Year end

Year end and where do we find ourselves as a country, people and individuals. out their in the Irish world, their are still people who are not affected by the recession, in fact they find everything a bit cheaper! and wonder why. The rest of us PAYE are Paying All Your Earnings to everybody but not recieving anything substantial for it. I am afraid that this is going to be the story for the moment and the conversation of choice around the dinner tables of D4. Slowley we see the 148 people classed with destroying the country getting their day in the courts as €€€ amount after €€€ amount is charged against them, we watch the deals being done and the bankruptcy's being entered into and take cold comfort from it.

Meanwhile people are ending up in John of Gods and St Pats and not understanding why they are there. The point being that as the year closes we all need to take a deep breath and listen to our fellow man, listen for signs of weakness, listen so they can talk and if you need to talk I hope that you find a listener. No judgements, no advice just listen. That's all people want and need for the moment, to understand that they are with the group and not isolated. So when you meet someone and go on about all the Christmas nights out and party's you have attended, listen and understand that they may not have been on any this year, may not have been out and have no prospect of getting out, they are only smiling at you to stop themselves from hitting you.

Day 1095 of the Recession

Well some of my ardent Blog followers may be wondering why I have waited 1095 days to make another pithy commentary on the recession, well to be truthful I was hoping it would have been over by now.... not to be.
Instead Ireland are been held up as the whipping boys for Greece to behave and come on side......listen hear Papandreau if you don't cut your costs we'll do to you what we did to Ireland......no no please Madam Merkel anything but that.
So my friends how has the recession been for you, comforted to know that while you struggle to keep a job, the cost of all basics are going up, your mortgage has gone up if you were not on a tracker and your income has gone down.
We now have a plethora of additional tax's with more to come, additional tolling to be added to the M50.
Funny how when you look into the recession and see that NAMA could sell 3 London hotels for the outstanding loans plus interest, then why couldn't these have been left with the banks and everybody sit tight and within 1000 days off load the loans for face value, a bit of funding to keep the banks on day to day running and they may have been able to sort out there own balance sheets without costing the tax payer
Funny how there is talk of over supply of apartments in the city, 25,000 talked of, yet when you look into it there is only 4,500 apts for rent and a shortage of apts in some areas with strong rents holding up in all areas of the city.

If we had all set tight what might have been for a lot less money.

Then and now.

The date was December 11th 1984, the venue was the Aragon Ballroom on Lawrence avenue in Chicago. The event was the 3rd leg of the Unforgettable Fire tour by U2. A young man who had arrived in the summer of '84 ( live aid hadn't happened yet for Bono) went to his first U2 concert. I remember them playing "Sunday" and at the end everybody was singing 40. It took a cold Chicago night in an ancient ballroom to make a fan. I remember them stopping the concert to allow the crowd to push back as there was crushing up front, I remember thinking how I hadn't really heard of them.

To the present and a warm evening in Croke Park on the 25th July 09, just a quick 25 years later and a dad brings his 11 year old boy to see his first rock concert, his arms wrapped around me and rocking out. When they played "Beautiful Day" early on the tears rolled down my cheeks...

A bit of cop on people!!

At a party recently the conversation turned as it inevitably would to the recession and how it affects people. At this point I would take it that everybody knows about the recession and is tired of talking about it. So a bit of courtesy to your fellow man while discussing the recession in a group situation.

It is not all right to ask "are you still in a job"
It is not all right to say " your industry is in a lot of trouble, redundancy's coming your way"
It is not all right to say " have you taken a pay cut yet!!!!"
It is not all right to say " have you heard about Bob...."
It is not all right to say " strong rumour going about, your company is about to close..."
It is not all right to ask " is your wife/partner still working?, then you'll be all right if you lose your job"
It is not all right to say " how's that 3 day week working out for you..."
It is not all right to say " are you able to pay your mortgage...."
It is not all right to say " so Bob your out of work since last summer, how are things going...."

Am I making my point clear here, its none of your business and if people cannot attend a party without being asked these kind of questions, then you should stay home and do us all a favour, because it might be you that's next.

Customer Service

When we look at the statement "customer service" and it's use over the last ten years, it doesn't look good, in fact it stinks. Companies who have used "customer service" to their benefit are better placed today to survive, while companies who viewed acceptable customer service as a spotty sixteen year old part-timer are wondering where all the customers are.

Retailing jobs have been devalued over the years into a temporary position on the way to another "better" position. However through out all the recessions, retailing is the one industry that emerges stronger and better able to adapt. The company that offers a true and effective level of customer service as a standard throughout its history will be better able to retain customers and compete with their competitors.

Hard to achieve, yes! harder for large organisations where the ideal is watered down by the time it reaches the front line. A quality manager who views his store as his "business" will actively promote customer service as it reflects on him how the store is perceived. However a "quality" manager will also cost, are you prepared to pay for this and then pro actively manage it so as the promised returns are achieved?

A very thin line between Operations manager, Area manager and Store manager must be achieved so as the Store manager perceives that he is part of the business and his opinions counts, you need a thick skinned area manager to achieve this and an Operations manager that is questioned on performance daily by the CEO. Remember the front line pay the back line.

Year end!

It strikes me as we near the end of 2008, that the capacity of events to surprise us is diminishing fast. Can this be a good thing? If you look back at the events both good and bad over the last year each of the main events would stand out on their own as a major news event. However because there have been so many major news events we are now sensitised to the breaking news and are not all standing around in front of the TV set saying " imagine that, it's unbelievable".

I ask the question again, is this a good place for the world to be in? What can happen that will truly surprise us, shake us up, put us into action? For myself I look back to the tsunami off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.This happened in 2004 and resulted in the lifeforce of 225,000 people being wiped out in hours. This resulting loss of humanity, the largest single loss in terms of hours that the current population has seen. The resulting shock wave of anguish never materialised and set forth the view that we are immune to large news events.

This would suggest that a nuclear incident in a large city would not have us in too large of a panic, in other words after the first 24 hour news cycle we will have started to move onto the next event. So large or small, the effect of news to impact on our lives diminishes in direct proportion to the more outlandish the news becomes. Again the question, is this a good thing?

Happy new year to all, we as humans can only be positive and look after each other.

Flapping in panic

The world at a cross roads and a new President elect collide, the resulting supernova will be a birth or a death pain. The possibilities are now endless with all cards on the table, a serious of moves and solution's will now be pushed through many governments, given a mixed bag of results.

The fact that the way forward is uncharted, but still must be governed by rules, does not inspire a level of confidence. For those now in there mid forty's, when you look back to your younger years, the possibility then that the people in government new what they were doing gave a small comfort. These people were for the most part over forty themselves, now those who find that they are in there forty's are for the most part the people in government. This again as you look around your office at the buffoons employed their, does not instil a level of confidence that the situation will be remedied any time soon.

The current crop of forty somethings are those in charge and this is there time, from now on they will steadily become older than the next crop of forty somethings that will come into governments and therefore will start to lose the small grip they have on decisions being made that can effect them and there welfare. This will be a crucial time and the future will now more than ever reflect the decisions being made today in your name.

So while today's forty somethings can have an impact on decisions, it is time to get involved, time to monitor and protest decisions. Time to make a decision to engage with the political process and to leave a small legacy to how you will be treated and looked after in years to come. 20 years from now upon retirement age, do you want your pension plan to have dropped 30% and counting?