Corporate Rudeness

by Graham Davies

Meetings cancelled at the last minute. Unanswered emails. Promised documents not sent. Phone calls interrupted by you being placed on hold. These are typical examples of Corporate Rudeness in 2009. But if you think they should just be ignored, then you are part of the problem.

Every time you ignore this sort of behaviour, you are encouraging the perpetrator to treat you badly again. And again.

I call these things squelches, named after the annoying sound you hear on a computer when it refuses to accede to a reasonable request. Each individual squelch from a business contact may well not amount to much. Nevertheless, always make a note every time you receive one.

This is not merely so that you can nurse a grudge. Each squelch is an indication that you should be careful about how you deal with that person in the future. A high cumulative score on the Squelchometer means that you should simply not trust that person, or go out of your way to help them when your time could be spent on more worthy people.

I have found that a sequence of minor squelches are clear warning signs of a major squelch (cancellation of a contract, breathtaking verbal rudeness, offensively inaccurate criticism of work done).

A serial squelcher is someone that you must decide never to take any shit from again, no matter how big a client they are.

Get rid of them before they dump on you.

The Speaker has no clothes
by Graham Davies

Or at least none like the bloke before him had.

Instead of a velvet waistcoat, winged collar and bands, Jon Bercow has decided to wear a modern business suit. This has horrified many tradtionalists.

Jack Holland, who owns the tailoring company that makes the old-style garb, feels that Bercow has made a dangerous choice....because he has thrown away the visual badges of office that helped to encourage respect for the position. He also points out that the old Speaker's Wig was a very useful device when it came to pretending not to hear comments that were best ignored.

Mr Holland's views are a superb illustration of why it is time to say Goodbye to the pantomime costume. No-one could respect the mumbling incompetence of Michael Martin even if his clothes were made on Krypton.

It is time for the House of Commons to go Cold Turkey from Expenses Addiction, and the new look epitomises the new attitiude. John Bercow's visual Micro-Message is No More Traditional Clothes, No More Traditional Bullshit.

The Speaker Speaks
by Graham Davies

There was an evening a few years ago when John Bercow was taking questions from the floor after a speech he had given to his constituency Conservative Association. The event ran past the expected finish time and eventually someone asked the Chairman, "Do we have time for one more question?"

The Chairman glanced at his watch and said, "Probably. But we certainly don't have time for one of John's answers."

Within his own party, what Bercow lacked in popularity, he always made up for in sheer length. There was even a time when he used to run public speaking courses for Tory candidates. He is a genuine enthusiast of spoken communication.

I am not too bothered whether he is a Traditionalist, a Reformist or a Couldntgiveatossist. I am just delighted that, at long last, the House of Commons has got a Speaker who can actually Speak.

Risky Presenting
by Graham Davies

This is a brief summary of a keynote that I delivered at the AIRMIC Conference in Bournemouth today. It won't make much sense unless you were there....and you were listening!

STEP 1: AUDIENCE RISK ASSESSMENT
There is no excuse for not doing this. Always ask 5 questions:
Who exactly are they?
Why are they there in that room?
What do they expect to hear?
What do they need to hear (often a different answer to the immediately preceding question)?
What must you give them in the presentation that guarantees that you get what you want from having given the presentation?

NB Most people have a shorter attention span than they did 3 years ago. Treat an audience as being full of Director/Driver types, unless you have good reason to suppose otherwise.

STEP 2: DECIDE ON YOUR FINISHING POSITION
This what you want the audience to know, think or feel by the time you have finished speaking.

STEP 3: FORGE A MICRO-MESSAGE
That crystallises what you would say if you only had 10 seconds in which to say it.

STEP 4: BRAINSTORM 3 KEY ELEMENTS FROM THE MICRO-MESSAGE
Only the stuff they must know should make the cut.

STEP 5: SHARPEN A SPIKE FOR BOTH ENDS OF THE SPEAR.

SO......say it, support it.....and SHUT IT.

ANY POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE COMMENTS WOULD BE VERY WELCOME.

IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION, I PROMISE TO ANSWER IT WITHIN 24 HOURS.

Gordon the Gob
by Graham Davies

Ramsay this time, not Brown.

I don't mind him comparing a high-profile Australian female TV presenter to a fat pig. It 's not clever, funny or remotely entertaining, but it doesn't upset me. And the presenter in question had the chance to carry out a pretty good counter-strike. On her own show she pointed out that the state of Gordon's marriage was a good indication of how effective he is in the way he presents himself to women.

Essentially, I have no problem with the Gob verbally attacking people who are in a position to give him a good kicking in return.

What I do find obnoxious is the way he likes to abuse people who are not able to hit back...the ones who just have to take it, like the back-stage crew and make-up team for his Australian TV show.

Fortunately, all this was nicely captured on camera, so this is not mere hearsay. The petty bully in him has been properly exposed.

I look forward to appearing on one of his programmes. Brace yourself and see what happens.

Gordon the Rhino
by Graham Davies

To lose two Government Ministers is careless. To lose eleven is comically catastrophic. But Gordon Brown's main presentational asset is not his academic brain...it is his thick skin.

It takes a remarkable man to be able to sit through a sequence of several speeches by senior colleagues, all of whom shared the same Micro-Message: your continued presence is destroying us.

Of course, because the Labour Party is so, well...laborious in its electoral procedures, it would take months to force him out, no matter how many MPs were against him. This means that Gordon can relish the prospect of peddling the following lines over the next few weeks:

• I am confident that the Party has full confidence in me
• The Euro-Election results were certainly not a vote of no confidence in me by the general public
  
• I am supremely confident of leading Labour to victory in the next General Election

This would be quite some Confidence Trick. But, unlike Margaret Thatcher, Brown will not end his career by quitting. His Micro-Message to the world is still Bollocks to all of you, I'm staying.

Careful in Cairo
by Graham Davies

Obama's performance in Cairo was largely an exercise in academic speechmaking. He was using the words and tone of a Thinker, not a Warrior.

It was a carefully calculated construction. He had clearly taken advice from a variety of sources to make sure that his religious references were entirely accurate. And his use of quotes from the Koran was very clever indeed. Imagine the horror if George W Bush had ever tried this!

He apologised for some past American mistakes and was careful to say how important is the role of Islam in his own country. He struck a note of thoughtful, but firm reconciliation which could never have been within reach of his predecessor. It was a solid, if somewhat bland, performance.

But the speech did not have a strong, compelling and memorable Micro-Message. There was nothing strikingly new that would inspire the Muslim world to bury the past and move on to the future.

Perhaps this is a blessing. This was not the time for simplistic slogans ("Yes We Khan!!?"). This was never likely to be a speech that changed the world. But perhaps it has opened the door for a a change of attitude.

Cameron's Silly PR Delay
by Graham Davies

Gordon Brown has run out of presentational cards. The "safe-pair-of-hands-in-a-crisis" card has been used too often. The "better-the-devil-you-know" card is just as unattractive to his own MPs as it is to the electorate.

With the Brown Beast at bay, Cameron should be presenting the Conservatives as being ready to fight an election at any time. He has tried a rather silly PR stunt instead: he has called for more people to apply for the Conservative Party Candidate's list. This is his way of saying that Fresh Faces my mean Fresh Politics.

It is a difficult and demanding process just getting on this list. And Cameron has not mentioned to the public that there are already more than 800 people on it. 100s more have now applied.

Of course, there could be several more Tory MPs that fall victim to Expenses Flu. But I am certain that there will be no more than a total of 25 Tory-held seats that will need to select a new candidate. Competition will be even more intense than it was before. I am also certain that none of those Constituency Associations will be remotely interested in selecting someone who has just decided that he has become interested in full-time politics within the last fortnight.

The influx onto the list has meant that some selections which were going to occur in May have been delayed to the Autumn, so as to give the newcomers chance to take part.

The bottom line is that Cameron's call for more people to join the game has had the effect of making his party less ready to fight an election. This is a bad mistake.