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. 

THE MILLENIAL MYTH DEFUSED

When Simon Sineck talked about the millennials in 2017 he derided their sense of entitlement and said what they really wanted at work were “beanbags and free food”. It was very funny. The trouble is Simon casually set the so called “snowflake generation” on a pillar of ridicule.

It troubled me at the time. Today I think it was pernicious and just plain wrong. The millennial generation that I see has a number of admirable qualities. When Rachel Bell, my co-author, chaired a group of CEOs a while back she asked them what was on their mind and the difficulty of managing millennials  was mentioned with comments like “I can’t stand them, who do they think they are?” She told these so-called leaders they were “wrong” because if they couldn’t manage millennial talent what sort of leaders were they?

In our experience most millennials are energetic, smart, fair, collaborative, generous in friendship, thoughtful and highly skilled. They may have grown up faster than we’d like, tyrannised by the stress of an exam culture. They may be sometimes be rebellious (unlike us of course in the mid-1960s and ‘70s). Interestingly millennials are drinking much less than we did. Here’s what an NHS report of 2018 concluded:

“A study …of 10,000 young people in the UK found that … 16- to 24-year-olds who say they never drink alcohol rose from 18% in 2005 to 29% in 2015. …young people who did drink alcohol were drinking less nowadays and binge drinking rates were falling.”

But millennials are not natural employees. They resist old fashioned concepts of starting at the bottom and slowly working their way up. We may find this unreasonable arguing it did us no harm (although looking at the products of  more repressive past regimes in, for instance, contemporary politicians I’m not sure this is a persuasive point of view.)

Instead however they are ideally preparing themselves to be creators of new businesses. They are the “Start-Up-Generation” which is why 70% of them say they want to create their own businesses rather than become a “wage slave”.

Vicki Harrocks, of Edge Hill University, teaches performance arts at Formby High School and says she spots the spirit of enterprise and latent entrepreneurialism in the year six pupils who are deemed most naughty and disruptive by her peers. She says they’re the ones who are quicker on the uptake, share ideas, talk in class, get restless and are never happier than when on their feet “showing off” (or, as we in business, call it “presenting ideas”).

These are our future. As they learn real business skills playing Fortnite, FIFA 19 and Restaurant Tycoon and create huge and powerful networks of diverse talents (not the antiquated “old boys’ network”) we’re looking at great team players, people who have real values and who want to create enjoyable workplaces.

They may be hard for us to manage but that’s a reflection on our own limitations rather than theirs. It’s time to give them their head. They will not let us down.

These are the millennial militants and they are winners.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell is published on October 3rd by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom.