On a recent business trip to London I had the chance to sample lots of ways of working and meeting. Not all of them great, but all interesting. I thought I’d share my experiences here. I’m tempted to mark them out of ten, but some of the people involved may read this and think I’m judging their choice of location (or mine).
The fashionable restaurant
One meeting was in a funky Thai restaurant in Soho – all tropical hardwoods, benches and attentive service. On arrival at 1215 there were three other people there. While my back was turned it got noisier and noisier and when I turned around to get up and leave an hour later, there must have been a hundred or so people. There was no space to get the MacBook out to share ideas with the client, but then the meeting was for ‘face time’, not work.
The comfy apartment
The next meeting was in a client’s home. Big chairs, roaring fire, good coffee and chocolate hobnobs. It was good job this was comfortable as we talked about their project for four hours. A huge amount of work was done, but it was also great to get to know them better, particularly having only talked to them on the phone. I left feeling confident of the business relationship that had been established and enthusiastic to get on with the work.
The home office
This was more of a training session – showing someone how to update their website in their own office in their home. It was very relaxed. Classic FM was on in the background and I knew that my presence was appreciated.
The dining room table
Same house, different client. Laptop on the table, set up email, play with big fluffy dogs, discuss blogs (including this one and the prolific blogger) and a bit of inspiring consultancy (two way). More intense this time, mainly due to intellectual curiosity and looking at how it might be to consult at a higher level than I thought possible. Watch this space.
The allegedly wifi-enabled swish cafe
If the chorizo soup and pear juice hadn’t been so good Apostrophe on Lower Regent Street would have been a real let down. Long high beech tables up front and comfy suede chairs at the back should have made working during a lunch a pleasure. Buying lunch in a wifi cafe so that I could get access to emails would have been useful, but it didn’t work.
The Institute of Directors, Pall Mall
Well, talk about seeing how the other half work. I’d never been in a ‘gentleman’s club’ and some would say that I still haven’t. The IOD on Pall Mall has a dress code and I had broken two of them (jeans and trainers) by joining a client for a meeting. Fortunately I was her guest and my offenses weren’t too obvious. The laptop rucksack was perhaps more of an issue, but it was only the reception staff that looked down their noses at me, everyone else was too busy making money.
It wasn’t the most conducive place for a bit of blog training and web discussion and the pot of tea for two cost my client £6.50, but it was impressive. I’m thinking of joining the Scottish Malt Whiskey Society in Edinburgh so that I can use The Vaults in Leith as an escape from the office, but the IOD is a proper business club. Scary. Was I taken there instead of Starbucks to be intimidated? Probably.
Benugo, St Pancras International
It wasn’t the plan to go to Benugo, but the food looked so fresh, the staff slightly manic but friendly and everything so spotless and contemporary that it was obviously the place to be. We could have gone to the longest champagne bar in Europe (where’s the longest in the world then?), but we struck lucky with Benugo. Meeting a friend who happens to be a client is a bit different, but this was a special time. We ranged in discussion from world politics to charities and from theology to how cool a MacBook is. I’ll go back. It was special (oh, I said that already).
National Express First Class, Edinburgh to London return
I don’t want to appear snobbish (well, perhaps a bit), but I have to recommend First Class on National Express to you. They’ve taken over the GNER East Coast Mainline franchise and I have to say that they’re fabulous. Not just fab, but fabulous. The whole experience was great. I managed to work all the way down and all the way back, and not just a hassled, baby puke and rowdy football supporters type work-on-the-train, but a sophisticated I-got-lots-done type work. I’m not going to travel standard for work to London again. Forget easyJet. This is the real deal.
So to sum up. Keep the IOD, I want First Class travel to friendly, inspiring meetings with clients in their homes, drink nice coffee and play with their dog / cat / MacBook.