🤔 Suits or Sandals? Has work attire changed?
📚 Tom Rowley episode - London’s newest bookstore
🌍 Martha Lane Fox becomes British Chambers President and to be a guest on Jimmy’s Jobs
📈 JJ Alumni secures £20m
🐏 Derby County - where are they now?
Welcome to the 16 new subscribers. If you are new here, my name is Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser turned podcaster. I write this notebook on the most interesting things I have seen on the future of work, jobs, technology and politics.
Firstly, I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen politically this week, we really are in unchartered territory where no Conservative MP has publicly called for the PM to go, yet it is all anyone is talking about in private.
Just as it was confirmed that the Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng had been sacked, Eliza Filby and I were sitting down to record the latest episode of The Shift, our new podcast where we are talking about the business news stories about the future of work.
So it felt as though we should discuss what all this turbulence means for business leaders, and how can you get any policy change be achieved?
We also chat about working from the pub, and whether New York is fit for the 21st Century?
It is available on Apple and Spotify.
🤔 Suits or Sandals? Has work attire changed?
BBC news recently had a story titled ‘Do you care if your boss wears a Suit or a Hoodie?’ exploring how all of us working from home in a t-shirt and crocs during the pandemic has brought about more casual wear in the office and how this applies to management.
It reminds me of a quote I once heard “If you are in a room full of suits and there is one person wearing a T-shirt and jeans, he is probably the CEO”. Now, this predates the pandemic and applied to Silicon Valley tech founders at the time, but it seems this mindset has started to spill over into all industries. For some CEOs, being more informal encourages their employees to see them as humans and fosters a closer culture.
On the other hand, a suit can also helpfully act as a uniform, giving you confidence in what you are saying or trying to achieve and encouraging others to uphold your standards. It has been reported that Downing Street is back to a ‘tie culture’ under Liz Truss.
It is useful to give guidance on these things though, with the dropping of suits and ties, you might think it becomes more accessible for people from less privileged backgrounds. However, the opposite can in fact be true, I remember reading about a production house company, where a young intern was told it was smart casual, he wore his smartest tracksuit, whereas what was really implied was slacks/jeans. He didn’t get a permanent role.
As an amusing aside, I am often reminded of one of my favourite films, the Damned United, the film about where Brian Clough manages Leeds for forty-four days (the PM should just about get past that).
Clough and Peter Taylor, played by Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall head off to sign Dave McKay to spearhead their revival, it turns out McKay is running a tie shop and Clough remarks,
what’s the point of that? No-one will be wearing ties in 20 years
I am glad Clough was confident enough to make predictions about two decades time, I can’t feel confident making a prediction about the end of this week!
(3:10 on this YouTube clip for anyone interested)
📚 Tom Rowley episode - London’s newest bookstore
What an amazing response we have had to the Tom Rowley episode, the man who quit his job at the Economist to found London’s newest bookstore.
The shop is open, he has done a superb job, and there were many of the great and good of the media world there this week, with the likes of legendary broadcaster Michael Crick in attendance.
You can watch as I ask the impossible question to Tom of what is his favourite book below
He had a great answer for Jimmy’s Jobs listeners in particular.
If you want to follow Tom’s journey directly, you can sign up to his Substack:
🌍 Martha Lane Fox becomes British Chambers President and to be a guest on Jimmy’s Jobs
Great news that Martha Lane Fox has been named the new British Chambers President, she is an absolute dynamo who is Chancellor of Open University and a Director at companies as diverse as Twitter and Chanel. She also co-founded the Lucky Voice karoke bar!
We are also interviewing her for Jimmy’s Jobs this week, which is very exciting, hit reply or leave a comment if you have a question.
And no, we won’t be doing a joint karoke on the podcast, we are trying to grow listeners, not lose them in the quickest time possible
📈 JJ Alumni secures £20m
In recent business news, Mark Kleinman of Sky News broke the story that the online care platform Elder, which helps pensioners receive care from their own homes, has raised £20 Million from Luxembourg-based IPF Partners.
The founder, Peter Dowds who was one of the first bona fide entrepreneurs I ever met in 2014 was on our podcast last year and shared his thoughts on how the industry will change over the next ten years, what the government can do to support the sector and how the build back better scheme has impacted Elder.
It is great that a year on and Peter is still scaling. I wonder if the ideals he discussed in our episode on trust and hiring only the best 7% of candidates have helped him achieve this.
I would like to give a massive congratulations to Peter Dowds. And if you want to check out our episode, (Season 3, Episode 9) It's one of my favourites and even sits on their careers page to this day -
Episode link here.
🐏 Derby County - where are they now?
It is a question I get asked quite regularly at the moment, is how are Derby County doing following all the #SaveDerbyCounty campaign earlier this year?
Well, the reason I don’t write much is well things are all really rather normal, we have a new owner local property man, David Clowes.
We have just appointed a new manager, Paul Warne from Rotherham, we sit just outside the play offs.
Although we did have a rather dramatic five minutes at the weekend, but thankfully it is mainly about the football
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