I am exhausted. My eyes are sore and bloodshot and I have become estranged from family and friends. I have enormous difficulty rising from a sitting position and every few hours I emit a guttural, primeval roar. In short, I have Olympic fever.

For the past two weeks I have marvelled at the prowess of sportsmen and women from all around the world who have run, jumped, rowed, dived, sailed, shot, lifted and all the other sporting verbs  to an extent mere mortals glued to the television cannot even begin to comprehend. If this was not enough, they have even invented a new verb: Olympians no longer win, they medal.

And medal they have with style, passion and sheer determination. Many of us draw inspiration from the games and Olympic champions are in high demand as politicians eager to bask in their reflected glory clamour to appear alongside the new generation of superstars. Business leaders are also keen to understand the athletes’ zeal for excellence and translate this formula for success into the corporate world. [Read more…]

If rivers could tell tales, then the vast expanse of brown water outside my window would be worth listening to.

Across from my office on the northern bank of this river is London’s financial district where two thousand years ago the Romans made camp as they forded the Thames and made Londinium the base from which to conquer Britain. To my right is the Tower of London built by Norman invaders a millennium after the Romans arrived in order to stamp their authority on the local Saxon population. Just to the east is Tower Bridge the great Victorian symbol of London.

In front of me I can see the gilded pinnacle of the monument built to commemorate the great fire that destroyed much of London in 1666. It is still the world’s tallest stone column but it is now dwarfed by the glass and steel boxes that house the greatest concentration of financial workers in the world. [Read more…]

According to a recent poll by the National Geographic Channel, 64% of Americans believe Barack Obama would be better able than Mitt Romney at handling an alien invasion of Earth. No doubt there are moments when the President feels that inter-planetary visitors have already occupied the world around him. Certainly the recent G8 meeting bore more than a passing resemblance to the bar scene from the movie Star Wars.

As far as I am aware AnnaPurna Consulting has not yet opened an office on Mars. I hesitate about being too unequivocal on this subject as my colleagues have an unflagging zeal to extend AnnaPurna Consulting real estate footprint ever further afield. This has been a deliberate strategy: to provide our clients with comprehensive geographical support in both the head office locations where they own risk and the more frontier spots where they are at risk.

But the turbo-charged enthusiasm with which this strategy has been enacted makes me wonder how much longer it will be before I find an invoice from NASA on my desk and learn that a AnnaPurna Consulting advanced reconnaissance team has already headed out to seek new opportunities on Mars and beyond.

On the basis I have learned not to be surprised by anything in this job, I thought it might be useful to sketch out the sort of advice we might give a Martian new business development director looking to evaluate where best to start the take-over of Earth. [Read more…]

Public life in Britain is pretty crowded this summer. The jubilee celebrations to mark Queen Elizabeth’s sixty years in the job and the forthcoming London Olympics are once in a generation events that seem to strike some genuine chord of national celebration. Add in the annual Wimbledon tennis tournament and you can feel a palpable and cumulative sense of national well-being. In part, this series of national festivities is helping to detract attention from rubbish economic data, looming tough questions about Britain’s role in the European Union and yet another banking scandal.

In fact, banking scandals seem to have become the new national pastime. What a pity there is no way the country can use this proclivity to Olympic advantage: “and the gold medal goes to the GB team for manipulating the inter bank lending rate”. We might even get extra points for our complete failure to learn any lessons from the previous string of scandals. Each time some sharp practice is revealed, we wring our hands, the government appoints yet another review of banking operations and stern words are uttered about rooting out the bad apples and curbing the excesses of the City of London. [Read more…]

Imagine you are walking through dense woodland on a foggy evening. You are following a friend along a twisting path and as the mist rolls in you begin to lose sight of your companion. You have to navigate by the sound of their voice alone. As the path becomes less distinct, you feel you are losing touch as you only catch the occasional glimpse of your guide. Just as you are in real danger of getting lost, the fog lifts and you emerge into a clearing to be reunited.

That is how I felt yesterday listening to Alan Greenspan. I had been invited to speak at the Conference de Montreal and the guest of honour was the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Sitting on his table at dinner, it was clear that he is used to being venerated and once you get beyond the fact that he looks like an octogenarian Woody Allen, he is undoubtedly well informed on all manner of subjects. [Read more…]