The four-day workweek

With increasing energy costs and a growing impetus to cut costs, Chrysler is in talks with unions about shifting to a four-day workweek of 10 hour days at some of its plants in North America. The change would allow the company to shut down the factory for three whole days, bringing significant savings on electricity. Employees would get Friday, Saturday and Sunday off.

This is an interesting example of one of an innovative industry innovating around working hours. I often wonder what lessons can be learned from automobile manufacturers and applied to other industries. I know I thouched on Toyota and Kaizen earlier this week, and another practice it does in its factories is have an andon cord hanging overhead on both sides of every production line.

When a worker sees a problem, they pull the cord, which immediately stops their particular production line. 

The almost complete lack of anxiety around stopping production with the andon cord has huge advantages. Only about 15 to 20 minutes of a full nine-hour shift are lost, and the defect rate on finished cars is close to zero, Toyota says.

Still the four-day workweek is set to stir a lot of debate before anything is agreed.

Trouble at the top

It’s probably one of the world’s hardest jobs at the best of times. But it’s pretty far from the best of times for Gordon Brown right now. The last few days have seen the British papers reach feverpitch with predictions of the PM’s imminent political demise. Polls are saying that his personal popularity has plummeted to new depths while an increasing number of Labour party members apparently view him as a dead weight on Labour’s re-election chances. Add to this rumors of a possible leadership challenge by David Miliband and you start to get an idea of how much pressure he is under. Add to that he’s got to run the country and his role looks distinctively unenviable.

When you’re a leader dealing with both internal and external dissent goes with the territory. A lot of focus goes on the external forces, but it can be the internal voices that deliver the killer blow. Here are some examples:

Steve Jobs

In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple. While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, an industry-wide sales slump towards the end of 1984 caused a deterioration in Jobs’s working relationship with members of the executive board, and at the end of May 1985 – following an internal power struggle and an announcement of significant layoffs – Jobs was relieved of his duties as head of the Macintosh division.

Barbara Cassani

US native, Barbara Cassani started-up Go, the low-cost airline, with a £25m investment from British Airways, as its CEO. In her autobiography – Go: An Airline Adventure, which is a great read, she details how, following Bob Ayling’s removal as Chief Executive of BA, the voices of disent on the viability of a low-cost airline grew from BA’s executive board. She was forced to partake in a management buyout of Go for £110 million before the airline was sold for £374 million to easyJet a year later.

Margaret Thatcher

Thatcher was Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. Her fall from power was partly attributable to divisions in the Conservative Party. She was also known to override colleagues’ opinions, including that of Cabinet, which strengthened the backlash against her when it did occur. The tipping point came when Michael Heseltine, a former Cabinet colleague challenged Thatcher for the leadership of the party, and attracted sufficient support in the first round of voting to prolong the contest to a second ballot. She announced that she would not be a candidate in the second ballot and effectively resigned.

So what should Brown do? Potentially nothing. Luckily for him the Labour constitution makes it almost impossible to unseat a sitting Prime Minister. It probably didn’t help yesterday when John Prescott defended Gordon Brown by comparing him with Titanic’s captain a couple of days ago. But the facts are that Brown does not have to call an election until 2010. So maybe the best thing to do is sit there and push on through the dip. He’s got until 2010 to get through it.

Innovate like you mean it

Andrew Witty is trying something big. He’s in an industry that has an effect on everyone’s lives delivering the most innovative products known to man. Yet the industry is not innovative itself. Andrew Witty is the newly appointed chief executive of Glaxo Smith Kline, Europe’s biggest drugs company, and he’s been making waves trying to change the established drug industry model.

Under the current model, Glaxo and its competitors have a range of drugs in development at any one time in the hope that one will turn out to be a blockbuster, generating billions in sales. It has become ever harder to create such blockbusters, though, and the patents on a number of existing big sellers will expire over the next few years.

To move away from this he has set out a three-point plan to revive the company: focus on emerging markets; simplify operations; and deliver more “products of value”.

Witty’s attempt to end the reliance on blockbusters is arguably the most radical element of the new approach. He has said: “The biggest thing I’m trying to change is to go from saying it’s okay to have a blockbuster once every five years to a situation where we are delivering several new products every year.

“Let’s build up a constant flow, let’s get away from this boom and bust where you have nothing for five years, then a blockbuster and then nothing for five years. What happens if you don’t have a blockbuster? You just get bust, bust. I want to see a more steady stream of drugs.”

Maybe this strategy to de-risk is something that can be replicated across other industries and even yourself? We’re all guilty of relying on blockbusters one time or another. Both personally and professionally. Take an innovative approach next time you are doing something on auto-pilot. Let me know how you get on.

Some of the greatest minds in business

“Go farther, go further, go harder,

Is that not why we came?

And if not, then why bother?”

It makes sense doesn’t it? If not, why bother indeed. I’m reading The Dip by Seth Godin right now. A short book by the marketing guru and best-selling author, who reasons that every new project (or career or relationship) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point – really hard, really not fun. At this point you might be in a Dip, which will get better or a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better no matter how hard you try. According to Godin, what sets the successful apart from everyone else, is their ability to give up in a Cul-de-Sac and press on through a dip.

The quote at the top of this post could easily come from there, or any business book for that matter.

It doesn’t. It was actually said on Lil’ Wayne’s latest album – The Carter 3 – by Shawn Carter, aka Jay-Z, the multi-platinum rapper (pictured above with Bill Gates). Rap is one of my favourite genres of music and business is one of my favourite types of literature. And I don’t think the rap world and sharp business thinking are a million miles away.

Here are two examples:

“I took quarter water, sold it in bottles for two bucks,

Coca-Cola came and bought it for billions, that’s what’s up!”

I Get Money, 50 Cent

Here Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent, breaks down Coca-Cola’s business model – in one sentence. He should know, he was a major beneficiary of the billions that Coca-Cola paid for Glacéau last year, pocketing an estimated $400 million for his personal stake in the brand.

“I’m not a business man, I’m a business, man,

Let me handle my business, damn!”

Diamonds from Sierra Leone (Remix), Kanye West (feat. Jay-Z)

And Jay-Z is a business in his own right. In April this year, the widely-perceived greatest rapper alive, signed a deal with Live Nation, the entertainment company, that will rake in $150 million in return for just about everything he produces, including albums, tours and merchandise, over the next ten years. You can see where he was coming from when, on announcing the deal, he said: “I’ve turned into the Rolling Stones of hip hop.”

These two examples barely scratch the surface of how much good business sense exists in hip hop right now. So next time a rap song comes on and you go to click skip, stop and listen: you could be getting three minutes with one of the world’s top entrepreneurial minds.