If you look good and dress well, you don’t need a purpose in life.
Robert Pante
Well, that will be where I am going wrong 
Archive for the 'Values' Category
The world still holds its breath (although its all over bar the shouting) with regard to the US Presidential election perhaps articulated best by my fave online daily cartoon strip UserFriendly.
However despite all the furore in the States, plenty of news is happening on November 3rd:
Sheikh Zayed bi Sultan al-Hahyan has died
Dignitaries are gathering in the United Arab Emirates for the funeral of its president, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, who died on Tuesday aged 86.
UAE citizens speak of a profound sense of loss over the death of Zayed, their only ruler since independence in 1971.“Farewell our father, our sheikh and sage of the Arab world,” Khaleej newspaper said in a banner headline.
I know little about the UAE, but his loss is obviously keenly felt - my condolences.
In theSudan, more abuses in a dreadful conflict:
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on the Sudanese government to stop its troops forcing refugees out of camps in the western Darfur region.
In Economic matters both the EU,
In Lisbon in 2000, the EU agreed on a plan to turn Europe into the world’s most powerful and competitive economy.
It was recently called a failure by a top Brussels official and has since been complicated by the EU’s expansion.
and perhaps more convincingly China,
As China gets richer and stronger, the world is coming to share its belief that it merits recognition and respect as a great power.
Through a combination of economic dynamism, skilful diplomacy and understated threat, it is already regaining much of its old imperial supremacy across Asia.Filling the void left by the former Soviet Union, it has also emerged as the likeliest challenger to the United States as a global superpower.
- seek to assert economic dominance over and perhaps more properly instead of, the US. An interesting statement from former Chinese foreign minister & vice-premier, Qian Qichen from monday:
The former vice-premier accused the US administration of trying to “rule over the whole world”.
He added that the “philosophy of the ‘Bush Doctrine’ is in essence force”.
In an article printed in the state-run China Daily newspaper, Mr Qian also said the US-led Iraq war had sparked an increase in terrorist attacks.
Whereas the regieme has now ‘properly’ changed in Afghanistan as Karzai is declared president despite some irregularities with voting (no different to the US then):
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said the decision to have only foreigners on the panel raised “a number of concerns” since many of the problems with the elections were blamed on international staff and organisations.
And elsewhere it appears Slavery, in its numerous forms, is stil an issue:
and on a more positive note:
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So lots going on in the world. Most of it impacted by the US election but perhaps not as much as the US would like to think.
Not sure what prompted this post per se but it seemed, like US news, too much focus has been given to the US. Despite the election’s importance, the world as a whole will need to look elsewhere for answers, whatever the ultimate result turns out to be.
“Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.”
Just read this and struck me in two ways:
- Relationships - both sexual and
plutonicplatonic, friends and family - Interests / Hobbies - ideas that capture your interests more than simply that’s fun
Assuming that ‘Enlarging’ is equivalent to growth in this instance then I am a very lucky bod, as I love and am loved by some wonderful people and I have a number of interests which I love and which sustain me (of which one is of course blogging!!)
VBG
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music | George Michael shuns music industry
Old news now but I think my view is that I applaud his stance in that any new music he produces will be purely for his enjoyment and sold only to donate money to charity - good luck!
Gary happens to be an excellent (well praise costs you nothing if its true) and well respected blogger. John Moore mentioned his blog on Brand Activism and therefore I decided to take a read. I realised (somewhat slowly) that Gary had commented here before (regarding my ‘at risk’ scenario in October) and his kind words were gratefully received, especially considering he himself is without portfolio at present.
While browsing the site I was intrigued (seems to be my favoured word today) by the title ‘Slaying the RIAA’ and then I read it and was inspired and motivated. The idea itself, essentially the disintermediation of record companies (and therefore the RIAA) reminds me of Scott McCloud’s Creating Comics and Reinventing Comics whereby disintermediating the publishers gives the artist and reader (consumer) greater value. Gary’s proposal is a similar and even more stimualting proposal to do this for the music industry. It is an idea whose time has come IMHO and which given enough of a community behind it could start to tip…
to producing a new portal where subscribing promoters and studios could directly announce their content and recording sessions, but where any RSS-enabled band, promoter, studio or venue could get their feed aggregated for the cost of an email message telling me the URL. I would develop the core engine, host the site, moderate and maintain the site, weed the spam, roll out new services, and fold all custom developments back into the creative commons of the Drupal.org archives.
In short, I would be working for you, the real music industry.
Please take some time to read Gary’s article in full - How to Slay the RIAA.
If you like it send him some encouragement. If you want to see the system send him some money and pledge your support. I have.
Keep our promises, own our problems, and fix them right first time
Slightly delayed from yesterday (all my troubles seemed so far away). I always felt that this particular ‘value’ was really aimed at Operational, particularly call centre staff. I also found it difficult trying to think of good, positive examples, again plenty of negative, never seen senior management live up to this type stuff. So until something occurs I’ll leave it here and point you to nthellworld where the majority of examples are in the negative.
Treat customers and each other as we would want to be treated ourselves
Okay as promised this is the first of the list of ntl values. The entire list are, I have to say, fairly inspiring, although it should be pointed out that the original presentation of them was via an inhouse magazine. Reinforcement of them has consisted of… er… no can’t remember anything particularly.
Anyway back to the point. I can easily be cycnical about these things however, positive stories:
1) A customer of ntl has a fault with their service. Despite repeated calls no one had fixed the problem. She wrote to the local paper (particulalry vitriolic…). An engineer upon reading the story goes to the customer’s house and fixes the problem, without being assigned. (He also mentions that he would have be disciplined if his supervisors knew what he was doing).
2) Customer with special needs has a telephone fault. No engineer times are left for the day. If no one attends today customer will be without a phone for 48 hours. Bad for customer and bad for ntl. ntl employee dealing with the call escalates to his supervisor. Supervisor (an ex-field service engineer) gets in his car and fixes the problem. Luckily he is praised by management.
3) Employee grandmother dies and employee is upset and distressed. In addition other pressures are mounting on him outside work. Official policy says he is allowed up to 5 working days off. Manager gives him as much time off as he needs to straighten out the pressures. employee delivers excellent work for the rest of employment.
What is interesting to me, while I had to spend time thinking about these examples, I could think of no instance where someone of a senior level delivered a story or actually lived the value - plenty of examples which are negative but none positive. Maybe this is just me - I can tend to be cynical and negative but I just cannot recall.
I think I’m going to have to do a bit of research and ask my colleagues for examples. Some of them are very positive
At present my conclusion from today? Some people naturally aspire to such values and hold them personally as being true. Because this is so doesn’t mean that the culutre exists to deliver on the values and as I suggest I haven’t seen senior management (executives) walk the walk. Delighted to be proved wrong however.
we can prove our work in countless cases, we demonstrate for perhaps the first time a coherent set of tools, expertise and thinking that can be used by corporations and individuals alike to truly value the relationships between real people and the system, the business and the planet.
I’m so glad the body language is changing and with our combined support we may make it permanent.
An uplifting positivity affirming post from Beyond Branding. I myself have not seen that change (but then why would I?). I only really see how life is within ntl and a few other suppliers, although that is really only fleeting and not of great depth. Values have been, and still seem to be paid lip servie without actually being taken seriously the point:
They are not smiling quite so patronisingly about values… is not happening here. We have vluaes, and visions, and objectives and someone occasionally insists we should know them and take heed but I have yet to see a leader live them. That’s what I want - people to walk the walk. Lead with passion tolerance and understanding. Show people the way don’t expect them to follow orders.
And guess what? Look after me and I’ll walk bare foot over glass for you. Blame me for things that are ultimately your responsiblity and I’ll head for the door.
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