A question
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Who’s to blame?
Mmmm watcha say?
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I’m going to be up front about this one. If you cannot talk properly, you will not make it to the top. The end. I don’t make the rules, I just see them in play. Don’t blame me.
I’m not talking about accents per se. Sure there are some that will act like a weight around your neck and any strong accent is the career equivalent to being found guilty of having goosed the CEO. And before you start accusing me of regionalism, you can have people from any area who can speak properly, there are as many people from London and the Home Counties that speak like complete and utter oiks as there are from other areas.
This is the point when people start quoting the exceptions, but note that for every Alan Sugar, there are a thousand Stuart Roses. When was the last time you heard a FD tell you that, “the balance sheets all gone a bit Pete Tong, but don’t worry cos I’m all over it, innit?” I can’t think of a single profession where it is an advantage to be incoherent and sloppy, perhaps other than recruitment consultancies……
If you want to influence people, you need to have impact. If you want to have impact, you need to have gravitas. And if you cannot speak properly, you will not have gravitas. We have a beautiful language when it is used properly, so do so. It will be better for you, it will be better for your career and to top it all, you’ll stop offending my ears.
You’re the man
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So there go the holidays for another year, well the summer one at least. This morning I was greeted by a grey and wet sky, no tube and a slog into work. It’s good to be back.
Compare this with the scene of sitting around the pool in 30 degrees heat and more. The place we stay is small, but lively enough for some people watching. The kids play, the adults read and somewhere in the middle are the teenagers, neither one nor the other. I sat watching a couple of boys interact with a group of girls. The boys were british, the girls french. Being teenagers, being male and (maybe) being british, they did what young males do best and displayed their bravado with back flips, rough and tumble and of course stealing the girls’ towels.
Just outside of the place that we stay there is a lay by. Each day in the lay by there is a man, with his tractor selling melons. We call him the melon man and his presence is celebrated by my kids with squeals and calls of, “you’re twisting my melon man” (God knows where they learnt that!). He is there selling his melons every day, he has been there every year we’ve visited and I’m sure for many a year before and I hope for many years to come.
All of this started me thinking about strength and perceptions of strength and how these change over time. I’m not teenager, nor am I an old man. My inner cheese-monkey is happily transitioning me from one to the other (during the holidays at a quicker than normal pace). Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, maybe it’s because my back-flipping days are over (I’m struggling to remember when they ever existed!) but I’m hugely more impressed by the melon man than the kids. Probably no surprise?
Then I think about work and I think about how often we are taken in by the brash and the forceful and the high gloss presentation and ambition of youth. How many times do we place value on these elements and overlook the commitment, dedication and endeavour. Think back to the last time you or your organisation was making redundancies. Out with the old in with the new? In the UK we are seeing and are likely to see significant redundancies within the Public Sector. I wouldn’t mind betting that the majority of those going will be in the higher age bracket.
Maybe I’m just getting on, maybe this mindset is all about self-preservation. Maybe. But quite frankly, I’d rather a melon man than a one trick pony. True strength manifests itself in many forms, sometimes we just need to cast away the stereotypes and assumptions in order to see it.
Bonnes vacances
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Well, that’s me then. I’m all packed up and ready to go. The to do list is down to a minimum, the inbox is cleared down. I’ve worked like a mad man to make sure that I can go away with a clear head. And in return I got a head cold.
But I won’t let that get me down. No. For the next two weeks I will be here. There will be walking, there will be hill climbing, there will be swimming in rivers. Unfortunately this year there will be no canoeing as the consultant didn’t think white water was particularly good for a fucked recovering shoulder…..
And of course there will be food and drink and merriment.
I’ll be back on 23 August refreshed and raring to go. Have a good couple of weeks all….and don’t forget about me! 🙂
PS. If you get really bored, check this out.
Get inside my head
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I’m on holiday count down now. In three days time I will take off and fly down to the sun. Music is vital to my life and no more so when I’m on holiday. I love having music on whether I’m reading, cooking or just relaxing in the sun.
Finding new music that I love has to be one of the great excitements in life. If you feel the same way that I do, I think you’ll understand. That moment when you listen to an album for the first time and think “wow”! Last year before my holidays I asked my friends on Facebook to recommend music for my holidays, it was a pretty eclectic mix some of which I loved, some of which I hated.
This year, I thought of you guys. One of the things about this blogging malarkey is that you know a lot more about me than I know about you. And I’d like to turn that on its head, with a little help from yourselves and perhaps at the same time show what an eclectic bunch us people professionals are.
So this is how it goes: let me know down there in the comments, an album (and yes it has to be a whole album – my OCD does not allow me to clutter the place with singles!) that you love and think I should listen to. It doesn’t have to be new, it doesn’t have to be any specific genre (although I point out now that any Death Metal or “elevator music” will be given short shrift) and tell me why you like it. I’ll then get it and have a listen and you have effectively managed to get inside my brain. Simple.
Come on, these “let me know” posts are always risky, I’ll look like a dick if I only get two comments…don’t let me down!
Raison d’être
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I’ve been on my own now for nearly a week. My family have packed up and gone on their holidays and on Saturday I’ll be doing the same. Life is manic, work is manic. There are a trillion things to be done and only a handful of moments to do them in. I’m no mathematician, but even I know that the odds are against me on that one.
The politic of self is too prevalent in our world. We’re led to believe that true happiness lies in understanding what we want and going hell for leather after that dream. People put off having a family later and later. Those of us that shift our butts in and out of the corporate world on a daily basis are seen as slaves to a cause. A cause that is not, has never been and will never be ours. We are the dupes, the losers, the muppets.
Spending so much time on my own makes me sad. It makes me a little depressed. It is hard coming home to an empty house after a day at work. Not necessarily because I want to talk about work, not necessarily because I want to hear about other people’s days. But because there is no reminder of the reasons for which I do what I do. A long, long time ago I sat in a bar drinking very cheap brandy. I was a psychology student and with me was my best friend and fellow student. As we drank we talked. We talked about whether it was possible to truly carry out a selfless act. We ended up determining it wasn’t. The brandy based theory being that every act was ultimately driven by the desire to do the right thing and to be seen to be doing the right thing. Therefore, this was not selfless, it was essentially selfish.
I’m not sure whether that was right or wrong. I’m no great philosopher and I don’t have enough alcohol to hand to recreate the experiment. What I do know, though, is that if you believe that you are the most important person, if there is no other in your life then you are poorer. Whether it is your kids, your parents, your siblings, your partner or your pet. Being for others is an important part of the human psyche. Being for yourself is not part of the genetic make up of the human.
I could be watching sport on a 24 hour loop right now, I could be indulging in films, listening to music, I could stay up all night and party. Ok, that last one is an exaggeration, I could maybe make midnight with a lot of Pro Plus and Red Bull. But all I really want to do is see my kids, see my partner and help. Cook for them, care for them, be there for them.
Everyone needs someone more important than them. If you don’t agree…..you’re the dupe my friend……not me.
Foursquare? For sure? For now…..
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An interesting exchange with the delightful Abi Signorelli yesterday started to help me crystallise my views of Foursquare. If you’ve been a participant on Twitter you’ll know that increasingly you see tweets declaring that people are the “mayors” of anything from the local chippy to their crusty old underpants. You’ll also see a gazillion, “I’m at the Testicle Tattooing Parlour”. And increasingly you’ll see tweets containing hashtags such as #foursquarecansuckit.
It was in response to one of these tweets that Abi challenged me to define the difference between tweeting where you were and “4squaring” where you were. (Pause for thought: that last sentence shows how much the world has changed….). Anyway, my argument is this. If you walk through any high street pretty much anywhere on a Saturday afternoon, you’ll see wrapping and packaging from McDonald’s. This is trash, blowing in the street, landing in flower beds, attaching itself around the ankles of passers-by. This has an impact on the brand and reputation of McDonald’s.
Now the counter argument to this is to state that this was never the intention of McDonald’s and that this is the fault of the consumer/user. In the same way that all of the inane messages that come out of Foursquare users are a result of people not using it properly. Extend this to its extreme and you get the argument of the gun lobby…..its not guns per se that are bad, it’s the people who use them to shoot up unsuspecting kiddies in schools. Now I’m not suggesting that Foursquare will kill you, although Louise Triance may have something to say after her stalker uncovered her in The Guardian last week, but the extension of the argument is intellectually the same. And I don’t believe you can separate usage from intent.
Another parallel is the dreaded Farmville on Facebook. If you have ever been on Facebook for more than 20 seconds, then I’m sure you’ve been accosted by requests for purple pigs, or fences, or some other such tomfoolery. Farmville became cool and was topping off at somewhere near 80 million active monthly users. Then it became uncool. Why? Because people were fed up of constantly being harassed by those that were using it, they were fed up of the constant messages, they were fed up of being told about something they didn’t participate in and didn’t want to participate in. The only difference was that on Facebook you could hide anything relating to Farmville. With Foursquare there is nowhere to hide.
I know a lot of people will tell me this is early adopter territory (there are only c.2m users), but I’m not convinced. I chose McDonald’s as a comparator for a reason, the golden arches. There is a lot of dross on Twitter, a lot of motivational gurus and self promoting dickheads. But only one always comes branded and from numerous sources. The “litter” may be unintentional, but it is real. And I can’t help thinking this is damaging the Foursquare brand for millions of us. Whether that is irreversible, I really don’t know.
Opposites attacked
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Tonight I start one of my two annual periods of bachelordom as my family take off to France for the summer. Tonight will therefore also be laden with surreal and completely irrational thoughts and dreams of car accidents and boats sinking and and and……well you get the picture…..I worry. And I’m ok with that.
But that isn’t the point. As so often happens, I’ve started talking about one thing when in fact I intended to talk about something else. I should become a politician, they seem to be good at that too. Anyway, last night I came home from work and well……. It won’t have passed the observant amongst you and those that have been hanging here for a while that I have OCD issues. And they kicked in big time.
My wife and I. We’re different. If it was me going away, I would have packed and unpacked at least three times. Tested the dimensions of the car boot and calibrated it against the maximum volume of all bags and baggage. We would have had three dry runs with the kids to see how quickly they could get their shoes on pick up their bags and get in the car. The car tyres would have been inflated, the TomTom would have been programmed and all major road works would have been identified and routes found to avoid them (with secondary routes also in place just in case the primary routes proved too popular with other freaks like me). And, and, and I most certainly would have had the number plates changed on the new car to have the little GB and EU swirly thing on. I mean who on earth would leave that to the last day……..
That would just be madness.
So I know life and love is all about difference, that opposites attract and all that. But sometimes, sometimes…..I mean! Sitting here writing about it the next day is sending my heart racing and bringing me out in cold sweats. Surely it’s not just me? I mean everyone drives their partner up the wall right?
On the plus side, I have ten days and a cupboard full of jars….and I’m telling you, those babies are all going to be pointing in the same direction by the time I’ve finished….
Why performance culture?
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How many pieces of information do I see each day that mention high performance cultures? Too many. No, that isn’t a joke….but pretetnding that your organisation can be or will be high performing is. And to add to that, why the hell do you want it to be?
When you think of high performance you think of elite sportsmen and women and the parallels have been drawn with business on numerous occasions. I ask you this, would you really want to live with one of them? Sleeping routines, exercise routines, nutritional plans. Everything driven by the next competition, the next performance. Every move analysed to within an inch of its life, data determining how you then live and breathe between now and the next.
Is that what you really want? Do you really want to be high performing?
I don’t.
I want my home life to have room for a bit of cheese and wine here, the odd meal out there. I want to skip the gym if I feel tired and not worry about it. I want to have a barbecue on a summer’s evening and over indulge, knowing that when I get into bed that night, later than I should, I’ll feel stuffed, but happy and alive. I want to go for a run because I enjoy it, not because it says so on my schedule. I want to know that I can do fairly much what I want, when I want as long as it isn’t going to hurt someone or cause distress.
And the same goes for work. Too often the drive for “high performance” means “kicking the living shit out of anything that was fun about this place”. I want my organisation not to care if people are having a chat and a drink together, if they go home early because they’re tired from working late the night before. I don’t want my organisation to always be striving for continuous improvement, to never settle for second best. I don’t want my organisation to be lean, I like a little lump here and a bump there.
You want to strive for high performance? Go for it, you won’t make it. Me? I’ll be sitting on the sofa relaxing, enjoying life, not seeing its inadequacies.
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Last Tuesday I stopped. You may have noticed, you may not. I don’t really want to know……because that in itself would set into action a whole other set of neuroses. I stopped, because I couldn’t think. I rarely stop writing for more than a day and my presence on Twitter is even more voracious (and inane) than that. But I couldn’t think.
I wouldn’t go as far to say it was writers block. You have to be a writer to get that and whilst I write, I am not a writer. In the same way I bake, but I am not a baker. I wank, but……oh well yeah….you get the point. It just felt like there was far too much noise and not enough brain to deal with it. So I stopped.
I wrote a post the week before called That is all. I didn’t respond to the comments and I’m not sure why, well I think I know now. I think it was my subconscious sending me a shot across the bows. It worked. I don’t plan what I am going to write. When I wake up in the morning, 95% of the time I have no idea. It just comes out like a spray of effluent that settles itself across my screen. Therapeutic? Yep, probably.
But I wasn’t doing that anymore, I was forcing it. I was making it happen. I was starting to become a sausage machine. I don’t like sausage machines. Well, I like sausages, you understand. I mean the blogs that are sausage machines. Wednesday? Ohh it must be Whacky Wednesday! Creativity isn’t about false concepts and self-created structures. True creativity is messy.
And it wasn’t just the blogging. When you add on Twitter and Facebook, the whole social media circus……well it can seem like it has become a 24/7 performance. And there is no shortage of clowns. Just before I stopped I said to someone that I felt like a grizzly that had just worked out it was in fact a performing bear. The shackles weren’t real, but they were there.
So I haven’t been on Twitter, I haven’t been blogging and I haven’t been reading blogs. I’ve just been normal. (OK, I was on Facebook a little, but I needed to keep up with the ins and out and preparations for #SocRecCamp in september). I feel refreshed, I feel new, I feel creative. I’ve got two weeks until I go on a really, really well deserved summer holiday. I intend to use those two weeks profitably.
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My Hell is Other People 