Are you talking to me?

As you know Cicero is not at all political and normally eschews making political comment lest he be seen as partisan. But this week he is going to break this habit and policy. Sorry to all who come here expecting a politics free zone of calm meditative thought.

But Lord Browne is wrong. A university education should be fully funded by us taxpayers. End of. A university education offers great potential to transform lives and a great opportunity to deliver a well balanced society. And as taxpayers we should be investing this. Given all the other stuff we as tax papers invest in which are nowhere near as liberating for individuals, why are we even debating how much students should be paying?

If we are prepared to invest in keeping people in dependency, why are we not investing in giving people the means to make more of their lives?

And if, as will be the case, we have issues with the affordability of going down this route, the answer is equally clear. We should be paying for fewer but better graduates and universities. It does not say in the Declaration of Human Rights that everyone has the right to go to university, does it? No.

But we say that all, regardless of race, gender, creed or size of wallet, should have the opportunity to get there. And should anyone fail to seize that opportunity then tough. You are not good enough. Get over it. But if you are good enough, you can be assured that Cicero will willingly share sesterces with you to allow you to get a truly great university education. For free.

Think again, Lord Browne.

And now normal service will be resumed.........

Imagine if someone you worked with failed to remember your name or called you by someone else’s name, or got some information about you that you would expect them to know about you, wrong. How would you feel? Probably not very valued or respected.
And yet every day that is exactly what brands do to their customers. And no matter how much we try to endow with human characteristics such as personality and tone of voice, brands can still come across as impersonal, faceless and anonymous. Just who exactly are they talking to?

A few months back Cicero received from his local chariot dealer a letter offering a summer holiday service check to ensure ‘you were not stuck in the car on the way to your hard earned holiday with the kids screaming in the back’.

Great idea. Great proposition.

Somewhat spoiled by addressing it ‘dear customer’ even though all customer details were on the system and were used to address the letter.

And what is the point of talking about ‘kids screaming in the back’ if, as in this case, there are no kids to scream in the back.

How well does this business really know and understand its customers? How much does it show it recognises its customers? Is this the sort of business that puts the customer at the heart of its marketing?

Now is the time for us as Marketing Grand Fromages to think about ‘brand personalisation’.

The more businesses can personalise their brand the more it can meet the consumer need of ‘, recognise me, know me, understand me’. And all of us like dealing with brands and people that know and understand us. We trust people and brands which can deliver against this promise.

And how do you personalise a brand?

Think 4 Ds-Data, Decisioning, Digital, Direct.

In other words let the data and insight held on your customers inform your digital and direct marketing strategies, creative and messaging. Of course it should go way beyond this with the data informing all touch points on how to feel and look and sound personalised to the consumer but let’s face it getting the direct and digital messaging coming across as personalised would be a huge step in the right direction.
Data from or about the brand’s customers informs the insight that drives the decisioning that allows you to make your brand feel personal and alive to your customers across as many touch points as you can and lets the brand demonstrate the deep understanding that earns customer trust, making it more responsive to changes in customer behaviour, more relevant to customers’ individual needs and more rewarding in the way it treat its customers.

And customers will repay by buying more, staying longer and introducing others over time. Or, to put it more simply, will drive the bottom line.

Seize the chance, fellow Marketing Grand Fromages, rise to the opportunity and make your brand relevant to market of one. It can be done. Think 4 Ds and don’t be a D for Dumbo.

Is it only me......but does anyone else care that we are losing skills?

Walk down any High St these days and you will be hard pressed to find a thatcher, a cooper or a blacksmith. And yet a hundred years ago these traditional skills would have been in plentiful supply in towns and villages across this green and pleasant land. No longer. These skills have gone and once gone they are gone forever as there is no one around to pass down ancient skills like these to a new generation.
And if we are not careful and take action now, a host of skills that many of us take for granted will also be lost.

Take the simple task of basic arithmetic. With the advent of pocket calculators young people these days are rapidly losing the ability to add, subtract, divide and multiply, whether on paper or in their head.

We are similarly losing the skill to map read and navigate, something at which the males of the species are especially adept at, relative to distaffs. Nowadays we just jump in car and just ‘sat nav’ the way to our destination. And should the ‘sat nav’ be left on the kitchen table or pack in, well, quite frankly and quite literally, we are lost.

We no longer know how to use encyclopaedia and other interesting fascinating books to find out what we need to know, instead we choose to ‘Google’ or, and this is even worse, ‘Wikipedia’ the information we need to know.

In passing, it is interesting to note that we are not only losing skills that people like me take for granted but we also are creating new verbs in the process as we have just demonstrated.

And finally we should be worried about the long term cognitive development of our society caused by mobile phones, iPhones and the like. Have you noticed how few telephone numbers we all now remember? When we were lads and lassies we could ream off the phone numbers, birthdays and house address including postcode of all our friends and relations, many of which we can probably still remember to this day. Nowadays we rely almost entirely on the memory banks of our mobile gizmos rather than our own. What will this do to our brain power going forward? We should set up a medical study now before it’s too late.

Now it might only be me but I find this all very worrying but, given that we can’t put toothpaste back in the tube and stop the onward march of technology and progress, I don’t really know what to do about it. I just thought you should know-a problem shared and all that.

Anyone got any suggestions?

And on that depressing note, have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Film Noir

Salvete, amici.

Great to see you back again.

And in response to a question asked last week-no, Cicero does not know everything and that is why you will never read thinking on topics as unexciting, uninteresting and unnecessary as finance, operations or even audit and risk. Instead you will read about those issues that contribute to business growth-people and customers. But it is pleasing that some people think Cicero does know everything.

Now here’s a question to get you started this week-would you rather go to a film or a meeting at work? If you voted that you would rather attend a meeting at work, there is every likelihood that you are on your own. Or if not on own, at least you are in a very small minority.

Now why might that be?

If you think about it, films and meetings have an awfully lot in common and some key differences.

Each will last for about 90 minutes. And each will contain a cast of varied and interesting characters.

And yet meetings are interactive, unlike films-you can’t shout at the actor on the screen and expect the actor to pay attention. And more importantly films have no real impact on our lives. In any meeting we get to have our say and the outcome of any given discussion can have and should have a very real impact on our working and business lives. Agreed?

So meetings are actually more engaging and more relevant, yet why do we hate meetings so?

Probably because they’re boring. And why might they be boring? What stops all films becoming boring? What is the key ingredient that all great films have that boring meetings lack? Anyone know?

Drum roll.............

Conflict. Name a great film that lacks conflict whether it be physical conflict, emotional conflict or conflict of conscience or any other kind of conflict.
Too often meetings, and by extension teams, avoid conflict. They avoid real discussion and debate. As a result they are boring but more damaging is that the team has artificial harmony so no one gets upset but in reality no decisions get made. Great teams engage in productive, ideological conflict and debate. It is its ability to engage in passionate unfiltered debate that sets it apart. Not everyone has to agree but they have to feel they had their chance to say something. And when the arguing is over great teams agree and all commit to it.

It’s easy peasy to build and lead great teams. All you need to do is go to the movies.

Is it only me.....but the EU needs to get off its high horse and drink up its milk.

Those of you who know me can easily tell from my shape that I love chocolate. Indeed I love anything sweet. To ask if I have a sweet tooth is akin to asking the Dalai Lama if the Pope is catholic. I love chocolate. I adore the brown stuff. I can consume so many thick slabs of it in one go that I risk a diabetic coma. Yes, I like chocolate and Cadbury’s especially.

And now it seems that Cadbury’s has fallen out of favour with the unelected Apparatchiks in Brussels and it is time for all chocoholics to man the barricades in defence, yes of Cadburys choccie bars, but more importantly to defend common sense from more Apparatchik nonsense.

For it is now illegal for Cadburys to refer to a ‘glass and a half’ as a key ingredient in its Dairy Milk bars, the Rolls Royce of choccie bars. According to Monsieur Jobsworth and Herr Nitpick such descriptions contravene European regulations. Instead Cadburys must now say that its Dairy Milk bars contain ‘the equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate". Now that really does trip off the tongue.

And no I am not kidding. And nor is it April 1st.

Yes, difficult as it is to believe, some nameless and faceless Euro-Apparatchik did in recent days decide without a shred of humour or a soupcon of common sense that Cadburys must change their strap line. And do you know what is worse, as this proposal no doubt trundled its way up and down and along and down and up the corridors of power across Europe, no one, not one person, no monsieur, herren or senorita, thought this was a dumb idea and should be stopped.

Now it might only be me, and this time I doubt it is, but this is surely what happens when we let Apparatchiks run the asylum. I don’t know about taking action to re-claim the streets but I do want to re-claim my sweets from the evil clutches of the Apparatchiks of Europe, or even our own home-grown ones.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Excuse me, is this seat taken?

Salute.

Now it seems that we are upsetting people by coming across as too political. Ok, let’s see if this works better for you all, regardless of gender, creed or political hue. There is just no pleasing some folks.

In discussion this week with some younger colleagues it became readily apparent that when entering a room to join a meeting, not much attention was being paid to the seating arrangements. How wrong can people be? And when Cicero started to expound on his theories on where to sit, mouths fell agape in shock and awe. And so this week’s words were born.

Remember the marketing maxim, everything communicates.

And even in meetings this maxim holds true. Even the place where you park your gluteus maximus communicates. Now read on to find out how you can improve your communication and influencing skills and learn from a master communicator. They say you should choose your words carefully. The same goes for your seat. Choose your seat with care. It is the road to power and influence in the meeting.

Clearly the leader, whether de jure or de factor, sits at the head of the table and wherever he or she sits, that is the head of the table. But where should everyone else sit? Where should you sit if you are not the leader?

Theory suggests that when a group sits around a table the person sitting on the leader's right will generally be the most loyal and aligned to the leader's thinking and wishes. A (likely) mythical origin is said to be that in Roman times a leader would place their most loyal supporter to their right because this was the most advantageous position from which to attempt an assassination by stabbing (given that most people then as now were right-handed). Assassination at least by stabbing is rare in modern work meetings but you can never be too careful.

In any event those who group around the top of the table whether to the left or right will usually be those who have sited themselves there to support the leader. Is this where you want to sit? Is this how you want to exert influence? Do you want to be seen as a brown nose?

Alternatively the seat directly opposite from the leader can be a great source of alternative power and influence. This is the alter leader space and from this position you can directly maintain eye contact with the leader and those around the table. This is a great place to sit and is usually the chosen position of the backside of yours truly. From here we can agitate, thought provoke and stimulate constructive healthy discussion and debate. This is the seat of the persistent devil’s advocate and end-of-the-table folks are usually the most active participants in the room.

The last place to choose to sit is round the side. From here it can be difficult to exert influence and power. Difficult to engage with those in the room. Tricky to assert your point of view. Avoid with dexterity unless of course you have the force of personality to turn a seat to the side to become the head of the table, the seat of power, the source of influence. It can be done but is down to you.

And one final tip for you-when someone is speaking, and no matter how much they might be droning on and on and on, every now and again nod your head to at least give the impression you are listening intently. The effect of this apparently small gesture will be massive. At a stroke the speaker will engage with you, and he, or she, mindful as we are that women are now a significant factor in leadership positions, will build and maintain eye contact with you, ignoring all other attendees to give you their full and undivided attention. You in their eyes are now the leader in the group and such will be the group dynamic that others too will see you in this position. This trick works every time.

And so, dear friends, we end this week’s lesson. And hopefully you will start to consider that where you park it can be as important as the ideas and questions you bring to the table. And just like educationalists who think they can show that where you sit in class can affect your grades, and in this particular case that might explain a lot, so where you sit in meetings can affect your career.

As we have said before, everything communicates. Even your bum. And no this is not what we mean by the phrase ‘talking out of your backside’. Thought it best to clarify.

Is it only me........

In a serious effort to keep the body toned and fit and now that Cicero has more discretionary time than previously, two to three times a week before work and just as the sun is rising, Cicero will make a visit to his local baths for a swim. This is a great pleasure and recommended to all. This truly is a great way to start the day.

Much to Cicero’s surprise however even at that time of the day he does not have the pool to himself and as he ploughs up and down the water filled lanes he has to take great care to avoid others similarly intent on following a fat reducing, fitness inducing lifestyle. For believe or not even at that time of the day, with the sun barely above the tree tops and the dawn chorus just warming up, a great crowd of swimmers is out and about before they head into their shops, offices and VTTSBs to earn their daily crust.

Or at least most of them are.

For a significant majority of this swimming community have quite clearly no work to head towards, given the amount of wrinkles on their skin and the elastication in their trousers, always a dead give away of age. For these people have retired and as a result have all day to enjoy their leisurely lifestyle. So why, oh why, do they insist on clogging up the water ways, and other civic amenities no doubt, at the same time as wage slaves like Cicero and no doubt you. Unlike superannuated wrinklies, who are no doubt enjoying these facilities at some reduced rate thanks to taxpayer funded largess, salatariat members have few options when they can attend and it irks that capacity is reduced somewhat by people with the time to attend at other times of the day.

Now it might only be me, and it would not be the first time that it was, but surely it is not beyond the wit of highly expensive and obscenely over paid local council quangocrats to put in place a system that restricts usage at peak times to full payers and not those whose presence is subsidised? That way we all might get more enjoyment and space to enjoy our splashing and paddling around.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Planet of the Apps

Greetings.

Cicero is still here and has come back for yet another week to share education, enlightenment and enjoyment. It is pleasing to note that many seem to have missed your weekly dose of such sentiments. Again my profound apologies but hopefully you will over the coming weeks see and receive the benefits arising from the previous long absence of this page.

And to satisfy those of you still complaining let us see if we can be a wee bit more controversial this week. And in doing so hopefully too these words will not be too cerebral for many of you. Another oft repeated complaint from last week.

In previous weeks Cicero has not been averse to complaining about the pointlessness Of Apple apps. We even held a competition to identify the most useful and useless.
On further reflection Cicero was wrong and after prolonged consideration through the summer recess, and having himself acquired an iThingymybob, it is clear that the Apple model has much to offer to the Apparatchiks Class as they struggle to come to terms with the spending dictats of the Two Caesars. Indeed it might also point a way forward for those of us toiling away generating the wealth required to keep the Apparatchiks in the style to which they have become accustomed and to pay for the spending priorities of the Two Caesars.

Get this right and we can change the way we generate wealth and deliver public services in this country forever. Now there’s an incentive.

Now let us be clear, Cicero has absolutely no idea what makes an iThingymybob work in the way it does but he does greatly admire the model whereby a cottage industry has grown up cheaply developing a range of useful and useless apps for use on said device based on open access to the knowledge, information and codes required for said apps to work.

Why can’t this thinking be applied to the Apparatchik sector?

Let me give you an example. Why does government need to use taxpayer for expensive and glossy ‘quit smoking’ advertising? If we apply the Apple model the government would open up to anyone who wanted to know, all the data and insight it had on people who smoke, why they smoke, what stops them from stopping smoking, and letting others use the insight to develop strategies, programmes or ‘apps’ to encourage smokers to quit. We could easily envisage companies that make patches and nicotine replacement products picking up the baton and developing effective programmes and products for this market. Everyone a winner. Charities and other self help support mechanisms could also be developed to fill this space. And so we begat the Big Society.

A similar approach is already being applied in education. Why does the State have to run schools? Where is this decreed? What is wrong with the State providing open access to the all the information, standards and protocols they require from schools and letting anyone who wants to set up and run a school? How is this so vastly different from the Apple model?

And on we go. Surely this thinking can be applied to all the nooks and crannies of our Apparatchik run bureaucracy to work out where it is more cost effective, efficient and viable to provide the services on the Apple app model and where it can only be done by the State, with examples of this being minimised and limited? All it takes is imaginative and creative thinking and a willingness to let go of State-sponsored, taxpayer-funded sacred cows and contrary to popular belief such attitudes and capabilities do exist in the VTSSBs.

And why stop there?

Such thinking can also be applied to those creating wealth. Too often those of us working in business think we have to come up with the next great idea, the next best selling product, the next fantastic idea to reduce costs.

Why?

Sure we employ consultants and agencies and other third parties from time to time to do our thinking for us but why not change the model. Make our data, our insight, our problems and challenges more freely available and encourage anyone out there to develop income generating or cost reduction apps which can be applied in our businesses. Why do we think that only those who work in the business have the ideas and the brains? Let’s use the virtually combined brain power of the world population to come up with the next great idea. Surely it will be possible to create a community of interested people to generate money spinning or cost reducing apps for our business.

It might be a batty idea and it might require more thinking to be done, but it might just be a brilliant idea.

They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away but thinking like Apple could well keep the Chancellor or our business banking manager away too.

Is it only me..........but we are not made of money.

As you will no doubt have gleaned if you are addicted to and follow avidly all the latest news, the time is fast approaching when the Two Caesars will announce how they are going to spend a lot less of our money. And for the record it is worth pointing that the terminology used by the media is constantly wrong. It is not about ‘cuts’ which is what everyone bangs on and on and on about but reducing the amount of our money they spend on our behalf. Surely far less emotive than the C word which is henceforth banned from these pages.

And are you equally fed up with the whining and moaning and groaning from Apparatchiks fearful about jobs? We could fill these pages with comment on Apparatchiks whining about the indispensability of their jobs. Maybe we might have more sympathy if said whining Apparatchiks focused more on outcomes affected than their own employment situation. We do not pay our taxes to keep Apparatchiks in jobs. Get over it. We pay our taxes for services which deliver meaningful and substantive service outcomes and this is where the debate should be focused.
But this is not the main gripe this week though this is surely a topic to which we will return in the coming weeks as the Apparatchiks become ever more whining the closer we get to the two Caesars announcing how they are going to reduce the amount of our money, and that of international lenders, they think it prudent to spend.
Earlier in week Cicero had the great pleasure of attending a business dinner to celebrate examples of successful capitalism in ‘The City of a Thousands Trades’. The dinner was a joyous and pleasant enough event but something struck Cicero when there and it niggled.

The dinner was sponsored as is the wont of these occasions and the venue was festooned with the logos of those businesses that had paid to have their names in lights. In total there must have been about 10 logos prominently displayed, 8 of whom were from the public sector. In other words there were only three real sponsors-two real businesses and us, the taxpayer.

Now is it only me but quite frankly we do not pay our hard earned taxes to subsidise the troughing of well fed business folk, do we? What in God’s name motivated a collection of taxpayer funder Apparatchiks to think it was a bright idea, when we are on cusp of a re-balancing of the levels of money sneaked from our pay packets, to think this was a good idea?

Ideas and thoughts please on this most welcome.

Was that controversial enough for you this week?

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

How conscious are you?

Cicero is well and truly back.

And for those of you agitating and worrying about the lack of presence from Him, sorry. The time off stretched on a wee bit longer than planned. Hopefully you were able to cope.

As you know the VTSSB and its Apparatchiks have by now been left far to stern although Cicero still retains a special affection for the people left behind there and wishes them all well as they deal with the Two Caesars. Good luck.

Anyway it is good to be back and for the past few weeks Cicero has been collecting many new experiences and developing many new ideas and thoughts to share with you.

So let’s get started.......we have no time to waste......we have a lot of catching up to do.

We are going to start with a little exercise.

We will start by signing our names. Go on, do it. Yes, you. Do it now.
Good. Now how long did that take? Not long. No doubt you did it in less than the blink of an eyelid. Nor was it especially painful. You will have expended less than one hand’s worth of brain cells doing it. Correct? In essence you signed your name without even thinking about it. Aren’t you clever?

Now swap hands and repeat the exercise.

How difficult was that? It is surmised that, unless you are ambidextrous, that took a lot longer, was far more painful and you had to think long and hard before making any move with your pen on the paper. Correct? And no doubt too your new autograph is far less legible than the one you scrawled with your natural hand.

And therein lies today’s lesson. For you have just demonstrated the difference between being consciously incompetent and unconsciously competent and such understanding is of vital importance and a critical concern to any leader in any business.

Most of us for most of the time are unconsciously competent. We know what we are doing. We do it well and without fuss and without thinking about it. Just like signing our name with our writing hand. And in this state we are no problem, not an issue.

But sometimes some of us can be unconsciously incompetent. We don’t know we are doing a bad job, unaware that we could be doing things better or differently. This is worse than writing our autographs with our non writing hand.

As leaders we cannot ignore this state. It is our job to point this out to our people and to root out unconscious incompetence. Incompetence at this level if unchecked drags down the performance of the team and saps the morale and motivation of our star performers. It must be checked to stop the spread of incompetence through the team.

In taking action we move our unconscious incompetent to being consciously incompetent. We now know that we could be doing better, that we are under-performing compared to peers and to the standard of the job. In this state the leader can take action and move to the next level when our incompetent is transformed into being consciously competent. The work is taking a time to be completed but the quality is good and improving though much effort and concentration is being applied to make sure the job is being done right.

And then we reach nirvana, a heavenly state of peace and tranquillity. We have arrived at unconsciously competent. We can do the job to a high standard without thinking about it. We don’t think about how we sign our name, how to breathe, how to drive our cars, we just do it. We have arrived at our destination.

In this journey it is our role as leaders to move our people from unconsciously incompetent to unconsciously competent as quickly and as painlessly as possible. There have been many times in past few weeks when Yours Truly has felt hopelessly incompetent (yes that is difficult to believe) but with the help and support of some great leaders, you would be amazed in how many new areas Cicero is now unconsciously competent.

So just how conscious are you? Let us know.

Is it only me......but paper cuts can be good.

As you may know Cicero treats his body as a temple and he works hard to keep it young looking and in good shape through regular exercise at a local gymnasium. A few days back Cicero headed off there to refresh, renew and re-invigorate his ageing, though well toned, body, only to be told that he had to renew his membership and hand over some sesterces before he might exercise to ensure sano in corpore et sano in mente. Not a problem.

What was a problem however was the insistence that before he might renew his membership he had to re-complete an application form and hand over exactly the same details that had been supplied previously. Cicero was not chuffed and made his feelings known. Given that Cicero’s details were already held on the system, Cicero wanted to know why these had to be re-provided.

‘I appreciate what you are saying but nothing to do with me. Its Head Office’, was the reply. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr. The kind of response that Cicero just hates. Do some organisations require staff to have frontal lobotomies on joining to render thinking and the application of common sense redundant?

Now it might only be me but it is time that in businesses across the land, in TSSBs and VTSSBs, we made a stand to get paper out of the system. Paper clogs up our processes and adds cost where cost is unnecessary. What happens to all the bits of paper which are only backing up information held on computers? Do we employ someone just to file them away just in case?

And have we considered the environmental impact of all this paper we needlessly produce? As you know Cicero is big on the environment and is concerned about the de-forestation effects of pointless paper.

So from now on Cicero has a new mission in life-to rid state and private sector bureaucracies of pointless paper. Will you join him?

It is great to be back.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

To infinity and beyond

Salvete.

The first week away from the VTSSB and the Apparatchiks has been very relaxing as Cicero awaits the call to help and assist some other business seeking marketing enlightenment.

In meantime it is great that the affairs of state are now in the hands of others. That the pressure of ensuring and assuring your liberty, your freedom and identity has been lifted. And that others have shouldered the burden of manning and guarding that wall that marks the boundary between freedom and anarchy. It can be tough as an Apparatchik.

But with time on his hands this week Cicero has been watching cartoons and is struck by the creativity and imagination of those who put together these films. In particular he is in awe of those who make cartoons like ‘Toy Story’, ‘Finding Nemo’ and, his particular favourite, ‘Cars’.

Delving deeper Cicero has discovered that these films are all made by the one company, Pixar, who seemingly have found the formula to produce hit after hit, and the process to produce creativity and imagination.

Now you might say that creativity and imagination is not a process. And you might be right but all businesses can create the environment where creativity and imagination is allowed to flourish, grow and develop, and not be stifled. And here Pixar are doing some great stuff from which we can all learn.

And on your behalf, Cicero, with time on his hands now that the burdens of state have been lifted, has investigated the Pixar story to bring you tips and wisdom.

Firstly Pixar puts people before projects and ideas. It does not start with the idea and then hire the people to execute. Instead it hires creative people and then encourages them to generate ideas. In this way their people are a creative and enduring asset with real ownership of the idea from end to end. How often do we see in business people being brought into execute something they don’t own, who adapt and modify the idea to fit their paradigm and then walk away when the results don’t materialise?

Secondly Pixar devotes a lot of effort to getting people to work together. Usually people collaborate on specific projects but pay little attention to what’s going on elsewhere. With Pixar a sense of collective responsibility is fostered with its people showing unfinished work in daily meetings and so get used to giving and receiving criticism. In addition any member of the team can at a regular time in the day ring a big cow bell summoning anyone with 30 minutes to spare to gather around to collectively brainstorm a problem. What a brilliant idea? As they say no one has a monopoly on wisdom. These systems of constant and collective feedback are designed to stop problems becoming a crisis and to provide teams with a constant source of inspiration. Surely all businesses might benefit from that.

And thirdly teams are encouraged to conduct formal post mortems once their films are complete with each review having to identify at least five things that did not go well as well as five that did. How often is that done in your business? How often do you sit down and review marketing campaigns, product launches, projects and the like along these lines?

None of this can guarantee that your company will be as creative or as imaginary or as successful as Pixar. Creativity depends on serendipity as much as planning. Managing creativity involves a series of balancing acts: giving people the freedom to be creative but doing so within a corporate structure; creating a powerful and successful corporate culture that is not too stifling.

But getting it right is in itself an act of creativity. And getting it right means too that for business success the sky is truly the limit. Or as Mr Lightyear would say ‘to infinity and beyond’. Are you and your business ready for the ride of a lifetime?

Batty? Brilliant? The choice is yours.

Is it only me…….but this should be child’s play.

It would appear that the Health and Safety Gualeiters did not disappear into the long grass with the Last Lot.

As evidence Cicero has heard about a young couple keen to encourage their children to be independent, are letting their two primary age children cycle to school through the leafy lanes of south London unsupervised.

Shock! Horror! Naughty parents! What kind of an example is this to set young people? Do they not know that 4x4s were invented just for that sort of activity?

It would seem that this is the views of the Nanny at the school, no doubt advised and counselled by some taxpayer funded Health and Safety Gauleiter, who is now threatening to report the parents to social services for some level of child abuse or neglect. What has the world come to?

Not it might only be me, though I doubt it, but surely social services would be better employed looking after the Baby Ps of this world rather than harrying and harassing middle class yummy mummys who choose not to send their young people to school by 4x4.

And in any event when was it decided that it was wrong to teach our young people independence? Was I out of the room when this was decided? Surely independence is a good thing. Why is it good for a country to be independent but not its people? Is this so the State and all its apparatchiks have something to do? Is this why some fear independent thought so much?

It is a miracle that Cicero has survived to such a ripe age. When he was a wee laddie the Health and Safety Gauleiter had not been invented. He had no one tell him when and where he could not cycle; he was able to play freely in the streets and fields without fear with all the other wee lads and lassies until it got dark unsupervised; he did not require a high viz vest, safety goggles and hard hat to play marbles. Ah those were the days.

Cicero hopes that the parents of the Biking Two have the courage to challenge and ignore the Gauleiters and Nannies. And that the Two Caesars take urgent steps to stop such errant nonsense.

And now for some really really bad news.

Cicero will not be around for next 2 weeks. He is off to learn new skills and experience new experiences. Enjoy the break. You will be able to get through the weeks ahead. Support and counsel each other. You will be fine.

Have great two weeks.

Et semper sis felix. Semper sis fortunatus.

Pro civilis muneris

Like Elvis, this week Cicero has left the building.

Yes, that’s right, Cicero has left the VTSSB to move onto pastures new but uncertain. He has laid down his career in an effort to help the resolve the Two Caesar’s wee financial headache. And as Edith Piaf might say at times like this ‘je ne regrette, je ne regrette ne rien’.

But fear not for this column does not depend on life on the VTSSB for inspiration and stimulation. This will continue and will live on. Bet you glad about that.

And it is noted that quietly and gently the flags are no longer fluttering from the chariots. Enough said

To mark Cicero’s departure from the VTSSB and as he wanders off into the sunset, this week’s dose of enlightenment is going to be a wee bit different and a wee bit self indulgent. Hopefully you will not mind.

But this week Cicero feels that he must speak up on behalf of the Apparatchiks with whom he has worked for the past 15 months, with whom he has toiled to preserve your security and freedom, with whom he has produced some great marketing stuff.

This week we speak out ‘pro Civilis Muneris’ which for those of you, remarkably few no doubt, who do not have the Latin tongue, means ‘in defence of the Civil Service’.

Now you might think at this point that Cicero after 15 months working amongst the Apparatchiks has gone native. This is most definitely not the case but the current attitude towards the Apparatchiks raises some serious issues, questions and concerns for the nation that must be debated and understood. And Cicero is just the man to lead said debate.

There is no question that the Civilis Muneris is too large and expensive. Undoubtedly its pay and pension policies need over hauled and reformed to align better with those creating the wealth in the country. And indubitably there is an excess of jobsworth zeal stifling creativity, imagination and simplification. But let us put such issues to one side for one moment and look beyond this.

We need to remember that the Apparatchiks are essential to us. They keep out streets safe and secure; they educate us; they keep us healthy; they collect our taxes; they pay our pensions and benefits; they provide support to business; they give us passports; they help the unemployed find work; and so on and so forth.

And yet we as a nation have in recent weeks and recent months taken against these people. And if we are not careful we will end up with the Civilis Muneris that we deserve.

It is easy these days to kick and pummel the Civilis Muneris but we must never forget that the Civilis Muneris is at the end of the day a collection of people trying to do a good job in difficult circumstances on our behalf. And if it is true that in any business people are its greatest asset then surely that is equally true in the Civilis Muneris. So let’s look after them.

This is a business where training and development in its people has been cut back to the point where it is non existent; where it is impossible to get a free cup of coffee; where you cannot buy pot plants to humanise the office; where there is paranoia about spending any kind of money to help make the Civilis Muneris a great place to work. And when you get a great place to work, you do great things for your customers.

And then when your Apparatchik wends his weary way home he is confronted with news of massive redundancy cuts, of changes to pensions and pay, of the value of his or her job being questioned and whether necessary, of salaries being published. How would you react to trying to do your best work in this environment?

Cicero fears for the health of the Civilis Muneris. The Apparatchiks are demotivated and demoralised. And how can it ever hope to recruit the brightest and best to work for it when this is the state of affairs. And that is why Cicero feels he must speak out in their defence.

A smaller lower cost Civilis Muneris, yes. A demotivated, demoralised, de-skilled de-humanised Civilis Muneris, no.

Batty? Brilliant? Please do tell.

Is it only me………………………………….but is this why we pay our taxes?

When news of the Two Caesars’ plan to reduce the amount of amount they wanted to spend, the Last Lot were a wee bit miffed. And as the Lot who worked with the Last Caesar, and who still wanted to be Caesar, pointed out ‘this is going to cost jobs in the public sector’.

Similar feelings of annoyance were expressed by a series of spokespeople from a consortium of unions and other lobby group supporters of the Lot that wanted to be the new Caesar but are not.

And here is question for you as an aside. Why are all Trade Union Head Honchos, Scottish….well a lot of them at any rate?

But back to my point.

Clearly if the Caesars want to spend less of our money it will have an impact on the Apparatchiks across the VTSSBs and TSSBs. If you have less income then you need to reduce the costs. You will know this from your own business. It is not nice and it does have consequences for those affected (yes, contrary to popular belief, Cicero does have a heart) but sometimes we have to do unpleasant things to do the right thing.

Now it might only be me but surely the role of the State is not to provide jobs but to provide critical services which cannot or do not want to be provided by anyone else. It should not be about jobs but outputs and outcomes. That is why we pay our money and we should be talking more about the value delivered rather than the cost of the inputs.

The primary role of the NHS is to cure the sick. Not to create jobs for marketing folk, for example. How exactly do you create demand for the NHS and why would you want to?

Schools should be about teaching kids to read and write and it would be good if they did that well. But why do they need folks to produce engagement strategies and to manage communications? Getting young people to spell ‘engagement strategy’ would be a great start.

And why does a local council need someone promote walking? All we want them to do is empty the bins and keep the lights in the libraries on. Spend money on that kind of stuff and not on something most of us do naturally and without promotion. If people want to get fat and lazy, leave them to it.

There was even a discussion overheard with one of the Last Lot who said with all seriousness that the decision not to be so profligate with our money meant that, and we are quoting here, ‘there would now be cutbacks in non-essential services’.

Hello. Wake up. Smell the coffee. If it is non-essential why is it being done in the first place? And if this means job losses, so be it. But quite frankly surely we only want our money spent on essential stuff and not non-essentials. We can debate what is essential and what is non-essential and that is a worthy debate but if it is non essential stop wanting to spend our money on it. Government is so simple.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.