Setup and Set Up

September 25, 2019 //
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I was on a website the other day and on their home page they described how they ‘were setup in 1993’. This looks plain wrong to me.

There’s an easy distinction to me. To set up is the verb, it’s two words, like put up, show up, grow up and so on. Setup is a noun, and a pretty modern one at that.

It simply reads much better to say ‘we were set up in 1993’, or better still, since passive verbs are not great in this context, ‘we set up the business in 1993.’

Here are some more examples of how verb and noun drive a different format of the word or words:

‘The setup was all wrong for that meeting.’

‘That meeting was a disaster. They set us up.’

‘Let’s set up the meeting this way, because the right setup will set us up for a good outcome.’

Verb is two words, noun one.

Yes, I know I’m being slightly pedantic and the sense is clear from what the company has written on their website, even though they don’t know or care about the distinction. But it looks odd that way, and puts me off. Is it just me?

 

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Categories Communication, Language

Oversharing

September 23, 2019 //
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There’s a scene in the film Jack from 1996 where Robin Williams plays a child in a prematurely aged man’s body. After describing why he was late for something – I haven’t actually seen the film but I remember this scene just from the trailer – using words and hand gestures to describe his visit to the toilet, the lady he’s talking to says ‘well that’s more that I needed to know.’

There are of course many variations on the TMI or Too Much Information phrase where we reveal too much personal information for the comfort of whoever we’re talking to.

I heard one the other day, used by one of my sisters-in-law and I expect you’ve been using it yourself already. It’s the act of ‘oversharing’. I thought this was hilarious, and it describes exactly what’s happening.

Our social adroitness attunes us to what is acceptable in terms of sharing information on ourselves. For some people who don’t have the social calibration set quite right for a given situation, this balance between sharing too little and sharing too much is a hard one to strike.

It has its parallels in work as well, by which I don’t mean social interactions between the individuals in a company or companies, but more the exchanging of information between people as part of a deal or project.

You can share too little, or undershare I guess – which doesn’t seem to attract the level of opprobrium that its generous counterpart does – or you can overshare, providing the other party with more than is useful for them, forcing them to waste time getting to the good stuff.

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Categories Communication, General, Language

Take Back Control

September 20, 2019 //
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When I look back on individual short-term events in my life, or over long-term things like career, health and so on, I find that I have allowed external factors to shape and evolve me. I have on occasion rolled with the punches, got caught up in the forward momentum and gone with the flow.

I’ve not been in control. I have allowed the focus of control to be external of me, rather than internal to me.

I think it’s important to level-set every so often and endeavour to take back control. Take back control in everything from individual decisions to relationships with other people or entities and to strategy for companies and organisations. Not at the expense of others, that’s not what I mean here. I mean to be active, positive, current, engaged and decisive.

Yes, an important part of assessing our strengths and weaknesses is also assessing the opportunities and threats that are outside our control. Yes, sometimes we have to play the hand we are dealt.

But, if that hand is not what we like, or has developing into something that we don’t like, do we have the option to walk away, and play another game? A game that gives us back control?

It’s about options, isn’t it? If it is, then it’s about taking back control, because without it our options are poorer and more limited.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy

Short on Time, Short on Money

September 18, 2019 //
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Most people are either short on time and long on money, or they’re short on money and long on time.

If you’re the former, it’s because you’re busy and / or important, and while you have plenty of disposable income you don’t have much time to dispose of it.

If you’re the latter, you’ve bags of time on your hands but your lack of money limits what you can do with that time. Both scenarios seem to me to be deeply ironic yet are classic examples of what life is like in the real world of limited resources.

The holy grail is of course to be long on time and long on money. I’m reliably informed that this is known as a financially comfortable and healthy retirement, a concept that feels very distant and remote to me. Then there’s winning the lottery or a similar kind of windfall, which is the short cut, at a distance and remoteness that tends to zero probability. And yet we play it, eh!

Unfortunately, I seem to be spending a good bit of my time in the lower quartile, the bottom left box of your management consultant’s two-by-two matrix. Yes, that’s the short on time, short on money variety. Dashing around the place developing business, creating projects, getting things off the ground, doing good things, for no money.

Yes, I’m happy, and lucky, I know. But a bit more of both wouldn’t go amiss, I promise.

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Categories General, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

To Hyphenate or Not to Hyphenate

September 16, 2019 //
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To hyphenate or not to hyphenate, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind…sorry, bit of a tangent there. But, it’s a good question. When you’re using phrases like much appreciated, well versed, often forgotten and so on, when should you use a hyphen and when not? Here I’m really talking about attaching adverbs to verbs. There are many other instances when you have to decide on a hyphen, or not.

Tricky one, but here’s my rule of thumb on it. Could be wrong, but makes sense to me. When you’re using the supine – that’s the passive bit of the verb, but it applies equally well to a part of the verb like occurring, as in often occurring – in a verbal sense, then I don’t use it. When you’re using the supine in an adjectival sense, then I do plonk in a hyphen. It’s as much about directing the reader as anything.

A couple of examples might help. ‘Thanks, that’s much appreciated. It’s well thought out’ Appreciated and thought are verbal, so much and well are simply the adverbs, as in next to the verb.

‘He gave me a well-intentioned slap on the back’. Here, gave is the verb, and well and intentioned describe the slap, so they’re used adjectivally, so I hyphenate them.

‘Often fired, sadly missed.’ Bit of autobiography here. This sentence is actually engraved on a bench in the bowls club where my late father used to play. Here, both fired and missed are verbs, not adjectives, so no hyphens. Both clauses are a clever play on words, when you think about the context, eh? I can’t claim ownership, my youngest brother coined it.

So, with this poorly-exampled post, which I’ve often considered but never put down in print, I’ll take my well-earned but seldom-occurring leave and promptly sign off, until the next time.

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Categories Communication, General, Language

In Praise of Electric Picnic – Part 3

September 13, 2019 //
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Electric Picnic closes the summer festival season, and is the largest in Ireland. In this last in a 3-part blog series in praise of the event, I focus on the people.

People come in all shapes, sizes and ages, and to a degree the same can be said for EP. There aren’t supposed to be kids from 13 to 18 there, but you see a few of them. The main demographic is 19 to 35 without question. There are a few young families there, but there’s also a surprising number in the 45 to 65 range too. If you can do 20- or 30-thousand steps a day in fields, and probably a good deal less if you’re not a culture vulture, you’re young and healthy enough for EP. You get the socio-economic panoply attending as well; it’s not confined to musos and hippies.

Drink is freely available, and according to my more savvy festival friends, drugs are too. I’ve never seen anyone supplying or receiving, but I’m not in the particular demographic and I’m not in the market. You do see a lot of people the worse for wear from both groups of stimulants, but trouble is very hard to find. You can be jumping up and down in a packed arena and bump into someone, and it’s all very good natured. A mutual apology is usually forthcoming.

Environmentally, of course, these types of events are an unnatural disaster. I don’t know where to start on this. One of the most ironic moments for me was watching a video in the middle of The 1975’s set where we were encouraged to consider civil disobedience since governments had failed to response adequately to the environmental crisis. ‘We’re producing too many greenhouse gases,’ said the screen on the main stage, which was probably burning 1.21 jigowatts of energy a minute in front of 30,000 people consuming their drink from a plastic cup.

EP is making an effort on the enviro front, but it needs to do so much more. A truly great weekend though, if that doesn’t sound too flippant a sign-off.

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Categories Customers, General

In Praise of Electric Picnic – Part 2

September 11, 2019 //
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In this second in a 3-part series in praise of the Electric Picnic music and arts festival in Ireland, I look at accommodation. And what a choice there is. While your ticket entitles you to put up a tent in ‘general camping’, there is a large array of additional options.

It all depends on your preferences for comfort, company, noise and location. You can bring a motor home. You can opt for eco-camping, as well as family camping. You can take one of the several ‘glamping’ options with the common denominator being that the accommodation is ready for you when you enter the festival, and you leave it set up when you head home. This makes an awful lot of difference to the amount of gear you need to transport to and from where you’re sleeping. But it come at price. There are lots of different sizes and types of tents and huts, from the functional to the fairly luxurious.

These posher camping options also come with better toilet facilities, showers, and are generally located closer to the action so you’ve less distance to trudge to get to the entertainment and sustenance.

We went with a modest pre-erected teepee-style tent in the glamping area. It pretty much doubles your entry ticket, but it’s worth it, especially if you’re the wrong side of 40 and can’t be bothered to slum it any more. It was also a mere 5 minutes’ walk to the main site, which is very handy if a change of weather calls for a wardrobe change, an occupational hazard at the end of August/beginning of September.

As you might expect, the nicer the accommodation, the nicer condition the place is left in when you leave, and the less of a hammering the site takes. I’m told the general camping is like a war zone on a Monday morning, and I’m inclined to take people’s word for it. I simply wouldn’t go if all I could get was general camping. I’m not 20 any more.

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Categories Customers, General

In Praise of Electric Picnic – Part 1

September 9, 2019 //
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For many who attended the largest music and arts festival on the island of Ireland during the Summer-Autumn cusp of 30th August to 2nd September, it is but a distant memory. With my tickets for 2020 already in the proverbial bag, however, I thought it would be worth paying a 3-part homage to the event.

I’m going to tackle this 3-part blog series as follows: music, accommodation and people. For music fans EP is a chance to connect with many major acts that you’ve not seen before. The kind of acts that you might not go and see specifically, in isolation. You’re probably not going to see the huge global acts coming to EP, but you’ll still get some major players making the trip down to rural county Laois. Performers play a huge variety of venues, from the main stage which can accommodate 50,000 people, to the big tops that will hold 5,000 and the little corner venues that will just about seat 50. Some of them are unknowns, some are on the rise, some are massive, and some were household names a generation ago and are still playing the lucrative festival trade.

There’s also a bourgeoning comedy and arts side to the festival, which tends to get dominated by the over 30’s, but again it’s a chance to hear and see some major people in their respective domains.

Many folk do their research beforehand and mark the shows they definitely want to see. Often there are clashes and agonising decisions to make: do I catch one or the other or try and do a bit of both? For me, though, the real benefit is going from venue to venue, stumbling onto stuff I’d never heard of and either giving it 5 minutes or else staying for the entire gig and making a note of them for the future.

I’m never quite prepared enough for the weekend, by which I mean I haven’t listened to enough of the pre-event playlists to make sure I’m not missing out. I tend to listen to the EP playlists for a few days afterwards and come to the realisation that there was so much more music I would have seen if I’d only had the knowledge, and more time.

If you like your music, there’s no better place for gorging on the sheer breadth and volume of it than at EP.

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Categories Customers, General

More Brexit Irony

September 6, 2019 //
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As I write this, daily and even hourly developments in the UK get filed under the ‘you couldn’t make it up’ column. As you read it, I expect the same situation is currently prevailing.

I heard an interesting story the other day, another symptom of the ‘every man for himself’ panic that sets in during similar times, affecting everyone from your neighbour up to national governments, causing us all to pull decisions, funding and the plug left, right and centre. If only we could be so decisive in our positive actions.

Anyway, this training company was offering programs on business growth. All very worthy in any environment, never mind today’s. Front and centre in the program was Brexit planning and mitigation.

Attendees were signed up, trainers were assigned, everything was ready to go. At the last minute, three companies pulled out, causing the program to be re-organised and two trainers to be let go. The reason they pulled out? Brexit! The irony that you’re pulling out because of concerns around the area that the program is focused on helping…

Remember recently when I mentioned organisations pulling marketing at the first cost-cutting sign of hard times ahead, when the one thing that can differentiate them in a challenging economy, and even grow at their competitors’ expense, is marketing? More of the same :-).

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology

Brexit Irony

September 4, 2019 //
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One of the fascinating characteristics of the universe is entropy, the notion that eventually everything gets messed up. Or, as the Americans might say, it all goes to sh*t.

This has never been truer when it comes to large political, financial and economic systems. They’re pretty easy to get into it, but after while you’re well and truly tangled up and they’re really hard to extricate yourself from. Perhaps that’s why there was no real plan for how a country comes out of the euro, or why the UK is finding it so hard to come out of Europe – whatever that means. Maybe the sages knew this all along and kept quiet.

Someone told me the other day that if there was another referendum on Brexit, ‘remain’ would win comfortably. Not because of the recent experiences, though. More because in the last 3 years many of the elderly who voted to leave have shuffled off their mortal coil. For them Brexit turned out to be a final parting gesture like when the Terminator disappears below the surface and gives us the thumbs up, except this time it’s the middle finger.

That is the true Brexit irony. We’re over 3 years further on, and how far have we got? Governments are composed of people, and as people we have a tendency to leave that washing up, that job, that year-defining dissertation til much later. Let’s take a break first, rather than immediately planning for the finishing tape and getting a sense of what we need to do right now to hit the deadline.

Now, with the deadline looming ever closer, and almost no progress made, we’ll be hoping for another instance where productivity accelerates hugely before the due time and we get it out the door, something, anything, just get it out.

Or maybe we’ll ask for more time, again. And if we don’t get it, and the deadline passes, will it be like Y2K, or WW2?

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology
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