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….

THE TROUBLE WITH DEMOCRACY IS THAT YOU HAVE TO LISTEN

I recommended the power of lunch a few weeks ago. I didn’t mention dinner.

Over dinners during the past week I’ve had two altercations which have slightly surprised me. Not the altercations but their demonstration of the glue which binds Britain fast and makes progress so hard. The first was at an event where in a Tory stronghold I knew certain views would be cherished but where my own brand of optimism about the future was decried as a betrayal of the past. The second was with someone who despite his middle class background has an old Labour slant on life – “don’t knock unambitious mediocrity son, it’s got us where we are today.”  Here my own brand of optimism about the future was decried as a betrayal of the past.

The past should never be forgotten and it can teach us lessons and give us a perspective on life. Companies that ignore their roots often amputate their most precious brand assets. But the words of Henry Ford ring in my ears:- “We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.” I love change. I love progress. I love experiments. I relish thoughts of the future. The changing face of high-rise London is I think wonderful and old London can take it. What it can’t take (no more can any other city) are slums, decay and sink estates.

Given free reign I’d modernise great chunks of Britain – “you mean gentrification” says the man on my left; “you mean popularisation” says the man on my right. The revolver itches in my revolutionary pocket but we live in a democracy so I have, I suppose, to listen. This is not a story about our own generation, I try to explain, eventually. If we want to sprawl on a deckchair or a sofa and dream of 42 inch TVs or St. Tropez that honestly is fine.

Me? I want to dream of glass and diversity and quality and children being taught to work harder and better and clean, new buildings and beauty. Bloody fascist! Bloody social engineer! Yes guys I hear you but louder still I hear the voices of those who want a better life and a better way.

And it doesn’t lie in hunting country or a sink estate.

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