(The first in an occasional series of book reviews. This is designed to both get me to read more books and to enable me to write more regularly too. Expect a mix of novels, social history, nerdy science and, just sometimes, sport).
Slaying the Badger by Richard Moore
I was talking with my new boss the other day at Work One (see the footnote here for my distinction between 'Work One' and 'Work Two') about how I like to operate at work, what my values and principles are, all stuff that I love (mainly because it means that I get to talk about myself) and we got to talking about the Tour de France. Now, anyone that follows my Twitter during June and July knows that I'm a huge TDF fan but not everyone might realise that I use it as my one "sporting metaphor" at work. I usually get very turned off when people try to engage me with football metaphors: "we're down two nil in the eighty-fifth minute, we need a super-sub" or "I'm just the skipper on the pitch, I need all the other ten men to get behind the ball too". Bleugh.
But for some reason the Tour is a totally resonant gold-mine for me of how I want my team to behave, lead and perform. I could go on for hours but three examples should do;
- Cycling is a team sport but it's also an individual sport. Each team has a leader and the rest of the team (the "domestiques") are paid to support him. This means that you competitors whose job it is to support and shelter their leader and that alone - this could be anything from: giving up your musette (feed bag) if the leader misses picking his up on the move; pacing the leader back to the pack if they stop for a wee or have a problem; all the way up to giving up your bike if the leader's bike has a failure. There's a wealth of things to think about there for work and other things you do in your life - how are you acting as a domestique in service to others? When are the team leader? When do these roles change? (On the last point, the best example of this is Bradley Wiggins as winner of the Tour leading out his team-mate Mark Cavendish for the stage win in Paris in the 2012 Tour - leader turned domestique for the day.
- The above, combined with the fact that to "just" be a domestique still means cycling 200km+ a day, every day for three weeks pretty much blows my mind. These are world-class athletes and they not only sublimate their ego and own ambitions to the service of the team leader but put themselves through agonies to do it. Legends.
- But probably the thing that I love the most about the Tour (and it's similar to why I love cricket) is the way that there are competitions within competitions and the balance of power and advantage can switch one way and another many times within a day. A rider might break away from the pack and be supported by a rider from another team during that lonely 150km because that helps their team to achieve something they want. Sometimes this is explicit with deals being done ("support me today and I'll set you up for a stage win tomorrow") on the wing and sometimes it's more serendipitous.
I was talking with my boss about all this and it turns out he is also a big cyclist and TDF fan and said he'd lend me a book he'd been reading. He did and I read it over Christmas and it's highly recommended by me for general sports fans or cycling aficionados.
It tells the story of the 1986 Tour which featured a see-saw battle between the new wave, represented by Greg LeMond and combative old-guard in the shape of Bernard Hinault (the eponymous 'Badger'). It's a cracking read that moves at huge pace and colours in the history and context of the race to make it fit together. There is a wealth of interviews with the key participants including LeMond and Hinault and their coaching teams.
The paperback edition (as linked above ) also has a fascinating epilogue that explores and justifies the author's designation of the 1986 race as the "Greatest Ever" in the subtitle to the book. The final passage touches on a few of themes I talk about above so I thought I'd quote from it at length;
"The reaction from one reader prompted me to think about another aspect of the story, an obvious one but one that I hadn't given much consideration to because it seemed so obvious. The reader, Gabriel Karaffa from New York, notes that the 1986 Tour was a 'stark example' of so many different people 'pursuing their own agendas'. The problem, of course, was that so many of the dominant players - from the charismatic, wealthy team owner to the coaching genius to the two strongest riders - happened to be in the same team. In cycling, perhaps more than any other sport, this is a recipe for conflict. Because, as Karaffa notes, 'cycling was not originally a team sport, but it evolved into one ... The problem with this, of course, is that only one rider can win the general classification ... Were it to completely convert to a team sport, all events would be decided by team classifications'.
Those of us who follow cycling closely accept that it is a team sport and rarely reflect on how unnatural this is. Perhaps it's best described as an individual team sport.
But it is an aspect of the sport that cuts to the heart of the 1986 drama. Neither Hinault nor LeMond was drawn to cycling in order to become a member of a successful team. Teenagers do not embark on the road to a career as a professional cyclist harbouring dreams of becoming a domestique. The team role is something that is forced on the majority of riders by their own limitations. For those without limitations - Hinault, LeMond - it is a nearly impossible compromise."
This neatly encapsulates the excitement at the heart of the sport for me. We saw some of this in the 2012 Tour with Cavendish (a cyclist built and conditioned to win) being de-prioritised by Team Sky to make sure that Wiggins won the race. This led to Cav leaving the British (dream) team to join Omega-Pharma-QuickStep where the operation will be built around him to win the Green Jersey.
Roll on 29th June!
It's been nearly a week since I got back from America and I've been suffering from what I think is know as "re-entry difficulties". I knew that things would be different when I got back (not least the fact that I was no longer free to start drinking at two in the afternoon and that I had to sit at a desk and do actual work at a computer) and it's been about as bad as I thought it would be.
I was struck by the expected jet-lag from the flight home - I know why they call it the red-eye - and was potentially very dangerous on the drive home. I played it safe and stopped for a rest about every 40 minutes which was the right thing to do but sadly had the effect of making it a very long journey! I got home in time to vaguely unpack, iron a shirt for work the next day, shove down some freezer food and get to bed. It was an particularly unwelcome alarm that went off at 6am on Monday.
It would have been bed enough to go back to my old job (which I knew how to do and loved) but instead I was having to face into a new job, new team and a fresh set of challenges. I kept telling myself it was what I wanted and asked for but it still made for a tough first day back. I knocked it on the head about 4 o'clock to avoid the awkward possibility of falling asleep at my desk!
Since then I've variously - had a Labour Party branch meeting (where I talked a bit about my experience before, during and after election day); caught up with lots of friends; rather half-heartedly campaigned for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections and desperately tried to tidy up my house from my whirl-wind re-entry. Oh, and had the plumber round to take a look at my boiler and explain why it was making a noise like it was going to blow up (answer: it was about to blow up and also featured a wasps' nest within it...).
I need to start thinking about how I can write up my trip fairly soon whilst it's still fresh in my memory - I'm thinking about sitting for a couple of weekends in the University of Nottingham's library and cracking it all out. There's so much I want to cover that I want to make a brilliant job of it so need some peace and the right atmosphere to make it work.
A number of people have mentioned that they'd like for me to keep this blog going now I'm back in Nottingham. I have to say I've really enjoyed writing it and lots of people sent me messages to say how much they enjoyed reading it so I'll have a think about how I transform it into something Nottingham focused (will have to change the title for a start!).
Slightly behind in blogging as no WiFi at the place I'm staying at.
I'm now in Minneapolis and whilst there isn't any Purple Rain it's certainly very cold so I've taken refuge in a coffee shop to catch up on emails etc.
The final couple of days in Chicago were as good as the first two - I spent a great day with the team at the Walgreens Deerfield 'Community Support Centre' (Head Office) and also saw some excellent architecture from Frank Lloyd Wright.
I won't go on too much about the Walgreens visit as it'll be pretty irrelevant to most people outside of D90 but it was a really useful and insightful day. I met with John Gremmer who heads up their CSR programme and he was able to introduce me to lots of people around the office including a brief chat with a couple of the Board members which was unexpected and very interesting.
A few random notes, mainly on cultural differences / similarities between Walgreens and Boots (for those who don't know the two companies are merging at the moment - see some info here).
- The company used to be head-quartered in Chicago city-centre but moved to their current suburban location in the 1970s. This move caused some bad blood with the Daley family (who have run the city on-and-off for the last 30 or so years) which still lingers even now. An interesting angle for my Company Towns research.
- The company has an internal motto of "doing well by doing good" which fits really well with the Boots company ethos.
- This includes a 'Four Way Test' which I saw displayed is everyone's office and in most of the corridors too.
- The company is doing some really interesting things to combat Food Deserts (which I walk about here in Detroit) - certainly the range and selection of fresh food in some of the stores we visited was very comprehensive.
- Oh, there's an own-brand range of beer: Big Flats - something the team at Boots should definitely consider...
A fascinating day that I've only just skimmed some of the nuggets from.
Only last (half) day in Chicago (sob) I went over to Oak Park west of the city. It was here that Frank Lloyd Wright lived for a time and designed a number of very impressive family homes. You can tour his home and studio (which I didn't do for lack of time) or do a walking tour around the houses (which are all still in private ownership). Despite it being a proper MidWest autumn day (ie freezing cold) I opted for the latter.
I really impressive collection of homes, some photos below, and what looks like a great community of people.
I then had to get back downtown, pick up my bag and navigate O'Hare Airport to get to my flight on time. I like to blame the cold weather for slowing me down as I nearly missed my flight... Got to Minneapolis to find that it was even colder - starting to be glad for the huge amount of clothes I've dragged with me here!
The Nottinghamians amongst people reading this will know that Nottingham is sometimes called 'The Queen of the Midlands'. I learnt today that Cincinnati (finally cracked how to spell it!) is known as 'The Queen City'. Tenuous nomenclature links aside, the cities are similar in population size (c. 300,000) but not a lot else - it's been a really interesting day or so exploring the city and drawing comparisons.
I arrived late afternoon yesterday and popped out to the Oktoberfest. I was intrigued to see what the American version of the German beerfest would look like. It was a great show - a reasonable variety of beers, lots of food and a real family atmosphere. The ratio of food and entertainment to beer was skewed to food rather than beer - and I'm not sure that Nottingham CAMRA would approve of Bud Light and Miller being included in a beer festival. I sampled a number of the local brews - including some from Samuel Adams, Great Lakes and Magic Hat. As per my post here on beers, it was good to see some of the craft brewers in America getting out there and encouraging people to try their products - but the number of people still sticking to their traditional low-taste volume brews was a bit disappointing.
Monday morning brought a slight hangover and also a meeting at Proctor & Gamble. The buildings the company occupies really dominate the city centre as you can see in the below photo.
I had arranged to meet FD Wilder, P&G's Vice President for Global Market Strategy and Planning. I was a little nervous going in to visit someone so senior in such a huge organisation but FD was highly engaging and very generous with his time. A really interesting discussion about how P&G's 'promote from within' culture both supports and can hinder their push for innovation and creative thinking plus some great details on how P&G engage with their host city.
On the latter point FD was able to talk to me about how the company deliberately invested in downtown Cincinnati as an act of enlightened self-interest: back in the early 2000s the city was not in a great place, including some horrendous sounding riots and a significant level of white-flight to the suburbs. This was causing recruitment problems for P&G as ambitious young graduates were not willing to move to the city. I can confirm that just over 10 years later the city centre feels a million miles away from the events described above - I felt very safe and saw a variety of races and backgrounds mingling together.
FD also gave me some really interesting perspective on both the Boots/Walgreens merger and also the global retail market (P&G see that there are 24m stores worldwide that sell products in categories they participate in; 6m of them they have a presence in but only c. 200,000 are part of a chain - the rest are 'mon-and-pop' independents, often in the developing world). Oh, and that Google have a model of a dinosaur at their Silicon Valley HQ - to remind everyone that works there that even the most innovative company can become obsolete if you don't guard against it.
I came out of the offices to some welcome Midwestern sun (it had been very cold first thing) and decided to walk up from the city-centre to Mount Adams - the suburb of the city that overlooks the main city and hosts a number of artists and other creative types in some very desirable housing. The climb was certainly a stiff one but the view was absolutely worth it, as were the couple of pints of Hop Bomber beer from Rivertown Brewery I had at the City View Tavern in Mt Adams.
Just to be clear that I've not spent the whole time drinking, I also went over to the Cincinnati Reds stadium - the Great American Ballpark to pick up my ticket for the baseball game I'm going to see tomorrow evening. Might have one or two pints at the game of course...
I've spent the day with the Boots USA team - these are the guys that are charged with distributing and marketing certain Boots branded products in the US - products like No7, Botanics, Expert and Extracts. They're based in Norwalk, CT so I jumped into my enormous minivan hire-car this morning just before 8am to do the 90 minute drive down.
I stayed last night with a great family in South Glastonbury in rural Connecticut. I found this place to stay through
Servas (you can read a bit more about this at my previous post - A Place To Lay My Head). Lisa and Wayne are my hosts along with their teenage son, Noah. They are so warm and welcoming, I couldn't have asked for more from them. A great chat over dinner and bottle of wine about the latest political happenings in the Presidential race (Romney's "47% comment" is getting a lot of play here - I wonder if it is in the UK?).
Anyway, the day with the US Boots team was incredibly inspiring. I met pretty much the whole team (which is only perhaps a dozen strong) and I was really impressed with the way that they represent the Boots brand so passionately and clearly when they're based thousands of miles away from Nottingham and the home of the brand. A few randoms thoughts that I jotted down during the day;
- If you've got a brand that is truly customer-centric then it can easily cross borders - womens' beauty needs are pretty universal
- The passion that I saw came from experiencing the using the products - none of the people I spoke to knew about Boots before they started working here but could all talk from the heart about how great the products were and how important the trust and heritage that the Boots brand represents are.
- Someone said to me before I came on this trip that the American people are generally, 'hard-wired to help' and I really experienced that today - a whole fay of meetings and interactions set up for someone they'd never met before and who they had no expectation of anything back in return.
The US focused website is here - gives a good flavour of the way that the UK marketing materials are translated to a similar but different audience.
The driving to get to and from Norwalk was OK - the minivan I'm driving hasn't got a blind-spot so much as a blind-entire-side: you have to crane your neck into the most ridiculous contortions to make sure you're not about to side-swipe someone when changing lanes. That aside and some brief slightly sticky traffic it was pretty smooth.
I'm back to NYC tomorrow for a meeting with The British-American Business Council which should be interesting. If I've got time I will pop into the New York Public Library which was closed at the weekend when I was in the city.
