|
The Buzz
By Michael Alan Hamlin
October 13, 2003
If you are out on a Friday evening and decompressing
from another long, strenuous week, buzz is that slightly intoxicated
feeling that flows through you after the first beer - when your
feet seem to leave the ground, and you smile contemplating the evening
before you. For a politician or fashion designer - alike more ways
than one might imagine at first blush - buzz is when everyone is
talking about you. It's being the flavor of the month, or the year,
or the decade.
A place can buzz, too. I just got off the phone with
a Washington DC-based editor who called to reminisce about his time
in Asia. And he confessed that "there's just no buzz here,
the way there is out there." Buzz is excitement, it's intense
interest, and it's a wonderful feeling. And according to British
business consultant David Freemantle, market leaders buzz for all
these reasons.
Freemantle is not your usual wavy-haired charismatic
consultant. For one thing, he's big, probably weighing in somewhere
around 250 pounds. You forget that, however, pretty quickly. What
leaves a lasting impression is his talent for helping people learn
through story telling. The prolific author of 12 books, Freemantle
keeps participants to his public presentations spellbound by relating
story after story - almost all from personal experience - illustrating
why some companies buzz, while others go buzz-less.
He hasn't always been a business consultant. Freemantle
holds a PhD in chemistry, and his first job was making Mars candy
bars. That explains somewhat his size. He also worked for computer
maker ICL and diesel engine manufacturer Perkins Engines before
joining the board of British Caledonian, a regional European airline.
His work at British Caledonian acquainted him with the pleasures
of frequent and wide travels, and he eventually transitioned from
corporate executive to author and consultant so that he could institutionalize
travel as a way of life.
Interestingly, Freemantle's twin brother is also a
PhD in chemistry, and a writer. However, brother Michael is the
European editor of a scientific journal, but that job also requires
frequent travel. The twin brothers have wives with the same first
names, both have four children, three boys and a girl, and each
has one adopted child. Both live in Windsor, where Freemantle says
his closest neighbor is the Queen.
Freemantle was in Manila last week speaking before
around 100 executives interested in creating buzz in their organizations.
He believes that many companies have mastered the important and
on-going tasks of business process improvement, financial control,
and high productivity. But he also believes they've concentrated
on these hard business areas to the detriment of the soft business
issues.
"Effective customer relationships," Freemantle
said in his presentation, "require that you get the 'heartware'
right. Strong customer relationships come from the heart, as well
as the mind." Although most executives would probably agree
with Freemantle, many companies focus exclusively on hard indicators
of competitiveness because they can be easily measured. That makes
establishing targets easier, as well as measuring progress toward
their attainment.
But that's not the case, apparently, with many top
CEOs. Sir Richard Bransen, founder of the Virgin Group, told Freemantle
recently that, "I have three priorities: people, customers,
and shareholders." When asked to explain, Bransen said, "To
get the shareholder thing right, we have to get the customer thing
right. To get the customer thing right, we have to get the people
thing right. So people are my priority. My essential advice to any
manager is that people are everything."
As Fortune magazine reported recently, Bransen may
not be the most successful billionaire around, but "if you
were able to trade places with any corporate chieftain, wouldn't
it be Richard Branson?" Author Betsy Morris explained, "He
simply has the most fun. Branson's greatest business feat, perhaps,
has been to engineer a breathtaking life for himself." Much
of the success in creating that life is likely due to his penchant
for passing happiness along.
There are examples closer to home as well. Freemantle
cites the case of a Singapore hotel general manager that told him,
"My main job is to make my staff happy. If they are happy,
our customers will be happy." And logistics company TNT's CEO
Alan Jones notes about his near-constant travel between company
operations: "When I visit a depot I have only one objective:
to leave the people more motivated than when I arrived."
The Singapore GM feels so strongly about his people's happiness
that he tells them not to come to work if they are feeling unhappy.
"Their unhappiness will rub off on customers," he says.
Happiness may not be measurable, but for these top managers and
many others Freemantle has interviewed, it's the stuff of competitive
advantage. Gee, I like that buzz.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is currently
at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing of Asian
Professionals into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2003 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
|
