WHAT'S REALLY ESSENTIAL?

Have you noticed how the words “not essential” have become popular with the police? The days of the Lord Chamberlain have crept back insidiously. Our lives are being censored by the boys in blue suggesting Easter eggs, your poor old mum and going for a long walk somewhere scenic are all inessential and self-indulgent.

Do you remember when East Germany was in its pomp and Erich Honeker its leader? The Stasi were its secret police. They kept files on about 5 ½ million people and had 90,000 full-time employees. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall these employees had to find work. Many became taxi drivers.

There was a joke that went as follows:
To a  Taxi Driver: “Can you take me to…?”
Taxi Driver says “That’s OK Mr Hall I know exactly where you live.”

A Police State is fabulous if you’re a policeman but for most of us it’s an anathema. Lord Jonathan Sumption, the former Supreme Court Justice described the Derbyshire police behaviour – using drones to identify and warn off walkers in the Peak District and staining a lake black to deter people – as “disgraceful.” He noted that public demands that “something must done” often leads to nonsense like this.

The language being used with relish by journalists and politicians – ‘serious, life-threatening, devastating, strict observance’ and so on have led to a frenzy of warnings and threats of banging up people.

So let’s talk (more positively) about what’s “essential” in life:

For me:
Hugs. Social distancing is like prohibition for me. (But I’m not going to hug – don’t worry.)

Family. My love for family always grows when it’s tough. I’m lucky to be surrounded at a distance by such lovely, smart people.

Wine. Yes! Have I got enough? Hmm

Community. Spend more time thinking ‘we’ not ’I’. And saying “hallo” and “how can I help you?” in other words “Love thy neighbour”.

Beautiful writing. It inspires, illuminates, simplifies.

Choral music. Holst Singers, the Cardinall’s Musick. Thomas Tallis makes anyone feel great. Precise. Uplifting. Clever.

Proper food. No modern sharing plates. Homemade soups. Cauliflower Cheese. Pie. Stews. Roasts and lots of fresh vegetables. Like Mum cooked. Like my wife cooks. Incomparable. Real food. Love food.

           
A garden. Spring flowers, neat beds, order and a constant  battleground with cats and slugs. All life and beauty is here.

Take any of those away from me and I’m as like as not going to grow a moustache, put on my Che Guevara outfit and start being very stroppy.

As regards work (remember that?) the list is shorter but essential:

Your people. Inspire them, look after them, treat them like your family. At times of stress be kind to them. Keep them on side.

Doubters.  People who are all doom and gloom. I can’t stand them. I suggest you shoot them. They spread the poison of timorousness and destroy self-belief.

           
No (that’s a bad word). No more ‘can’t’ or ‘don’t’. A lot more ‘please’, ‘well done’ and ‘thank you’.

Customers. Love them. They are hurting too so help them. Become customer therapists. Like elephants they’ll never forget being loved by you.

Pivot. Work out how to pivot and win. You may have to start a new business, break up your organisation into smaller units, merge with someone or discover the one thing you are uniquely qualified to do. Be creative and, by the way, creative is fun.

Targets don’t matter. The desire to win and the feeling of being in a winning team is all that matters. Targets are for bean counters. Winning is a buzz. And targets follow.

And essentially that’s what’s essential as I see it. Keep safe but keep sane too. 

WHERE DO WE LIVE?

What interests me is how we feel; where our true north is. Where we live, live in our head as opposed to where we physically sleep or where we work are different things. I know people who think nothing of commuting a thousand miles a week, or who camp near their place of work before driving home.

After the wall came down in East Germany someone hailed a cab to go home. He said to the Taxi Diver:-
“Can you take me to …”
“No need to ask,” replied the Cabbie “I know where you live.”

Apparently most of the Stasi became taxi drivers when their security role ended. But where they lived had changed in their heads.

I was talking about football to my grandson when he said there was a boy at his school who was exceptionally gifted at it.  In talking about this success he said that this boy came from a different country.

“Oh where does he come from?” I asked. To which he replied without missing a beat.
“Manchester”.

Yes, Manchester a different country,  all on its own, full of great footballers - nothing to do with the rest of us.

It was Christopher Marlowe in the Jew of Malta who said “The past is another country”.  And you realise the truth of this in listening to UKIP. This other country is one of nostalgia, when summers were always sunny, when steam engines drove our trains, when cricketers wore white flannel, when business lunches were fuelled with claret and cigar smoke.

I simply don’t do nostalgia. I think the future is a different country and, if we choose to make it so, a better one.

I am currently doing work across Europe. Sweden, Poland Germany, Greece, Italy, France, Britain, Ireland are all terrific, bright, different but united (in the English language and in in an attitude to doing business). These people are not defined by where they come from but by where they live in their heads.

Unashamedly I’m pro EU albeit anti-Euro bureaucracy. My philosophy of life is the same as one-time US President Lyndon Johnson’s (cynical as it may sound). He was talking about an obstreperous colleague who was thinking of resigning:

“It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”

That’s how I feel about Europe - the biggest economy and most civilised in the world. The more I work in Europe the more I think of it as one country.

The most changed country is America whose view of the world swung eight years ago. They gave up on old Europe and swung their attention west to the Asian powerhouse. I don’t blame America - that’s probably right for them.

But it leaves an opportunity for us. We can and should be the key portal for the rest of the world into Europe…it’s something we do really well - because it’s where most of us working really live and do business intellectually.

Colourful Thinkers