You do the maths!

Greetings.

And welcome back. I guess Cicero must be doing something right for you to come back each week to see what Cicero is up to and what fine words of wit and wisdom are being spouted this week. I will try once again not to disappoint.

Please note that the facility for you to pass comment on my observations or to ask Cicero questions is now back. My apologies if you have been trying to use this in recent weeks to let me know what you think about my dribbles. Please feel free to make full use of this facility which the good folks at Google have laboured long and hard to make available for your use and pleasure. It seems I had inadvertently turned this off. I thank you for bringing this to my attention but Cicero and technology have always been uneasy bedfellows.

It is good to see other big names coming round to my way of thinking. I am not going to make a habit of referencing others but thought you might like to check this out as evidence that we are not alone in our thinking.

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/5754533/health-and-safety-fears-are-making-Britain-a-safe-place-for-extremely-stupid-people

I wonder if he links to me.

This week I want to talk maths.

From time to time Cicero is asked to pass on his advice and share his experience with others. And recently I was asked my thoughts on what makes a great leader. I have no idea why they asked me but they did and so I want to share with you my thoughts on this important topic. For great marketing leaders not only have an intuitive feel and understanding for the techniques and tools of marketing but also have the ability to help lead their organisation and their team.

And for me management and leadership is not about vision, it is not about motivation, it is not about managing resources. Sure these are all important ingredients but truly great leaders can do maths.

Let me introduce you to a simple sum and this is the sum that all great leaders understand and can instinctively do:

Performance=Potential minus Interferences.

Even the most ordinary activity at a business or a personal level can be done better. There is always a gap between performance and potential and this can at times be quite a large gap. And there is always something in that gap and these are called interferences. It therefore follows that if we can reduce the interference we increase performance and more of the potential becomes available.

Interferences can be intrinsic or extrinsic. They might be about the physical environment where people are expected to do their best work, the equipment they might be using or the resources available to them. Even the right for state employees to have a working lift is an interference if this right is not met. These are the extrinsic factors. Or as is more usual they might be intrinsic due to factors like fear, lack of self confidence, boredom, trying too hard and the like.

Great managers help people and businesses identify the interferences that are stopping potential being realised. Great managers have the ability to work with people’s capacity to learn and can re-introduce this capacity to individuals and businesses.

Think of children. Children learn fast. They do not stop to consider interferences; they are far less afflicted with fear and doubt. As a result they learn fast. At what point exactly do we lose this capacity? At what age did the interferences start? If we had been born with fear and doubt we would never have realised our potential to walk.

Great managers have the ability to focus the attention of the business and the individual so that the fear and doubt that causes interference are minimised as an issue. Because when we focus attention on one aspect we forget all about the interferences that are stopping us doing our best work. Our mind gets distracted and we focus. When we were learning to walk as toddlers we concentrated so hard on getting onto our feet and copying those around us that the fear of falling receded from our attention. Our focus was somewhere else. Great managers have the ability to bring back this focus to eliminate all the interferences that stop businesses and individuals from doing great work each and every day.

Think about it the next time you or a colleague are held back from doing something great for whatever reason. Find your focus and you will be fine. Try it out. It really does work and next week I will try to describe an exercise you can do to help and to demonstrate the power of focus to restore our capacity to learn. This really does add up and as we would say back home ‘quod erat demonstrandum’.

Is it just me?

Did you read recently about Bernie Madoff who has been sentenced to125 years in jail for swindling lots of investors, lured by the greedy promise of easy money, out of billions? It seems he was running a Ponzi scheme, a kind of pyramid selling scheme, whereby higher returns than the market can sustain are offered to investors and when investors want their money back they are paid not from the investment fund but from money paid in by other investors. There is only way such schemes can end and in Madoff’s case it ended with a long spell in the pokey. Such investment schemes are illegal.

Now consider this. And this might only be me. But is this not the same approach employed in this country by successive Prime Ministers and Chancellors towards pensions? Just like the money Madoff received from his investors, our national insurance contributions are not invested in some super investment scheme to earn high returns to give us a comfortable retirement. Now this might come as a shock to you, and if you are of a nervous disposition it might be better if you took a seat, but these ersatz taxes are used in exactly the same way that Bernie Madoff used the money he was given. They are not invested but used to pay the pensions of current pensioners. And we who are fast facing our destiny with Saga, Werthers Originals, stair lifts and pensions, will be reliant on those at school today to pay our pensions. And there will be less of them to support me and others of my generation. It is a worry. Is this not just a state sponsored Ponzi scheme? What is the difference between Bernie Madoff and Messrs Brown, Darling, Cameron and Osbourne? I think we should be told. It would be a tragedy if our politicians were to be incarcerated along with Mr Madoff. Or would it?

And on that bombshell, have a great week.

Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.