How the mighty fall

Cicero is pleased to report that he is still here.

Despite last week’s tad controversial thoughts on how to improve airport security while making it easy, straightforward and hassle free for the majority of us to continue to fly, the world has not ended nor the roof caved in. Although it is understood that there are teams of hit men form the sub polar regions out looking for your guide, your muse and your mentor as we speak. Hopefully you will continue to hear words of wisdom and profound common sense next week.

Strangely Cicero is still awaiting the call from those charged with airport security requesting his advice, hints and tips. It can only be a matter of time.

For some strange and bizarre reason, Cicero has been spending a lot of time recently thinking about Sir Fred Goodwin, the erstwhile Head Honcho at Royal Bank of Scotland. This is not some bizarre fetish for Celtic bankers that is being exposed here but a curiosity to understand what drives the mighty who have achieved greatness onto fail, and in Sir Fred Goodwin’s case, to fail mightily.

As the Homeric tradition teaches us, was this yet another case of Icarus flying to close to Jupiter’s winged chariot while Daedulus watched?

At the heart of business failure is hubris, a pride born of success. Your previous success as a business and as a leader makes you arrogant and complacent. You become insulated by success and fail to appreciate the extent to which luck plays its part in your success. Consequently you over-estimate your own capabilities.

Is any of this ringing true for you, Sir Fred?

And from this flows the undisciplined pursuit of success. The discipline you have exerted to this point, whether it be financial, operational or creative, you start to abandon. Extravagant decision making follows. See ABN Amro, purchase of.

When you see this going on around you, when a business starts to build fountains, marble colonnades and statues, get out and get out quickly. Hubris is now at epidemic proportions.

Still with me, Sir Fred? Note Sir Fred, a sure giveaway, unless you acquire such monikers for humility these days.

From this point on decline although not inevitable has set in and it will take a strong leader with humility to spare who can prevent this. Negative data starts to be discounted and the positive accentuated and spun to great effect. The business and its Head Honchos are now in denial and blame is assigned to external factors. See also British Prime Ministers and their Chancellors.

The business with decline apparent will start to grasp at straws taking more and more risks searching for that magic bullet, which rarely exists, to provide the route to salvation. Each knock back, each failure, each false dawn, will erode financial strength and organisational spirit and morale. The end is nigh. And as we have seen the decline and the end can happen at frightening speed. See Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, any government owned UK bank, Iceland, Leeds United.

Could Sir Fred, or any other corporate Icarus, have avoided his, or her in these enlightened times, fate?

Yes. The answer is not to think of you as a great leader. To do so is the kiss of death for any Head Honcho and the business he, or she, leads. Head Honchos must demonstrate real humility. It is not about them, it is about their business. Head Honchos who succeed take responsibility for their results rather than the credit for the good times and blaming external events for the bad. Rise and fall are both self inflicted and both are within our own control.

And so the next time you see a Head Honcho feted and celebrated and garlanded, and enjoying it, you can be sure that company is doomed, certain that the mighty are about to fall. You mark Cicero’s fine words.

One last thought for all us budding leaders. What applies to Head Honchos also applies to leaders throughout the business who are not quite Head Honchos. Personal decline and business decline is down to what we do to do to ourselves. You have been warned.

Is it only me…..who thinks that the eco-mentalists have been lying to us and who is pleased their lying theories have been exposed?

If you are an eco-mentalist or a fully paid up member of the Green Gestapo you might like to stop reading at this point.

For if you are one of these, you must these days feel like an atheist arriving at the Pearly Gates to be greeted by St Peter saying to you ‘you must feel a proper Charlie’. It is now clear that for years you have been wearing the Emperor’s new clothes. And for years you have played fast and loose with the facts to exert enormous, and substantially fraudulent, influence on governments and on all our lives. I hope you are hanging your heads in shame.

First we have the eco-mentalists sexing up their facts, their e-mails and their dodgy dossier of spurious scientific tosh to support the argument that the weather was warming up. Guys, there are people in government who would be proud of you. Next time we want to start an illegal war we will know where to come.

And as if that was not bad enough it now appears that the UN Nobel prize winning climate change team got a key fact wrong. It now seems that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to disappear.

What else have you got wrong? What other tosh have you been peddling? What else has been distorted and made up?

Is it any wonder that many of us now believe that the eco-mentalists, relishing their 15 minutes in the low carbon footprint spotlight, are perpetuating a conspiracy to exaggerate the effects of climate change, global warming, or whatever wonky weather is being called this week.

Now that your lies, your frauds, your scientific hyperbole, have been exposed, is it only me who wants the eco-mentalists to get out of our lives?

Stop influencing governments to us tax back to the Stone Age in the name of eco-mentalism. Let me drive a 4x4 if I want to; get a plastic bag in the shop for free when I need one; fly whenever and wherever I want, subject of course to the airport stasi concluding that I am not going to blow the plane from the sky.

Wonky weather happens. It has been happening for millennia. It will happen for countless more millennia. And there is nothing we can do about it. It happens. Get over it.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.