HowardWright.com

Blog Changes

My other Blogs

Travel blog (www.travelwrightblog.com) - including hotel reviews, travel and photography tips as well as trip notes on our recent visit to Yellowstone Wildlife watching for Christmas 2008.

Motorbike Blog (www.R1200RTBlog.com) - BMW R1200RT tips and tours including reviews and installation notes etc.

Caterham 7 build blog and TIG welding experiences.

Reversing into the Future

I recently posted a piece on using different techniques to stimulate thinking about alternate futures - the topic of that post was using False Constraints to force people to think differently. To follow up on that I propose that we now consider Reversal or Opposites as a way of challenging our thinking.

This technique is one which can get a bit annoying when first used as it just seems like contradiction and is   reminiscent of a Monty Python Sketch (the argument). In the first post I talked about only delivering on Tuesdays and using this technique we would deliver every day except Tuesday. Or if the status quo is that we deliver to every house once a day - using this technique we would deliver to no houses.

So taking this last example of non-delivery what would the infrastructure be like to support that model? Well there would be less staff although there would probably be a large number of collection points - either owned or franchised with some sort of PO Box type service to allow for segregation of mail. People would be expected to collect their mail on a daily/weekly basis and with entreprenuership a private delivery service would probably spring up.

This concept would reduce costs significantly and could offer the added advantage of centralised recycling as people could recycle mail at the collection centres rather than at their homes. Any mail not collected would be automatically recycled after 6 weeks and a fine levied on the recipient maybe.

As I hope you can see this technique offers the advantage of turning a current model upside down and hopefully gets you to see the situation from a different angle.

As I mentioned in my previous post of you would like to find out more about using innovation and creativity techniques get in touch.

Using constraints to map the future

In the last couple of weeks I have been working with a large FMCG company looking at Innovation – particularly around R&D and Products. This focussed me on looking at some of the Creativity and Innovation techniques I developed whilst putting together the Royal Mail Innovation Lab in the early noughties.

What struck me was the opportunity to use some of these techniques to think about the future of the   delivery business in the UK. So over the next few weeks I will use some of the tools to develop possible future scenarios for delivery services in the UK.

Many of the techniques and tools were developed to get people out of ‘stuck’ thinking and help them position themselves in different futures – some linear and some non-linear. I will post a list of all the techniques on this blog for reference if people are interested.

The first technique I propose to use is ‘false constraint’ – in this approach a constraint is applied which alters the way the service is delivered – an example would be that all mail is delivered next day or that mail is only delivered on Tuesdays. In this example the constraint is used to shape the service that is required to deliver it. Clearly the infrastructure that would be required to deliver every piece of mail the next day is very different from that which would be required to only deliver on Tuesdays. This is a useful way of taking people away from what is in place today and getting them to think about alternate futures.

So for the purposes of this short exercise the ‘constraint’ is that mail is only delivered on Tuesdays. To deliver this service there are some assumptions that need to be identified – volume of mail, availability and flexibility of staff, urgency of mail, availability of alternate communication channels – but for the purposes of this post lets assume that mail volumes have fallen to 50% of what they are today, unemployment is high so that staff are available as required, urgent communications are delivered electronically and every household in the UK is connected via broadband (you can introduce any assumptions you like in here).

To deliver this service the number of delivery offices would reduce significantly and mobile delivery offices would be introduced – implemented in the back of 40’ trailers which would provide ‘localised’ facilities on Monday evenings only – where this was not economic, public halls and other available space would be used to undertake the final sortation and provide a focal point for delivery staff.

Staff would be recruited on a part time basis and would work a 2-shift system from 10pm Monday evening to 4pm on Tuesday when all the mail would be delivered. Any mail not delivered in this timeframe would be ‘mopped’ up by a rapid response team on motor scooters or similar transport. The staff would have a renewable retainer contract and be guaranteed work on a 6 monthly basis. As employment patterns would have changed the concept of a ‘portfolio’ career will probably be the norm with people having multiple jobs – although it is probable that high unemployment rates would make this approach attractive for some.

For the purposes of this post I don’t intend to go much deeper into the ‘scenario’ but I hope from the above you can see the benefit of the ‘false constrain’ approach to thinking about the future.

If you want further information or are interested in using this approach please get in touch.

Which comes first the answer or the question?

I have over the last few weeks been involved with a number of companies and individuals with new products and services in the identity and information security space. I have seen some amazing products and services   promoted by some of the most enthusiastic people I have come across for some time - in the current depressive state of most of UK business this has been a pleasant change.

As I sit and listen to the 'pitch' one question keeps floating to the top of my mind "is this trying to solve yesterdays problem or is it answering tomorrows question?" Invariably the answer is that it is solving yesterday's, or if I am luck todays problem. Of course this will be the answer as that is all we know about. 

The problem with that approach is that we keep wedded to the past and we are never prepared for the future. We spend our lives fire-fighting the problems as they come up, rather than pr-empting the problems before the occur. 

So how can we start to even think about problems we know nothing about - how can we envisage what tomorrows questions could be? 

As we face continued economic problems the focus has moved away from thinking about tomorrow and much of business has become myopic in its approach - worrying about the next 12 weeks rather than think about the next 12 years. This approach is OK but it leads to fire-ficghting being a way of life. 

There is, however no magic bullet to the question of tomorrows questions, there are techniques though that can help and people who can help you with the thinking. I have posted on this blog previously about Scenario Planning and the concept of futureScaping both of which will help you envisage different futures, OK the chances are that the future you envisage today will be based on what you know - but at least you will, hopefully, start to think a little differently and I can almost guarantee that you will find new questions.

So the next time you are sat listening to a presentation or reading something in the press ask yourself the question "is this answering yesterdays' problems" and if so ask "what will tomorrows question be?"

Kindle no:3

Today my life gets back to some level of normality as Amazon delivered my International Kindle. This will be my third Kindle as I was one of the first to get one when I was living in the US and when Kindle 2 came out again I was first in the Queue.

When I got back to the UK I could read the stuff I had on the Kindle but couldn't get any updated content so it tended to get relegated to a drawer in my office at home. But now the Kindle has landed and it was great
  to sit having coffee this morning in my local coffee shop reading the morning papers without having to fight other customers for the printed versions.

There are a few problems of course in that we can't get access to blogs in the UK and the web surfing doesn't work but apart from that it seems pretty much the same. I managed to transfer over the account and now have access to all the content I had on Kindle No:2.

One annoying problem I found today was that there is no way of zooming when viewing images. Many books have images in them and a couple I am currently reading - Ratio by Michael Ruhlman and Processing by Ira Greenburgh - both have tables which are unreadable on the Kindle.

But life with the Kindle is pretty good and I am glad that we Brits have joined the eReader revolution.

Future Workforce - The Millennial Effect

Our traditional view of the workforce is set to change as the Millennial generation
  (those born between 1978 and 2000) hit the workforce. These new workers, the children of the Baby boomers, have very different expectations and experiences and have lived in a world touched by technology all their lives. How are companies going to attract, reward and retain this new generation and how are they different?

Download the latest white paper on Millennials below:

Download Future Workforce – the Millenial effect V2

The real value of mail - Big Mac vs. Mars Bar

I came across an article in the FT from 1981 which talked about the Mars Bar Index, where the price of a Mars Bar is used as an economic indicator. This got me thinking about other economic indicators and if these could be related to the price of a stamp and therefore be used to understand the relative value of the postal service.

In 1986 the Economist came up with a similar concept but this time using the price of a MacDonalds Big Mac Index as a global economic indicator - looking across the world at the relative price of a Big Mac and then relating it to earnings etc.

So here is my take on it and I would welcome your comments and thoughts. In the table I have pulled together the MBI and the BMI and then related them to the price of a first class stamp. As you can see the number of stamps that can be bought for the price of a Big Mac has reduced from 8 in 2002 to 6 in 2009 a significant decrease in value. This I have termed the BMS (Big Mac Stamp Index) Index.

When we look at the Mars Bar Index I have taken the price per gram as an indicator and factored this against the price of a first class stamp and as you can see using this metric the stamp fairs better and the relationship remains fairly constant over the period.

One of the things I have found difficult us finding the cost of a first class stamp on the web pre 2002 so if you have and information on this I would be interested so I can complete the table.

Do you think this is a viable indicator? Are there other indicators that could be used?

Although this posting talks about relating these factors to mail could they be related to other areas?

Is Global Warming stifling innovation and creativity?

Water shortages and restrictions are going to a common factor for the future. This means we are going over the next few years to steer away from getting in the bath/tub in favour of showers that use a 10th of the water. This however could be a retrograde step when we consider innovation and creativity as most people have some of their best ideas whilst having a soak in a nice warm bath. From an early age, and for a certain generation, the nightly soak in the bath was a ritual and for many one that has carried on into later life where the tub has become a sanctuary - a place to think and contemplate and more importantly to have great ideas and solutions to problems.  

In the 60s, 70s and 80s the UK was the worlds powerhouse for innovation and creative thinking with many of the technologies we enjoy today, such as CDs, mobile technologies, computers and arguably even the internet were being invented and developed - ok so in many cases these were exploited by other countries - but I would guess that many of these ideas started in a nice warm bath!

The key question is if we had only had showers would we have in fact invented them at all?

The next question is is there a correlation between those countries who enjoy a good soak and their success on the world stage. This I suggest could be argued for the Nordic countries who are the powerhouse for mobile technologies and also like a good soak.

So back to the original question - will our move way from a soak in the bath stifle innovation and creativity and could this be a reason why we find ourselves in the position we do today - a global recession, having difficulty in defining out role on the worlds stage?

Travelling again - Boston and beyond!

Since I got back from the US at the end of June life has been busy sorting out an extension at the house in the UK to provide more kitchen and living space as well as a whole load of courses to get me back up to speed. The consultancy market in the UK seems to be pretty dead at the moment but hopefully it will pick up in the New Year - but in the meantime I have started an independent publishing company which is keeping me interested and active.

I am now blogging on an industry website on a regular basis (www.post&parcel.info) so check this out. I am parallel posting some blog entries where they are of a general nature but much of the stuff on the site is related to the mailing and logistics industry so are targeted at that area.

I am flying out to Boston this week to catch up with friends and to spend some time photographing the fall foliage in Vermont and New England and I will post some photos if I get the chance whilst I am out there.

What will be interesting will be how the Americans are now viewing President Obama - when I left there was a definite air of frustration and disillusionment as things weren't happening fast enough, however press coverage seems to suggest that this has now gone away and things are more positive - we'll see!

Idea Reuse - open source ideas

I was clearing out some files at home yesterday and came across one that had ‘great ideas’ written on it. The file was around an inch thick and clearly hadn’t been opened for a while and the ideas were mostly dated between 2000 and 2002. What I had here was a whole host of ideas that had been generated when I worked as head of Innovation at Royal Mail. Unfortunately not many of the ideas got off the ground and I tried to remember why they hadn’t been taken up – was it that they were bad ideas, was the timing wrong, were they unprofitable ideas or was there something else?

I thought it might be worth whole publishing a few, taken at random, on this blog to see if there is any reaction and to see if it was just timing or they are really not good ideas – so here goes:

• Address for life: this concept is based on making available personal postcodes, non-geographic postcodes that people could buy – similar to personal number plates. The sorting technology in the IMP machines has the ability to read this code and spray on to where the postmark would be the real address so the postman can read and deliver the item. The benefit of this idea is that it could be the basis of a ‘follow me’ service as it would be relatively easy to reroute items as long as 24 hours notice was given.
• Semantic Mail: Tracking of items of mail is becoming more common, particularly for high value items, however it suffers from the problem of being carrier/operator specific – being reliant on a central database. The concept of Semantic Mail, mail which understands itself, is that there would be some form of coding on the mailpiece, either in a 3D barcode or RFID type device – the idea proposed something called Microspot developed by HP. Encoded in this would be where the letter had come from, where it was going to, the class of the letter and something about its contents – this could be read by Open Source readers and therefore the letter could be tracked across carriers. One problem with this is that unauthorised people could also read the code.
• Virtual Warehouse: This idea was to build a software system that took input from all the tracking systems of all the carriers – both Mail and Parcel – and displayed this on a Map based online system. The advantage of this is that companies shipping products could see where they all are at one time. Although this idea was dated 2002 I came across a similar product developed by a guy in New York 18 months ago and tried to persuade Pitney Bowes who I was working for at the time to buy it and develop it further. Unfortunately it didn’t fit into their vision and I didn’t succeed, but at least it proved that the concept was viable although the timing of the original idea was a little too early maybe.
• Web enabled Post-box: This concept was to install a web server, powered by solar, on a number of key post box locations around the UK and in customers premises. The technology would have the ability to do image capture to ascertain whether items were first or second class, as well as just basic counting of items in the box. It was proposed that simple mobile phone technology was used to relay the information back to a central site. This idea came out of work I was doing during a strike when I was doing post-box collections. Many of the boxes were empty – others were full to bursting, however as no information was available I spent a lot of time visiting post-boxes that had little or no mail in them – wasting time and fuel. The initial cost for the unit, which was to be installed, was £5k but this was reduced to less than £500 when the idea was taken to York University Advanced Computing Group – and today it would probably be down to £50!
•  Dog Repellent Trousers: Always my favourite idea and one I could never get funding to develop. Dogs are an ongoing problem for post persons and a large number get bitten every year. This idea was to develop material that would protect against dog bites – that was cheap, attractive and flexible. Loughborough University did some initial work generating some ideas but funding through the Royal Mail Innovation Fund ran out and it never got off the ground.

 

OK so these ideas as they stand may not be of immediate interest but there are elements within them that may be usable. When I was involved with the Innovation Lab within Royal Mail we generated many thousands of ideas – less than 5% ever got out of the lab and had any development focus, however it doesn’t mean that the other ones were bad – it just wasn’t the right time for them to be good.

In the UK hundreds of companies are running brainstorm sessions almost on a daily basis, generating ideas of which many will be dismissed – wouldn’t it be great to capture all these ideas somehow and make them available to a wider audience - an open source ideas database/wiki?

Do you have a similar file?

HAve you got ideas that you think are worth sharing?

The shape of the recession and its impact on mail.

Almost on a daily basis we are hearing conflicting opinions on whether we are coming out of recession. House prices are starting to increase, unemployment is still increasing, consumer confidence is still low and retail sales are bubbling under. So what is happening?

There are a number of models of how recessions can play out and I thought it interesting to explore them and think about the consequences. There appears to be 4 or 5 different models of recession we have seen in the past.

• The classis is the ‘V’ recession where we see a sharp drop in the economy followed by a sharp rise. Although this ‘bounce’ can be over many months the result is the same in that the economic indicators etc. come back to a previous high within 12 – 18 months.
• The second model is the ‘W’ where there is a sharp drop in the economy that then recovers and then drops again. This is one, which has caught out business and governments in the past, as the second ‘bounce’ was not predicted. This model has a longer recovery period and can take up to 3 years for the economy to recover to something like its previous high.
• The third model is the ‘O’, which is a continuation of the recessionary effects over a longer period of time. This type of recession can last 10 years or more as seen in Japan. In this model customer confidence doesn’t fully recover, house prices remain at a low, unemployment remains high and governments struggle with stagflation.
• The fourth model, and I believe the one we are going to see in the current crisis, is the ‘L’ model where we see a steep drop in the economy and then a long, slow recovery – probably not seeing significant growth for 5 years or more. My thoughts are that we are probably not going to get back to 2007 levels until 2013 or 2014 and then only in certain areas.

(I was disappointed that I couldn’t find an E or an S model so I could have spelt Wolves!)

So what does this mean for the postal industry? One interesting point is that historically postal volumes have been a key indicator of recovery. Marketing mail was a leading indicator of economic recovery as companies started to see green shoots and felt confident enough to start sending marketing pieces out. Mail volumes have always been closely linked to new housing starts – again an indicator of recovery in the housing market. The last significant area is mail generated by the financial services sector that is a lagging indicator of economic growth.

As we see ‘E’ taking over from ‘P’ it will be interesting to see if the mail flips from a leading indicator of recovery or only as a lagging indicator which is relegated to advertising mail responding to economic recovery?

Whichever model plays out it is unlikely that we are going to see the economy fully recover to the over inflated levels we saw in 2007/2008 before the market crashed. House prices will rise, unemployment will start to reduce slowly from mid 2010, and interest rates will remain low for the next 9 – 12 months and then start to rise. This rise in interest rates is a good thing; believe it or not, as it can indicate a rise in customer confidence and signs of inflation that are controlled through interest rate rises.

Mail volumes are more difficult to predict as the current threatened strike action is bringing uncertainty for customer and is forcing companies to explore alternative delivery channels and of course a move online.

We will see over the coming months/years whether mail can survive as an effective communication channel and can weather this ‘perfect storm’.