The world according to Panto…….

As I get increasingly older, Christmas traditions become more important. No I am not going to refer to the British failure to deal with snow and ice. I am thinking of something much closer to my heart, the peculiar British tradition known as pantomime. You know the sort of thing, girl falls in love with girl, transvestites abound, ghosts creep up behind you, fairies wave their wands and it is all deemed suitable for a family audience.

Traditionally (that word again) we at Orchard Growth Partners have offered our contacts an early Christmas present in the form of some tips and ideas to help businesses improve their performance in the year to come. This year we have decided to look at the lessons that can be learned from those familiar pantomimes that we all know and love.

Pantomime has many lessons for business leaders (oh no it doesn’t! Oh Yes it does! Isn’t that a bit tenuous? Oh no its not….). For example King Arthur demonstrates the value of leadership, Snow White examines the benefits of leftfield collaborations, Cinderella shares the secrets of successful rebranding and Dick Whittington shows how simple tried and trusted solutions can crack new markets.

Of course there are many of you who are of the opinion that the world at present is one gigantic pantomime or at the very least a farce. Incompetent business leaders, bungling bureaucrats and bickering politicians have caused many of us to hold our head in our hands and wonder at the craziness of it all.

And yet that does both these forms of entertainment a great disservice. Good pantomimes, like good businesses, require skill, imagination and hard work in order to succeed i.e. put on a great show and get punters to part with their hard earned money. A pantomime that was put together by the incompetents, bunglers and bickerers above would not be funny and would fail as totally as everything else they seem to do in their day jobs.

I guess there are many people out there who are looking to put the year of 2010 “behind them”, even though 2011 will bring its own worries. To them and everybody else out there I wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Santa’s Little UK Based Helpers…..

As Santa gears up for his annual global trek bearing gifts for children young and old, my thoughts turn idly to the elves that spend all year busily manufacturing the products that are loading on the sled. Contrary to popular belief many of these elves might actually be situated in the UK. To borrow heavily on the words of Mark Twain, rumours of the death of UK manufacturing have been greatly exaggerated.

UK manufacturing is on a roll. According to the November Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) the sector grew at its fastest rate for 16 years. There has been record growth in employment in the sector. The Engineering Employers Federation have said that the manufacturing sector will outperform the rest of the economy next year and that firms were powering ahead, recruiting staff and investing in their businesses. Manufacturers were ending the year on a high and expecting to enter 2011 on a strong footing. Very impressive indeed.

Manufacturing currently accounts for 13% of UK GDP. OK in Germany it is 24% but the figure in France, which is fiercely protective of its indigenous industries, is broadly the same as in the UK and in the US it is lower. We are unlikely to get back to the 30% level of the 1970s, but given that the last ten years has seen manufacturing output fall by 11%, the rebalancing that we are starting to experience is very welcome if long overdue.

Historically UK manufacturing has always been about harking back to the past rather than looking to the future, an approach characterised by forlorn attempts to protect the heavy industries of the past. This attitude has led talented graduates looking elsewhere for their career options. With the tarnishing of the financial services industry, and a touch more glamour surrounding high tech specialised manufacturing hopefully we are starting to see a real change in attitude towards the sector.

So as we struggle with the packing and wire ties that seem to accompany our Chinese made toys this Christmas morning, we should also look forward to a gradual increase in “Made in Britain” goods emerging from wrapping paper in future years. A little ray of sunshine to offset the wintery conditions the country is facing at present.

It’s Berlin Time….

This week sees MPs (well those who can be bothered to turn up on a Friday) debate the idea of the UK moving to “Berlin Time”. Tory MP Rebecca Harris will be introducing a private members bill which is aimed at moving the UK permanently one hour ahead i.e. on the same time zone as most of continental Europe. This could, according to each side of the argument, either provide the UK, particularly the south east, with lighter, safer more enjoyable evenings, or plunge Scotland and all points west into a spiral of gloom and depression as mornings stay darker for longer.

Berlin of course is the capital city of the country which is currently Europe’s strongest economy. News emerged last week that German economic confidence has reached the highest levels since records began post unification in 1990. Indeed Germany’s economics minister Rainer Bruederle has gone on record as saying that “full employment will soon be possible”. This is a remarkable turnaround for an economy where unemployment has been stubbornly high for much of the past decade, and that fell off the end of a cliff at the end of 2008. Much of Germany’s current economic success is attributed to strong export performance, although domestic demand has also played its part.

The German economy has always run on a strange mixture of entrepreneurship and regulation. The typically family run “mittelstand” companies, enterprising SME businesses which focus on innovative and exportable products based on a strong commitment to research and development and long term planning, sit alongside some of the most fearsome employment protection systems in the world. And yet at the moment it seems to be working extremely well.

The situation in Germany is not perfect, and clouds exist in terms of the euro crises, public spending cuts and domestic banking risks. It would also help if they were to borrow and spend more as consumers. However, as the UK looks to rebalance itself as an economy which is weighted towards export and investment, rather that the consumption and borrowing model that we have grown used to, marrying Germany’s longer term approach to developing and making high value products that people want with the UK’s strengths of flexibility and dynamism looks like a winning combination.

Something to consider maybe as we prepare for our usual pre Christmas splurge prior to embarking on an uncertain 2011? We don’t have to be on the same time zone…..