SO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

That tyrant Sam Goldwyn, the film tycoon, who flourished in a Hollywood age prior to its sexual harassment scandals said this: “It’s difficult to make predictions especially about the future.” Yet we must try because we live in a world of storytelling where ‘narrative-drive’ is all and business leaders regard themselves as born-again Aaron Sorkins.

Recently a friend asked with the urgency of a character in the TV series, ‘Victoria’ when parliament was in the midst of the Corn Law crisis: “Richard. Do you think the government will fall next week?”

I paused and thought … I don’t know and I don’t care because the malevolent hand that’s writing our script has lost its touch. There are too many cliff-hanger dramas, there’s too much noise, just too much …

In a week when the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Defence Secretary tussled, almost coming to blows (more East Enders than West Enders) and in a world where Trump’s finger inches further towards the nuclear button you tell me what’s next?

Predicting the future is difficult? Even for computers it would seem. In Australia the hitherto faultless Umpire Decision Review System in Test Cricket has been seriously questioned by many cricket commentators. Here the question is where a cricket ball would have gone in the next 3 or 4 feet of travel. Even that isn’t that easy.

I see with gloom that the market is awash with new alcohol free products, gin, whisky, beer and cider - Seedlip, Teetotal, St Peters, Kopparbeg and so on. And that’s just for starters. (Happy Christmas everyone.) Cars are beginning to look like Victorian horses - on the verge of redundancy.

So the future is a carless society, free of alcohol and one where smoke of any kind - tobacco, coal or bonfire will be illegal. New political parties will form….and evaporate. Labour will purify itself of what they call “Blairite Zombies” - that is centrists - and become the darling of a reducing but passionate minority. The Tories will implode (again). Europe will disintegrate and we’ll be glad we left. Then it will reintegrate and we’ll be sad we left. The political landscape will just become more of a mess.  That pendulum will swing to and fro increasingly erratically and the fickle finger of fate will stop and point where least expected.

Back to a real storyteller - Aaron Sorkin. In his series “The Newsroom” Jeff Daniels plays a news anchor who can't take the bullshit anymore about America being the greatest country in the world during a panel discussion and tells it like it is - a weakening, contradicting and failing country that’s lost its moral compass.

What’ll happen next is unknowable. So we must go with the flow, be kind, true to our beliefs and values. We shall be in a pickle if all we worry about is money, status and how others see us.
2018 will not be easy. That, at least, seems a safe prediction.

AVOID BEING BUSY OR BEING OBEDIENT

We live in a world where being busy is most people’s default position.

A friend of mine told his sons, “if you snooze you lose”. And children have never worked so hard. Five year olds do more homework than I did when I was 11.

And the badge of courage is to seem even busier than you really are. It’s pretty bad anyway isn’t it? You have a shortage of breath, a vile temper, are sleeping badly, getting up early to cram in extra work and really needing that glass of wine in the evening. Somewhere recently I saw this fantastic insight. People are so busy they don’t eat, they “inhale” their food.

So how are you? “So busy I can’t believe it, it’s ridiculous”.

Combine the following: self-pity, stress and a curious sense of pride and satisfaction. Welcome to 2015.
But is it true that everyone’s unusually, mind-numbingly busy or have we all just lost our sense of proportion?
I think Thomas Cromwell was pretty busy apart from being multilingual and seeming to manage what was the Tudor Civil Service pretty well singlehandedly.

Yet in Wolf Hall we see him thinking at least as much as rushing around. And he doesn’t rush anyway. He prowls. Take up prowling - it might change your life.

Anthony Trollope wrote a lot of great novels as well as holding down a huge and successful job in the Civil Service.  They used to call someone who such had a broad portfolio of activities a Renaissance Man.
Stop being stressed, start celebrating. Having a lot to do gets you nearer to changing the world. Being active feeds your brain. Be a Renaissance man not an ungracious moaner. And you know what? It isn’t that bad. Trollope had to learn French and German in a year for his job which makes AS levels look just a bit easy in comparison.

And now for obedience: Thomas Jefferson said: “A little rebellion now and then isn’t a bad thing”. Nor is it - it was only when I started to be a pain in the arse at school arguing, disagreeing with masters, looking for new ideas that my brain started to work.

In most workplaces I’m beginning to detect a lemming-like obedience which worries me a lot (and it’s worrying a lot of CEO’s I know). Here’s Sam Goldwyn’s contribution: “I don’t want yes men around me. I want people who tell me what they think - even if it costs them their jobs.”

I think he was joking. I hope so.

We need to think more, plan better, choose to do what matters and start arguing if something’s being done that’s wrong, illegal or which could be done better.  In a world of great change we need to prowl more, think more and question more. We’ll enjoy our jobs more and we’ll get on better too.  Because few things are worse for everyone’s morale that being a busy sycophant.