🚧 What next for the CBI?

Chambers of Commerce | the Podcast Show

💈 Frank Luntz and the CPS polling on business

⛪ David Young

📅 A four day week … not such a good idea after all?

🗞️ Times profile piece

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 an apology.  Many of you got in touch about my preview of the British Chambers of Commerce conference:

Will the stand-in striker step up to the plate?

‘You have butchered two sporting metaphors, and you have Americanised it, simply unforgivable - if it happens again, I will unsubscribe’ 

Brutal. But also very true, my humble apologies.

So how did the Chambers of Commerce as the stand-in striker for the CBI perform?

Firstly, let’s get to the good stuff, it is impressive that women hold the top three jobs of Chair, DG and President and over half the senior leadership team are women. Many spoke on stage and were incredibly impressive.

The event was brilliantly chaired by Ayesha Hazarika and the format of the Q&A and no speech from Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor worked really well. 

There was a good speech from Shevaun Haviland, who crisscrossed the country outlining some impressive business stories, including a two century old tale about Newcastle businesses using dynamite to create a port and there was a useful mapping exercise of the five challenges facing British business,

the digital revolution; people and work; green innovation; global Britain; and the future of the high street

Which are more specific and go deeper than ‘we just need more skilled people’.

But you can tell there’s a but coming …. 

I was slightly underwhelmed by the main stage, there was a bit of a lack of entrepreneurial zeal, where was the Revolut / Monzo / Gymshark / Arcade Media of the world? People building and creating new business models for the 21st Century. 

Furthermore as for the crowd,  I felt at 35 that I was probably the youngest by a distance, aside from the journalist table that is. 

Contrast that with the Podcast Show held at the Highbury & Islington Design Museum the following week, where I felt like an old timer. The show might just be in its second year, but with over 10,000 attendees from 40 different countries, it feels like an industry and sector that is only beginning to get into its stride. 

It felt more of a ‘creator’ conference than podcasts, and there were a lot of people there under 30 building serious businesses, employing teams of a dozen or so people pulling together their shows. 

As an aside,  I had never been to the venue before, after 15 years of working and living in London, that feels a rare event, but I have to say it was an amazing set up, check out the video we took on the day. 

The two events rather demonstrate the huge arc of business and how it continues to broaden, it is changing dramatically and it is very difficult to represent them all in one go. 

And that rather neatly brings me to my next point about the CBI …

🚧 What next for the CBI?

Their crunch meeting on the future of the organisation is next week of which Graham Ruddick has an excellent run down here. 

Although I think there is still a major hole missing in what they are trying to do - and that is make the case for British business to the British public (and not just politicians) 

At the moment, the focus is on all the sexual assault and the cultural allegations, but it was put me to me by one captain of industry last week:

The sexual assaults remind me of the assassination of Franz Ferdiband in WWI, it may be the catalyst, but there are many deeper underlying reasons for why the CBI is collapsing in on itself. 

Rain Newton Smith’s, DG of the CBI piece in The Times said, ‘you still need us’. 

But do business still need the CBI?  Many of the public affairs and lobbying operations of the large FTSE  companies are SO much more sophisticated than they were 10-15 years ago. 

The biggest companies have practically built their own in-house public affairs agencies now. 

And ultimately a lot of businesses are concluding they don’t need the CBI and the £60k membership fees can be better utilised on more sector specific campaigns. 

The CBI may be able to save itself if it says we are only going to speak for big business, we are proud of big business, for those that employ over 500 people, we are going to make the case for them. I think that is a very important job which at the moment isn’t really being done by anyone. 

But the wider point being missed by all the business groups I feel at the moment, is businesses rock bottom standing amongst the British public… 

Whatever the format, structure, name of the CBI, I think it needs to focus on making the case for British business to the British public. As we have discussed before there is an obsession with face to face meetings with politicians and media quotes. 

This polling from Frank Luntz when he was working with the CPS last year should hang in the wall of those representing business

He gave  people 18 phrases to associate with British business,

10 negative and 8 positive … they ranked the first 8 as all negative. 

One in the three saying they were disappointed, that is seriously alarming. For those of us that care deeply and believe in business.  

As part of the general era of disruption / acceleration - the way that business, the government and the public interact is going to have to change and I don’t think anyone is close to working out what that new model is yet …. But if you are interested in those topics, make sure you subscribe, because we’ll be coming back to it. 

⛪ David Young

Next week we celebrate the life of the great David Young who passed away just before Christmas, he was Margaret Thatcher’s adviser on enterprise and it is very difficult to think of anyone who had such a sustained impact on the policy of entrepreneurship over so many decades. 

He went on to advise David Cameron in 2010 too and was a key instigator in the Start Up Britain campaign.

I would dearly love to hear his views on how British business should look to improve its standing with the public in 2023. 

I wrote about his passing, just before Christmas. 

📅 A four day week … not such a good idea after all?

I have written before about how it was Jeremy Corbyn;s best economic idea might have been the four day working week.

We have almost had an enforced experiment in May of the four day week having had so many of them. I know many entrepreneurs will not agree on its viability, at a time when inflation is ripping through the economy having people in companies off so much has been a real challenge.

As Alex Depledge, founder of Resi said in this post, it is partly tough geeing people up after a three day weekend. 

🗞️ Times profile piece

That all being said, it has been a crazy month here at Jimmy’s Jobs, we had our 100th episode with Miles Jacobsen, the CEO of Football Manager which has seen record downloads. 

And we had a great double page spread in The Times, LinkedIn post here and the original piece - ‘Former No.10 adviser finds his money where his mouth is’.

When I started this whole Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future podcast, a lot of people were a bit bemused at what I was doing. However, with the major advances in AI, I think people are beginning to understand why this is going to be one of the most critical challenges of the 21st Century.

We make this all the production stack up on the show and this email due to our partners who understand that there is a totally new way to engage with audiences.

If you are interested in working with us, whether that is content curation around thought leadership, talent recruitment and retention. Frankly if your a business that is employing people, we are interested in telling your story.

You can drop us a line at partnerships AT jobsofthefuture DOT co (yes it just co, I joke it is because we couldn’t afford the M when we started out)

We have a particular focus in the second half of the year on the following areas:

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• future of the office,

• the creator economy,

• Impact of education technology (EdTech)

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We are well listened to and read in Westminster and have a whole host of prominent politicians coming up over the rest of this year.

And check out the website, the hub for everything Jimmy’s Jobs:

jobsofthefuture.co

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