Nicholas Bate

Did you miss it? Blog round-up.

Fake steve in great form here. Yep, it's about the money.
Vive le Left Bank. Yep, it's about the money.
Presenting and Pecha-Kucha. Yes. it's about time (lack of).
This from Guy may be a useful tool for you. Yes, it's about time (lack of).
How to take great notes: here. Better: it's about investment.
Sort out your sleep, here. Still better: it's about health.
Wow: here. At last: it's about beauty.
Just one song? Here. At last: it's about simplicity.

How to write

A recent guardian piece reminded me how much I enjoy writing while travelling. After all I have a brilliant well-lit, comfortable office with fantastic views and all resources to hand....but despite that it's often not as good as a cafe in Paris, a train from LA to San Diego or even an ordinary hotel in Manchester's docks area.

When travelling you are often 'trapped' in a place for a while: an airport, a hotel room, a client's reception. Or on a train. Or in a cafe. While trapped you might as well write. Accompany that with the energy of people around you and you have all you need to generate words.

You have privacy plus 'buzz'. You have reflection plus stimulation. You are moving but you are confined. So if your novel has stalled, if your cook-book is stuck at starters, find a cheap flight somewhere.

Retail Therapy

"Marital crisis averted-for this morning, anyway. One big happy family yet again. And all it took was £623.99. Definitely our heaviest Saturday shop of the year. Still it is cheaper than therapy"

Douglas Kennedy, The Big Picture

Frightening? Inspiring?

Here. Whatever, keep reading to the kids.

How to find a good thriller?

Wondering how to identify a great thriller to read over the week-end. Try this blog.

Don't let them get you down

Thoughts from Ryan Holiday here.

You rarely hear the other side...

..of the story.

A couple of years ago one of my clients was going through a particularly hard time; they needed to reduce costs. They called in all their suppliers including their consultants-including me-and made a simple proposal:

'reduce your fees for a year to help us out and we'll remember you when things get better'

I asked: are there any guarantees?
They said: no.
I said: to help you out we'll look at how we can do fewer days, but as we consider ourselves exceptional value, we will not reduce our daily fee.

I have to say, it was a tough meeting. The purchasing guys really wanted our fees down. That was the one thing I would not move on.

I left the meeting not knowing whether we would get any more work from them.

We did and we do.

Interestingly a couple of weeks ago I was introduced to a person who told the tale from the client side. He said we were the only supplier of 263 not to reduce our fees. And we were the only supplier not to lose business.

It's never easy when negotiating as we rarely know the full range of consequences of aour actions, but in general:

-make excellence your minimum standard
-deliver and believe in your value
-help the client keep costs down by looking at the overall process, not just their easy perspective of reducing your fees.
-believe in yourself

Thanks!

To the new cohort on the Warwick University full-time MBA. We had a great day yesterday. A few follow-throughs are necessary; you know what you need to do, guys.....

Read to your children.

It's increasingly a lost art: reading to our children. Start it in your family. Re-start it if the tradition has been lost. Why?

Children love it.
It's bonding.
It develops a child's imagination.
It develops vocabulary.
It's a nice thing to do before falling asleep.
It's a ritual in an otherwise busy day.
It completes the day on a high spot whatever has happened.
It creates discussion points.
Choosing some of the classics (e.g. Rudyard Kipling) not only 'rounds' an education but establishes fundamental ways of looking at the world.
It broadens the mind by reading about other jobs/people/parts of the world.

Yep, read to your children.

Does it scale?

Top blogger Michael Wade is one of my favourite daily reads because of his thoughtful no-nonsense posts. A recent one got me thinking about the whole business of scalability.

You know, that funny effect that increasing/decreasing say an audience size has on your ability to communicate with that group. For a long time my audiences tended to be work-shops of 10-15 people; I got delivery down to a fine art until I was asked to do a key-note to 250, and then a group of 50 and then... I soon learned that you need to scale correctly. It's just as your pie recipe may work brilliantly for six but goes wrong for 30 (just not enough pastry/crust). It's why Michael Connelly's latest book has received much criticism from fans; it's simply too short to allow the hero Harry Bosch to develop as he usually does. It's why the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is not something we have to worry about when playing frisbee.

When does scalabilty become relevant? When you're getting good at your job: writing, presenting, cooking, painting. You're good because you've developed your niche. You've been spotted and people want you to do more in other-less comfortable-areas. That's when you need to check that you can scale. You probably can, but how quickly can you learn? Otherwise as a successful book author your weekly short column may fail. Or as a scuccessful sculptor your Chapel Ceiling may be a disappointment.

In the New World of Work:
1. Get good, really good, very quickly.
2. Learn how to scale to maximise but not damage your brand.