The compleat angler

Greetings

It seems that we are now able to annoy Guardianistas and Apparatchiks without even meaning to (see last week’s comments from Anonymous to understand). A rare skill indeed.

Is this the time to point out to the Apparatchiks and Guardianistas that they enjoy the kind of pension heavily subsidised in large part by the value creating taxpayer and squeezed middle who themselves do not get such generous settlements in old age? Can someone please explain why this is fair and equitable? God bless Lord Hutton for pointing out the inequity of this absurdity. And yet the Apparatchiks have the cheek to want to revolt. They should be want what they get, not get what they want.

But let us put this behind us and move on to discussing more worthwhile and interesting matters.

Cicero loves coaching. And he enjoys reading about coaches and how they help prepare their coachees to deliver great performances. This can only help Cicero continue in his role as sage, mentor and guru to Marketing Grands and Petits Fromages and to his many devotees who imbibe his every word.

And last week he spent a brief time in the company of one of rugby’s great coaches who passed on these wise words.

One day a hunter and a fisherman went away camping, resolving to experience nature and to live off the land. On day one there’s plenty of fish for the men to catch and both men were happy and fully fed. On the second day there were far fewer fishes in the river and the hunter is beginning to get agitated, no doubt beginning to feel the hunger pangs in his tummy and the slow steady onset of anorexia.

‘Be patient’, the fisherman tells him, ‘you must wait and see if any fish will come this way.’

Prepared to wait and confident in his skill as a fisherman, the fisherman catches one fish late in the day to keep starvation at bay through the night.

Day three and nothing is biting at all and the fisherman knows it is going to be one of those days and a long slog. ‘No fish today’, he says to the hunter, ‘that’s just the way it is.’

But the hunter doesn’t accept this. He fashions a spear from the boughs of some nearby tees, wades into the water and starts to walk upstream. Brushing the cold and wet to one side he eventually finds and spears a fish.

And the moral of the story-you have got to make things happen, you’ve got to get on the front foot and never accept that ‘this is just the way it is’. If it’s not a good day, you turn it round. You never ever shrug your shoulder and accept the status quo. As Ghandi might have said ‘you must be the change you want to see in the world’. Clearly he was a hunter and not a fisherman.

Now this moral works on a couple of levels.

First as a coach. We can help our people to get on the front foot, to explore and try new ways of doing things and thinking. And not just to accept that they can’t improve, get better or move from their comfort zone just because ‘that’s the way it is’. As coaches we can encourage our people and our business not to play the fisherman role but to wade into the water and go out and make things happen. That is why great businesses and good people succeed.

But we can also use such a philosophy to improve, challenge and question things that are wrong within our business and cause the interferences that make life difficult for our customers. We can refuse to accept the wrong and we can wade upstream within our business to right wrongs that we know or can see are agitating our customers. How many times as consumers do we encounter shop staff, call centre people, waiters and waitresses, and everyone else in the customer service business who excuse bad service on the grounds that ‘that’s just the way it is’. Nonsense, it can be changed if we can be bothered to change it. And nothing riles Cicero more than we comes across people, usually in Hi Viz vests, who just shrug at some absurdity or other and excuse it on the basis that ‘is just the way it is'. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

From now on, let’s resolve to be hunters. It will be better for our people, our customers and ultimately for our businesses. And that way none of us will starve to death.

Is it only me.........but this is dangerous.

I don’t know if it has ever struck you how inherently dangerous ‘average speed restrictions’ are on our motorways. Well it has struck me and hopefully the Two Caesars and their Apparatchik Little Helpers who work in the Highways Agency will take heed. Don’t hold your breath.

Now no doubt someone will point out based on spurious statistics that average speed restrictions through road works saves 1.72 lives a year. And no doubt too the eco-mentalists will point out that by reducing speed through the road works and for every county on either side of where the men in the Hi Viz vets are supposed to be digging, reduces our carbon emissions by 0.29g per annum. And so in the basis the Men from the Highway Agency will crack open the champers, say ‘job done’ and pay themselves a whopping Apparatchik bonus, or as I like to call it, transfer money from my pocket into their wallet.

But hold on a minute. Before we get carried away on a binge of righteous self congratulation, let us examine a few more facts.

Now we may not here have all the facts at our disposal but since when has that ever stopped anyone from making a point. However it has not escaped my attention that on a daily basis the Traffic Gals who populate our radio stations will report that the ‘M(insert number) has been closed for the past few days due to an incident(note-we no longer have accidents) in the roadworks’. And of course the road either side of said accident, sorry incident, will have been closed for at least 50 miles. No doubt to give the Wombles something to do in their 4x4s.

Now I have a theory why this might be the case.

These accidents are caused by drivers staring incessantly at the speedometer and feverishly calculating their average speed between the yellow sticks, instead of watching the road and concentrating on what is happening in front of them. And then bang, crash, wallop, another incident and another stretch of motorway turned into a car park for the next few days.

Now it might only be me but this is why average speed checks are so dangerous and should be banned. This might upset the eco-mentalists and Health and Safety Gauleiters (Motorways Branch) but quite frankly surely we can live with a few more grams of CO2. And does it not take a lot of energy and extra CO2 to repair all the cars damaged and written just because we have lost the art of mental arithmetic these days? I bet no one has included that in their calculations.

Have a great week. And drive safely.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.