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.

In defence of banks

Many happy returns to Cicero Speaks.

I take it you enjoyed conversing with me so much last week that you wanted to come back for more of the same, more of my thought provoking warm wit and wisdom. Thank you. I will try not to let you down.

And if this is your first time here. Welcome. Stick around. You will get soon the hang of this. And I hope you will be so stimulated by my thoughts and views on marketing, on business, on life, that you will want to come back and will want to take part in my Great Big Conversation.

And please let me have your thoughts on my thoughts. It is very lonely writing for you. Mr Google has laboured long and hard to allow you to comment on my words.

This week I want to stick up for banks. I know this is bound to be controversial but someone has to before we all get consumed by our choleric anger against them.

And before I start let me declare an interest. I am no apologist for the banking industry in this country but until recently I practised my marketing arts and science at one of these fine establishments. The banking industry has been good to me-it paid for my house, my car, indeed it funded my entire lifestyle, as it does for us all though in a very different way. And I do want the industry to be around to fund my old age which is coming up fast towards me. My future is almost behind me.

Now I may be stupid but I am not so stupid as to think that banks are entirely blameless in the situation we are now in. I understand that banks are guilty of humungous errors over the past few years. Only an idiot would think that if you lend money to a Tennessee trailer park resident with no income, no job and no assets, that you are going to get it back. And only someone who is severely learning disadvantaged would think it commercially sensible to buy these loans along with loans to his cousin from Texas, his wife’s sister in Alabama and his brother-in-law’s cousin’s wife’s friend in Florida. Sorry I forgot, that is exactly what the bankers did with our money.

Banking used to be easy. It was based on the 3-6-3 rule. You pay savers 3% for their money, lend at 6% and be on golf course for 3. But that was before the rocket scientists took over and decided to invent a whole new range of TLAs, or three letter acronyms, such as CDOs, CDS and WTFs, which no one, including me, understands. As my old boss (and in case my old boss is reading this, when I say old I mean former, you are not old, honest) used to say ‘if you don’t understand what you are buying and selling, don’t buy or sell it’. Wise words.

I think you will be with me so far. But you will no doubt be wondering how I can stand up for these morons. Let me try to explain. Let us look at why these bankers, and I know I am only one letter out, did what they did.

In some respects we must all share a responsibility for what happened, unpalatable as that might sound. Do we not believe we have an inalienable right to right buy a house with a cheap mortgage? Did we not think that our spending on cars, holidays, clothes and the rest via our flexible friends was a basic human right? And did we ever for a moment consider where the banks got the money to lend onto us?

Sure we gave the banks our savings to help fund the boom we have all enjoyed over the past few years but that was nowhere enough and so banks also got money to fund our insatiable desire for cheap borrowing from dodgier, riskier and more incomprehensible sources of funding. Yes I know the banks wanted us to borrow but we as consumers were not exactly slow in taking and spending it. Indeed to fund our borrowing ‘needs’ it is estimated banks need an additional £700bn over above what they get from savings. Where do you think this money is going to come from? Are we going to save an additional £700bn? I don’t know about you but I am a little brassick at the moment.

And now we all think we are all shareholders in these banks. We are not, except of course RBS where we are shareholders. As taxpayers we have only lent them the trifling sum of £40 odd billion plus a few more hundred billion in guarantees, soon we will be talking real money. And this money was given to them not so they could lend but so they could be safe and strong.

As a taxpayer I would like my share of this loan back. And I want to see banks big and strong and profitable, keeping our savings safe and generating profits to pay tax again. Don’t you?

This means that the banks have to lend sensibly and behave commercially. This does not give us the right, no matter how unfair it might seem, to demand higher savings rates, lower mortgage rates, increased lending to small businesses, an end to repossessions and even, and I kid you not, I even heard this on the radio, the right to 6 Nations rugby tickets since this is sponsored by one of the many banks we now think we own. I would like my money back as soon as possible

So going forward I would like the bank which has got my tax money to return to health at the earliest opportunity. I want it making good returns again, not excessive ones, good is good enough for me. I would like it to do this with great humility. And I want us as consumers to remember the part our greed played in bringing this about.

That is why I am standing up for banks.

And finally, here’s a thought. Are there any streets in London that are not being dug up? Everywhere you look there is a hole in the road. I play golf and I share my golf course with herds of rabbits, themselves inveterate hole diggers. I believe that there are less holes on my golf course than there are in central London currently. What is going on? Why has London taken on the appearance of an Ementhal cheese?

And that note, I’m off. See you again next week.

Ave atque vale. Et este fornatus.