Hello.
Have you all gone to sleep? Only asking, given lack of comment being left below these words of wisdom over past few weeks. Maybe we are not being provocative enough. Hopefully this week’s dose of enlightenment will change that.
Now as you know Cicero hates shopping and loathes shops with all the zealotry of a Taliban fundamentalist. But of course Cicero has to shop. He could not possibly be seen about town in last year’s toga and sandals.
To get round this wee problem he has taken to buying stuff from the World Wide Web. God bless, Tim Berners-Lee.
And in the interests of research of course so that Cicero might better advise Marketing Grand Fromages, he has in recent weeks been signing up with a variety of retailers so that they might keep him up to date with all the latest news from the fashion catwalks.
You will as fashion aficionados yourself be familiar with how this process works. You hand over a few bits of information about yourself so that the retailer in theory is able to send you information and offers relevant to you. And the more relevant the offer, the more likely you are to buy. It is really quite simple.
And yet Cicero cannot believe how so many retailers can get it so wrong. And when they get it wrong they undermine their brand, lose sales opportunities and increase the likelihood that any emails received will go from in-box to trash can without even touching the sides.
To give you one example.
A major retailer whose name rhymes with ‘text’ and who despite collecting enough information on me at the outset, have and continue to send me details of the latest fashions and fabrics......for women. Now they might know something that many of you may also think but it can be confirmed that Cicero has not, nor ever will have, any interest whatsoever in fashions for Distaffs. And should anyone think or know otherwise, beware the Super Injunction. It baffles that they should make an error of this magnitude but other cases are known of similar careless unthinking errors from these guys.
And then this week Cicero got an e-mail from another purveyor of togas and sandals. Talk about chalk and cheese. This was good.
It came from the owner of the business, not a faceless company apparatchik. It felt really 1-1. He even knew Cicero was a man. And this man’s passion and enthusiasm for his brand really shone from the page. Why can’t all brands behave in this way?
Cicero was thanked for being a customer. He was ‘delighted to have me as a customer’. He even described Cicero as ‘fantastic’ and as ‘one of their best customers’. Wow!
As a result he made this aged customer feel really special. And so you can bet your last sesterces that Cicero would buy from this man again. See, genuine customer engagement programmes really do have the power to work.
Effective customer engagement marketing is so simple-just show you recognise, know and understand me. Why do some businesses keep getting it so wrong? Even Abba understood this-it is all about ‘knowing me, knowing you’. Sorry couldn’t resist.
Is it only me..............but the earth isn’t moving for me.
Near to where I live, at a busy road junction, there are some road works which has meant that the traffic has needed to be controlled by temporary lights. And the result is chaos.
Now not being of Irish extraction I have no idea why the road is being dug up but the Council trained Navvies have dug up a foot wide trench for about 50 yards. To my untrained eye it is my guess that they are putting in some new pipes. They have been doing this for about 3 weeks now and given that their wee trench is still open to the elements, again I would surmise that we are still a wee while away from the wound in the road being sown up, sutured and traffic once again allowed to flow as nature intended.
In the meantime I am baffled why such a small tear in the highway has taken so long to be repaired. Of course, silly me, this is a State run project, why should I expect this to be done with anything other than great inefficiency and great disruption to the public such people are supposed to serve?
But consider this.
A few weeks back Japan was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami causing untold disruption and mayhem, death and destruction. Far more than caused by the digging up of my local High St. And yet there they managed to have a 25 mile stretch of ripped up, torn up and seriously rippled motorway back up and running with Hondas, Toyotas and Nissans moving along it smoothly within 2 weeks. Let me repeat that-the Japanese restored to full working order a severely destroyed 25 mile stretch of motorway within 14 days. And they did this at the same time as nuclear power plants were threatening to do a Hiroshima; when much of their infrastructure was in tatters; and when the rice and sushi was unable to get to the shops for the road diggers packed lunches.
Now it might only be me but surely we have every right to expect that our Council Navvies should be able to replace and repair a 50 yard slit trench a lot quicker than the 3 weeks taken so far. Indeed if my maths are correct if they were Japanese the slit trench would have been dug up and repaired before lunch on the first day.
But then of course such working practices would put Council Navvies out of a job and we couldn’t have that, could we? Would that not infringe their human right of a job for life?
Have a great week.
Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.
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Thursday 26 May 2011
Monday 23 May 2011
Mini financial crisis
Salve.
If you came here last Friday expecting to read Cicero’s latest dose of wit and wisdom, you will have been disappointed. Apologies if that was you but Cicero was once again taking a wee break to ensure he was sano in corpore as well as sano in mente. It is good of you to persevere to get your weekly fix. Hopefully you will find the wait worthwhile.
And while he was away Cicero came across this interesting story which he feels many should read and take on board.
Many years ago a very clever designer called Alec Issigonis designed the world’s first smart car. It was called the Mini and for its time it was truly revolutionary. For the first time ever a miniature vehicle that was a genuine car.
First he put the engine in sideways. This saved masses of space under the bonnet. It didn’t need any transmission-whatever that might be. Then he used sliding windows instead of the wind-down kind. This saved lots of space on the width of the doors. He used smaller wheels to save on height.
He left the welds on the outside, to save on manufacturing costs. It was the smallest-ever genuine four-seater car.
And, fifty years on, it’s considered the most influential car of the 20th century.
In 1959, Issigonis showed the original designs to the head of the British Motor Corporation, Leonard Lord who asked “How much will it cost?” Issigonis said “I don’t know. I’m a designer not a production engineer.” Lord said “The Ford Anglia is selling for £600. I want this priced at under £500.”
So that’s what they did.
The Mini sold for £470.It was a massive hit worldwide. It even beat every car in the world to win the Monte Carlo Rally. Not once, but four years running.
Everyone fell in love with it.
In a really smart marketing move, Minis were given to stylish celebrities like Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Peter Sellers. So they’d be seen in newspaper photographs getting out of them.
It became a truly classless icon. Today it would have its own Twitter and Facebook site and surely even a super-injunction, this year’s must have accessory.
Ford, who made the competitive Anglia, was mystified. How could BMC sell it so cheaply?
So the engineers at Ford got hold of a Mini. They stripped it down. Every nut and bolt, every weld and clip. They found it was well built. They reported that it would cost Ford £35 more per car to build than BMC were selling it at. And Ford was a much more efficient carmaker than BMC. So BMC had to be losing between £50 and £100 on every Mini they sold.
Years later, when the BMC management were asked about this they shrugged their shoulders.
So what? They were a state-owned company, everything was subsidised. This means it was paid for by the taxpayers of the time. Good to know that State employees in these olden days had the same attitude as today’s Apparatchiks. But they had a runaway success on their hands. So successful that they eventually sold 5 million Minis, worldwide.
What was the problem?
Well, actually, that was the problem. They sold 5 million cars at a loss of at least £50 each.
That adds up to a loss of over £250,000,000. Not a smart way to run a company. Even Cicero can see that and he knows nothing about cars.
Which is probably why BMC doesn’t exist anymore.And Ford does. And why it is never sensible for State Apparatchiks to run anything remotely like a business.
Chasing volume, increased sales, is a kneejerk reaction for marketers. But it’s not always a sensible route to go. Selling something cheaper usually means more people will buy it. But it might make more sense to put the price up and sell less. At the time BMC went out of business they were only making £5 profit on ever car sold. At the same time Mercedes were making around £1,000 profit on every car sold. For BMC to make the same profit as Mercedes, they would need to sell 200 times as many cars.
And that was never going to happen.
In the case of the Mini someone didn’t do their job. That’s why I think it always makes sense to question a brief or an instruction. It is never the right thing to blindly accept it or do what you are told because someone with the right job title gives it to you. Anything worthwhile should stand up to scrutiny by common sense. And common sense is available to everyone. But then we also know that sense is never common.
Is it only me.......but we don’t all have 20:20 vision.
Now over the years I have spent many nights in hotels. Big ones, small ones, some nice, some not so nice. But over the years taking a shower has become increasingly difficult. Sadly this is an age related-affliction.
Firstly showers don’t all work in the same way and it would be very helpful if there was an ISO standard to regulate how showers work. Often you are confronted with a multitude of levers and dials regulating pressure of water and temperature and in my experience the more stylish the hotel and the more stylish the shower, the more complicated and obtuse the operating instructions.
There you are in your hotel suite wearing nothing but a perplexed facial look, staring at the polished chrome trying to work out how to switch the damn thing on without getting scalded or inducing hypothermia or being blown backwards onto the shower wall through sheer nozzle force. Believe me but in some hostelries it has taken me a good few moments before I have cracked the ideal permutation of levers and dials. Sometimes it feels more like safe cracking than showering.
But there is another problem.
In every hotel bathroom you get a small array of bottles. Again the posher the hotel the more wee bottles you get-potions for this and that, shower gels, shampoos, conditioners, anti ageing cream and so on and so forth. I have not yet seen stuff for conditions like acne and other embarrassing conditions but am sure that somewhere out there some really posh hotel will offer that.
But my problem with these is that the writing on these wee bottles is so small that I live in dread that I am going to put something totally inappropriate on some part of my anatomy that I shouldn’t. To read the size of print that those who design these wee bottles put on their labels, either I need put on my Gregory Peck’s or practice my Braille. But who wears their Gregory’s in the shower?
Now it might only be me but I cannot be the only one who has eye sight problems and who requires a pince nez make the printed word legible. We are not all young, hip and trendy with 20:20 vision so could wee bottle makers please make their labels legible. We should start a campaign for legible labels on bottles in hotel bathrooms. I am convinced there is a gap market for these.
Have a great week.
Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.
If you came here last Friday expecting to read Cicero’s latest dose of wit and wisdom, you will have been disappointed. Apologies if that was you but Cicero was once again taking a wee break to ensure he was sano in corpore as well as sano in mente. It is good of you to persevere to get your weekly fix. Hopefully you will find the wait worthwhile.
And while he was away Cicero came across this interesting story which he feels many should read and take on board.
Many years ago a very clever designer called Alec Issigonis designed the world’s first smart car. It was called the Mini and for its time it was truly revolutionary. For the first time ever a miniature vehicle that was a genuine car.
First he put the engine in sideways. This saved masses of space under the bonnet. It didn’t need any transmission-whatever that might be. Then he used sliding windows instead of the wind-down kind. This saved lots of space on the width of the doors. He used smaller wheels to save on height.
He left the welds on the outside, to save on manufacturing costs. It was the smallest-ever genuine four-seater car.
And, fifty years on, it’s considered the most influential car of the 20th century.
In 1959, Issigonis showed the original designs to the head of the British Motor Corporation, Leonard Lord who asked “How much will it cost?” Issigonis said “I don’t know. I’m a designer not a production engineer.” Lord said “The Ford Anglia is selling for £600. I want this priced at under £500.”
So that’s what they did.
The Mini sold for £470.It was a massive hit worldwide. It even beat every car in the world to win the Monte Carlo Rally. Not once, but four years running.
Everyone fell in love with it.
In a really smart marketing move, Minis were given to stylish celebrities like Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Peter Sellers. So they’d be seen in newspaper photographs getting out of them.
It became a truly classless icon. Today it would have its own Twitter and Facebook site and surely even a super-injunction, this year’s must have accessory.
Ford, who made the competitive Anglia, was mystified. How could BMC sell it so cheaply?
So the engineers at Ford got hold of a Mini. They stripped it down. Every nut and bolt, every weld and clip. They found it was well built. They reported that it would cost Ford £35 more per car to build than BMC were selling it at. And Ford was a much more efficient carmaker than BMC. So BMC had to be losing between £50 and £100 on every Mini they sold.
Years later, when the BMC management were asked about this they shrugged their shoulders.
So what? They were a state-owned company, everything was subsidised. This means it was paid for by the taxpayers of the time. Good to know that State employees in these olden days had the same attitude as today’s Apparatchiks. But they had a runaway success on their hands. So successful that they eventually sold 5 million Minis, worldwide.
What was the problem?
Well, actually, that was the problem. They sold 5 million cars at a loss of at least £50 each.
That adds up to a loss of over £250,000,000. Not a smart way to run a company. Even Cicero can see that and he knows nothing about cars.
Which is probably why BMC doesn’t exist anymore.And Ford does. And why it is never sensible for State Apparatchiks to run anything remotely like a business.
Chasing volume, increased sales, is a kneejerk reaction for marketers. But it’s not always a sensible route to go. Selling something cheaper usually means more people will buy it. But it might make more sense to put the price up and sell less. At the time BMC went out of business they were only making £5 profit on ever car sold. At the same time Mercedes were making around £1,000 profit on every car sold. For BMC to make the same profit as Mercedes, they would need to sell 200 times as many cars.
And that was never going to happen.
In the case of the Mini someone didn’t do their job. That’s why I think it always makes sense to question a brief or an instruction. It is never the right thing to blindly accept it or do what you are told because someone with the right job title gives it to you. Anything worthwhile should stand up to scrutiny by common sense. And common sense is available to everyone. But then we also know that sense is never common.
Is it only me.......but we don’t all have 20:20 vision.
Now over the years I have spent many nights in hotels. Big ones, small ones, some nice, some not so nice. But over the years taking a shower has become increasingly difficult. Sadly this is an age related-affliction.
Firstly showers don’t all work in the same way and it would be very helpful if there was an ISO standard to regulate how showers work. Often you are confronted with a multitude of levers and dials regulating pressure of water and temperature and in my experience the more stylish the hotel and the more stylish the shower, the more complicated and obtuse the operating instructions.
There you are in your hotel suite wearing nothing but a perplexed facial look, staring at the polished chrome trying to work out how to switch the damn thing on without getting scalded or inducing hypothermia or being blown backwards onto the shower wall through sheer nozzle force. Believe me but in some hostelries it has taken me a good few moments before I have cracked the ideal permutation of levers and dials. Sometimes it feels more like safe cracking than showering.
But there is another problem.
In every hotel bathroom you get a small array of bottles. Again the posher the hotel the more wee bottles you get-potions for this and that, shower gels, shampoos, conditioners, anti ageing cream and so on and so forth. I have not yet seen stuff for conditions like acne and other embarrassing conditions but am sure that somewhere out there some really posh hotel will offer that.
But my problem with these is that the writing on these wee bottles is so small that I live in dread that I am going to put something totally inappropriate on some part of my anatomy that I shouldn’t. To read the size of print that those who design these wee bottles put on their labels, either I need put on my Gregory Peck’s or practice my Braille. But who wears their Gregory’s in the shower?
Now it might only be me but I cannot be the only one who has eye sight problems and who requires a pince nez make the printed word legible. We are not all young, hip and trendy with 20:20 vision so could wee bottle makers please make their labels legible. We should start a campaign for legible labels on bottles in hotel bathrooms. I am convinced there is a gap market for these.
Have a great week.
Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.
Friday 13 May 2011
After the gold rush.....
Greetings.
And of course welcome back-as always it’s good to see you.
Given that last week is the first full week many of us will have worked in a while, hopefully you paced yourself well to get yourself through the week.
This week’s words of wisdom are dedicated to Neil Young, a musical icon of the 1970s, whose album ‘After the gold rush’ inspired these thoughts. You have been told previously that Cicero seeks and obtains inspiration widely.
Now you might think that Cicero can at times be a wee bit behind the times. You would be wrong. Cicero can get down there with the kids, man, when it is needed. He does have his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. And he does understand the cultural mood of the nation.
To prove it he has been following with rapt interest the machinations of Cheryl Cole over the past few weeks-would the nation’s sweetheart follow her mentor Simon Cowell to become a judge on the American version of X factor or would she pledge her troth to ITV. Of course she went for the Yankee dollar. And who can blame her.
But there are interesting parallels here with the dot.com boom of the late 1990s and the Yukon Gold Rush of 1897. And few other learned authors could link those three events.
Can anyone remember who won the first ever version of X Factor? Nope thought not-for the record it was Steve Brookstein. And whatever happened to him? And whatever happened to Shane Ward or Leon Jackson, also winners of X Factor?
The point here is that it’s not the show winners who are the real winners. No the real winners are the likes of simian-like Simon Cowell, our Cheryl and even the Irish leprechaun, Louis Walsh.
Now think back to the dot.com boom.
In this it was not the dot.com entrepreneurs who made the money, with a couple of notable exceptions. Indeed most of the eye ball chasers with flawed business models and preposterous valuations soon crashed and burned. No the real winners were the IT firms who flogged them the servers and the networks and the consultancy services, or the lawyers, bankers and accountants drawing up IPOs, or the people who set up sandwich businesses servicing Silicon Valley, Glen or Vallee.
And what does this have to do with the Yukon Gold Rush in 1987, almost exactly 100 years previously?
As you will be aware the discovery of gold in the Klondike river in the Yukon sparked a frenzy of gold rush immigration and gold prospecting with thousands flooding into the area in the mad search for gold. A bit like X Factor in many ways but without the tears and telephone polls.
And just like X Factor most had their hopes for fame and fortune dashed and came away disappointed.
In the Yukon the real winners were not the gold diggers but the spade sellers, the bar owners and the hookers. In other words it was those servicing the prospectors who made the real money. The parallels are uncanny.
So what kind of business are you in? Are you a spade seller or a gold digger?
And so this week’s moral lesson for anyone in business, don’t try to be the next Alexandra Burke but aim to be Cheryl Cole. It is always more profitable and more sustainable for a business to be a spade seller than a gold digger. And if you are looking to establish an entrepreneurial business or if you spot the next economic bandwagon and want to jump onto it, look to do so as a spade seller. We cannot guarantee it will make your fortune but the odds will favour you.
Is it only me...but why do these people think they need more money just for doing their job?
Now you might have missed this piece of ground breaking news this week but Network Rail have reached agreement that their workers will be bribed to ensure industrial harmony with a pay rise around 10% over two years and extra shift payments during the Olympic Games. In addition no staff can be dismissed during the games period and disputes will be fast-tracked or suspended until September.
No wonder the T-Rex dinosaurs at the RMT called this ‘a good deal’. You reckon. If such behaviour was seen in the playground the pit bulls of the RMT would be disciplined for bullying.
And you know who is going to jump next onto this gravy train-the train drivers, the guards, the porters (do we still have porters or is that beneath us these days?) and of course the good old tube drivers. All will look to be bribed to do the jobs they are paid to do in any event lest they threaten to strike and cause untold disruption and misery.
And who at the end of the day will foot the bill for this level of bribery-us, the long suffering tax payer and commuter. Surely such munifence is against the Bribery Act.
Given this example by quasi Apparatchiks no doubt other Apparatchiks will threaten to withdraw their labour through the Olympics unless they are paid off. And meanwhile those of us charged with only growing the economy will continue to see incomes and living standards squeezed but will carry on uncomplaining. We know our jobs are not guaranteed and under-written by the State-or should that be the taxpayer.
Now it might only be me but could someone please explain why these Rail Terrorists think they should be paid significantly more for doing exactly the same job they were paid to do in the first place. Will they be undertaking increased responsibilities? No. Will they be taking steps to reduce costs? Course not, don’t be silly. Or will they be finding ways to increase income? Now you are just taking the Michael-income, what is that?
So why exactly are they being substantively more? I think we deserve to know.
Have a great week.
Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.
And of course welcome back-as always it’s good to see you.
Given that last week is the first full week many of us will have worked in a while, hopefully you paced yourself well to get yourself through the week.
This week’s words of wisdom are dedicated to Neil Young, a musical icon of the 1970s, whose album ‘After the gold rush’ inspired these thoughts. You have been told previously that Cicero seeks and obtains inspiration widely.
Now you might think that Cicero can at times be a wee bit behind the times. You would be wrong. Cicero can get down there with the kids, man, when it is needed. He does have his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. And he does understand the cultural mood of the nation.
To prove it he has been following with rapt interest the machinations of Cheryl Cole over the past few weeks-would the nation’s sweetheart follow her mentor Simon Cowell to become a judge on the American version of X factor or would she pledge her troth to ITV. Of course she went for the Yankee dollar. And who can blame her.
But there are interesting parallels here with the dot.com boom of the late 1990s and the Yukon Gold Rush of 1897. And few other learned authors could link those three events.
Can anyone remember who won the first ever version of X Factor? Nope thought not-for the record it was Steve Brookstein. And whatever happened to him? And whatever happened to Shane Ward or Leon Jackson, also winners of X Factor?
The point here is that it’s not the show winners who are the real winners. No the real winners are the likes of simian-like Simon Cowell, our Cheryl and even the Irish leprechaun, Louis Walsh.
Now think back to the dot.com boom.
In this it was not the dot.com entrepreneurs who made the money, with a couple of notable exceptions. Indeed most of the eye ball chasers with flawed business models and preposterous valuations soon crashed and burned. No the real winners were the IT firms who flogged them the servers and the networks and the consultancy services, or the lawyers, bankers and accountants drawing up IPOs, or the people who set up sandwich businesses servicing Silicon Valley, Glen or Vallee.
And what does this have to do with the Yukon Gold Rush in 1987, almost exactly 100 years previously?
As you will be aware the discovery of gold in the Klondike river in the Yukon sparked a frenzy of gold rush immigration and gold prospecting with thousands flooding into the area in the mad search for gold. A bit like X Factor in many ways but without the tears and telephone polls.
And just like X Factor most had their hopes for fame and fortune dashed and came away disappointed.
In the Yukon the real winners were not the gold diggers but the spade sellers, the bar owners and the hookers. In other words it was those servicing the prospectors who made the real money. The parallels are uncanny.
So what kind of business are you in? Are you a spade seller or a gold digger?
And so this week’s moral lesson for anyone in business, don’t try to be the next Alexandra Burke but aim to be Cheryl Cole. It is always more profitable and more sustainable for a business to be a spade seller than a gold digger. And if you are looking to establish an entrepreneurial business or if you spot the next economic bandwagon and want to jump onto it, look to do so as a spade seller. We cannot guarantee it will make your fortune but the odds will favour you.
Is it only me...but why do these people think they need more money just for doing their job?
Now you might have missed this piece of ground breaking news this week but Network Rail have reached agreement that their workers will be bribed to ensure industrial harmony with a pay rise around 10% over two years and extra shift payments during the Olympic Games. In addition no staff can be dismissed during the games period and disputes will be fast-tracked or suspended until September.
No wonder the T-Rex dinosaurs at the RMT called this ‘a good deal’. You reckon. If such behaviour was seen in the playground the pit bulls of the RMT would be disciplined for bullying.
And you know who is going to jump next onto this gravy train-the train drivers, the guards, the porters (do we still have porters or is that beneath us these days?) and of course the good old tube drivers. All will look to be bribed to do the jobs they are paid to do in any event lest they threaten to strike and cause untold disruption and misery.
And who at the end of the day will foot the bill for this level of bribery-us, the long suffering tax payer and commuter. Surely such munifence is against the Bribery Act.
Given this example by quasi Apparatchiks no doubt other Apparatchiks will threaten to withdraw their labour through the Olympics unless they are paid off. And meanwhile those of us charged with only growing the economy will continue to see incomes and living standards squeezed but will carry on uncomplaining. We know our jobs are not guaranteed and under-written by the State-or should that be the taxpayer.
Now it might only be me but could someone please explain why these Rail Terrorists think they should be paid significantly more for doing exactly the same job they were paid to do in the first place. Will they be undertaking increased responsibilities? No. Will they be taking steps to reduce costs? Course not, don’t be silly. Or will they be finding ways to increase income? Now you are just taking the Michael-income, what is that?
So why exactly are they being substantively more? I think we deserve to know.
Have a great week.
Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.
Friday 6 May 2011
All the King's horses
Welcome back.
It seems a while since we were together but it is good to see you back here seeking enlightenment.
Hopefully you enjoyed the rest of the past few weeks and the Nuptials. For Cicero the abiding memory of the Nuptials was the horses. There were rather a lot of them.
And it occurred to Cicero that in our businesses we could learn a lot from the men and horses of the Household Cavalry. And if you give the Man a chance He will explain how so.
Cicero might not know much about horse riding but He does know, or at least He likes to think He knows, a wee bit about leadership in business. And maybe if we look closely at how to ride a horse properly we might become more effective leaders.
Take it from Cicero but riding a frighteningly big and powerful horse is not about saddles, bridles and tight jodhpurs. It is about engaging with the horse on an emotional and intellectual level.
Lesson number one-emotional awareness and confidence are critical. Your state of mind determines your horse's performance. If you're nervous getting on a horse, it will sense that. Horses and people are not that different; your internal sense of foreboding, optimism or confidence has an impact on the people around you whether you realize it or not. Being emotionally aware allows you to consciously choose how to respond in any given situation.
This means that your energy is contagious. Energy passes through you to your horse. To ride well and connect to your horse you need to learn how to use that energy. The same goes for leading an organization. Leaders don't control most of a business's projects and activities. As a leader, what you can control is the energy in a particular situation — be it a meeting, in your 1-1s and around the water cooler. All eyes are on you, and your team will sense if you are scared or uncertain or frustrated, and react accordingly. By harnessing and shifting your energy, you can use it as a resource to imbue the people around you with a sense of trust and calm and focus.
Secondly, be mindful of non-verbal cues. Your body is a crucial instrument for communicating with your horse; everything right down to your posture matters. The same holds true with people. Whether you acknowledge the people around you, how you sit in a chair, the way you hold yourself during a conversation — these mannerisms matter because they send a signal. People notice all kinds of unconscious cues. Be aware of how you conduct yourself. This is an important tool in your leadership toolbox and profoundly influences the message you're trying to get across.
Cicero’s third lesson from the Household Cavalry is that empathy is key to motivation. There are two ways to motivate a horse: carrots (positive reinforcement) or sticks (negative reinforcement). The most effective "carrot" a leader can use is empathy. When your horse spooks, the fastest way to get it to behave is to understand what is bothering it. Ask yourself, "what is going on here and why is it happening?" Take a step back and think about the possible factors influencing a situation before you react; it will prevent costly mistakes and help you keep your people motivated to succeed.
And finally, always remember that as with horses, satisfaction comes from the quality of the work, not from being well-liked. The surest way to lose a horse's respect is to spend your time worrying if it likes you rather than if it's doing a good job and comfortable in this enterprise. Horses, like people, feel a sense of worth and fulfillment simply knowing they are doing meaningful work. If employees, and horses, feel involved in what they are doing they will feel an abiding satisfaction as part of a functioning and productive team. Overcoming the need for people to like you will help you focus on being a more fair and effective leader.
So maybe the Nuptials were not such a waste of time and money after all.
Is it only me.........but it’s time we got back to work.
Now for the past 2 weeks due to all the holidays and the Windsor Nuptial Nonsense, I have not been writing my fine words of wit and wisdom as you will have noticed. If we assume that I will write about 50 pieces over the course of a year the last two weeks represents a 4% drop in my productivity or my GDP. And there you have it in a nutshell-the reason why we are broke.
Every day the news media assault our senses with the latest piece of economic misery-consumer confidence is the lowest it has been since the last time it was low; spending in the shops is down; inflation and unemployment are up; manufacturing output is down; and so on and so forth. In short, and to mis-quote Hobbes here, ‘life is (economically), poor, nasty, bruteish and short’.
And yet despite this out of the past 15 working days we have only worked 11 of them which means we have only been producing stuff and generating value for 11 of these days. And given the lack of chariots on the viae over this period it is apparent that many of you have decided to forsake the work place all together over this period reducing yet further our productive and wealth generating capacity.
Is it any wonder we have a recession?
Now I understand that we do have statutory Bank Holidays and part of problem this year was caused by Easter, a legitimate religious festival even in this polyglot country still, almost over lapping with a non traditional festival to celebrate the proletariat, of which we have few in this country. But did we need an extra day off just because a couple of nice young kids were getting married, something which happens every day of the week. And if one or two people did want to watch this on TV, is there anything wrong with getting married on a Saturday?
Now it might only be me but surely you can see that there is a causal link between our productive capacity being at rest and our economic progress or lack of. We can’t have our cake and eat in, not in these straitened times. If we are not at work making stuff or services to sell we cannot generate the wealth we need to create more jobs to improve our spending power and to keep the Apparatchiks in the style to which they have become accustomed. The circle cannot be squared.
So thank God we are now all back at work. It is the only way man knows to create the economic recovery we are looking for. We won’t get there by taking endless holidays or standing idly by watching two people, we don’t know and are very unlikely to meet or even get to know, getting married by someone in a fancy pointed hat.
Have a great week.
Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.
It seems a while since we were together but it is good to see you back here seeking enlightenment.
Hopefully you enjoyed the rest of the past few weeks and the Nuptials. For Cicero the abiding memory of the Nuptials was the horses. There were rather a lot of them.
And it occurred to Cicero that in our businesses we could learn a lot from the men and horses of the Household Cavalry. And if you give the Man a chance He will explain how so.
Cicero might not know much about horse riding but He does know, or at least He likes to think He knows, a wee bit about leadership in business. And maybe if we look closely at how to ride a horse properly we might become more effective leaders.
Take it from Cicero but riding a frighteningly big and powerful horse is not about saddles, bridles and tight jodhpurs. It is about engaging with the horse on an emotional and intellectual level.
Lesson number one-emotional awareness and confidence are critical. Your state of mind determines your horse's performance. If you're nervous getting on a horse, it will sense that. Horses and people are not that different; your internal sense of foreboding, optimism or confidence has an impact on the people around you whether you realize it or not. Being emotionally aware allows you to consciously choose how to respond in any given situation.
This means that your energy is contagious. Energy passes through you to your horse. To ride well and connect to your horse you need to learn how to use that energy. The same goes for leading an organization. Leaders don't control most of a business's projects and activities. As a leader, what you can control is the energy in a particular situation — be it a meeting, in your 1-1s and around the water cooler. All eyes are on you, and your team will sense if you are scared or uncertain or frustrated, and react accordingly. By harnessing and shifting your energy, you can use it as a resource to imbue the people around you with a sense of trust and calm and focus.
Secondly, be mindful of non-verbal cues. Your body is a crucial instrument for communicating with your horse; everything right down to your posture matters. The same holds true with people. Whether you acknowledge the people around you, how you sit in a chair, the way you hold yourself during a conversation — these mannerisms matter because they send a signal. People notice all kinds of unconscious cues. Be aware of how you conduct yourself. This is an important tool in your leadership toolbox and profoundly influences the message you're trying to get across.
Cicero’s third lesson from the Household Cavalry is that empathy is key to motivation. There are two ways to motivate a horse: carrots (positive reinforcement) or sticks (negative reinforcement). The most effective "carrot" a leader can use is empathy. When your horse spooks, the fastest way to get it to behave is to understand what is bothering it. Ask yourself, "what is going on here and why is it happening?" Take a step back and think about the possible factors influencing a situation before you react; it will prevent costly mistakes and help you keep your people motivated to succeed.
And finally, always remember that as with horses, satisfaction comes from the quality of the work, not from being well-liked. The surest way to lose a horse's respect is to spend your time worrying if it likes you rather than if it's doing a good job and comfortable in this enterprise. Horses, like people, feel a sense of worth and fulfillment simply knowing they are doing meaningful work. If employees, and horses, feel involved in what they are doing they will feel an abiding satisfaction as part of a functioning and productive team. Overcoming the need for people to like you will help you focus on being a more fair and effective leader.
So maybe the Nuptials were not such a waste of time and money after all.
Is it only me.........but it’s time we got back to work.
Now for the past 2 weeks due to all the holidays and the Windsor Nuptial Nonsense, I have not been writing my fine words of wit and wisdom as you will have noticed. If we assume that I will write about 50 pieces over the course of a year the last two weeks represents a 4% drop in my productivity or my GDP. And there you have it in a nutshell-the reason why we are broke.
Every day the news media assault our senses with the latest piece of economic misery-consumer confidence is the lowest it has been since the last time it was low; spending in the shops is down; inflation and unemployment are up; manufacturing output is down; and so on and so forth. In short, and to mis-quote Hobbes here, ‘life is (economically), poor, nasty, bruteish and short’.
And yet despite this out of the past 15 working days we have only worked 11 of them which means we have only been producing stuff and generating value for 11 of these days. And given the lack of chariots on the viae over this period it is apparent that many of you have decided to forsake the work place all together over this period reducing yet further our productive and wealth generating capacity.
Is it any wonder we have a recession?
Now I understand that we do have statutory Bank Holidays and part of problem this year was caused by Easter, a legitimate religious festival even in this polyglot country still, almost over lapping with a non traditional festival to celebrate the proletariat, of which we have few in this country. But did we need an extra day off just because a couple of nice young kids were getting married, something which happens every day of the week. And if one or two people did want to watch this on TV, is there anything wrong with getting married on a Saturday?
Now it might only be me but surely you can see that there is a causal link between our productive capacity being at rest and our economic progress or lack of. We can’t have our cake and eat in, not in these straitened times. If we are not at work making stuff or services to sell we cannot generate the wealth we need to create more jobs to improve our spending power and to keep the Apparatchiks in the style to which they have become accustomed. The circle cannot be squared.
So thank God we are now all back at work. It is the only way man knows to create the economic recovery we are looking for. We won’t get there by taking endless holidays or standing idly by watching two people, we don’t know and are very unlikely to meet or even get to know, getting married by someone in a fancy pointed hat.
Have a great week.
Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.
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