BEWARE FAT LADIES AND ORANGE JUICE

I’ve been reading Iain Martin’s book called “Making things happen” which is about the collapse of the RBS Banking Group. It’s a bleak read because it interprets what happened with step by step superciliousness.

I’m sure Iain is a very nice man. I think he’s a clever one too. But his huge antipathy towards Fred Goodwin makes the book bloodless. Surely Goodwin was just more interesting and complex than this. In contrast read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs to see how a bully can be described.

“It aint over till the fat lady sings” was a line originated by Ralph Carpenter of the Dallas Morning News in 1976. Carpenter (possibly a Wagner lover thinking of Brunhilde) was writing about an American Football match.

In his book Martin has an elephant in the room in every chapter whom no one seems to notice. It’s that fat lady clearing her throat and opening her sheaf of music. And yikes, she’s about to sing.  I’m a bit surprised that the cast of bankers, regulators and politicians hadn’t been deafened by the sound of preparatory humming she was making.

But in most situations we face in business we seldom encounter such perfect storms that the banks faced in 2008. We just face a demoralising prospect of decline, desperation and demise. Yet the solution is to get in there before the fat lady puts on her glitzy dress and mount a planned and sustained sales drive. Cost cutting alone never does enough. You have to do something systematic about the weakening top line. Fat ladies can’t sing when you’re hitting your sales budget.

And talking a bit more about fat ladies there’s a recent novel piece of demonization. Sugar. In the 1960s Professor John Yudkin wrote a book called “Pure, white and deadly” which put the root cause of fat ladies down to their eating too much sugar. He lost that argument and fat instead became the enemy. But the devil sugar is now back under the microscope.

And I hear that fruit is bad for you, it’s full of sugar - crammed with the wretched stuff, and fruit juice is worse than Capstan Full Strength. As for five a day, forget it.  And chocolate? The “c” word is no longer crack cocaine – it’s Cadbury.

What I love most about human beings is our ability to change our minds and turn heroes into zeros and vice versa. If I were Fred Goodwin I’d launch a confectionery brand – what’s to lose?

Most of all I love our ability to re-group, prove our resilience and face down fat ladies with songs in their hearts and tell them that they will not be required, thank you.

WHY I LOVE LOOPHOLES

One of the smartest men ever to work in advertising was Bill Bernbach. He said that the admission of a small fault would gain you trust that you were a truthful sort of person. Bill was praising the loophole, or rather the need to admit it and the benefit from doing so.

Truth of course is much in the news right now – the Police, Orchid View Care Home and the KPMG HS2 report on the zero sum effect of the project…apparently its loophole is it’ll damage the economy of places to which it isn’t going.

Today when everyone is counselled to whistleblow it’s disappointing that Lisa Martin who called in the police to Orchid View exposing a horror story has been unable to get a job since.

And if you want to succeed as a policeman watch other colleagues’ backs, smooth over the loopholes and play for the team. I’m not defending the Plebgate guilty, merely observing that they acted, all of them, true to their collegiate and Freemasonish culture.  Imagine a premier league striker stopping a game to confide in the referee that a team member had “dived deliberately” in the penalty area.

The likely consequence, I imagine, would be the whistleblowing footballer would be sent off by the irate referee, fired by his club and beaten up by his agent.

Truth, as Pontius Pilate discovered, is tricky stuff.

And again as we saw in the hostile interrogation of the HS2 CEO, Alison Munro by Gavin Esler regarding the failure to broadcast all the data in this recent report.

What the appalling Esler did is switch me (and I suspect others) from sceptic about HS2 to fervent supporter on the basis that if he can be so horrid he must be against it for bad reasons.

The perception of truth is about its presentation as well as facts.

In my imagination I see Esler interviewing Asa Briggs Candler, the marketing genius at the birth of today’s number two brand, Coca-Cola:

“So does it contain traces of the banned substance cocaine?…do you refuse to answer?....Well what are the ingredients?...What do mean it’s secret?. …why are you hiding the truth?...and does it dissolve human teeth if they are left to soak in it for 24 hours?...come on answer…you will be judged by your silence.”

Coke is a winner and you Mr Esler will be judged by your manners.

Life is not neat and tidy. It is not a thing of perfection. There are loopholes.  And the desire to have a cut and dried, cast iron, irrefutable story is going to lead to being economical with the truth.

Remember what Bill Bernbach said and disarm your opponent with a small admission and keep smiling. On balance you’ll win more victories that way.