You can't help but to love Richard Branson. Few people have made a ding in the Universe as big as Richard. Emerson, Edison, Gates, Jobs come to mind. There are surely others, but Richard has always been the most intriguing in my view. I have read his books and served some of his companies as clients. But the thing that always stands out in my mind is his anti-establishment views, notably never wearing a tie.
How I longed to tear my tie away when I worked in Europe. The year I spent in banking in Scotland was amazing...except for the ties. I own over 50 of them, mostly for work or funerals. So when I read this post from Branson's blog it got me thinking about the symbolism of Richard Branson rarely donning a neck tie.
In a country that has exceptionally poor fashion sense (yes, I mean America), I appreciate a well dressed man or woman as much as the next guy, but the neck tie is a relic with very little purpose in my view. More interesting is what it means to not wear one. Most of America doesn't require a tie unless you are walking into a private club or Wall Street bank, and even they are changing. I have nothing against tradition, in fact we could use more of it. But redefining business dress or formal attire the Branson way is pure symbolism for daring to challenge the status quo.
And thats what I love about the Branson way in general. Challenging the rules to find better ways. This mindset is what we need in the world, especially when it comes to business. Here are three areas where I think we would benefit as humanity if we take the Branson approach to not wearing ties - I'm sure there are many others:
- Government
- IT industry
- Healthcare
No matter where you go in the world Government is pretty much the same. It doesn't work the way its meant to, it has a ridiculous amount of rules and bureaucracy, and its a deterrent to the purpose or goal at hand. For example, if I want to move to Ecuador, start a business and raise my family, the amount of obstacles government puts in front of me makes it pretty much unfeasible.
The IT industry has grown into a colossal complexity that costs billions of dollars a year to the economy even though it is supposed to, and to a degree does, make life easier. Ray Lane, the former Oracle executive and now Chairman of HP, once outlined the biggest problem with the IT industry - no standards for companies to work off of. Just look at the number of plugs and cables you have for everything we buy. It gets worse when you start looking at building IT infrastructure in an organization.
And then there is Healthcare. Sadly I experienced second hand what patients go through when my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and was in a hospital for two months. Her last months on Earth were a living hell and a lot of it was down to how healthcare works. I'm not a Doctor or a Pharma expert, but this industry is in bad need of reconstruction.
Alas, we are not going to solve anything in this post so lets stop here and keep it light hearted. Hope you enjoy Richard's post as I did.
Richard Branson on Office Ties and the Company Dress Code
By Richard Branson
Nothing unusual, except for one thing that made me laugh out loud: their identical school ties. Or more accurately, what was left of them. More than half the kids had cut their ties so that only three or four inches remained below the knot.
Intrigued, I asked the teacher who was bringing up the rear, “So what happened to the ties?”This caught my eye because Virgin just got into the banking business with the acquisition of Northern Rock, a British bank that we are gradually rebranding Virgin Money. In British banking, few things strike terror in the heart of a customer quite as much as the prospect of facing a tie-wearing, three-piece-suited bank manager across a huge mahogany desk. So we redesigned the banks.
One of our first changes has been to start to remove the traditional counters and replace them with informal seating areas. We also thought that the staff’s formal business attire was almost as solid a barrier to customer-friendly experiences as those counters were. Our newest group of Virgin employees were told they could dispose of the ties.
He chuckled and said, “Well, the kids hate wearing them, but school rules say they have to. What the rules fail to specify, however, is how long they have to be -- so, snip-snip!”
Why didn’t I come up with such a naughtily innovative solution when I went to school? This would suit me -- I have always hated ties, maybe because I’ve never seen the point. They are uncomfortable and serve no useful purpose. I am lucky to have always worked for myself, and therefore have never been a victim of corporate dress codes. For years, a sweater and corduroy trousers were my standard business attire. Someone once joked, “The day Richard shows up at the bank wearing a suit and tie, you’ll know that we are in serious trouble.”
Lately I have taken to wearing a jacket, which is handy since I encounter many different climates and situations through my business travel, but I will only wear a tie under extreme duress, which usually means some ultraformal official occasion, such as the state dinner at the White House that I was fortunate to attend.
Suits and ties in an office are just another type of uniform, but in an arena where uniforms no longer serve any useful purpose. At one time they probably showed that the wearer was, at the very least, able to purchase and maintain a fairly expensive piece of fabric. Now, however, in an individualized, interconnected culture, your achievements speak for themselves. The suit and tie is an anachronism.
It used to be that the one male in the room with an open neck (which was usually me) would be self-conscious about it (which wasn’t me). Nowadays, however, I am delighted to note that it’s the man wearing the tie who is most likely to be the odd person out.
Probably one of the biggest breakthroughs in the gradual demise of the suit-and-tie dress code came, rather surprisingly, in some lofty political circles. Tony Blair was one of the first British prime ministers -- Maggie Thatcher excepted -- to frequently appear in public without “proper” neckwear. Now President Obama has carried it to a level where he seems to be tieless almost 50 percent of the time.
I have always prided myself on throwing out the rulebook when something proves a barrier to business -- or is just plain silly. And there is no viable argument why “gentlemen” should wear ties. The best anyone can muster is: “It’s expected,” or “Everyone else will be wearing one.” One of the signs that business culture has changed is that when people arrive for a business meeting with me, often the first thing they ask is, “Do you mind if we remove our ties?” They surely never thought, “If we don’t wear our ties we’ll stand a lesser chance of getting the deal done.” So why did they wear them in the first place?
So on behalf of the oppressed tie-wearers of the world, here is my appeal to those corporate despots who still force their male employees to put nooses around their necks every day: Please think again.
Intrigued, I asked the teacher who was bringing up the rear, “So what happened to the ties?”This caught my eye because Virgin just got into the banking business with the acquisition of Northern Rock, a British bank that we are gradually rebranding Virgin Money. In British banking, few things strike terror in the heart of a customer quite as much as the prospect of facing a tie-wearing, three-piece-suited bank manager across a huge mahogany desk. So we redesigned the banks.
One of our first changes has been to start to remove the traditional counters and replace them with informal seating areas. We also thought that the staff’s formal business attire was almost as solid a barrier to customer-friendly experiences as those counters were. Our newest group of Virgin employees were told they could dispose of the ties.
He chuckled and said, “Well, the kids hate wearing them, but school rules say they have to. What the rules fail to specify, however, is how long they have to be -- so, snip-snip!”
Why didn’t I come up with such a naughtily innovative solution when I went to school? This would suit me -- I have always hated ties, maybe because I’ve never seen the point. They are uncomfortable and serve no useful purpose. I am lucky to have always worked for myself, and therefore have never been a victim of corporate dress codes. For years, a sweater and corduroy trousers were my standard business attire. Someone once joked, “The day Richard shows up at the bank wearing a suit and tie, you’ll know that we are in serious trouble.”
Lately I have taken to wearing a jacket, which is handy since I encounter many different climates and situations through my business travel, but I will only wear a tie under extreme duress, which usually means some ultraformal official occasion, such as the state dinner at the White House that I was fortunate to attend.
Suits and ties in an office are just another type of uniform, but in an arena where uniforms no longer serve any useful purpose. At one time they probably showed that the wearer was, at the very least, able to purchase and maintain a fairly expensive piece of fabric. Now, however, in an individualized, interconnected culture, your achievements speak for themselves. The suit and tie is an anachronism.
It used to be that the one male in the room with an open neck (which was usually me) would be self-conscious about it (which wasn’t me). Nowadays, however, I am delighted to note that it’s the man wearing the tie who is most likely to be the odd person out.
Probably one of the biggest breakthroughs in the gradual demise of the suit-and-tie dress code came, rather surprisingly, in some lofty political circles. Tony Blair was one of the first British prime ministers -- Maggie Thatcher excepted -- to frequently appear in public without “proper” neckwear. Now President Obama has carried it to a level where he seems to be tieless almost 50 percent of the time.
I have always prided myself on throwing out the rulebook when something proves a barrier to business -- or is just plain silly. And there is no viable argument why “gentlemen” should wear ties. The best anyone can muster is: “It’s expected,” or “Everyone else will be wearing one.” One of the signs that business culture has changed is that when people arrive for a business meeting with me, often the first thing they ask is, “Do you mind if we remove our ties?” They surely never thought, “If we don’t wear our ties we’ll stand a lesser chance of getting the deal done.” So why did they wear them in the first place?
So on behalf of the oppressed tie-wearers of the world, here is my appeal to those corporate despots who still force their male employees to put nooses around their necks every day: Please think again.
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