Black Magic

Well it seems that last week’s dose of wit and wisdom upset the Guardianistas. It is always pleasing to see them upset.

However as always Cicero will not shy away or censor the critics who exercise their right to disagree and to contend. It is what we are here to do. In the words of Mao ‘let a thousand schools of thought contend....... let a thousand flowers bloom’. Of course this statement did lead to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution so maybe not.

Today we are going to use a card trick to illustrate this week’s key leadership thought. Given that card tricks are highly visual this might be as tricky as ventriloquism on the radio to pull off but if you are prepared to apply your imagination this might just work.

And if it does this will amaze and amuse those relatives, friends and visitors with whom you might be choosing to spend the forthcoming Saturnalian revels.

First of all write down the suit and number of a playing card on a blank sheet of paper, seal it and give it to someone in the room to hold. Tell no one the card you have written down. For the purposes of this exercise you might wish to heighten the drama at the outset by pretending to read minds. Of course you are doing no such thing.

Are you still following this?

Ok to make it easier to follow let us say you wrote the Jack of Diamonds.
Now you need to find a willing volunteer from your audience to be your Debbie McGee. Got one? Now to proceed with a trick which will baffle, astound and confound.

Ask Debbie to name the suits.

‘Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades’.

‘Now pick two of those suits and tell me which two you have selected’, you will ask. And this is where it gets tricky for she could pick any two suits at this point.
‘Hearts and Clubs’.

At this point you now need to start to vary and adapt your answer dependent on the answer Debbie has provided.

‘You have elected to throw away the Diamonds and the Spades. Now I find that very interesting choice and I would like to go a little bit deeper into your choice.’

At this point you as the master magician are waffling madly to ratchet up the tension and suspense and also applying distraction techniques to divert the minds of your rapt audience away from what you are in fact doing.

‘If I asked you to select either Diamonds or Spades to hold onto, which one would it be?'

‘Diamonds’ replies Debbie.

‘Ah Diamonds, a girl’s best friend. A great choice if I may so though it would be interesting if we had the time to discuss what you have against Spades. Ok. In the suit of Diamonds what are the five highest ranking cards?’

‘Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10’.

‘Now pick two of those’

‘Ace and Jack’, replies Debbie.

‘Of the two you have selected, which one do you favour?’

‘Well the Ace is the highest so I guess that is the one I prefer’.

‘So if you give that one to me what is the card that you now hold in your hand?

‘The Jack of Diamonds’

‘Now let’s see what card I wrote down’

Drum roll. Unfold the piece of paper. Study it. Frown. And show your paper to the audience.

‘The Jack of Diamonds’.

Gasps from the audience. Wild spontaneous applause. The room erupts. The card discarded from the pack by Debbie McGee matches the card written down before we even knew that Debbie McGee would be doing the card selection.

And the moral of the tale, and this week’s useful business lesson, if you know where you are trying to go and what you are trying to achieve, you will get there, and take everyone with you, by making sure you ask the right questions along the way.

And if you still don’t get how this ‘trick’ works, re-read the story and try to work out what was happening as we got to the result we were looking for.

It is not black magic. It’s leadership. Or is that just black magic? Discuss.

Is it only me......but this is snow joke.

Apologies for the dreadful pun but we could not let this week go without reference to the snowy weather of the past few days.

And in passing let me say, is it not strange how all those previously making wide eyed wild claims about global warming have gone suddenly quiet? Where are the enviro-mentalists now, we wonder? As we have pointed out countless times before, it is just wonky weather. It happens. Live with it.

But back to my point.

It is annoying in the least when every time we get a few snowflakes in this country, someone, usually dressed in a matching Day Glo high viz vest, the wardrobe of choice for unctuous busy bodies in this country, advises that we should only travel if our journey is ‘absolutely necessary’.

Now when such announcements are made there will no doubt be quite a few shirkers, skivers and slackers (and for the avoidance of doubt I know no one fitting any or all of these descriptions) who will take this as an official recommendation for an extra duvet day. But at what point does a journey stop being absolutely necessary? I think we deserve some guidance on this point.

I think we should consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and while I am prepared to concede that journeys done for my self- fulfilment and other self actualisation needs, of which I do very few, might not be ‘absolutely necessary’ in the eyes of Mr Day Glo, anything to do with my basic biological and physiological needs such as shelter, heating, food and water, and earning the spondooliks to buy the same, must be considered an absolutely necessary trip. Would you not agree?

But what about my esteem and achievement needs? Are these absolutely necessary? My belongingness and love needs? My security and order needs? You see Mr Day Glo and his Health and Safety Gualeiter friends do not think about these kinds of things when they make such wild pronouncements on taking trips in the snow and ice.

Fortunately I do.

Last week we even had a senior policeman stressing that this time he really meant the advice about unnecessary journeys. Which does beg two questions.........did he not really mean it before every time he urged us to take an extra duvet day? And next time he issues said advice will he mean it this time? This is the kind of mess such warnings get us into.

It might only be me but I have a solution to help resolve this dilemma. Perhaps when such warnings are issued going forward the advice should be linked to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and instead of linking the warning to some vague reference to necessity we could get warnings like ‘police today advised drivers only to venture forth if they are seeking to satisfy their needs for belongingness and love’. Or in extreme weather only journeys linked to basic biological needs will be allowed. That way we will all know where we stand.

Do you get my drift on this one? And we are not talking snow drifts here.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.