Yes I know, there was no blog this last weekend… with life seemingly returning to some sort of normality it has become busy again, and apparently, all it needs is a slight change of routine (an activity was cancelled) and suddenly everything is out of alignment and you’ve run out of time… Who would have thought that writing a blog would have any similarity to landing planes (or indeed running the trains), but apparently it does (albeit less dangerous)… but, everything needs to happen in sequence!

I have always had the plan, to try to get an article out each week, since I started. Largely I seem to have been able to achieve this, and this mostly has been a rewarding experience. However, with life somewhat getting in the way this week I decided, rather than push something out in the smaller hours of the morning, it was better to take a break and come back refreshed another day.

So here we are sitting here in the cold light of day (or an afternoon in early February) and it strikes me is that this was not just a lesson for weekend writing, but also for the experience at work too.

… of great plans

I mean, how many times have you had a plan, a great plan, one that was meticulously crafted and designed, where something has changed and all of a sudden the implementation does not seem quite so easy or even worth it anymore… (I can think of a few ‘un-named’ projects that could fall into this category… and I am sure there are more too).

The question is always what do I do? Do I stick with the plan, plough on regardless, all because it was agreed it would be done? Or, do I give up, throw in the towel and say life happens, adjust and move on?

It is of course easy enough, as a detached party, to say “move on”, but what happens if you have already sunk considerable investment into the project… a business transformation for example… suddenly the pressure is on it is a lot harder to give up.

Deep down apparently, as human beings, we are all somewhat loss-averse, preferring to not lose something than look ahead to what we might gain… now risk aversion is not always a bad thing, nor is a bit of long term planning, but psychologically it can also be a hard habit to break… and doesn’t necessarily really help us in building a growth mindset.

And, if you look closely the same process can be at work in our careers too.

Many of us have of course invested considerably, time, effort, and often money into gaining the skills, experience, and contacts to do the jobs we do well. With all that investment changing direction can be hard. It is easy to fall into habits, doing the same thing because you have always done it and fear the change… whilst all the time, time continues to flow in the background.

… and pain-aux-raisins

Sometimes however life happens, a shock or change of situation… which of course has happened to many of us over the pandemic… and suddenly we are shaken out of our slumber.

After all, many of our lives and routines have been upset… suddenly bringing into focus many of the habits we had before all this started. Do I really need to commute? Do we really need the second car? Do I really need pain-aux-raisins with my coffee at Pret?

But, most of all, a question of… do I really enjoy what I do and was it a habit or something I really find fulfilling, taking me somewhere to where I want to go?

It has been a moment of question… and (like the blog) rather than make a snap decision, carry on or stop, maybe it is time to simply take a step back, assess the situation afresh and decide the next best step in the cold light of day (or a Tuesday in my case).

For me and the blog, I will be back next week… maybe with a new style and theme, but certainly refreshed. It is always good to shake things up a bit…!

Have a good rest of the week everyone.

Lots more talk on the rising cost of living this week. It was also something I also noticed directly in my weekly food shop too.

To be fair it has been a while since I have done a full regular weekly shop. With trailing Christmas rations, COVID restrictions, and to be honest January cake-related reasons, I seem to have relied more on my local corner store than my local supermarket recently… but this week, with things looking up, it was time to get back into the routine.

The rise in the cost of living is getting real

Now, I am sure it has been creeping up for a while unnoticed, but sometimes you get to make direct comparisons and it hits you in the face. My weekly shop seemed to be around 50% more than it used to be.

Now we all know there has been some inflation, but 50% is quite a lot more than the 5% annual headline figure in well, the headlines. This is something that food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe has been pointing out for a while, and someone who is now talking with ONS to enable this to be better reflected in the stats (good on her btw).

But, here it was direct evidence in my shopping basket.

Now food of course is something we cannot really manage without, the other item in this category is the energy we use to stay warm.

In hot water… or not

Over the last year, we have also seen the price of wholesale natural gas increase significantly. This is to the point that it has put a lot of energy businesses out of business.

As a result, it has resulted in millions of us moving suppliers, a consequence being many of us have also moved onto standard tariffs.

Now if you were on a fixed price tariff before, this has already resulted in your energy costs increasing… however, even the standard tariff does not expose you to the full market price as yet… it is smoothed with price caps to prevent this happening.

But, history will catch up with us. Eventually, these price increases will kick in. With the announcement of the next standard tariff price increase is due next month, it going will be live on our bills in April.

With such a large number of us on these standard tariffs, this will impact a lot of people, and looking at wholesale prices estimates I have been hearing is that we could see increases in our energy bills of over 50% each month.

Time to be prepared

By adding both of these two, non-discretionary, expense increases together, it all adds up to a serious assault on our cost of living. It is once, especially for those on tight budgets, that is going to be difficult to absorb and could be enough to push many people over into deficit. All of this could have a serious impact on arrears levels across the economy.

Back to Basics

With this in the background, I too am thinking about how I can reduce costs in advance. Be it changing where I shop, cooking more at home, and just buying less stuff, there is seemingly always an opportunity to economize.

However there is also a limit to this saving, and for those with debt and behind on payments, there will also be a priority to provide appropriate support and forbearance plans to help people through what can be a difficult time.

Is now the time?

Of course, we have been expecting an increase in the levels of arrears for a while now. It was something we were all very concerned about early in the COVID pandemic.

But, the levels never really materialized (undoubtedly helped by government support). With maybe a slight questioning feeling of, were we all a little overdramatic at the time… the fear of arrears seems to have gone away.

But, is it different this time around, and are we now so desensitized that we are not taking action when we need to? Maybe.

So it may be time to re-dust off the plans, invest to ensure there is adequate staffing capacity and processes to handle the volume.

… and finally

One last thought in all of this is the importance of good customer service.

Going back to my shopping example, I have been ordering online for a while now, and am pretty used to unpacking and repacking boxes to bring my shopping inside to pack away.

This week however I was late to getting outside, and not feeling much up to the task… it had been a long day.

Imagine my surprise when the driver had already repacked the boxes to just take inside… needless to say, I was pleased and grateful.

Linking this experience back to customers in financial difficulty and forbearance… a customer helped in difficult times can make a customer for life… just something for us to think about in times ahead.

Have a good week everyone.

Sometimes it is the little things you notice that provide interesting insights, and this week was no different.

The topic of conversation was perfectly normal… chatting about differences between markets over the pandemic… it is something I always find interesting and illuminating, understanding how things are different.

However, in many cases these days, these differences, are increasingly being flattened.

In the last 10-20 years we have gone on this massive journey of globalization. One that has undoubtedly generated massive economies of scale, but one that has also resulted in more standard processes and products.

However, in listening closely, despite this wave of standardization, there is also an undercurrent of localization too… and some businesses are clearly seeing increased value by having products customized for distinct communities.

Coffee time

All of this was further reinforced later the next day by a further knock on the door.

Now normally, this is often an Amazon delivery, who I swear seem to be waiting for a video conference call to start before deciding to ring the doorbell.

This time, however, it was different… a milkman, setting up locally and offering a new service, looking for customers.

Now given this was 11am, I had just made a coffee and was actually grumbling ‘there is no milk in the house’. Timing is often everything and I had been caught at the most perfect time… I was sold (and if he had been offering sticky buns or cake I probably would have bought some of those too).

But, as the discussion to sign me up ensued, he also mentioned that he had also had a good response from my neighbours too. It set me thinking this is another local service picking up customers against the mass market.

Now two data points don’t necessarily make a trend, but they do make a line, and that line was going up. Is this a potential competitive advantage that can be deployed?

Your friendly neighborhood…

This is of course certainly something that local businesses can use, relatively easily, to create differentiated services and gain market share.

And, this customisation doesn’t have to be limited to a geography, it could also be local to a community too.

If people are increasingly looking for tailored solutions amongst the froth of mass-market offerings, this could be the next new but old trend in the ‘post-pandemic’ world.

So how should big businesses react, and will they be able to create the same level of service as a local provider? With the increasing use of data, the volume of data that is now available, it is undoubtedly getting tantalisingly close.

Mass customization of consumer experiences, almost down to individual level is starting to be possible. And, as the degrees of freedom within the data increases so does the likelihood that your experience is unique to you.

However, despite the advances that have been made, most of my day-to-day conversations still seem to revolve around process efficiency and mass customisation…

So my thought this week is… maybe we also now need to think and use this data to build community in our processes too, a new lens which to overlap on process design. It could lead to better customer outcomes, retention and be the next source of competitive advantage…

Have a good week everyone.