Archive
on well meant hypocrisy
One of my female business acquaintances recently berated me for being the only one of her social media contacts not to forward on something that she posted about the plight of young girls in certain countries around the world. My failure to support her cause had obviously upset her, but I have strong feelings myself about issues like this and, whilst they trouble me, it is not for the same reason as my friend.
The lady concerned is a fervent Remainer and a self-confessed Leftie who has been very vocal about the British Imperial past whereby we, in her view, oppressed those whose countries we colonised by trying to, amongst other things, convert them to our religion and customs. She is also very critical of the way that we treat immigrants to the UK in not wanting them to bring their customs here; we should instead embrace them as what they bring enriches our society.
Both points are all very well, but I feel that there is some hypocrisy here in that her cause for young girls around the world is surely an example of us trying to “civilise” people in another country. Yes taking child brides and FGM are abhorrent to our society, but what right have we to tell someone else that their customs are wrong? To me it is one of the things that we used to do as a colonial power and if you think that we were wrong then how can you agree that it right to do it now?
Effectively the message is that other cultures are to be embraced, but not in their entirety. When I put this to my friend she could not see the conflict in her stance and that saddens me. I am not certain that I am right, but it seems to me to be wrong to go to another country and try to change their way of life. By the same standard here we have laws and standards and people who come to live in this country should abide by them.
For me it is one thing for the United Nations to decide that it is necessary to send in a force to stop, for example, genocide in another country, but it is entirely another thing to have private organisations, no matter how well meaning, trying to convert people in other countries to our way of thinking. It suggests that we hold ourselves better than them and I think that is wrong. In fact I see it as nothing less than one strand of white supremacist thinking.
I have no doubt that my friend and those who think like her have the right motives at heart. They do not mean to be hypocrites, but I think that they are. Maybe I am wrong on this and I leave it to you to make up your own minds. One of my more controversial posts, but It has been nagging at me since my friend brought it up, so there it is.
on blogging
I know that I am no longer very consistent in blogging here. I would like to get back to the days when I would write exactly 600 words to go out at 0600 every Monday, but my life now is very different to the one that I had back then.
Early in my blogging I was a road warrior and frequent business traveller. There would be time on trains and ‘planes (and waiting for them) to rough out blog posts and time in hotel rooms to polish them. Even whilst driving I could, if nothing else, capture Ideas for I used to have a voice activated digital recorder on a lanyard around my neck. I started using it when I first had a hands free ‘phone kit in my company car and could not always be relied upon to remember exactly what someone had told or asked me. Having the digital recorder was a help later in the day and I soon came to use it for recording ideas. It also captured my occasional thoughts on other motorists…
So I would have all of these ideas, many based on something that had happened that day and could be caught whilst fresh and then developed. Initially I wrote blogs as individual stories that were as long as they took; one might be 450 words and the next over 1000. It was a chance encounter in an airport that changed things for me and developed my approach as a writer.
I will call my mentor Janice for the sake on anonymity. She saw what I was writing one day and struck up a conversation that led to her following my Monday Musings and she contacted me later to suggest that I set a word count and tried to develop my blogs to fit it exactly. She gave me a framework to write to and encouraged me a lot. Through her tutelage I began to write things with a tight focus and the challenge of sharing a sentence here and a word there to get to the 600 word target was one that I began to enjoy. Janice died less than a year after we met, but I tried to keep up her standards for some time.
Later I became a professional writer in that I began to be paid for regular magazine features. I had written a few features and short pieces going back to the late seventies, but had stopped when I was not paid by two publishers, one of whom not only used my words, but also my photos. That soured my interest in writing for publication until I was approached for an article. That commission was used and paid for and led to a series followed by another series and for nearly three years I had an article out every month. Carefully reading what appeared in print against what I had submitted gave me a lot of respect for the skill of a good editor in making small and subtle changes to enhance what appeared on the pages.
The Summer of 2016 marked a turning point for me professionally and changed my lifestyle considerably. No longer did I have the periods on solitude to capture ideas nor the lonely periods in hotel rooms where I could work those ideas up into blog posts, each carefully sculpted to an exact length. The magazine for which I had been writing closed down and that took away one of the disciplines too; there is nothing like writing to a publishing deadline to focus the mind and a personal target is no substitute.
It is rare now for me to be in the position where I have had seven or eight weeks worth of blogs written and scheduled here. I did manage it briefly last Spring, but then personal projects took over my time and I lost impetus again. Can I get it back? I don’t know, but I do like to write and it is something that I want to try and get back into.
Thank you to those who have followed me so far. I hope that I can maintain your interest.
on leaving the EU
So it looks as though we are finally out of the EU and that pleases me up to a point, but this is not a time for celebration for me. Yes we have finally ended our membership of the EU, but the real work is just beginning. The important thing now is to use the opportunity that freedom from EU regulations gives us.
When people talk about the costs of EU membership they rarely account for the cost of compliance that we all bear as part of what we consume and that affect us all in our daily lives. The effect of complying with the EU’s labyrinthian rule book will take time to undo and whilst we still need compliance in terms of what we want to sell into the EU there are still opportunities for us. A good place to start is in public procurement.
The procurement regulations that we have been subject to are a supplier’s charter. They provide no real benefit to the public purse, often just the opposite and the illusion of driving down price through ensuring competition usually results in a mechanical process followed by rote. Hopefully we can replace the current process with something that allows freedom for buyers to make best use of the market.
There has been a lot of nonsense talked about us losing our biggest market. The EU is not our biggest market for everything, but we have not lost it; we will just be dealing with it on different terms (as will it with us) and I think that various significant commercial interests have lobbied hard to get the politicians to wake up and forget the dogma. Trade with other European Union countries will continue despite a change in customs status, but we can now work with the other markets that we buy and sell through on terms that suit us.
Whether it was right or wrong to leave the EU is no longer relevant. Yes it had some good things, but it also had many that were wrong, the European Council for one, and now we need to grasp the opportunity to move on or the last four years will have been wasted.
on personal motivation
Last week I was musing on teams, but the question of what motivates the leader is always worth considering, especially when the leader is you. Just like everyone else leaders have bad days, even bad weeks, but have to hide that from the troops as best as they can because the rot will spread. Whatever is going on inside the world needs to see a positive attitude.
One of the hardest things that a leader has to face up to and find a way to conquer is fear. There is no getting away from it; everyone will be afraid at some point and failure is probably the biggest cause of fear. It is important here to look at failure from two perspectives; failures through a mistake, making the wrong call or whatever, is something that you should embrace because you can learn from these things. There may be bad consequences, but you still can look at why you made the wrong decision and do better next time.
The other form of failure comes from where you fail to act, to not do something that you knew needed doing, but just let it slide. The fear then move to the consequences and, let’s be honest, if you pull this one then you deserve what you get. You ought to learn from this too though, the lesson being that, as the leader, you have to face whatever the job throws at you. The old adage of if you can’t stand the heat then stay out of the kitchen was never more apt.
Motivation for a leader may come from material things; car, money, fringe benefits, power and the like. At the core should always be a desire to do the best that you can though and to improve all the while. Managing fear will come though all of that and one driver will be your ambition.
Looking back I don’t know where my ambition came from and it certainly rarely ever seemed to have any focus. As a small boy I wanted to be a coach driver; it seemed wonderful to me to be able to take people on trips that gave such pleasure whilst also getting to drive what I thought were the most wonderful vehicles. That faded to be replaced by becoming a pilot and that looked, briefly, as though there might have been a chance, but it didn’t work out. By then I had begun to experience the careers advice offered at school and had decided that I wanted to be a manager. I had no idea as to what they did, but going to work in a suit, having a nice car, an office and a secretary all seemed attractive.
Others had the same idea about me as I later came to understand and worked hard on developing me in that direction. I was an organiser in my teens and was given responsibility at school that I did not understand the significance of for many years. It was only when I was into the development of others that I started to understand some of the opportunities that I had wasted, or at least not fully grasped, in my younger days.
Eventually I made it, going all the way from the shop floor to the boardroom. The two things that seemed to drive me, and that I thrived on, was having responsibility and influence. They were my motivators even if it did take me time to recognise their influence. But I think that underpinning all motivating factors is that you need to be hungry for success and to do what you need to to earn it.
I did, at times specialise at work. I have four professional qualifications in IT, Purchasing Facilities Management and Logistics each of which was acquired when I was specialising in those areas, but the common thread was that I was a decent organiser, or manager, and got things done. I established a reputation through project delivery, but was equally successful at routine operations and still regard myself as a generalist rather than a specialist.
For me I was fortunate in that I had a lot of training along the way. The opportunities to learn were always grasped with both hands right from my first school days and I still, aged 68, will grab any opportunity to try something new that comes my way. How you motivate yourself is something that you must find. Don’t sweat it too much, but do try and see if you can understand what makes you tick and channel it to you advantage.
on teams
So much of team building chatter is based on the premise that we are all capable of being excellent, that same mentality of the Blair years that we can all have anything that we want, that there are no losers and similar excuses that blights genuine progress. The reality is that there are always losers because there are so few genuine winners and, in any case, true excellence is something that comes at the expense of much else. If you want that you can forget most of the work:life balance claptrap that is bandied around.
For anyone leading a team the issue is how to get the best balance from what you have and you will rarely have any choice in picking your team, at least at first, so you will be doing what you can with the hand that you are dealt. There is every chance that you will have a star or rough diamond in the mix and a number of people who are very competent as well as what will seem to be a dud or two.
The first step is to get to know them and try to understand what makes them tick. Weaknesses are important, but put them at the back of the queue for now and concentrate of strengths. You may want to work on people’s weak areas in time, but for now use the team to cover each other’s weak area. If someone is not good on the ‘phone don’t let them answer it. It is important to the team to feel that you believe in them so if you get them doing the things that they are best at they will be happier and start to trust you. As that trust builds they will be more receptive to your efforts to develop them and these should always be around polishing their skills before working on their weaker areas.
If you can get that right you will find that at least some of your team will start to ask about working on their weaknesses. This only comes when people begin to feel confident and you will not get that by harping on about their weaknesses; you need to be subtle and building the confidence that they, and you, need. It is about building an atmosphere of mutual trust.
Another benefit from this approach is that when things go wrong people will be more open about what they did which helps to understand what you need to do to prevent recurrence. Eliminating errors becomes a lot easier when your team truly believe that they are working in a no-blame culture so always look for what went wrong rather than who did it.
As you come to understand your team better you will also understand what motivates them. Not everyone wants to be a star and there is no reason why they should. For many people to just do a job that fulfils them and enables them to survive in modest comfort is all they want and people like that are the bedrock of any team. They turn up, do their stuff and go home day in, day out. What will demotivate people like that quickly is a poor working environment so, as leader, you want to make sure that the physical infrastructure works well and that your team have the things that they need. It can become a huge problem when the stapler can rarely be found and, when it can, it is out of staples or the photocopier is always out of paper. These are simple things to fix, but are the grains of sand that can grind people down. Fix them and people will be happier and happier people are more motivated and productive.
A few thought to play with. As always, feel free to disagree.
on putting in a shift
Many years ago I was given some feedback (although we didn’t call it that in those days) on my recent performance on the management training scheme. The comment that stuck with me at the time was “He shows up on time and gets on with it. He puts in a shift, but is nowhere near ready for the move up”.
Those thoughts stung the 20 year old me quite a bit and, despite the offer of a move up to department manager a few months later I had already decided to move on: The stupidity of youth. With the benefit of hindsight my mentor had been spot on and it would be a couple more years before I could see that and had begun to work out what I needed to do to move from worker to manager.
But even as a manager there is still the need to show up, get on with it and put in a shift and to be able to do that day in day out regardless of how you feel. Yes there are times when there is that urge to get in to the office (or wherever, and start making things happen, but there are days when there will be no spark at all. It happens to everyone regardless of where they sit in an organisation and is a common cause of the odd day off here and there.
To “Put in a shift” has been a philosophy that I have carried for nearly fifty years now and it has become ingrained. It’s just what I do and I am happy with the approach. I turn up on time, do my best and go home. As long as I can do the latter feeling that I have been able to make a positive contribution then I will be content. It also means that I am never embarrassed about getting paid.
It is advice that I would offer anyone as a basic plan to working life. Yes there is more to it than that simple statement. You especially need need to learn as you go along if nothing else, but if you turn up and get on with it you will be well on your way.
perception versus reality revisited
Perception is belief. How you see things is the truth as far as you are concerned and it will stay that way until something comes along that might change your mind. It is a trait that we humans will probably always have.
It is fine as long as we are open to new ideas and are prepared to be proved wrong. If we are not then we are bigots and that is one of the problems with society today; there are too many people who are not willing to have their beliefs challenged.
I grew up through a world of change, not just in what was happening in the post WW2 period, but also because we moved house every couple of years or so. By the time I left school in 1969 it was my fifth school in 12 years. That revolving cast of teachers and other adults that helped form me fell broadly into two groups. One group lectured me in their beliefs whilst the others gave me their opinion, but pushed me to think for myself.
That carried on into my working life where there were many people who were dogmatic about how things were or should be done, the “My way or the highway” type, but there were also the rarer people who would ask “Why” or “What happens if…” and these people were also open to allowing me to challenge their thinking.
I learnt that to be certain was a dangerous thing. Weigh up the available evidence and make your decision, but be prepared to explain why you had come to it and never be afraid to allow others, especially subordinates, to offer their thoughts.
Today in society it seems that informed debate is dead. Social media appears to dominate people’s thinking and if you do not line up with the way others see things you are wrong. In a time when people’s rights are trumpeted everywhere the fundamental right to free speech has been lost. Offence is taken freely, but the way that we react to something that we hear or read is our own choice; we do not have to take offence at anything and personally I don’t, no matter how abhorrent what has been written or said is to my beliefs.
Hatred is everywhere as opinions become more polarised and topics are dealt with at a purely superficial level and, sadly, it is at that slim veneer that people’s perceptions become fixed. What people today seem to believe is not critically thought out, it is based around sound bites on social media which is the last place to be looking for informed debate. Because people gravitate towards sources that support their way of thinking and so shut themselves off from anything that might balance their opinions.
There is no short term fix to this and eventually there will be a swing the other way. It may not be in my lifetime, but it will come. I hope that there is not too much damage done before it happens. There is an old adage that The Truth Will Out and one day we will get back to a place where there is more congruence between perception and reality than there is now.
on projects and slippage
I started a series of projects on home and garden back in January and, when lockdown hit us, these became something of a primary focus for me. I said at that point that I would hit my overall objectives in terms of time and money, but, as so often happens in professional life, things have changed.
Taking my personal goals as a microcosm of business workings I have seen a familiar progression in that now, around seventy percent of the ay through my personal programme, the needs have changed and so what I had planned on in therms of certain specific objectives are no longer necessary.
Part of the problem has been in delays from external suppliers; the new shed is still not here and is now four weeks behind schedule and the new greenhouse is unlikely to arrive before next Spring. Both of these issues are primarily due to Covid-19 firstly because demand for garden products shot up during lockdown and then because the production facilities were not working at capacity having had to deal with the impact of lockdown, social distancing and the like. These things happen.
Then there were the things that were uncovered as work progressed; the bae for the new shed required digging out of some significant root systems and even the had to be raised about 10cm. Clearance of waste was affected by Covid-19 restrictions and instead of a daily trip to the tip I could not go for about a month and then was restricted to two trips a month.
If I were to be sitting with an employer discussing how well I had performed in terms of meeting the objectives set nine months ago I would not be doing too well I suspect, but therein lies another story and one that I have visited here before. The bottom line is that the world changes around us and we need to be able to recognise that.
Looking at where I am now against where I was in January the difference is huge and whilst I have not sone some of what I set out to, because of external forces, we are in a much better place than we were at the start of the year. My main aim of having the deck sorted out so that we could enjoy some of the Summer sitting out has gone because Summer is past. That is a shame, but the bulk of the hard work is done and come next Spring it will al be there for us to enjoy.
In business we often become so focussed on getting to an objective that we miss the fact that we do not need to get to that place any more. Time and money are expended on things that have become obsolete or for which the immediate need has passed. Plans should always be flexible because, to quote the old military adage, no plan survives past first contact with the enemy. Your strategy may still be current, but the tactics have to adapt to what is going on around you.
Hang loose and take advantage of what you can do as long as it helps you prgress
on life
The secret to a long life is to avoid dying. These things only become obvious later in life when you start to realise that the sands of your time seem to be slipping through the egg timer of life a little faster than they did when you were younger.
The Berkshire Belle and I both have birthdays coming up and whilst we don’t really do much to recognise such events these days they do tend to remind one of the end being closer; we are all dying one day at a time. I don’t mean to be maudlin here, just recognising a fact.
I don’t usually feel that I am nearing the end of my sixty eighth year of taking up space, but now and again bits of me do remind me that I am not eighteen any more. That, in turn, reminds me that over my years of working in business I replaced a lot of clapped out kit with newer and shinier stuff that worked better than its predecessor.
When I replaced anything I rarely gave any though to what would happen to it; I do not remember being sentimental about any of it and nature is like that with life. This is one of the things that I find abhorrent about modern life; the principle of not having losers. Nature is competitive. It rewards winners and casts aside losers. Yes it is hard, but that is the way of the world and to try and deny it is ridiculous.
For the time being I can still provide some useful function in life and contribute to society. I do not fear death. I know that it is coming (the Grim Reaper has had two or three tries already) and hope that it comes quietly when I am no longer any use. The one thing that I do fear is to become a drain on the community. If I can avoid that I will be very grateful.
Life is for living and I have not done too badly. I have certainly done things that I would now prefer not to have done, but everything that I did led me to the Berkshire Belle and, between our two birthdays, we celebrate thirty one years together this year. That is nearly half my life and I am very grateful that I walked a path that saw us come together.
Along the way I have done a few things that please or amuse me. Amongst these I have:
- Driven a main line steam engine
- Flown several aeroplanes
- Sailed a landing craft
- Driven a racing car
- Worked my way from the shop floor to the board room (and back)
- Had an armed escort to and from the office
- Walked through the front door at 10 Downing Street
- Worked in 9 countries across 4 continents
- Advised departments in the governments of 6 countries
- Had feature articles published by six magazines
- Written three books (so far)
- Lectured at an Oxford college
Very few of those things were on my mind as a boy and I doubt that anyone who knew me then expected me to have done much of that list. A good life so far and, hopefully, I can avoid dying for a few more productive and pleasurable years.
Stay safe and, at a suitable distance, have fun.
on local trading
There are a lot of posts on social media exhorting the benefits of trading locally and supporting small businesses near you. It is all very laudable and I do my bit, but I question the anti big business argument that is bandied around to support local trading.
I have run small businesses for almost twenty years, but none of these have been targeted on my local area. My horizons have always been much wider and I have traded internationally from the start as well as UK wide, but I have tried to support my local business community both professionally and as an individual.
My motive has been purely selfish in that I like, regardless of whether I have my business or personal hat on, to be able to deal face to face with suppliers and I can do that without travelling too far then I am much happier. It saves me time for one thing, but whilst I am happy to deal with local suppliers I have no issues with using the big chains and, especially when not on my own turf, prefer them because I know what I am getting.
I don’t care if large corporations pay very little in tax. It is not their fault if those opportunities are available to them. How many of us voluntarily pay extra tax? Certainly in the days when I was paying 40% tax I never felt any need to ring up the Revenue mob and ask them to round it upon to 50%. These big corporations employ thousands of people around the country who all pay their own income tax and spend what they have in whatever way they can. Some of that will be spent in the shops where they live so that money goes into the local community.
There is this implied fallacy that all money spend with a global brand somehow vanishes into offshore pockets. It doesn’t all go that way. Shopping, and spending, patterns have shifted radically over the last four months and many large brands are in trouble. If they fail there will be a lot more people out of work than if a few local shops close. It isn’t just the stores; there are the warehouses and distribution networks, manufacturers and packers and many more who make up the supply chains. They all provide employment that puts money into local communities.
What the world will lo0k like in another four months I have no idea. Some of my spending has shifted to local suppliers because it has been easier to deal with them than with big chains that are temporarily closed. I have gained a fruit and veg box supplier and a fishmonger that I buy from on-line and have the produced delivered. My butcher has also expanded his on-line business and so I use that rather than drive to browse and choose from his counter.
Other local businesses have lost my custom though, not through any fault of their own. The weekly pub lunches thinly disguised as business meetings have ceased as have the ones in coffee shops along with the casual spending in the shops in those nearby towns en-route from car park to venue. Much of the latter affects charity shops where I would inevitably emerge with a book or two if nothing else.
The reality is that we, the consumers, drive the market. Yes we respond to advertising and all that, but it is us who spend our cash in the way that we want to. If we don’t want to shop in the High Streets then we won’t and that is the way it is for now. This year has simply exacerbated things, but you cannot blame it alone. We are selfish people and will not pay higher prices locally when we can get stuff delivered for less. I am as guilty as any and, as I potter around doing something and an idea for a purchase flashes into my mind I am as likely as not to pull out my ‘phone and make the purchase.
Local trading was once the only way to buy, but the concept of the High Street is barley 200 years old. If it is going to die here it will as it has done in the USA and we need to accept that. Let’s move with the times and not waste government money, local or central, in trying to prop up something that is beyond help.
There will always be a place for the small business as much as there will always be a place for the big ones as long as both can offer us something that we want. It will be what we make it and we will live with what we get.
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