: How would you describe your attitude to risk?
CP: Entrepreneurs accept that only a small percentage of ideas come to fruition or make a profit. Likewise scientists make good entrepreneurs, because they know 90% of the results from an experiment turn out not as anticipated.

JLA: How do you create a culture of innovation?
CP: Innovation is risky. Edison discovered 1500 ways how not to make a light bulb before he did it successfully. You only discover limits through failure. The inherently risk-averse should be encouraged to take risks by seeing that failure is not the end of the world. 

JLA: What part does technology play in innovation?
CP: To me technology is innovation, and it’s often bred by lack of resources. If you don’t have the money or technology to address your problem you have to think harder. Scientists thrive on problems, and questions without answers.

JLA: What will the next generation of technology make possible?
CP: Overcoming the energy problem is getting a lot of attention but that doesn’t mean somebody working on their own won’t find a way of allowing people to flap their arms and fly. You can’t predict Eureka moments.

JLA: How should business react to climate change?
TS: The deadline we face is the first in history set by nature, not man - and only those who recognise that will thrive. Although there are climate change deniers, there are few who deny that we could work better with the grain of nature.

JLA: Can green technology really come to the rescue?
TS: Eden has commissioned the first commercial geo thermal plant. When it comes onstream in 2012 it should change perceptions of this renewable resource. More than 10% of all UK energy needs could be met from Cornwall alone.

JLA: How do you inspire people to embrace innovation?
TS: There’s no mystery. Enlightened organisations profit by opening up to change. Leaders need to show successful examples of innovation, help the resistant to overcome their fear and explain the risk of doing nothing.

JLA: How do you build cooperation between the opposing interests?
DS: Find common ground. Ensure all parties want to achieve the goals you are setting. In Northern Ireland if people didn't want to make peace, if they weren’t psychologically ready, they weren’t willing to cooperate. Building trust is key.

JLA: In this context, what are the principles of good leadership?
DS: A leader should have a strong degree of humanity. To inspire trust and popularity you must be approachable - talking and listening to people is very important. Negotiate. Give others the freedom to input, don't lead by dictat.

JLA: How do you handle criticism and failure?
DS: Edward de Bono says that if you come across an immovable obstacle in the road, find a way of getting round it. If your team is in disarray and failing then you have the wrong team - they are no longer working together effectively to achieve the objectives. Step back, take stock, pick a new team and instill common aims.

JLA: What has this recession taught us about globalisation?
MZ: Because global trade is such an important part of all manufacturing, for example, the recession has led to a collapse far greater than was the case in the Great Depression. It globalises the effects of a major downturn.

JLA: Will capitalism itself look different when we emerge?
MZ: Capitalism only looked like ‘capitalism’ when compared with the so-called ‘communism’ of the USSR. In fact it was always a very diverse phenomenon. In general there will be more state control of economies (the Anglo-American model is on life support even in those two countries), but the forms of state control will vary from country to country. In the end, what Greenspan did was to make the Chinese model a more dominant paradigm than the US model. Thanks, Alan. 

JLA: Is the G20 capable of agreeing and imposing smarter regulation?
MZ: No way. As the number of countries involved in global deliberations has increased, the chances for coordinated responses has diminished.
 
JLA: How do you regain trust, re-build confidence and re-kindle ambition?
MZ: Ambition remains aplenty. The good news from this debacle is that work and value will return to the fore. People will return to making money the old fashioned way - through entrepreneurial activities. The scams are largely over; work is back. Long term this is a good thing.

JLA: Can public sector leaders learn from the private sector, and vice versa?
MZ: They can, but probably won’t. In Europe the public sector will continue to impose itself on the private in ways inimical to faster economic growth. There’s nothing wrong with that because the population accepts the trade off – but in the US it makes the public about as angry as the people of Tehran following the death of the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri.

JLA: Which sectors/business models are most likely to thrive in the next year?
MZ: In the US the clear winner will be healthcare. It's already up 17%, and it will go higher. Defence is another, teamed with electronics. Otherwise education will benefit from new expenditure as Americans see it as their way out of the trap of low paying jobs. In Europe, I would bet on Brussels!