WELCOME TO FALL

It’s that exquisite time of year when blackberries are at their juiciest and leaves begin to think of falling (but not just yet) and we start to think of new beginnings. New School. University. New job. It’s the season of change. It started last Friday and ends on the last day of November. 

It used to be called “harvest” when we were a fully rural economy. Then the Latin “autumnus” - which derived from augere “to increase.” This verb's perfect participle auctus means “rich” (as in a “rich season”). I really like the idea of Autumn as a rich reason in the sense of harvest and abundance. The alternative “fall” started in the UK and then more widely in the 17th century as a poetic counterpart to “Spring.”  The Americans sensibly took it and made it their norm as, being shrewdly literal, this is the season when leaves fall.  Maybe our continued use of “Autumn” reflects the difference between the literally minded Americans and our own enjoyment of long words. Yes that’s…incontrovertible.

But this year “fall” may seem more descriptive than usual. It’s not likely to be  a bumper harvest of anything  after that drought nor is the economy looking too rosy. The next quarter doesn’t look like being a rich season at all.

Meanwhile I’m fascinated to see how resourceful people are being. Ghastly thick knit sweaters are emerging from cupboards. Sales of foil are rising ready to be stuck behind radiators. Jamie Oliver is digging out money-saving family menus in his own inimitable cheerful way “oh my Lord – that’s gorgeous” style. We are entering a season of draught proof curtains, a season of mists and thermal underwear. 

 

“Warm banks,” we’re told are to be set up in art galleries, museums and libraries to help people unable to heat their homes as energy prices soar. The Guardian reports that pensioners in Swansea are buying books from charity shops for just a few pence each and taking them home for fuel. With temperatures plummeting and energy costs rising , thick books like encyclopaedias are particularly sought after.

A certain, not entirely surprising, mood of hysteria has swept through  the British media as we await a new Prime Minister and cabinet. This is beginning to feel not like the fall of leaves but the fall of something more important. Like the fall of the Roman Empire. 

The fall of assumptions that this good life we’ve been enjoying for so long is a given. Or the fall in a more biblical sense. There’s a song by The Little River Band (1978) with the lines

“I tried to explain our fall from paradise was meant to be

 it's written down for all to hear, there's not much time, the time is near “

 

Yes….something like that. We all probably feel that maybe it was all too good to last. Like a bull market. But we have those pragmatic series of energy saving and money saving strategies and one other thing. Optimism. Not the media who are predictably downbeat. Walk the streets of Brighton on Saturday and it’s a cheerful place. I remain astonished by how resilient and good humoured people are.

 

Finally a personal fall, spectacularly, from a ladder in our garden two weeks ago. I ended up with possibly cracked ribs and general aches and pains but, do you know, I really see the funny side, the Chaplinesque absurdity of my doing something really stupid and avoidable.

 

So welcome to fall. We shall survive. And we’ll help those less fortunate than us as we always do. Happy soft landings.

 

 

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

There aren’t many reasons if you read the Guardian, the paper to read if you want to know what’s wrong with the world and why it’s a disgrace, and in which we read last week that we must steel ourselves against the likelihood that a vaccine will be discovered or the other gloom merchant who suggested this was all a rehearsal for “the big one” as in the Spanish Flu epidemic when the second spike in 1918 was much worse and much more deadly than the first one.

We are all doomed and if we don’t behave as though we are, we should be very ashamed. Pubs, clubs, churches are all closed and the sound of laughter is quelled. And we say we are following the science – as Matthew Parrish noted putting “the” in front institutionalizes it and gives it a phoney importance. The Law. The Church. The News. “The” makes anything it’s attached to more formidable hence “the wife” is more fearsome than “my wife”. Well the science is very different in three countries all with comparable death rates. In Sweden the science says ‘no lockdown’ and saunters off to the pub for a
beer.

In Belgium the science says ‘let’s stop the lockdown very soon’ and gets dressed up for a night out...roll out the barrel. In the UK the Scots and Welsh declare scientific independence because they want to show they can (their science) and England says the science says stay put and no giggling or having fun. But why can’t we be cheerful?

We ‘re having a record Spring ... forget Chaucer’s ‘sweet showers’ this is very bliss.

The birdsong is a harmony few of us have listened to before.  Consumption of alcohol has boomed by over 30% and according to the Sunday Times casual sex has peaked and Fifty Shades of Play has become a new norm amongst the young. Working from home has many unthought of benefits “Sorry Tom I’ll have to call you back I’m a bit tied up at the moment”.

Food is high on our agendas helped by the enterprising Mr Oliver, “rip it up, bung it in use a carrot or a tomato just use what you’ve got in the Fridge”. Just try his sausage, apple, onion and shaved parsnip melange – it’s scrumptious. Jamie makes the word caramelized sound so erotic.

As regards work I cannot believe command-and-control organisations with huge open-plan offices can survive.

Perhaps the most cheering thing has been to hear the O2 has been taken over and dressed up as a hospital in which 1800 people are being trained to be ready for work in the new Nightingale Hospital.

Inspiring I’m told.

Perhaps we truly are reaching towards a better world, one less travelled in which people are more respected. And of course if you’ve just lost someone or something dear to you I’m deeply sorry.
One thing’s for sure. Time doesn’t travel backwards so we cannot go back. Just forwards – positively.

LET'S GET STUCK INTO THAT SWAN!

That jovial Martin Sorrel – sorry Sir Martin Sorrell – certainly has a way with words.

First he gave us the bath shaped recession, then “the US presidential election has resulted, yet again, in kicking the can down the road”. Now he’s warning us about grey swans (they’re one down from Mr Taleb’s famous black swans). Apparently there are four of them about to zap us. He explains that these are the birds that we know we know but we don’t know how beastly they’ll be. Hmmm…. In plain English Marty is warning us (in contradiction of Dave) that things out there look bleak. Given he has intimate first name relationships with the bosses of a lot of the world’s top companies he should know.

But I don’t much like swans. They weigh about 28lb, have wing spans of up to 8 feet and are remarkably bad tempered. And I see hope not gloom when I look around the real world rather than try diagnosing macro-economics. I see technicolour swans swanning about and proclaiming pockets of good news.

Giles Coren reviewed the Carshalton Boys’ Sports’ College canteen on Saturday. A brave headmaster arrives at a run-down school in a disadvantaged neighbourhood and re-launches it. He hires a well-paid professional chef, gets 80% of pupils to eat school meals (up from 20%), prices meals way below local fast food shops, offers breakfast too and free curry for those staying after 430 to do their homework. Exam results have been transformed.

“I’d pay £10.95 in a restaurant for this which, here, costs £1.65”

Carmel McConnell (social entrepreneur of the year 2008) founded and runs “The Magic Breakfast” supplying free breakfast to 6000 primary school children because BC (before Carmel) 25% of those kids arrived at school not having breakfasted too hungry to learn.

So Carshalton and Carmel are jointly doing something which buries grey swans, providing healthy fuel for learning. Jamie Oliver sits alongside these guys as ambassadors for good.

Colour and laughter shape this school

Schools can teach us other things too. I was at the open morning for grandparents at our grandson’s school, Aldrington Primary, Hove. As I walked around hearing happiness, seeing colour and love, watched 8 year olds creating Tudor seats and children reading in the library, older ones helping younger ones, I reflected that the best, most colourful, buzzy schools like these should be a template to creative businesses and new start-ups. Businesses like swans can be too grey.

Sunday – I’m upbeat and there’s roast swan for lunch. Yum!

www.colourfulthinkers.com

"I WANT TO BE A SALESMAN"

I have been thinking about the role and reputation of selling recently and the fact that you are much less likely to hear anyone say they want to be in selling than you should be. Apparently the desire to sell is declining even in America where Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” has become a reality.

But not in China where it’s a prized job…now that should tell us something.

It’s baffling because all great businessmen and leaders have to be good salesmen and they are. Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Charlie Mayfield, Michael Dell, Jack Welch are or were great salesmen. Tony Hayward of BP was not – so he was the wrong man for that job.

The only two things that will get us out of this global mess are going to be great innovation and great salesmanship. And by salesmanship I mean not just the art of pitching or being a huckster, I mean the art of profound understanding of a product or service, the ability to present its benefits beautifully and engagingly, the ability to build long term relationships based on trust and an absolute commitment to customers needs.

The marketers meanwhile are brand building and creating social networks. Hell, I’ve been in marketing all my life and love it but the way some marketers talk about selling you’d think it was a very dirty word involving transactions and…money.

One-to-one selling is going to be the key to the future and you can forget the busted flush of Asian Contact Centres which have done perhaps more than anything else to damage the image of selling.

To be a great salesman you must be very bright, understand the business scene and what senior management have on their minds, be economics savvy, very intuitive, able to think on your feet, be a great presenter, think long term, be very margin focused and understand that real marketing is theatre. Like the incredibly rich Jamie Oliver.

Accountants can cut cost but they can’t increase sales income.

So it’s time to find out if you’re good enough to be a salesman now…and join the true, new heroes of the 21st century.