Month: December 2021

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD PONDERS THE YEAR

A refrain from eternal optimist Del Boy Trotter in Only Fools and Horses was that “this time next year we’ll be millionaires”.  It would be good to hear his thoughts on the recovery from a pandemic that continues to stretch its tentacles into every aspect of life.  For this Englishman abroad it’s back to the future as California’s new indoor face mandate comes into effect and my trip to the UK for New Year is cancelled.

Just a few weeks ago, there was every chance of travelling.  The plane was booked, hotels in Norwich, Manchester, London and Brighton selected, the prospect of Eleanor’s birthday, Christopher’s band at New Year and a trip to Old Trafford to watch a rejuvenated Manchester United thrash Wolves.  Then a little Omicron in the works and the prospect of getting on public transport, being in dingy bars and becoming quarantined in the Holiday Inn equivalent of Wormwood Scrubs became too much.  

So, in 2021, outside of a trip to Washington in June, my life will have revolved around the idyllic neighbourhood of North Park and South Park and I’d have to say there are plenty of worse places to be.  The neighbourhood has survived furloughs, lockdowns, labor shortages and deep cleansing routines with remarkable vigor.  A new ice cream parlour opened on the corner of Juniper and 30th just last weekend after the shop had been empty for the best part of two years.

To say it’s an ice cream parlour underplays the vibe.  The ice cream is from family-owned Mutual Friend, the venue offers a café with coffee from the renowned Dark Horse Coffee Roasters as well as vegan doughnuts and liege waffles.  On a busy corner of South Park with the Golden Rhino alongside and Matteo just over the road it is going to be a total success if my first encounter with it’s first night waffle cone is any guide.

Differences to the daily routines are relatively subtle but the march of time, technology and entrepreneurial zeal have shown their hand.  The Whistlestop Bar has started to accept credit cards, increased their wine range and there is an excellent taco food truck on the weekends.  Needless to say, I have continued to pay in cash, drink Alesmith and sit at the same table each week complaining about the young crowd these changes are attracting.     

There was even the excitement of Albert Hammond Jr attending a promotional night for his newly launched “wine seltzer” called Jetway which required the outdoor drinking area to be cleared for a VIP event.  While I’m not one to complain about celebrities needing their privacy I was a bit baffled to find that the guitarist and occasional backing vocalist of The Strokes had that level of stardom.  Having mastered all five chords of It Never Rains in Southern California recently I was going to offer to accompany him on his Dad’s top selling tune but he lost his chance.

Even the best barbershop in the world, Thee Inglorious Blacktree Barberia, has upped its technology game with a new online booking system called Booksy.  I am pleased to report that an increase in efficiency will not mean an end to being offered beer and a shot to kill some time before getting into the chair.  The other big news is that a food truck stops outside TIBB on a Wednesday and Saturday night – perhaps I should suggest a buzzcut ‘n’ BBQ promotion.

The longest running saga of the pre-Christmas period has been the failure to get a treadmill delivered.  Walmart had the first opportunity and the delivery van even got to park outside the house while I engaged with the driver to get him to put it, as agreed with the company, in the outhouse.  I found that American delivery drivers don’t bargain and after five minutes of him furiously gesticulating while he argued with dispatch on his phone he simply drove off.

While WalMart might think that they have the financial muscle and retail nous to take on Amazon this was a real indication that they do not have doorstep delivery in their blood.  Decades of having shoppers making a pilgrimage to their tedious acres of boring aisles on bland retail parks has numbed them to what individual service looks like.  The promises of a new delivery date were given but never matched by action and after another two weeks the order was cancelled.

Next up was BestBuy which has a decent reputation but is turning out neither to be Best or to offer any certainty that we can Buy.  A delivery man phoned to ask if he could come earlier in the day than expected and I agreed only to find that 12 hours passed without him coming and the dispatch team not even knowing where he was.  A second attempt found Felix promising action without any follow through and here we are two weeks later wondering if this is another bust.

What I have to believe is that somewhere in a WalMart warehouse and then in a BestBuy warehouse there has been/is an expensive, 300lb treadmill with my address on it.  There is no supply chain crisis where the parts are scattered around the world because a man turned up outside my house and was ready to deliver it if he’d been given the right instructions.  The purpose of logistics firms is to pick, load and deliver these items on a basis that is routine to the point of boredom and Amazon has got it right while others are failing.

Somebody who has delivered is my friend and erstwhile PR entrepreneur Tony Tighe with a book of his life and career called “30 Years of Bull****”.  It’s a romp through his starting point on the family’s Liverpool market, through early days in Benidorm and on to a career in beer sales and marketing before starting Greenwood Tighe PR.  We worked together during the heady days of ASDA store openings during the 1980s where budgets were lavish and hangovers a certainty.

For several years the level of invention and B list stars became increasingly surreal.  A world record breaking haggis for the opening in Corby, crooner Frankie Vaughan kicking down a green door in Stockport, Anneka Rice in a helicopter as part of the treasure trail for Hunt’s Cross and the extraordinary ‘wrapping’ of ASDA’s “present” to London at Colindale.  It was splashy and showy and was part of defining a brand that challenged the establishment hierarchy of Sainsbury and Tesco. 

When I returned to ASDA in the 1990s I had already been told that “the roundheads have taken over from the cavaliers” and the store opening budget was about 10% of its previous high.  We’d have the oldest and youngest members of staff cutting the ribbon or run a competition for a deserving local family to have a trolley dash for the opening.  The local coverage was decent but it wasn’t quite the same as bringing the motorway to a standstill and being on national news with store bound traffic as we had done in the glory days.

What had been carried forward from the 1980s was a contrarian, disruptive attitude to challenge the corporate smoothness and complacency of the two dominant southern based retail behemoths which saw us overtake Sainsbury on market share.  Tony had moved on to other things but I was fortunate to find new creative geniuses and allies at Lynne Franks PR to dominate tabloid and TV coverage and capture the imagination of “ordinary working people and their families”.  Having seen Mr Tighe write his book at the age of 70 I am pondering whether I should set about offering my own tales from a career in PR.    

Advising the Advisers

Advisory boards have a long history and can be genuine forces for industry insight, expert advice and sound counsel.  As we have seen with Theranos and Enron they can also be stacked full of notable and well respected names to provide comfort to outsiders without much impact on management behaviour. With private money flooding into edtech there seems to have been an increase in advisory appointments and it is to be hoped that they will bring benefits to universities and students. 

Recent developments at ApplyBoard, THE Student and LeverageEdu and longer standing arrangements, bring higher education insiders firmly alongside commercial organizations that are trying to grow their business in higher education. Motives will differ but there is always a degree of flattery in being singled out as a “thought leader” and invited to join a group of colleagues to give your opinion without having any responsibility for delivery.  Those with an authoritative voice in education circles might also argue that influencing, or learning from, a commercial organization engaged with the sector is always a good thing. 

For the commercial partner there are clear benefits to being closely associated with reputable individuals. This is particularly so where the very presence of their names on the website, or at events and making introductions, brings instant credibility.  It can sometimes go wrong but rarely turns into the public resignation crises encountered by Pride in London, the UK’s Science Museum, or software company Afiniti. 

Whatever the purpose of the appointment it would seem to be in the interests of the adviser, the commercial entity and industry stakeholders to make the terms of engagement transparent. Advisers might also consider flagging their role at any event where the subject comes up and confirming whether it reflects any opinion on the merit of one commercial organization over its competitors. The Advisory Board Centre (which appears to operate mainly across Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore) also has some interesting reading on the subject.

Apply Carefully

The stated purpose of the ApplyBoard UK advisory board is to “guide and support ApplyBoard’s expansion within the United Kingdom”. Recent ApplyBoard advisory appointee, Prof Sir Steve Smith, was billed in his role UK Government International Education Champion when he presented at a recent ApplyBoard event described as a “closed door briefing” for UK vice chancellors.    It’s entirely possible the advisory role was announced or well known to the audience but they might legitimately wonder if his role implies any views about the company’s market position compared to commercial competitors. 

Two other recent appointees to this advisory board have roles with HEPI*, which has long positioned itself as the “UK’s only independent think tank devoted to higher education”.   One industry commentator described the new board members as “smart cookies along with £3bn betting on AB and you are betting against it, you braver than I!” (sic). It will be interesting to watch how praise or criticism is allocated in any HEPI articles** about the role of aggregators and whether there will be an appetite to consider the policy questions around possible regulation.

Slice of the Pie

LeverageEDU recently announced the addition of the CEO and founder of PIE News to its advisory board. There is one other advisory member, Karan Khemka, formerly of EY Parthenon and now a portfolio board member and investor, who is also a Director of agent aggregator Adventus.  The PIE has published extensively on the aggregator community and announced Khemka’s appointment but its own CEO’s new role doesn’t appear to have been important enough to make even the “movers” section of the publication. 

Oversight or Oversight?

THE Student’s global student advisory board has gone the route of appointing individuals with roles in universities. The Chair of the Board says (of edtech) that “it’s vital that the university sector has oversight of this newly emerging field”.  There would be a lot of agreement on that but, unless there is some undeclared governance aspect, an advisory board doesn’t usually provide oversight or binding advice.

The board has representatives from several parts of the world but one of the biographies on the website is already out of date.  David Pilsbury is shown as Deputy Vice Chancellor, International at Coventry University, a role he left in June 2021, and he is now Chief Development Officer at Oxford International Education Group.  In the interests of transparency it seems reasonable to expect that Advisory Board profiles are kept up to date.

A Portal to Misinformation

The relative newness of the THE board may save it from an even poorer showing at StudyPortals where four of the nine members of the UK Advisory Board have moved on from the positions described on the website.  Andrew Didsbury left the University of West Scotland in January 2019; Ken Gill left NCUK in May 2019; Dr Sonal Minocha is now a Professor and left Bournemouth in December 2018; and; Dr David Pilsbury (the same one as on the THE Board), left Coventry University in June 2021.  If students are reassured that Study Portals is taking advice from an Advisory Board entirely made up of stalwarts from UK universities they are sadly mistaken.

Most of those moving have gone on to roles in commercial roles. Didsbury has become President UK at MSquare Media which describes itself as a “leading global service provider and international education platform”; Pilsbury is Chief Development Officer at Oxford International Education Group and Minocha is Chief Academic Officer and Co-CEO at a yet to be announced edtech venture.  Worth adding here that MSquare Media has a UK and Europe Advisory Board with eight external worthies from UK universities and the British Council – the biographies look totally up to date.

Pathways to Confusion

Senior university figures engaging with commercial entities have a particular need to ensure that their role is not misunderstood and Professor Sir David Eastwood’s appointment with INTO University Partnerships (IUP) may offer some lessons.  After becoming VC of the University of Birmingham in 2009 he became a Director of IUP in 2014, but when the university UCU union branch asked in 2018 why this interest was not declared during discussions on student recruitment, he was re-classified by the university as “non-executive” director of IUP.  The UK’s Institute of Directors state that “there is no legal distinction between executive and non-executive directors”.

There appears to be no recorded comment on motivations for taking the post or what benefit the University got from the appointment but it must be assumed that the appropriate university authorities gave approval.*** Eastwood is due to have a statue honouring him erected on the Birmingham campus when he retires later this year and currently holds 258000 C Ordinary Shares in IUP.  His current profile on the university website describes him “a Board Member and Non-Executive Director of INTO University Partnerships” while IUP’s pages describe him as a Board Director.

Slippery Pole or Path to Glory

The worthiest and most high-minded motives can be misunderstood and it is reasonable to know whether people, particularly those in positions of power and influence, have any personal stake in a cause they are discussing.  The contemporary debate in the UK about MPs having second jobs or using their position to lobby for commercial organizations is not directly equivalent but reflects the risks caused by uncertainty over motives and rewards.  As Warren Buffett reminds us, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

NOTES

Material presented in this blog reflects publicly available information with the links given checked in the period up to 3 December 2021.  If there are any errors or misrepresentations they will be amended on receipt of authoritative and documented evidence.  Individuals who wish to clarify the nature of their agreement, including any benefits received or anticipated, with the commercial company mentioned will have that information added to this blog.      

* HEPI is a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity and “aim to be transparent in our funding”.  Broadly 45% of income comes from HE institutions, 30% from corporate partners, 15% from events and the rest from co-sponsored projects.

** HEPI’s work is guided by an Advisory Board appointed by the Trustees.  The Board’s role is “only to give advice to the Director”