If your Self-perception is is miles away from everyone else’s experience of a situation, you are setting yourself up for a fall.   Anyone who has seen the initial exchange  between the Prime Minister and Gillian Duffy will likely be left wondering why he thought it ‘a disaster’.   Yes it was challenging – but commentators seem to agree the PM handled that part pretty well. At the end of it even Mrs Duffy said she was happy and would vote labour and let’s face it, that was the most important thing.

Mr Brown’s self-perception was that he’d performed badly and it was – in his own words – ‘a disaster’.   It had been a conversation where he had faced some difficult questions, you could see he was a touch rialled at her mention of migrating of Eastern Europeans into Britain.  To observers  he still managed to answer the question and even showed what seemed like genuine interest in Mrs Duffy’s family.

Challenging exchanges like this are exactly what canvassing should be about – get stuck in, fight your corner, justify your policies and ideas.  So far in this election there’s been precious little depth to policies and ideas. Even Gordon – it seems – didn’t want to get too drawn into ‘the substance’.

So the key point is this: just because you thought something went really badly – it doesn’t mean everyone else thought the same.
What should’ve happened? If the self-awareness isn’t there (and there aren’t many politicians who seem to have much of it) it needs to come from somewhere else. Kind of an impromptu reality check that falls somewhere between research (pulled) and feedback (pushed) so I’m going to call it Reseedback.  If someone in the entourage was enabled with the confidence to intervene with Reseedback and say ‘tough situation that one Gordon  - good job, well done’ he might never have blurted his misguided self-perception.

It wasn’t quite the all-guns-blazing showdown you’ve probably conjured up in your head.  Having run out of food and rapidly running out of water he and his comrade mates opted to open the gates and let the British in.  Let’s face it – being hungry, thirsty and conscripted to fight in a war for a dictator who was about as popular as a corporate banker in a working mens club – it’s not surprising their hearts weren’t really in it.

So I like to think that ‘italian-ness’ is part of my heritage and I mention it because I think those Italian genes may just have just bobbed up in the youngest in our string of his great grandchildren.

Last Saturday, whilst my wife took our eldest to yet another 5th Birthday Party, it was my time to hang out with his little  brother.  After a hearty lunch of pasta spirals with ham and cheese – or should I say Fusilli con proscuitto e formaggio – the little fella announced he wanted to go to the park and play football. Except he didn’t, because at 3 years old he only wants to play football for about 3 minutes. We went anyway. We kicked the ball – a bit.  We threw the ball – a bit more.  We ran round  waving our arms – a great deal. A very italian afternoon.

Having worn each other out we headed back to the car park and I strapped the little bloke into the front seat of our family transport – a  Fiat 500 which we bought over 18 months ago.  Now on the one hand you might take a negative view accuse me of buying what’s really a Fiat Panda – but is far less practical and more expensive. Take a more positive view and you’ll appreciate it’s transport that ticks lots of feature boxes and packages them up as benefits to meet the most diverse range of customer values…

Our 500 is the 1.2 pop – that baby of the range.  It is the first car we’ve ever owned from new and never ceases to put a smile on our faces.   On the one hand there’s the look and finish, on the other the features and efficiency they’ve managed to pack in. Everything about it screams retro – the cheeky looks are modeled on the 1950s original.

This little Fiat is a truly amazing feat of consumer focussed product development. There are no boxes this little car leaves unticked.  You want safety – it has 7 airbags and it’s rated 5* by  EuroNCAP.  Style – well just look at the body shape and interior, all a work of italian automotive art. Environment – I went to Lampeter for three days last week and averaged 55mpg  - and at 119g/km of CO2 it won’t kill the planet as fast.  Running costs – I’ll shortly be renewing the road tax which will be a tiny  £35 – for the year, it’s group 2 insurance and coming in at 4 grand less than a basic mini it is huge value.

Of course, ours isn’t as exclusive as it was 18 months ago – they’re still selling like hotcakes – but it is still living up to its brand promise.  So there, the Fiat 500 – a really good example of how investing effort to create a product that meets diverse consumer values is a sure-fire route to success.

A sound reputation creates trust – and trust is the most valuable asset you can find if you want to influence people.  Trust can be built in lots of ways – but it mostly comes down to whether what you live up to your promises.  Get caught lying and you’ll lose it for a very long time.

There’s been no better example over the past few days than the Gordon Brown bullying accusations.  Is he a bully – or is he just a strong willed leader who occasionally loses his rag? A bully is someone who is intentionally cruel to others to make them feel inferior, not someone who gets a little hot headed  (angry even) when things aren’t going so well. Mrs Thatcher had a reputation for having an Iron will, did that make her a bully? And let’s face it, there’s been lots of things to get cross about running Britain lately  - so Gordon might be excused for the occasional temper driven outburst.

The jury is still out on whether Gordon is a forthright but highly stressed-out decision maker who sees the red mist occasionally – or guilty of direct and hurtful personal attacks on his Civil Service staff. It’s easy to interpret someone is out to hurt you personally when you are not getting your own way – how and when that becomes bullying only  those involved can really sort out.

The whole debate hangs around the substance of claims made by Christine Pratt of Charity the National Bullying Helpline. She claimed that No.10 staff contacted her helpline for advice about bullying.  That revelation didn’t go down very well (amidst accusations of breaches of confidentiality) and remains unsubstantiated.

Mrs Pratt has enlisted the help of Max Clifford – probably the most famous PR professional in the country – to help her maintain her reputation, fee free.

Clifford’s reputation has been built on his actions and abilities –  we’re back at that ability to meet promise again.

What’s most interesting to me in the context of managing reputation is not so much the outcome of whether the Prime Minister  is a bully or not – that will be decided by the evidence Christine Pratt presents – but how Mr Clifford’s words on his involvement are so very carefully thought out – so that his own reputation remains intact.

He says he told her, ‘the only way you’re going to change the public and the media’s perception is to come up with evidence of what you’ve been saying. Can you do that?’

And then on his choosing to take the account he said, “She and her husband have said, ‘Yes, we believe that we can.’ So I said: ‘Well, in that case, what you must do is keep your heads down until you’ve got that evidence which you feel establishes what you’ve been saying.”

Of course it’s a common sense thing to say – but more than that it leaves him with no egg on his face if Christine Pratt can’t produce that smoking gun.

It’s much been touted in the media as a Lose – Lose situation. Should it happen, a little lateral thinking could go a long way to ensuring a few more BA flights get in the air.

The crunch for BA is that they need trained cabin-staff to cover flights. Trained doesn’t just mean being able to smile at customers and offer a friendly hello. Trained means being qualified and competent to deal with an emergency on an airliner.

Ryanair has a completely different model for it’s cabin staff – one that BA could try capitalising on. Ryanair have partnerships with Cabin Crew recruitment like Crewlink, St James Management and Dalmac.

So why not ask these agencies about getting some temp staff in to cover. Keep a few more planes in the air. The answer may well be no – we haven’t got anyone available – but at least they’ll be trying. It also leads to an interesting question of competition and employment law…

So come on BA – pull every single stop out – show you’re doing everything you can (and more) to get people where they want to be at Christmas.

Sure – some people are wired to be more naturally creative – but that doesn’t stop less creative people finding ways to get those ‘ooh I just had a great idea’  juices flowing.   But let’s be clear – creativity in the sense I’m talking about is different to pure imagination. It’s a tool to make sure whatever it is you are being creative about is different and interesting enough for people to look in the first place – but still has purpose and (heaven forbid for the ‘imagineers’ out-there) even meets an objective.

Get into the the brain-works of creativity and you’ll find that (in right-handers) it’s the right side of your noggin that is responsible for the ideas.  Trouble is – the left side is responsible for ‘testing’ them and giving them real world objectivity – and for most people that’s what it does – the moment you come up with something – almost subconsciously without you even knowing it.

I call it the ‘that won’t work because…’ syndrome – and it’s the gallows for creativity. It’s also why many corporate organisations struggle to do really innovative thinking in-house. If you can’t put something into a process, cross the t’s and dot the i’s then it can’t go anywhere. Environments where dotting the t’s and crossing the i’s would see you in a disciplinary are about as helpful as a hog-roast at a vegan dinner party when it comes to creativity… which is why most of them contract-out ‘the creative’ to creative agencies.

Which brings me to the analogy of relationships.
Tell your other half you’re going for a night out with your mates (OK – by telling them you’re really illiciting their permission) and you’re far more likely to be asked the next day if you had fun – not sent a snotty ‘Whr TF R U?’ text just as you neck your third round of chasers.

In any strong relationship – provided your purpose is communicated honestly and openly – you’ll be allowed out.

And that’s exactly what you need to do to release more of your own in-built right-brain creativeness.
Learn some techniques to tell the left-hand-side you need some space, to pipe down for a bit, that you want to go out for a while and sort some things out.   You’ll be surprised the effect it has.

The essence of the story is that Climate Change Scientists have been rigging the way data is reported to support their argument: that the impending climactic catastrophe is man-made and we have the power to do something about it – provided we all do something together.

I’m not going to dwell on who’s right and who’s wrong in that argument – it’s about as futile and ferocious as the Mac/PC debate.

Much more interesting – from a communications and marketing perspective – is the condescending attitude of experts and authorities telling us to reduce our carbon footprint. And I can say that with authority – because I used to be one of them.  Government – for almost all of these kind of public information campaigns – says behaviour change as what they are out to achieve.   What they really mean is motivating people to do something differently.

Motivation is the key to behaviour change.  ’Fun and easy’ are the motivating factors that most people seek in their day to day. Sadly most of the Climate Change behaviours that we are told we need to adopt seem set to make things less fun and harder. Fair enough – fun and easy are highly subjective – but if you can’t grasp what motivates people you’re on a hiding to nothing.

Take Act On CO2. It was created to provide a single cross-government* campaign with joined up messages to influence the habits and decisions of the populous.  When it was launched in 2007 it was a big improvement over it’s predecessor – Tomorrow’s climate, today’s challenge (which was woolier than the jumper my Mum will inevitably put under the tree for me this christmas).

Sadly though it still isn’t quite up to the job –  much of  the content is still instructional and doom-laden.  Seen the latest TV ad?  - we’re back to scare tactics that vilify how we live our daily lives.  Whoever came up with the creative for that is stuck in 1998.

Then there’s the logo itself: it uses BIG SQUARE CAPITAL LETTERS.

In text/email/blog speak everyone knows that’s shouting. Shouting at adults who aren’t under the instruction of a disciplinarian regime usually results in you getting punched on the nose.  Telling people they need to do something only works when they are given a positive motivation for taking part.

There are plenty of specialist  ’world-saving-eco-terra’ agencies doing sustainability communications that talk a very good talk. Many have had a lot of success in the commercial and third sectors but it seems none – yet – have really cracked it advising government with truly motivational creativity for government sector communications.

So come on – motivate me – I’ll do more if I feel good about the actions I’m taking - not like a villain for the ones I am not.

*(thanks to devolution this cross-government campaign isn’t UK-wide, Wales and Scotland aren’t currently running ACT ON CO2)

First off – there’s the great PR that comes with the Environmental and Social responsibility of a BOGOL.  There’s a perfectly sensible argument that when you pick up a second free item at the same time it’s a lot more likely to end up in the bin – having passed its use-by date before you get the chance to trough it. Supermarkets have been quick to point out (making fullest use of the media) when introducing BOGULs that they have done so in reaction to Government and consumer pressure to reduce food waste.  So the idea has ethical legs – albeit short stumpy ones in the grand scheme of ethical and sustainable food production.

Secondly – and more important for the retailer I suspect – is that BOGOLs create a reason for you to go back to their store a second time. Discounts in food retail (more often than not) are designed to get you in store – where you’ll be tempted into purchasing other nice things that  are cunningly placed to grab your attention.  BOGOLs double the opportunity to get you in front of those nice things as they force you to return to the same retailer to make the most of the deal.

BOGOLs – one tiny step for sustainability, one giant leap for food retail marketing.

Okay, now maybe he shouldn’t have used the phrase ‘risk of dying’ – or maybe he was misquoted – but we all knew what he meant.  ’Bubble-wrap-Britain’ in the nought-ies is a very different place to when I was growing up in the 80s. There were consistently two or three people in my school year group sporting stitches, a dressing or cast of some kind to mend a wound or broken limb.  They’d have come off their bike, fallen off a wall, out of a tree… or managed a head-plant while ski-racing on the dry slope (which was my most spectacular contribution to what would now be the accident book).

You just don’t see kids in casts these days. That’s either because they’ve got strong bones – a result of drinking more milk (which lets face it is unlikely) – or because they aren’t falling off  bikes, walls and out of trees anymore.

Now on the one hand you can view it as a good thing – health and safety – protecting our young people from injury.  On the other isn’t it a consequence that they’re being wrapped in cotton wool and life is all becoming a bit less real and little too virtual?  That’s the point the Prince was making. Young people need excitement through risk. Children learn how to manage risk through experience. Initiatives like the D of E are brilliant for doing that in a way that minimises real danger – but keeps the excitement.

Before you all think I’m advocating allowing children to jump of bridges, going swimming in quarries and play on level crossings – I’m not. We just need to burst the bubble-wrap and get young people back to a real life – that’s exciting.

The first shock of the day was on the train – heading into London Victoria. As the train pulled up it was clear it was crowded and we boarded expecting all seven of us (4 adults, 3 children) would be standing in the door area. To my massive surprise several people gave up their seats to swap with us – so we could all sit together. Still in shock and my faith in South Eastern human kindness restored, the kids had a right roaring journey.

At Victoria we held people up at the barriers as I showed our five year old how to use his ticket to get through. Again nothing but patience and ‘Ahh’s’ from our fellow travelers – for what was a really big event in his day.  Then as we walked away it all changed…

Standing in the middle of the walkway was a member of station staff. He was directing people coming to board trains over to the right ‘funneling’ them  towards the two outbound gates that were accepting tickets onto the platforms. Except people weren’t always listening, they walked right by and had to turn round and come back. His reaction to people that missed him was astonishing. Rather than politely directing them where to go he barked at them, berating them publicly for missing him and not listening  Astounding.

Now, maybe he just got out the wrong side of bed, or didn’t want to work a Sunday, or maybe he was just a grumpy old man. But it could have all been so different. He could could have done his job with a bit of humor and a sense of fun.

How about getting one of those massive pointy foam hands to point people in the right direction?
Get a bit of banter going. Make the start of the journey fun for people. Give them something to talk about for the next 5 minutes. Make them smile.

Apart from that we had an amazing day in London. It’s funny how the simplest (and free) things – like playing in the fallen leaves in St James’ Park – kept the kids entertained.

To sum it up:  Traveling public: 10, train company staff: nil.

Well last week I went back in colloquial time to a language before our favourite plasticine friends had taken the word as their own.  Bolton, England – Wallace’s neck of the woods indeed – slap bang between Wigan and Bury.

It was a glorious autumn day – as the early morning sun beamed through the kitchen window my lancastrian friend I was staying with described it as a day for ‘cracking the flags’.  A real belter. A scorcher.

So there we have it – ‘Cracking the flags’ – gorgeous sunny Lancastrian days – hot enough to make flagstones split. Another brilliant English colloquialism that can be notched up to describing the weather, but that has come to mean so much more. Cracking.