Guest blog by Sue Chapple, Head of Revenue Management of EDF Energy Plc - 'No pain no gain?'

For three weeks in July every year, our household becomes totally and utterly obsessed with the Tour de France.  This is a relatively new phenomenon, which has crept up on us over the last five years – but still now, our total immersion with the event, takes even us by surprise.  The ‘phone goes unanswered, ironing builds to a veritable monster, the weeds gang up on us and the dog has to remind us he wants to be fed and walked!

 

So as the 2013 edition draws to a spectacular close and we are left feeling bereft, I wonder what, if anything, I can draw from the experience.

 

I suppose the overriding observation, every year, is the total and unswerving dedication to the cause.  The absolute commitment from every single rider, to every kilometre of the race, regardless of pain, weather, or gradient is remarkable.  Does this type of dedication exist at all, outside of the sporting arena?

 

Is it possible to harness just a tiny bit of this focus and desire and capture it for our own worlds? Or are the participants, by definition, simply a special breed that cannot be ‘recreated’ in any other environment?  Could we look at the Sky Team approach to ‘process improvement’ which, in the words of the great (Sir) Dave Brailsford, is all about marginal gain: if you work, methodically, to remove variances over which you have control and which have a negative impact, and aim to do 100 things one percent better – the impact in any walk of life will at the very least be noticeable and at best, incredible.

 

So far so good, now I wonder how my team will feel about the lycra suits………

 

Next week Philip King’s guest blogger will be Sue Kettle, Director of Membership & Support Services for the ICM.

Weekly Blog by Philip King, CEO of the ICM - 'Just the job'

Some of you who know me will know that, since I spend a fair amount of time on the road, I am an avid listener to audiobook biographies as I drive.  Last weekend I finished listening to the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. The audiobook is unabridged, and on 20 CDs lasting 25 hours so it took a few weeks, but what a listen and what a story!

  

I wouldn't suggest that he was an ideal role model for, in many respects, the book suggests Jobs' style and communication skills left much to be desired.  Nevertheless, he had some qualities without which Apple wouldn't have grown from a start-up in his parents' garage to the world's largest company, and without which the Apple products wouldn't have earned the reputation they have for simplicity, quality and intuitive use.  He brought ideas, art and technology together in ways that invented the future.

  

His ability to focus on a small number of projects or details to the exclusion of everything else allowed him to ensure they received absolute and undivided attention.  His relentless drive for perfection meant he never settled for second best and never compromised any of his design principles.  His ability to see the future for his and other products and predict likely trends enabled him to spot opportunities in the market that would otherwise have missed and indeed were often missed by other players already in those very markets.

  

Some leaders push innovation by being good at the big picture, others by mastering details, but Jobs did both relentlessly and delivered a range of products over 30 years that transformed whole industries.  He quoted Henry Ford as saying "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse; our job is to show people what they can have"; Jobs believed Apple should show people what they were going to want before they knew it themselves; he said Apple's task was to read things that were not yet on the page.  When you look at the graphical interface introduced on the Mac, iTunes music downloads, iPods, the iPhone and, most recently, the iPad, it's hard not to accept that he did exactly that.

  

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of his personality was his frequently cited "reality distortion field' which resulted in him seeing things as he believed they should be rather than as they really were, and in him refusing to accept that something couldn't be achieved.  At the end of the book the author says that almost all the many people he interviewed would share a litany of examples of how badly Steve treated them but end by saying how he got them to do things they never dreamed possible and which they didn't believe they were capable of.

  

If you get the chance, it's a cracking good read (or listen) and has some great good and bad examples from both of which there is much to learn.

To find out more about the Institute of Credit Management visit www.icm.org.uk