IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN

I’ve just started reading “Smarter: The new science of building brain power” by Dan Hurley.

He’s an American journalist who writes for the New Yorker and various science journals. He writes beautifully and persuasively about how it seems possible to improve our fluid intelligence, our IQ, by a series of brain training exercises. The theory is the same as that of physical exercise making our bodies fitter. If bodies, why not minds?

It even applies to people whose theoretical brain power is on the ebb - the elderly.  But, more than 500 years ago one smart lady, Elizabeth 1, recognised the need to keep learning. She claimed to learn something new every single day. And she lived to 70 - a fine Elizabethan age.

Giving up on learning and assuming we know how to fit the facts to the script that we’ve already written for ourselves hit the headlines this week. Tesco, a victim of unreasonable expectations all round, seemed to have romanced its profits somewhat and a whistle blower showed them the yellow card. Extraordinary that mighty companies haven’t leant you can’t fib anymore.

On stage next, Ed Miliband. So you’re a show off - “look no safety net!”-  and you try to do your conference speech unscripted. But you screw up and forget to mention two crtical issues you meant to raise. OK stuff happens. But then you try to wriggle out of it in a furtive “the dog ate my homework” kind of way.

Had you said “Yeah. I made a mistake” I’d have felt better about you. Extraordinary that big public figures haven’t learned that they can’t take unnecessary risks and that they can’t fib anymore.

Whilst we maybe overstate the importance of presentation in our working lives, decent clear communication is the least we expect and inspiring oratory works miracles (whether read or half read.) What we don’t need are word perfect actors.

Age is the greatest teacher of all. Most mature people I know have more inquisitive minds than they did when younger even if the passion to get-it-done and go-for-it has waned somewhat. Ferocious characters like Portillo and Tebbit mellow and even a foul-mouthed trader called “the Animal” at Salomon Brothers in Michael Lewis’ exposé “Liar’s Poker” is a genial novelist now in Colorado.

Yet the concern some feel about the upcoming generation’s ability to think nimbly and cleverly and have a NASA scientist competence with technological complexity is misplaced. Never confuse cleverness with understanding. By far the greatest asset in a world where marketing and people skills are still king, is empathy. We must be able to get what people really feel and think.

Finally Einstein’s version of insanity best describes the Tesco issue:-
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

We must vary our behaviour in response to what’s going on around us, avoid silly risks and learn to tell the truth.

Amen

WHY ARE BUSINESS PEOPLE SO NASTY?

It’s the sort of question that a grandson might ask having listened – having nothing better to do – to Ed Miliband’ s speech at the Brighton Labour Conference.  There the small and unsuccessful were lauded but the bigger and makers of more “p….”

(hiss the word quietly my dear for it’s a word that cannot be said) more “profit” …. were to a man – mostly men – because there are very few women at the top of business – rotters.

John Cleese put it like this:
“I find it easy to portray businessmen. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.”

Businessmen have been typified by Messrs Goodwin, Diamond, Sugar, Green and a yo-ho-heave-ho of Russian pirates…all, were we to imagine them as alumni of Hogwarts, members of Slytherin – rather sleazy and slick and sarcastic.

But isn’t that a little disingenuous and unfair?

The media just don’t like business although they are discovering, to their liberal chagrin, that Generations Y and Z do. Research by You Guv shows “they take more pride in British business than the Welfare State and give Google, Apple and O2 credit for improving their lives”. (The Times 18/9/13)

Applications from them to advertising agencies are flourishing. The likelihood of these young people going on an anti-capitalist march is low. Enterprise and entrepreneurship are actually sexier than they’ve been for some time.  It’s the word “businessman” that, in its old fashioned way, summons up images of pinstripe, furled umbrellas and middle class white men. Think ideas, think dirty hands, think midnight oil, think trial and error, think global excellence …that’s the new world of business.

Bland?  Certainly not.
Cruel? No more than competition ever is.
Incompetent? Just try doing it yourself, John. You’ll find it isn’t that funny when the alarm rings at 4.00am, your flight leaves at 6.30 and you have a day’s work to do on top of pitching an idea to a German who is likely to say “no”.

Business is seldom about chatting over lunch in the Savile Club for Generation Y. It’s a Starbucks in a paper cup and a bagel.

Lunch? Lunch is for wimps.

But what some may find antipathetic is that business now works to global rules.
And this applies to ethics too. (Incidentally I heard one of the church commissioners talking about their 10% stake in the new “Ethical Bank” that’s being constructed out of RBS. The history of the church has not exactly been brimming over with ethical concerns itself and isn’t the concept of an ethical bank a little like that of a compassionate abattoir?)

Overall you can’t regulate innovation. Business has to find its own level and  markets have to be allowed to work.

We should stop trying to herd cats and we should avoid business clichés.

The more I see of young people in business the better I feel about the new tougher breed of competitor.
As many of them are women as men and nearly all of them deft and hard-working.

Nasty?

Now you should see the politicians. Kevin Spacey in House of Cards is nothing….

IT'S NOT JUST THE WAY YOU TELL THEM THAT MATTERS

Aren’t party conferences incredibly old fashioned? They’re the Routemaster buses or Frank Carsons of communication. Great for the hospitality business but that’s as far as it goes.

As I watched bits of Danny Alexander – good grief -  and the four party leaders (I include Boris in that line up) I began to wonder what had happened to the power of argument.

Philip Collins of the Times is the seer of “what they’re really saying”. And sometimes finds more going on in a speech than I do.

 "Good morning everyone (This is in praise of the current measures. The emphasis on “morning” suggests they are just beginning to take effect). On my way to conference this morning I vividly remembered how these conferences used to work (“on my way” describes the beginnings of a long journey and the shock-word “vividly” – brightly coloured – not blue, or yellow or red – suggests a “coalition of thinking” which is counterpointed by the words “remembered” – the past, when things seemed better but were worse. It’s a devastating attack on conservative thinking.)

Ed Milliband got praised for speaking for 70 minutes without notes. What’s the big deal? It’s the content that really matters.

Man or waxwork?

The obsession about speaking without any prompts is weird. Margaret Thatcher read her speeches and so did Tony Blair.

Most of the speeches are far too long and aim to be as blandly uncontroversial as possible ….but we live in deeply controversial times. They need to be edgy.

What seems clear (especially as we discover the murky secrets of Lance Armstrong,  Jimmy Savile and apparently a whole host of DJs) is appearance was everything and minor misdemeanours like cheating or sexual exploitation, even rape, were OK if you were otherwise a good guy….. Yes, that’s just Adolf’s little way….he did a lot for the economic growth of Germany – good guy in very many ways.

I think we are all losing our critical faculties and are judging speeches by the performance not the thoughts contained within them - although some have got under a few skins.

Boris is the most extreme example, undoubted comic that he is.

I found Max Hastings words telling “I would neither trust my wife or my wallet with Boris” although, if I were  Max’s wife, I might have something to say about this.

www.colourfulthinkers.com