Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, 1936

I’ve been to see Henry Moore at Tate Britain twice now and I plan a third visit before the exhibition closes in August. My favourite room in the exhibition is the one you come to last, Room7: Elm.

I love the Elm room so much because for me it is the clearest example of the way in which Moore worked, and it demonstrates his genius in vivid form. His genius was to work in collaboration with the material to produce his work, the material is as much part of the artistic process as Moore is.

Moore forms the shapes he makes around the wood, working with the grain to balance his vision against what the material is willing to allow him to do.

When Moore started work on the piece above it was a massive, solid block of wood, he didn’t know the exact grain patterns he would reveal, but he started working comfortable in the knowledge that as an artist he was not completely in control.

When Moore finished I can imagine him standing back and in conversation with the wood congratulating and thanking it for bringing him such monumental success. Without understanding and respecting the material Moore’s work wouldn’t mean so much to so many.

Perhaps when Moore finished making his work he didn’t get the shape he saw in his mind’s eye when he started, but the work is better for it, his sympathy and respect for the material to decide where knees, shoulders, breasts and head all precisely sit make the work wholesome, real and meaningful.

And now for the publishing bit…

Henry Moore served his audience work that was shaped around the material that he carved, we must do the same. As we carve our products into new forms we must continually react to changes in the surface of the material with which we work, we cannot force or dictate them into a shape that cuts across the grain; we are not carving a block of blank chalk but a beautiful piece of Elm.

As publishers this means adapting to the grain of cultural, social and economic shifts and where appropriate carving our products using new developments in technology and changes in editorial direction. We have to work in collaboration with and respect the environment in which we publish.

We can only form our products effectively and create them as art by understanding the raw materials we work with will change dramatically as we move forward, we must be ready to adapt quickly and sympathetically to these changes before we disrupt the grain and spoil our products, it is then that our art falters.

Reading through a couple of articles by Ruth Spellman, Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute, a few issues she raises rang alarm bells, and I imagine they will do for hundreds of people across the UK’s publishing industry.

In an article about management style Ruth wrote.

If we are serious about pushing the UK towards economic recovery, businesses need to be innovative, accessible and empowering. It’s what employees need and want.”

Ruth Spellman, 2010

I couldn’t agree more, Ruth.

Detailing the plight of the managers Ruth goes on in another recent article to detail the following.

Yes, managers are currently under a great deal of pressure to restore their organisations back to pre-recession health, but there are no excuses for pushing employees so hard that the health of the individual is sacrificed for the health of the business. Work should be a place where people are built up, not broken down.”

Ruth Spellman, 2010

Read the last sentence again, it’s remarkable but it really shouldn’t be, it should be standard practice; we should take it for granted this will happen.

“Work should be a place where people are built up, not broken down.”

Imagine working in a business where the driving force was to build up employees, make them better, bring them a wealth of experience and look after them. That would be good for employees and for the business, especially in these hard times.

The requirement for good management steps up a level and becomes a lot more serious when you look at the implications bad management can have on the health of employees and what that means for the business.

If employers need a financial incentive to develop smarter processes to avoid putting pressure on their workforces to deliver more for less, they should bear in mind that presenteeism — underperforming at work due to ill-health or stress — costs the economy £15bn each year, almost double the cost of absenteeism. This fact alone should encourage employers to do more to manage increased workloads, keeping morale and staff productivity levels up.”

Ruth Spellman, 2010

Management is a two-way thing. Most managers don’t get this, they don’t realise they are managing humans, they think they are just managing a spreadsheet. Most managers don’t innovate, and they aren’t accessible or empowering because they don’t understand the employer/employee equation involves delicate unpredictable human emotions not raw data, which can be manipulated at the click of a button to tell them what they want.

And why does this happen? Because only one in five managers have any type of professional management qualification. A lack of qualified managers has bred a class of authoritarian, bureaucratic and secretive managers obsessed only with the maintenance of their own seniority. This doesn’t work, it isn’t productive, and it ultimately leads to failure for all involved.

All employers have a duty of care to employees and are legally required to assess the risk of work-related stress, it is a duty of care the UK publishing industry does not take seriously, this needs to change if the task managers have of “restoring their organisations back to pre-recession health” is to be achieved.

In an industry that has taken big hits and suffered harshly at the hands of the recession we need innovative, accessible, honest and open managers who can create an environment where the people left after the streamlining process of the last two years can be built up and bring the UK’s publishing industry a new lease of life.

You wouldn’t expect a broken lens to take a perfect picture, it will take one, but it will come out looking like half the image it could have been, even if the person processing the image isn’t making a mistake.

A lack of clarity is a very real and present danger in publishing, without leaders and working environments that provide clarity products fail their audiences, and businesses fail their employees; breaking the duty of care that is legally afforded to them, which results in stress and anxiety in the workplace. This is not acceptable in any circumstances.

Without a working environment that aspires to deliver its product or service with clarity of thought and vision at all levels, the only result can be a failure to meet the product’s maximum potential.

Clarity must come in 4 areas to avoid failure:

1. Clarity of communication:
   Communication chains must be clear and open. Nobody must be hidden and nothing covert.
2. Clarity of strategy:
   A strategy needs to be unambiguous, focused and forthright.
3. Clarity of planning:
   Planning must seek to deliver on the answers the strategy is finding for the business.
4. Clarity of execution:
   Plans must reach those who execute them in a clear framework so all objectives are met.

A lack of clarity in any of these areas will play havoc when trying to deliver a media product. Decisions will be hard to make, then misunderstood and not executed correctly.

It is not a clear management strategy to keep people in the dark, avoid talking to them and conduct one’s self in a manner other than that which leads to amicable understanding.

Media products are complicated, they require editorial, commercial and technical input. Due to this complex nature the need for clarity in operational procedures is vital to assure products meet their full and unadulterated potential.

Let me be clear:

A lack of clarity is a fatal black hole, which will swallow up everything in its path and end in disaster for publisher and audience.

Image by Spencer Tunik

People like making and maintaining human connections; they are what make us who we are. The people we form these connections with become acquaintances and friends; you can have a shared experience with these people that make a valuable addition to your life. If you form a connection like this you mutually advocate each other, this is a positive, active, human connection.

These human connections mean a lot more than the passive brand connections many people have with media products, and which some brands are actively looking to increase without thinking about what value, if any, these passive followings really have.

We don’t just need more people following us, we need more acquaintances and friends, we therefore need to make our brands more human and personable so people form relationships in which they feel they can advocate what we do.

The image above isn’t included for titillation or shock value. Specer Tunik once said of his art that the subjects are pivotal to the work. His work is credible because those involved completely buy into the idea, they advocate it, they are not just a following but working in collaboration with him to produce something startling, special and completely unique. Art.

It never ceases to amaze me when ordinary people get into the spirit of what I’m doing. It’s pivotal to my art.”

Spencer Tunik

People are pivotal to media products. Our products are our art.

Publishing brands are losing their credibility and relevance because audience expectations around forming connections with them have changed. This is due to the proliferation of interpersonal methods of digital communication like email, forums, Facebook and Twitter. The ability to share information with other people in real-time is easier than it ever has been and we maintain regular communications with more people than we ever have done, so why should we listen to what a brand has to say with the same level of interest as a human connection? We shouldn’t and we don’t.

There is still massive value in the media brand as a platform to enable professional content creation but more than ever before it is the personality and human behind the brand operating on the platform in which our audience are interested in and want to form a meaningful connection with. If the opportunity to do that is absent for the audience they don’t buy into it.

To facilitate the audience advocating our brands we must humanise them to the greatest degree possible, the audience should feel they can connect with the people behind the brand and form a connection with us on a human level.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and we’ve got The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times on the go in the living room, the floor is a patchwork of around 25 different papers and supplements (some are possibly from yesterday’s Times), many of these papers have accumulated next to me as I slowly plough my way through them with great delight.

My dad had made his way through the particular supplement he was reading and asked me to pass him The Telegraph’s Seven section, I recommended he reads The Times Culture section, which is my opinion a better entertainment supplement, and passed him both. As you can see by the delight drawn across his face above he agrees with my recommendation!

My interest in this exchange is the mutual experience we are having of the media in which we invested. The 25 or so supplements, which are now also being passed around to my sister and have even interrupted my mum’s eBay addiction, are all part of an incredibly flexible product.

The act of sharing the content isn’t at all complicated. Only one person can be reading a unique part of the product at one time, recommendations can be made by us individually based on our knowledge of the others unique interests. We can see the products and move them around our physical space, picking them up and passing them from hand-to-hand when necessary or waiting for them to be finished with before we read them.

I passed my sister a particularly good picture feature in today’s Times Magazine, which I knew she would be interested in, and my dad as I write this has just plonked an article from last week’s Observer (which is still kicking around) in front of me about the first 10 years of Tate Modern, because he knows I love the gallery. I’ll read it when I’ve finished this.

We discuss articles as we read. Dad has just found out that “Valerie Singleton lives in Somerset” a fact contextually relevant to our location. Due to the nature of the medium we’re all engaged in a valuable shared experience of the content in which we’ve invested. This experience would seem to me infinitely more difficult to recreate in a digital form.

What happens when papers are no longer printed and we all have an iPad on which we read our Sunday papers? The experience of the media may be regressive; the tablet we are viewing media on would be one of stone, which needs to be passed from caveman to caveman in its entirety.

The iPad and similar devices are going to be extremely exciting mediums to work with and I look forward to the changes that will happen to the media products we make and consume. We must however recognise that as well as building new products those in existence now have some very uniquely engaging properties by the virtue of their physicality, which we should be extremely careful not to overlook and devalue in the development of the new products.

On a bank holiday weekend I cherish the experience of Sunday papers, if only I didn’t have this bloody ink all over my hands!

I watched this video of Rishad Tobaccowala (Chief Innovation Officer at Publicis) this morning and it really resonated with me.

Rishad discusses the important role talented people play in building and sustaining successful creative businesses. Talent is so critically important but seems so inexplicably overlooked and undervalued in the publishing industry.

I truly believe that the industry and the companies that have a disproportionate share of passionate talent will beat everybody.”

Rishad Tobaccowala, 2010

So do I, Rishad.

During these times when the publishing industry has the potential to enter a renaissance; brimming with new opportunities, it will only be the companies with a talented, motivated and inspired team that will taste true success.

How do you motivate and inspire talent?

The next generation (my generation of 20 something ambitious professionals) want wealth. As Rishad explains we want three kinds of wealth.

1. Experiential wealth
Give me an opportunity now and make it exciting.

2. Educational wealth
Surround me with good people and teach me.

3. Economic wealth
Pay me appropriately and allow me skin in the game.

If the next generation of talent are not given the opportunity to grow their wealth in these ways they will find somewhere else to build. This will be the death of the professional publishing industry. No builders, no products, nothing to sell, no money made, business dies.

The publishing industry is in flux, which makes it difficult to provide this triple play of wealth to the next generation of talent because it is predominantly tied up and focused at the previous generation who are motivated and incentivised by building and maintaining their own seniority.

Unfortunately the value in real terms of the previous generation during the renaissance is completely out-of-sync with their price tag when compared to the talent that will make the new business models, which are so frequently speculated on, a reality.

I’ll finish with another quote from Rishad, which perfectly sums up how I feel the publishing industry should be thinking.

Let’s get back to the audacity and the dreams, and you know what, the spreadsheets will fill up beautifully.”

Rishad Tobaccowala, 2010

Every facet of the publishing industry stems from talent. Nothing else even comes close. If you don’t sit up and recognise that your business is a Dodo.

(Via Cultural Fuel)

Wired US are going to be the first magazine on iPad. Not a big surprise, but a great move by them from a business and PR perspective.

The video above is brilliant. It pitches Wired and Condé Nast at the cutting edge of global magazine publishing, which they are. Their audience and advertisers are going to want to be part of this, partly because they are exactly the sort of people who are already planning to buy an iPad and willing to advertise on them but also because Wired are being so open, sharing so much and creating such interest in what they are doing.

The product itself doesn’t look finished or as good as it can be yet and it probably wont be perfect on day one, but it’s a great start.

We are at a point where technology is going to enable us to view and consume media in an entirely new way whether it’s on paper, mobile devices or iPhones or the iPad there are going to be a number of ways that people want to engage with that content.”

This is just adding one more avenue of communicating and connecting with the brand of Wired”

Scott Dadich, Creative Director, Wired

Scott puts it really well. This isn’t the only platform magazine content will be delivered through. People will access magazine content using a variety of different touch points. But this format is definitely a place the magazine needs to be if it has a future and one with which, certainly for Scott’s audience, will offer a valuable addition to their favourite brands’ product portfolio.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for… an opportunity to use all these visual tools at our disposal and tell these stories in a way that is efficient [and] multi dimensional, but we also think it’s an opportunity to reset the economics, for the first time people may value this experience so much that they’ll pay for it.”

Chris Anderson, Editor-in-chief, Wired

And they will pay for it. Why? It isn’t complicated and doesn’t need over dressed with meaningless jargon, which often spews out of some executive mouths like they’ve downed a pint of carbonated Cuprinol.

It will work because, as Chris Anderson says, it allows us to do all the things print publications are so good at and which their audience love so much, but now translate that to a digital medium in a way that is appropriate.

It’s not just a case of putting a PDF on a computer screen and asking people to pretend they are turning the page, something has been born here, which looks like it can evolve into a product that will deliver audiences a meaningful, high-value media experience.

Brilliant. Well-done Wired!

I was sent this article

The point I have a problem with is below.

The end of frequency
Say goodbye to the idea of monthly magazines, or weeklies, or dailies. Print publications, already under siege by the Internet and 24-hour news cycle, will have to learn to adapt to a world of instantaneous updates. This is most obvious for news and business publications, but it’s just as true for fashion, entertainment and specialized titles.”

Luke Hayman, 2010

I disagree with Luke, I would have written something like this.

The rebirth of frequency
Say hello to the idea of monthly, weekly or daily digital magazines. Print publications, which have seen their audience decimated by the unbundling of content on websites can take control of their content once again. News publications by their nature require instantaneous updates the feature led niche subject matter found in magazines doesn’t. The iPad may provide a consumer platform for a digital equivalent to a monthly, weekly or daily magazine.”

Me, 2010

Putting news, business, fashion, entertainment and specialized titles in the same bracket confuses the issue. Newspapers and magazines are fundamentally different platforms, which are consumed in a very different way by their respective readers and in turn deserve different digital platforms.

Luke comments himself that “Print publications [are] already under siege by the Internet and [a] 24-hour news cycle” the modern news cycle isn’t part of the way modern magazines need to operate. While touching on topical issues magazines are predominantly feature led and nowhere near as time or location sensitive as a newspaper.

I also have a problem with Luke referring to the Internet like it is a medium (“under siege by the Internet”). It isn’t, the Internet is a place, print publications are under siege by websites.

Websites by their nature make bundling content rather difficult. The iPad as a medium may be able to deliver bundles more effectively in a fundamentally different way to websites. As Jony Ive comments in the iPad launch video though “In many ways this defines our vision, our sense of what’s next”. It isn’t the final solution, but it is a start.

When Bonnier published their Mag+ research at the end of last year they commented that audiences like “an editorial package” and “an infinite, endlessly expanding RSS feed” makes it difficult for an audience to really engage and relate to a content provider. Audience like a package they can “read through and finish”. I agree.

Audiences like a bundle of content, it’s not a bad thing for them to want and it’s not a bad thing for us to want to provide. The birth of the iPad does in no way whatsoever signal the imminent death of monthly, weekly or daily magazines, it signals their renaissance.

The December issue of US Esquire sold itself as the Augmented Reality Issue. This means you can hold up certain pages that contain a special barcode in front of a computer with a webcam, which has a specific piece of software installed and are shown images, videos and audio that relate to the page you’re on. It’s really good fun!

Benjamin Palmer from Barbarian Group who put the augmented reality application together comments that.

What we’re trying to do is create something that isn’t just about showing off the technology, but actually adds to the story.

Benjamin Palmer, 2009

And it does, it’s the best issue of US Esquire I’ve ever read, actually it’s the only issue of US Esquire I’ve ever read, but isn’t that the point. Being brave and taking a risk can put you back on the map for readers and advertisers. That’s always a good thing.

This issue of US Esquire is engaging, exciting, inspirational and makes you feel intimately involved with the magazine (look I’m in the background!). If that’s not good for brand building then I don’t know what is.

Although it’s fun and I’d love to make something with this technology it’s really just a publicity stunt, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I hope it gave US Esquire a sales boost and I hope they are back on the map for some readers who might have lost interest in their brand.

Trying something new like this is brilliant for the industry and Esquire should be congratulated for giving it a go and hopefully inspiring others to take similar risks. Because sometimes, as in this case, they pay off!

There is no point in even thinking about scaling our businesses to try and theoretically increase profits without first getting our products in the right condition to fit their contemporary marketplace. You need the right people in place to make this happen. People who care about and understand their audience, are aware of the latest developments in technology and know how to apply these developments to positive effect.

Too frequently the wrong people are put in place to try and bring success to a business which needs to make these changes. Reading Mike Hirshland’s blog post, How to Kill a Startup: Hire Executives instead of Entrepreneurs, this became glaringly obvious.

Whereas later stage successful startups typically should be run by executives who excel at scaling a business and its organization, early stage BPMF (Before Product Market Fit) startups typically are best off being led by highly entrepreneurial founders with great product sensibilities.

Mike Hirshland, 2009

Although Mike’s post is talking about his experience as a venture capitalist working with tech startups, his way of thinking is perfectly applicable to all businesses which find themselves at the bottom of their product lifecycle curve, because at the bottom of the curve we are all a startup. It is at this point we need to develop a VC frame-of-mind and invest in the right people to restart our product lifecycle.

I have full faith in the fact that audiences in the UK and around the world crave the products we are capable of delivering to them and there is a profitable marketplace in which we can play, but fitting with that marketplace and having the right product is key and this can only be achieved with entrepreneurs pressing the reset button, not executives.

Inspired by VCMIKE’S BLOG via Read Write Web