How to handle Russia

The Economist has a new editor. I learnt that she is a woman, a fact given away by John Micklethwait, in his excellent valedictory editorial. A bit of work on Google this morning reveals her name as Zanny Minton Beddoes.

I don’t know if it is a co-incidence, but this week saw by far the worst article I have ever read in the magazine, entitled “From Cold War to Hot War”, about Russia.

The piece could have been written by a retired colonel from the seventies. I remember at school that once a year some old guy in a faded uniform would come to speak to us. It was always the same, the purpose was to scare us with propaganda. I guess they thought public school kids might become opinion formers, or future recruits to military or intelligence. More likely, sensible schools wouldn’t have let these people near their kids. I remember misleading charts full of outsize Russian tanks seemingly on the point of invading Eastbourne – captain Mainwaring could not have done it better.

At college, I met my first Russian, a girl with many of the same quirks as the rest of us, a bit weird but in a normal, reassuring way. Before that, I seriously thought that all Russians were rabid communists. Once I had made the connection, I vowed never to be fooled by such nonsense again.

It was a good lesson, and one that has stood the test of time. I have developed a nose for censorship and a healthy scepticsm about the judgement of others. Such antennae have been especially active since moving to the US. Yesterday’s Russians have become today’s Muslims. But now it seems the Russians are back in the frame as well.

From the Economist, I have come to expect rigour, balance and some practical options. This article lacked all three.

I hated the regular twinning of EU and NATO. From the article, you could almost think they were the same organisation. In reality they are very different.

The EU promotes economic and human development among its member states. It does not threaten anyone, has admirable governance and attempts to be transparent. NATO is a military alliance. It aims to project military power and threat to promote the interests of its member states. It was formed specifically to contain Russia, and is dominated by the US. Its governance is far from transparent.

Viewed from Russia, the EU and NATO will appear completely different. One is a potential trading partner, a forum for development, and a threat only in terms of rule of business law and as a demonstration to Russian people that alternative economic models might be stronger than the Kremlin’s. The other is a direct, military threat, aimed at the throat of the bear at all times.

I hated the box “In the Kremlin’s pocket”. We were supposed to conclude that many political parties across Europe were somehow stooges for Russia. As far as I could tell, the only so-called evidence was that the FN in France had accepted a loan from Russia. The rest was innuendo, and pretty pathetic innuendo at that.

I hated the chart comparing Russia’s defence spending and NATO’s. It used the puerile device of starting from a year where Russia’s spending was lowest and then indexing – so that Russia’s spending now appeared more threatening.

But also striking, an ultimately more worrying, was the lack of ideas. The article noted how Putin was fighting on many fronts, and the tactics he uses, such as cycles taking military ground and then negotiating a pause. But I didn’t really see any thoughts about what to do about the situation. There was not even an opinion about the extent to arm the Ukrainian government – correctly pointing out that this would play into Putin’s hand by validating his story about the conflict being stoked from behind by the US.

I am no apologist for Putin. He was schooled in the KGB and shameless in tactics and disrespect for humanity. Actions in Chechnya, Abkhazia, Transdniester and Crimea are pretty indefensible, as was his cynical and inhumane reaction to the downing of the Malaysian airliner. The Litvinenko story is frightening and consistent.

But Putin and his coterie will only be controlled if we try to understand the world from their eyes. We can hazard some guesses.

Russian history of the last hundred years has been repetitive humiliation. Losses in both world wars were horrific. The state collapsed in the 1980’s. Afghanistan showed the ineptness of the military. They were lectured by Reagan and then Bush. The country was led by an alcoholic stooge – when Yeltsin danced at conferences or failed to get off a plane in Dublin, the rest of the world laughed, but just imagine the hurt that would cause in a patriot. For all his flaws, the only one that seemed to project any authority was Stalin. And the Russian Orthodox Church gives God’s cover for doing what it takes to restore greatness.

Then there is the world map. Go back far enough and choose your date, and Russia encompassed much of Europe. Even now, its sheer scale is truly awesome. When Putin was growing up, the borders with places like Ukraine or Lithuania were more like between administrative regions than nations. He’ll have been raised on pictures of a Russian Crimea or Georgia. In his mind, that is probably the correct order of things.

Then, as a KGB man, he must take a cynical but perhaps realistic view of the CIA. He will know the extent of covert operations during the cold war and the tactics employed, and how nothing much was dismantled after 1990. Small wonder he sees CIA plots in Kiev, Tbilisi and everywhere else – and is he wrong? Responses about democracy and the will of the people wear pretty thin when we see the democratic weakening of congress and the double standards over Crimea.

Finally, he’ll take a jaundiced view of the US itself. Here is a nation that undermines international organisations, defends an occupation, invades at will, seems to have a congress controlled by sinister money, and rescinds on agreements at will. When poked by tiny Cuba, the US went into a fifty-year sulk, but it still has the gall to talk of freedom and values. Now there is ill-disguised cynical economic war too, from a nation supposedly espousing free markets.

I guess that will be a large part of the Putin perspective. We can add in some paranoia and politics at home, a perpetual fear of everything and everyone and a controlling manipulation to manage the indefensible. Further, he will feel a horrible shame and jealousy of others that have shamed Russia economically.

This has to be the start of a basis to respond. A report for the UK government today found that poor diplomacy meant that the UK and EU did not realise what a threat the purported Ukraine/EU agreement at the end of 2013 would be seen in Russia. True, but surely you don’t need an army of diplomats to deduce this, merely a simple willingness to see the world through other eyes. This does not seem to have been a strength of US or UK foreign policy lately.

It will be hard now to find a workable accommodation over Ukraine, without more loss of life or loss of face or risk of escalation. The only place to start, as always, is to gain the high ground by respectful use of genuinely international institutions, for example by involving China, and by scaling down the military rhetoric.

The Economist was right about one thing: in the end the only way to offer a better life for Russians is to demonstrate stronger values: then the Russian people will in the end come around. It is a shame that our Western values are so easily diluted. Up until now, one beacon has been the Economist itself. We can only hope that this poor article is a one off, and that the magazine does not start to become part of the problem too.       

Agility in Business

I do some work for a company called Synthetron (www.synthetron.com). This blog follows a public session I recently organized there.

More news: My "A letter from Queens" was published in the Guardian Weekly this month. Here is the link to the online edition: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/03/letter-from-united-states-queens-new-york

The Synthetron team recently organised a business think tank session on the subject of Business Agility, defined for the session as the ability to react quickly to change. You can download the report from here: http://www.synthetron.com/bttreport/. The session gave me pause to reflect, not least about my own agility.

Most of us started the session thinking that more agility would be a good thing. We have read the stories about the modern technology companies who seem to be able to create and implement new business models in a few weeks, and most of us have seen our own companies struggle to do very much at all in that timescale.

People in the conversation also had a good idea what an agile environment would feel like. We’d be able to get decisions and take risks and make mistakes. There would be a lot of listening and learning, and not much bureaucracy. Things would feel small and fresh.

But then we were asked to think about what first steps would help make our environment more agile, and what KPI an “agility czar” might be judged against. This was harder. The energy in the discussion increased, but there were few synthetrons and more disagreement. It was generally agreed that attitudes and behaviours would be key. Somehow we would have to demonstrate trust and empowerment, and engage and listen more. But how?

There were plenty of interesting thoughts. Someone made a connection between agility and relentless performance management: if we are all given strict tasks and targets and judged against these, we might have less incentive (and less time) to react to what we see changing around us. That felt credible, and also disturbing: surely intense performance management is a good thing?

Sacrifices for Agility

Why was agility seen as so desirable, but so little seemed to be available to practically achieve it? The menu for everyone in the discussion would be quite different. And there might be wider messages available too.

The comment about performance management got me thinking. Perhaps other well-established practices also come at the expenses of agility. Many of us have endured attempts by our companies to become bigger, to harmonize practice, converge regions and demand standardisation. That is hardly likely to support agility – not only is personal initiative downplayed in favour of conformance, but also decision chains get slower and more complex. In my own career, I’m convinced I’ve seen more diseconomies of scale than I have economies, and every time I’ve been part of a standardisation programmes I think it has made things worse – at great expense and great distraction from the customer. Mergers are even worse.

Who wins from all these so-called good practices? Winners include managers who love predictability and control, and people looking to build senior careers in service functions like finance. Power hungry CEO’s can see the allure. Weak management teams can create distraction from losing to their competitors.

But the group who gains the most are consultants – especially the biggest ones and the IT ones like Accenture – and other advisors like lawyers. They win from the standardisation projects and they win from the customer that emerges at the end – more centralised, offering bigger projects and unlikely to hire boutique competitors.

I wonder who is conning whom here? It is certainly worth thinking about. It is not only agility that loses out every time, but simplification too. Work-life balance usually loses as well, as expectations at work become more global.

We produced a From-To table as part of the report. Looking down the To column, and imagining a large company run along those lines, it would certainly be refreshing, but it might be a bit chaotic as well. For some situations, it might work well, but for others it would clearly lack discipline. So even the desire for agility should certainly be contextual, and for sure not everyone could thrive in that environment, since we have spent most of our careers developing skills in the opposite direction.

So agility does not come for free. Just as someone has to suffer for lower taxes and someone has to pay for higher spending, something has to be lost in order to acquire agility. So how much do we really want this? It is all very well hankering after an agile environment, but what would be sacrifice to achieve it? My suspicion is that most corporate leaders would take a lot of convincing to change radically in the direction of agility, and their consultants and advisors would certainly not help. It does not help that, judging from the conversation, KPI’s and links to financial performance are hard to come by.

Longer-term Consequences

Are we storing up later problems by under-prioritising agility? We can use tricks like creating hothouse environments where agility is most required. But surely the ability to react quickly to change really is critical in the whole business, and will become more so? Perhaps it is more important in the long run than standardisation or control. Firms can die from a lack of agility, paralysing complexity, or burned-out key staff. But I suspect the top pay lip service to the aspiration to improve, but are not really convinced and not ready to make the sacrifices. I’ve known many senior managers who thought things like agility are for wimps.

A frightening parallel might be climate change. We all want to stop it, of course. But it is hard to see meaningful first steps, and leaders are driven by opposing objectives and are not ready to pay the price. Until when?

I sense there is fertile ground here for smart consultants, ready to go against the grain. What are the smart moves that have low cost? When can they be applied with low risk? What are the hidden downsides of established methods? Can we find good KPI’s and prove links to financial goals? And how can we develop leaders who will see things another way?

Always start with I

One thing we can always do is look at ourselves. This may be one of those areas where we all think we are a little bit better than we really are. Are we part of the problem? My first advice to new managers is always: Get out of the way! But how well am I following my own counsel? This might be one of those irregular verbs: the boss should get out of my way, peers should respect my creativity, and subordinates should just do as they are told!

How do I know that I empower and engage more than my colleagues – or is that just wishful thinking? When did I last seek out feedback on these things, or do an assessment?

Which brings me back to Synthetron. It is a great way to capture signals and ideas, bring forward issues and find solutions and actions that really involves people, all in just an hour. This Think Tank helped to open my own eyes: somehow most Synthetron sessions seem to achieve that, often in surprising ways.

Beli-cheat or Bally-genius?

I have to declare a personal bias here. In American football, I have supported the New England Patriots for twenty years. One result has been that this week I have been in a good mood, despite the horrible weather and a particularly frustrating business project. On Sunday night, the Patriots won the superbowl!

I was one of those who actually wanted to watch the game rather than the endless half time show or the ubiquitous adverts. For fans, the superbowl is the least satisfying game of the year because of all the distractions, unless of course our own team is involved.

It was an excellent game, close, decided with only twenty seconds left to play and with many subplots and examples of superb play. The reason I love the sport is because as many as half of all games during the season are like this, though of course the quality is better in the payoffs.

All the analysis of the game has focused on its decisive play right at the end, when Seattle made a questionable play call and suffered an interception, handing back the ball and consigning themselves to defeat when it looked almost inevitable that they would score and go ahead and in all probability win. It was wonderful drama, and indeed the play call looked wrong-headed, but I think commentators have missed the wider point.

In my opinion, New England won because of their coaches. They analysed Seattle and devised a game plan to beat them, whereas Seattle just turned up and played their regular game. Seattle are great at defending the run and long, classical passes, so Tom Brady threw fifty passes, nearly all of them short ones, and each one designed to create a favourable match up. Seattle did almost nothing during the game to respond to how New England played.

On the other side of the ball, New England knew that Seattle’s best weapons were their running game and their mobile quarterback, Russell Wilson. So they tried to contain both of those, at the risk of being more exposed to longer passes. Seattle played their regular game, and only adjusted when they got desperate. As it happens, when they started throwing longer passes they had success, thanks to some great skill but also a lot of luck.

So New England took small risks multiple times while Seattle took few big risks. The game was only close because Brady threw an uncharacteristic interception early in the game, and because an unlikely proportion of Seattle’s big risks started to pay off. It was ironic and even a bit fitting that Seattle lost the game by taking one little risk at just the wrong moment.

So the difference was coaching. Seattle probably had more talent. Seattle certainly had at least equal motivation. Pete Carroll and the front office do a marvelous job recruiting and motivating. But then they just played, while New England managed to engineer the game to get more from their talent than Seattle did.

At the heart of this lies Bill Belichick, long time coach of New England, and a man most people love to hate. His record is far and away the best ever in the NFL, despite the league doing everything it can to equalize teams; this means it can be argued that his record is unique across all sports.

Yet most people hate him, and even more don’t really respect him. Part of that is old fashioned jealousy – I steadfastly refused to think good things of Alex Ferguson against all the evidence because I simply hate Man U (and Liverpool). The Patriots fill that love to hate role for many fans in the NFL.

But with Belichick there is more to it. One reason is showbiz. US sports are set up to entertain, and I love it. Part of the entertainment is coaches being open with the media and being big characters. Pete Carroll of Seattle fits the bill perfectly – and huge kudos to him for being so big about that infamous call. Belichick, by contrast, is a curmudgeon.

Bill interacts with the media only when forced. He wears utterly unfashionable clothes. He speaks without really opening his mouth. He does little to hide his disdain for dumb people. He doesn’t work on being liked. He just focuses on what it takes for his team to win. So shouldn’t we look past ESPN, and respect him more for that?

The other problem with Belichick is a reputation for cheating. My teams have made a bit of a habit of falling foul of the law in the last ten years. In soccer I support West Ham, who have lost court cases over the Carlos Tevez illegal signing saga and just last week about Sakho playing during the African nations cup. The Patriots had spygate in 2007, and now deflate gate, about allegations that they intentionally deflated balls, still sub judice.

There are many ways to cheat in sports, and it is interesting to compare how they are judged. In my opinion, some types of cheating are much worse than others.

Perhaps worst of all are attempts to manipulate a result, like throwing a match for betting purposes. That completely undermines public trust in a sport and is tawdry. The Chicago baseball scandal of years and years ago is most famous in the US, but nowadays cricket looks very vulnerable. I am also surprised there is not more scrutiny of baseball and basketball, because both are vulnerable to spread betting.

Then there are acts of wanton violence. Surely these are worse then technical cheats, as they can end careers? Remember Nancy Kerrigan in ice-skating? But Wayne Rooney on occasion and other soccer players are arguably just as bad, even allowing for the heat of the moment. The New Orleans Saints offered a bounty to players for injuring opponents: they were penalized, but their coach stays in his job and is a media darling.

Performance enhancing substances can also ruin a sport. Cycling has lost all credibility, and I would never rehabilitate Lance Armstrong. Earlier we had Ben Johnson, and the whole shameful era in baseball. I have my doubts about how the NFL treats this subject still. With the very survival of the sport threatened by discoveries about brain damage, they should do much more than they do.

Then we get to deception of officials. Simulation in soccer is rife and I hate it – these players should suffer much more severe consequences than currently.

Next comes abuse of power. In this category I lump both the probable fraud in FIFA, the monopolistic behaviour of the Indian cricket board and the shameless bullying of people like Ferguson.

All of these categories do much more damage than technical cheating. Usually, technical cheating is very close to innovation: an attempt to exploit ambiguity in a rule to take the game forwards. Look at one-day cricket. Gradually, the rules have evolved, to outlaw bowling on the leg side, underarm bowling and placing all fielders on the boundary. The teams that used these tactics weren’t cheating, though they were all vilified at the team: they were simply being creative. Because they were trying to help their teams win games, and moving their sports forward at the same time, arguably they should be lauded not condemned.

As far as I can read, Spygate fell into this category. Many teams tried to read opponents signals, the law was ambiguous, and Belichick did it openly. He perhaps crossed a line when he did not check back with the league after they had written a letter about the subject. But really, was his behaviour as bad as that in the other categories? The sport was hardly tainted, and no-one could be injured.

If Deflategate proves intent to deceive, I may change my mind about the Patriots, but I am optimistic. Even if they are found guilty, I’ll have a good look at the evidence: the league certainly likes to get its own back on Belichick for his arrogance and curmudgenliness from time to time.

They should not be so dumb. Belichick does more to further the sport than anyone else. Media darlings are two a penny, real quality and innovation are much harder to come by. Don Shula and others should know better and shut their mouths.

Meanwhile, I’ll stay in a good mood as long as I can. Go Patriots! Go Hammers – even they are having an unusually good season. Now all I have to do is learn to party like Gronkowski.