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.