But on this occasion, someone was playing a video on their phone at full volume.  Everyone in the carriage, even those of us with headphones on, was flabbergasted.  Eventually a lady got up and walked to the source of the noise.  It turned out that a young mother was playing a video to her small child in a pushchair.  It obviously hadn’t occurred to her that the rest of the carriage didn’t want to share the CBeebies experience.  

The second incident was later that same evening.  We were sitting in a concert hall listening to a classical music performance.  A lady very near us had around her wrist about 30 or so silver bangles.  She moved her arm constantly.  It didn’t stop.  And every time she did it was as if someone was jangling a bunch of keys.  It was incredibly annoying.   And the lady was completely oblivious. I admit that as I get older I do feel far less tolerant of what I consider to be anti-social behaviour.

Part of me thinks that sometimes my issue is less to do with noise and perhaps more to do with people.  As Sartre said, hell is other people.  I consider myself to be a professional extrovert and a personal introvert and I do like peace and quiet.  But then I kick myself for being hypocritical. For instance, I’m perfectly happy with my own noise; it’s the noise other people make that I don’t enjoy.  My leaf blower is ok but why do my neighbours use theirs when I’m trying to work. 

Some might say that noise is a price that one must pay for living in a vibrant society.  But I do feel that there is too much of it around.  We’re bombarded with information and stuff and nonsense on a daily basis.  Noise pollution is everywhere.  So I find myself actively seeking out silence.  I need quiet time and quiet spaces to think, relax, and reboot.  I walk in the woods listening to the wind in the trees and birds singing.  And I smile to myself as I’m passed by runners with earbuds who feel the need to listen to a podcast rather than the quiet sounds of nature. 

Perhaps Pascal was right when he said that “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Recently I was having breakfast in a very small guest house.  The owner was a Basil Fawlty-type, complete with passive-aggressive repartee and an unctuous smile.  To another guest he said “Ah, you’re another of those walkers.  Sorry, but I just don’t get how walking and holiday go together.  When I’m on holiday I just want to lie on a lounger and click my fingers for another Pina Colada.” 

I had plenty of time to think about his words as I walked that day’s route of 19 miles of rugged coastline path, scrambling over rocks, walking along narrow paths alongside precipitous cliff edges, and with steep descents to sea level before huge climbs back to the top.  Perhaps the guest house owner had a point.  Was “walking holiday”, like “military intelligence”, an oxymoron?  And as I thought about it I quickly came up with some reasons. 

One foot in front of another – that’s all there is.  It’s a simple pleasure and it reminds us that the only reality is now 

Time – Walking provides the space for real thinking and contemplation.  Life is lived forward but can only be understood backwards. Walking is the same.  We walk forwards but we can only understand our journey in relation to where we’ve come from.  Walking offers fewer distractions and it can often provide the space for creative thinking.  Perhaps that’s why so many thinkers, writers, artists and composers loved to walk.  (Try A philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros)

Beauty – some places can only be reached on foot.  No cars or bikes, just you and the world.  It is often uplifting to feel far away from civilisation even if the nearest village is only a few miles away

Nature – most of our lives is spent ignoring nature as we rush past it in our cars or in our distracted mindset.  Walking slowly brings the sights, sounds, and smells of nature’s glory into focus

Solitude – Hell is other people, as Sartre said.  Sometimes it can be energising to be far away from the madding crowd.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if many walkers were waiters fed up with people clicking their fingers at them for another drink

Exertion – the 19-mile leg of the walk was exhausting. It was a real physical challenge.  But at the end came a huge sense of achievement at having done it.  Feet up with a pint at the end of a long walk – there’s nothing quite like it   

And finally, there’s the three dimensions: Time, Height, and Distance

                Time – the longer that you’re away from issues the less important they seem

                Height – the higher you climb the more insignificant issues seems

                Distance – and the further away you are then the easier it is to see things in perspective.

That’s my list.  Others will have their own.  And don’t get me wrong, sun loungers have their place as well.  But I don’t think anything can beat a long, blister-free walk.

My relationship with Myers-Briggs has undergone a transformation.  Since my first exposure to it over 15 years ago, I have gone from being a true believer to sceptic, and from sceptic to seeing it as irrelevant.  Jung himself said that every individual is an exception to the rule and that sticking labels on people was “…nothing but a childish parlour game.” However, I’ve stopped seeing it as irrelevant and now think of it as dangerous.  It is often seriously misused and is, in my view, potentially harming the coaching profession.  In one respect, my journey feels a bit like joining and then leaving a cult.  The multi-million pound Myers-Briggs industry is built on shaky ground and it needs its true believers to sustain it.  However, once you’re out and can see it for what it is, then there’s probably no way back.

But to begin at the beginning.  I had taken similar tests before Myers-Briggs, but they had only given me a name.  Myers-Briggs was a revelation.  It gave me a whole new understanding of who I was and how I thought.  It seemed to confirm my status as a rare and special maverick, fundamentally different from the run-of-the-mill mortals who tended to work in businesses.  It took on a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: I needn’t be concerned with my inability to concentrate, or to be bored with detail.  My personality (brain wiring?) didn’t need to worry with the minutiae of life; my destiny was to bigger and better things.  I now understood, and perhaps had an excuse for, my inability to ever open a bank statement.  I exaggerate, of course, but nevertheless I wore my four letters with pride.

Scepticism came later.  The first chink in the armour appeared when I started to work globally.  As I travelled and spent more time working with groups in different countries I found that I was less able to predict the M-B types of other people.  More importantly, I realised that these types were of little use in understanding either behaviours or attitudes.  This was especially the case in the Middle East and Asia. Culture and custom seemed to be the key drivers.  Inclinations, temperament, perspectives, and mind sets all seemed to be hugely influenced by the context in which people were operating.  Indeed, there seemed fewer correlations between M-B types.

The second revelation came when I re-took the test, under different circumstances, a decade or so after my first attempt.  My results were similar but different.  They were similar enough in that my four letters hadn’t changed but they were significantly different in the weightings.  Most strikingly, I seemed to have gone from being an out-and-out extrovert to a closet introvert.  At this point, I merely filed the information away, stopped evangelising about Myers-Briggs, and became a sceptic.  Over time my scepticism evolved and I started to see it as irrelevant.  I had no more need for it and so gave it little thought.  And then I started coaching. 

It quickly became apparent that for nearly all coaches in nearly all circumstances, Myers-Briggs is an essential service. My indifference and scepticism were being challenged, and so I had to start to think properly about the role it played in coaching.

Researching Myers-Briggs raises the problem of confirmation bias.  All the research in favour tends to be published by organisations, such as the Journal of Psychological Type, which is basically the Myers-Briggs house magazine.  Research which raises concerns tend to appear everywhere else. Nevertheless, one has to be on guard against merely seeking information that confirms one’s own position.  So before I set out why I think Myers-Briggs is dangerous for the coaching profession, here are some specific points:

Myers-Briggs is not a scientific test.  To be scientific it has to be replicable over time.  It isn’t.  In fact, research shows that as much as 50% of people find that they have different results after retaking the tests. It also has to be the same across the world.  It isn’t.  For instance, cultural influences and religious beliefs play a significant role in affecting people’s attitudes and behaviours. And it has to be based on scientific research based on controlled experiments and data. Again, it isn’t.  In fact, even Jung himself warned that his personality types were no more than approximate tendencies that he’d observed rather than scientifically tested classifications.  By contrast, the speed of light is based on consistently repeatable tests, provable data, is replicable over time, and is the same in different parts of the world.  The speed of light, therefore, is a scientific fact. 

Myers-Briggs also uses false binaries.  Real data shows that most people are not “either” “or” but show characteristics of both. As Jung said: “There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert.  Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.”  The fact is that most people are in or around the middle of the bell curve; few are on the extremes. Dan Pink, in To Sell is Human, says that we are basically ambiverts. Yet the labelling is absolute. In discussing the standard error of measurement, David Pittenger said:  “…the differences between the two-letter categories are not as sharp and clear cut as it would appear.  Because the MBTI uses an absolute classification scheme for people, it is possible for people with relatively similar scores to be labelled with much different personalities.” (1)

The test claims that it measures how people perceive the world and make decisions.  Yet it does not explore how the key drivers of such attitudes and behaviours are formed. There is no distinction for gender or age, yet our observation of workplace behaviours would suggest that there can be fundamental differences along these lines.  There is no attempt to understand values or beliefs; and yet a belief in, for instance, destiny or God can hugely influence decision making (When Arab businessmen, for instance, say God willing about a decision they really mean it).

Psychology and other disciplines including behavioural economics, are finding the unconscious to be a fascinating area for research.  Freud, it seems, is making a comeback. Humans tend to make a significant number of decisions without understanding why.  This is not the same as the SvN, TvF, and JvP distinction.  The self-scoring method of Myers-Briggs means that the results are what the person taking the test likes to think is the case rather than the reality.  Decision making is far more complex and is subject to a greater degree of both unconscious and external factors than can be covered in a 93-question test.  Social norms, corporate culture, and even day-to-day events greatly influence how we think and process information whether we are consciously aware of it or not.  In organisations, peer pressure, group behaviour and flow, and emotional contagion and the need for a sense of belonging and conformity can all play a significant role, regardless of anybody’s particular four letter score. [Solomon Asch’s famous 1951 experiment, on the length of a line, is a great example of the unconscious need to conform on our behaviour].

The transformation from merely seeing Myers-Briggs as irrelevant to seeing it as dangerous began with my coaching course.  Its sheer ubiquity in the sector and the inappropriate use to which it was being used made it impossible to ignore. Of course, it is never entirely fair to criticise a movement merely because of the uses to which it has been put.  There are many die-hard Marxists who complain bitterly that the revolutions in Russia and China, for instance, don’t reflect the true thinking of communists and that we shouldn’t judge Marxism by what was done in his name.  Similarly, Myers-Briggs enthusiasts will say that only properly trained and paid-up members of the club can be relied upon to interpret effectively the true implications of any one person’s results.  The reality is somewhat different.  Companies are hiring for specific behaviour traits.  Recruiters ask for people’s type and write it down in ink. Organisations are creating teams that reflect the whole spread of characteristics.  People are being promoted on the basis of their scores.  This is all madness and the coaching industry must stop being complicit in such nonsense.  IQ, EQ, experience, values, attitudes, global views, are all, for instance, what makes someone the right person for the right role at the right time.  It is a curious blend of hard and soft, tangible and intangible attributes that allow different people to make different contributions at different times.  Type casting is of no value whatever.

Coaching, perhaps in a desperate attempt to find an empirical underpinning for its role, has grabbed onto Myers-Briggs for the scientific certainty that it purports to bring. Coaching, curiously, seems to want to have a tangible way of measuring the intangible.  In the same way, many coaches are turning to neuroscience as a way of explaining behaviour and attitudes.  There is a proliferation of neurological terms entering the sector when the reality is that although scientists can see “how” we make decisions or “show” emotions (principally through observing which neural pathway light up under certain stimuli) neuroscience is a long way from understanding “why” let alone of even beginning to understand consciousness or put their finger on it. And yet coaching is prone to grabbing hold of the latest piece of scientific data and absorbing it into its lexicon.  Rather than set coaching apart from the self-help psychologists, talking pseudoscience actually weakens our position.  As David Semple said in the Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry: “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and most popular psychology is from Uranus.” (2)

The real reason that I feel that Myers-Briggs is dangerous for the coaching industry is not so much that it is unscientific (although that does potentially put it in the same class as snake oil salesmen and astrologers) but because of what it forces coaches to do.  Coaches who use Myers-Briggs tend to judge their clients.  They may not do so pejoratively, but by seeing them as a type they make certain assumptions.  In fact, many turn to a reference book which indicates how to “coach” the various types of person.  No ambiguity, no uncertainty, merely a four letter approach to painting by numbers. Of course, the rejoinder is that Myers-Briggs is merely one tool that helps clients towards a sense of self.  However, the reality is that it leaves many with the mark of Cain on their forehead and few people, including the client, can see beyond it.

Coaching is about listening and questioning to find the true person, and helping that true person to be comfortable in owning who they are.  It is about helping them to understand their values and motivations.  It is about challenging their assumptions and helping them to reframe their context and their place in it.  Clients today live complex lives with pressures from many competing areas.  The coaches role is help clients understand those competing pressures and to find a pathway that enables them to navigate their way through that ambiguity.  Self-knowledge is critical, but self-knowledge is a journey.  It cannot be something that is arrived at after having merely taken a 15-minute test. 

All tools can be both helpful and unhelpful.  Coaches need to be aware that Myers-Briggs has the potential to make them both judgemental and closed.  Listening and questioning can only be effective if they come from a place with no assumptions.  Real change comes from the client finding out who they really are and how they can make sense of and thrive in their place in the world.  Coaches need to work on helping to uncover the roots rather than focus on the leaves and branches.  Telling people how they think and process information can close down more than it opens.  True self-awareness comes from challenging one’s own thoughts, values and assumptions, and in learning to be comfortable with who you are. Labelling should not form part of that process.  As Carl Jung said himself in The Undiscovered Self:  “There can be no self-knowledge based on theoretical assumptions.” (3)

Further reading:

http://bit.ly/1HH48eq              (1)

http://bit.ly/1EFAeYT                (2)

http://amzn.to/1psZrtq            (3)

http://read.bi/1HH45iR

http://bit.ly/1qctoTH

http://huff.to/1iDjHEM

http://bit.ly/1z24LOf

http://bit.ly/1btigvk

http://bit.ly/1HIdlVm

Have you ever wished that you could press the pause button on life?  To take time out on the whirligig of life and work?  I always thought that if we had the chance to pause it would be a great opportunity to reinvent so many things.  And especially work.  So much of what we do and the reasons why we do it have passed their sell-by date.  And yet, despite constant “change” programmes we end up doing pretty much the same thing but with fewer people.

Well, be careful what you wish for.  Because lockdown has given us that pause.  It turned work upside down.  Yet it seems that rather than take the opportunity to rethink work the danger is that we’re intent on going back to what we used to do.  And it seemed to me that much of the reason for this is because too many leaders are using legacy thinking and legacy behaviours to deal with an entirely new scenario.  Whereas many had some experience of the occasional home or remote working, there was little in their playbooks to help them lead effectively when all their teams were in the same boat. And certainly not during a long-term lockdown.

And so, I decided to write a short book to help.  I wanted it to be a very short book and as simple as possible but no simpler.  It aimed to do three things: to challenge assumptions about work; to change leadership behaviours and attitudes; and to inspire leaders to think differently about the future.

The book starts by exploring some of the issues around office-based work.  Not everything about the office was good.  It hasn’t really changed since the 1950s, despite the extraordinary advances in IT.  Offices in their current incarnation are not entirely fit for purpose.  They often encourage the wrong sorts of attitudes – eg deference, hierarchies, silos – and the wrong sorts of behaviours, such as presenteeism.  And we still try and cram work into physical spaces and fixed working hours and weeks despite the fact that no-one lives like that. Rather than feeling nostalgia for offices I wanted to get leaders to focus on the nature of work and not a physical building.  For too many, the mindset was that work was a place where they went not something that they did.

The second section explores some of the very real issues around working from home. Not everyone has an ideal home office and some are sharing workspaces.  One of the key things that leaders need to learn is empathy.  They need to understand that imposing work on home and family lives is not easy.  There are babies that need feeding, toddlers that demand attention, kids that need supervision with their schoolwork, dogs that need walking or elderly parents that require support.  Leaders cannot impose their timing demands or schedules on entire families.  Concepts such as Close of Play are now meaningless.  Leaders need to learn to trust more and accept that the more flexible and adaptable they are, then the more their business will survive.  But gaining trust starts with empathy. One example would be video calls.  Just because they’re fashionable doesn’t mean that they’re right for every communication.  Zoom meetings can be intrusive.  And there may be other demands for bandwith within the household.  And why is your Zoom call more important than home-schooling? Too many leaders still think that they get to choose the message, the timing and medium just because they’re in charge.  But true leaders think more deeply about their engagements.

Another section of this short book covers leading yourself.  After all, as they say in the airline safety briefings, always fit your own mask before helping others.  There are tips and ideas on both the physical and mental issues that come with leading at home. And there are suggestions on how to be a better leader covering topics such as communications effectiveness, coaching, and ethical leadership.

The likelihood is that we will be living with elements of lockdown for some time.  Open plan and hotdesking are likely to be a thing of the past, and so office space will be rationed.  There may also be restrictions on mass transit capacity in many countries.  So, the future is most likely to be a hybrid:  three days at home, two in the office.  However, organisations will have to confront issues such as mental health (not having a commute means many people suffer from not having a decompression chamber between work and home), insurance, quality of home office work station, confidentiality, and digital exclusion.  In fact, we’re at the foothills of understanding and dealing with these issues.

The final section of the book looks to the future.  It tries to help leaders think beyond what’s immediately in front.  Rather than focus on where work is carried out, they should question what work actually is.  The danger is that too many leaders are trying to build on the legacy of the past, fighting the last war, rather than trying to build afresh. 

It is, of course, difficult to be optimistic in the face of so many business closures.  The impact on the economy, jobs, and livelihoods has been catastrophic.  But there have to been reasons for optimism.  Things don’t have to revert to exactly as they were before.  Leaders need to imagine that lockdown was the best thing that happened to them.  It forced them to confront real issues about their leadership style and their attitude to work.  The job of a leader is not to provide certainty, but it is to inspire their teams to generate new thinking and new opportunities.  The business that will thrive are the ones that are the most flexible and adaptable.

Leading from home will have provided many challenges.  But the biggest will be to change mindsets and attitudes.   And so, getting leaders to communicate and act differently will be key.

So, what about our Covid-19 storm?  What will it look like après le déluge?  Some may feel that it is too early to start thinking about the future when we’re still in the midst of the crisis.  Others will say that without a clear sense of direction it is impossible to know whether we are heading on the right path.  I have always maintained that it would be great to be able to press pause: to put life on hold for a moment whilst we take a look at where we’ve ended up; to get our bearings and reflect on whether we are happy with where we are and where we’re going.  Are we going to reappraise, reinvent, or remake? 

There are, I think, four main ways to think about what happens next. There are the Iconoclasts, who see this as an opportunity to move fast and break things. These people want to seize the opportunity to start afresh. 

Then there are the planners, who with calm and considered system’s thinking, want to co-create a more inclusive future. They want the chance to create a sustainable Utopia, probably centred around Davos.

Then there are the followers of Belloc’s poem Jim with its famous line: “Always keep a hold of nurse / for fear of finding something worse”.   They’re the incrementalists, who want as few changes as possible.

And finally, there are the followers of Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, owner of the Frog & Peach – the catastrophic failure of a restaurant with a limited menu (frog and peach) situated in a bog in the middle of Dartmoor.  Poised to open a new restaurant, he was asked whether he felt he’d learnt from his mistakes. “I think I have, yes” he replied “and I think that I can probably repeat them almost perfectly”.

The world of work was already cracking at the seams.  The contract between wealth creation and society is under strain. Add in healthy doses of AI, automation, demographics, disruptive technology, political volatility, and climate change and the picture looks decidedly uncertain. And then Covid-19 came along, bringing recessions, bankruptcies and economic turmoil. Surely too much has changed for things to go back to exactly as they were? Businesses will have changed, people will have changed, governments will have changed.

Churchill won the war. He thought that all he had to do was turn up for the 1945 General Election.  He had the respect, gratitude and admiration of a grateful Nation.  He lost.  He didn’t realise that the War had changed people.  It was time for a new normal.

I do think that so much will have happened that many people want to return to a new version of normal.  And so here are some thoughts for society, government and business of areas that might be ripe for a rethink. It’s far from comprehensive, and not everything is either true or realistic but perhaps many do reflect the sorts of things that will be up in the air.

Governments may have different priorities

• More directive
• More interventionist
• Less trusting of big business and special interest groups
• More big projects – Les Grands Projet. Marshall Plans. Bretton Woods
• May effectively nationalise key businesses – infrastructure, travel, utilities, media
• Rebalance the economy away from services and more support for manufacturing
• More devolution
• More nationalistic
• More protectionist – Britain/America/France First
• Further fragmentation of political parties

Governments may intervene more in the capital markets

• Limit foreign investment/takeovers
• Stricter control of hedge funds (short sellers)
• Rules on dividend cover and share buybacks
• Rules on supply chains
• Tax may need to be reformed – NI (like pensions, are a Ponzi scheme)
• If jobs are scarce, why have income tax that mainly taxes jobs
• Tax land/ capital rather than income
• Change business tax regime

Financial Markets may have to find other ways to measure value

• EBITDA not EPS
• Govt strategic investments in certain industries/sectors may see reductions in liquidity
• More realistic valuations – Ocado is home food delivery middleman not a tech company; Uber is ride hailing app; WeWork is a glorified letting agent
• Users are not the same as underlying profitable users/customers
• Clicks are not eyeballs are not readers are not interactors

Society may want different things

• Rebalance reward/tax in favour of key workers
• Less tolerance of executive pay
• Society is only as strong as its weakest members
• The economy serves society not the other way around

Businesses will have to change

• Greater role for worker representation
• Even good profitable, well-managed, innovative businesses will go under.  Fundamental difference between turnover, profit, and cash
• Questions over “efficient” business models
• Share buy backs will either be outlawed or become socially unacceptable; ditto sale and leaseback
• Specialisation less fashionable; maybe a move towards conglomerates who can spread risk
• Less outsourcing
• Pressure to shorten supply chains (see: Macron)
• Less Just in Time, more Just in Case
• Reduction in global travel, conferences
• Rethink on role of offices
• Rethink on effectiveness of open plan
• Work smarter – fewer hours, less travel, more technology
• Rethink role of, and primacy of, shareholders
• Greater role for unions/worker representation
• End of low cost procurement to best value

It’s a long list and it’s far from comprehensive.  I certainly don’t know the answers let alone the real questions.  But what businesses and society need now are people who can take the long view and the short view; who can learn from the past as well as look to the future; and who can bring the outside in as well as the inside out.

Rebuilding, reappraising, reinventing…

It’s all up to us.

———

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”  – Giuseppe di Lampedusa The Leopard

Remember your first bicycle?  Fixed wheel and no gears.  Little legs peddling so incredibly fast. Then you moved on to a bike with three gears, most likely Sturmey Archer.  And then you had that moment of realisation that you could peddle more slowly but go faster.  Slowing down was a more efficient use of resources.  A lesson for life, except that in a crisis, most people tend to forget their life lessons.  Too busy to think, too preoccupied to see the wood for the trees.  And at the same time, also having to confront one’s own emotions of fear, anger, frustration and confusion.  Plans have gone awry and nothing is certain.  And working at home highlights the often yawning gap between the pressures and opportunities of the workplace with those of home life and family.

There is no right way to behave in a crisis.  There are too many permutations and moving parts for there to be a one-size-fits-all playbook.  Despite all those conferences and case studies, there is little that is perfectly replicable from one organisation or situation to another.  And beware particularly of advisors and consultants who claim to know what’s right for you and who tell you how to think and what to do.  Rather, now is a good time to have a coach: someone to share burdens without judging, and someone who can help you find your own answers to your unique set of circumstances.

In these days of managing by not walking about, there are still plenty of good things for leaders to focus on.  Especially in these challenging times, the eternal verities of good leadership should shine through: active listening, empathy, delegating, providing clear and concise direction and feedback.  Setting an example by not sweating the small stuff and using the Eisenhower matrix to focus on those things that are both urgent and important.  Again, having a coach can also help to raise one’s sights from the immediate to the long term.  In a crisis, people often focus too much in the business and not enough on the business.

The challenge, as Kipling put is, is to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.

The truth is that there is no proper response. There are too many permutations. Each of us has our unique set of circumstances with which to deal: elderly parents, young children, lack of paid work, no money for a rainy day, too much time on our hands, too little space, plans cancelled, and difficult neighbours.  At a macro level, we’re all in this together; but at the micro level the differences are profound.

One thing that perhaps unites everybody is a desire for it all to be over.  To that dream scenario most people would add that they’d like it all to get back to normal.  And the likelihood is that although it will, at some point, be all over it is unlikely to return to what it was.  We are all going to be profoundly changed by the experience.  Not necessarily for the worse, but changed nevertheless.  For every dystopian there is an optimist – we can each choose a glass half full or half empty.

I’ve often wished that we could hit the pause button.  After all, all forms of society and the economy have evolved into what we see today and, let’s be honest, not everything has turned out great.  There are many oddities in the ways that we live our lives – how we work, travel, educate ourselves, protect ourselves, etc (*) – that could do with a fundamental rethink. So maybe this could be an opportunity to reflect on what is important to us and what our priorities are, both on a personal level and on a societal one. 

But we’re not there yet.  In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, most of us have slipped down the pyramid from focusing on our esteem and self-actualisation to being concerned with our resources, safety, security and family.  That is entirely right and understandable.  The same is true for many businesses and organisations.  Their focus is on paying wages, keeping going and not going bust. The bigger picture will have to wait for now. Survival is the order of the day.

If the second World War offers a lesson, then we’re still at the Dunkirk stage, frantically regrouping. The Blitz and the Battle of Britain are yet to come. And we’re still a long way from the Tehran conference of 1943 when Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met to think about the shape of post-conflict Europe.

We all react in different ways because we are different people in different situations.  Now remains the time to focus on the urgent and the important.  The longer-term re-shaping of ourselves and our society will need to be thought through, just not now. Let’s recognise the need and desire to change but don’t rush.  First things first.  Let’s get through this together. (*) for a great read on the subject, try How Britain really works by Stig Abel

Eschatology and apocalyptic thinking has always been with us. More recently, we all remember seeing Doomsday sandwich-board men proclaiming that the end of the world is nigh.  Nowadays it has become impossible to go to conferences without everyone agreeing that climate change is the number one threat to our existence.  Personally, I’ve always put climate change as number four in the list behind terrestrial threats (volcanoes, earthquakes and the “imminent” switch of polarity from North to South), extra-terrestrial threats (asteroids, solar flares) and, of course, pandemics which are now finally getting the focus that they deserve. And on a micro level, barely a day goes by without some questions being raised about whether or not we should eat bacon, drink coffee, burn wood, and how many bottles (sorry, glasses) of wine we should consume each day (sorry, week).  One thing’s for sure: regression analysis and epidemiology are jolly difficult subjects.  Few of us properly understand our dependent from our independent variables let alone the difference between correlation and causation.

So what’s a person to do with all this doom and gloom about? Should we all ask our slaves to walk behind us whispering “Memento Mori” into our ears? What about asking for whom the bell tolls?  Actually, the most practical thing that we can do is to pause.  Times like this ought to provide an opportunity for a bit of welcome self-isolation to weigh up risks and rewards and to maybe to reset some of our life priorities.  Ask yourselves the question of what is really important to you.  Look around and see what you’ve got, because if today is your last day then what you see really is your legacy.  And is that how you’d like to leave it, at work and at home, and with family and with friends?

As you reflect you’ll see things that you can change and influence and things that you can’t.  It may be that you decide that you need to do more, or do less, or even do something completely different.  Reassessing how you work, where you work and why you work can be of benefit.  For some people, life has taken them on a journey without them being consciously aware of the costs and effect and it may be time to reappraise.  Sometimes when you pause to look at the eager beavers running around the office you realise that many actually define themselves by what they do and not who they are. 

Time and distance provide real opportunities for seeing things for what they really are. So maybe we all need a bit of self-isolation to stop and think.  And remember that all those books aren’t going to read themselves.

And as for the end of time, rather than catastrophising why not just keep dancing until the music stops.

In the business world, I also tend to ignore fashions as they come and go.  Every few years a new thing comes along. Whilst others jump on the latest bandwagon, I prefer to watch fads from the side lines until they fizzle out and are replaced by the next big thing.  And to help save me from going along with the latest craze I periodically revisit one of the favourites on my bookshelves: Charles Mackay’s 1841 classic “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”.  He wrote dispassionately about the impact of mob psychology and the phenomenon of greed on topics such as the South Sea bubble and Tulip mania.  And all this is by way of introducing my main points: that I think purpose is a fad, and I think that it is complication, and that the last thing that business needs is further complication.

Business seems extraordinarily susceptible to fads.  What may be a sensible option for one business or industry sector quickly turns into the norm.  Consultants and analysts, all of whom love benchmarks and conformity, egg on businesses until everyone is doing the same things.  Everything from sale and leasebacks, share buy backs, and outsourcing, to open plan offices.  It seems to be less about progress and more about following like sheep.  And I believe that having a purpose is merely another manifestation of that theme.  Everyone else has one and that means we have to have one as well.  The fact that we already have a vision, a mission, strategic goals, a values statement, ESG commitments, code of business principles, whistleblowing guidelines, targets, KPIs, and personal development objectives doesn’t mean that we can fit in a few choice words about how we’re filling a void that needs filling to make the world a better place.

There are, I’m sure, many good purpose statements that do play an important role alongside, or above, the plethora of other company statements.  But most are a complete waste of time and resources.  Take these few (genuine) examples: “Our purpose is to foster and celebrate life’s opportunities” – a chocolate company.  “Our purpose is to revolutionize the way the world grows.” – a pesticides business.  “Our purpose is to equip families with a better, cleaner home, and peace of mind.”  – a kitchen spray.  “Our purpose is to create, fund, and inspire businesses that elevate humanity.” – a fund manager.  These should be read alongside classics of the genre such as Enron’s Human Rights principles (“ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don’t belong here”), and WeWork’s desire to elevate the world’s consciousness.

The world of business is hugely complex.  Most operate in the so-called VUCA environment with macro and micro, global and local issues butting up against disruptors and technological innovation.  So why on earth would anybody want to make it more complex than it is by adding in more and more statements of intent?  The Chicago School of Milton Friedman said that if businesses had too many (often competing) objectives then they would end up going around in circles.    He suggested having one simple, focused, objective that all stakeholders could understand and measure.  He famously chose shareholder return.  Of course, this idea is rightly maligned by pretty much everyone who believes that business has a wider responsibility.  But just because shareholder return is a poor and blunt choice does not make the idea of having one, simple focus a bad one.  So why not return to the original idea of business as something that makes a profit which it then reinvests and shares equitably.  Clear, focused and principled.  The wider societal and community issues could be more appropriately dealt with through better regulation and corporate taxation.  That way we might be spared the sanctimonious preaching of Davos man telling us how they’re saving the world whilst simultaneously minimising tax, enjoying flagrant pay packages, and presiding over businesses where significant numbers of their employees suffer from in-work poverty.  So, businesses focus on being profitable and governments look after their societies (for a far better explanation of this argument, see “Winner take all – the elite charade of changing the world” by writer and former McKinsey consultant, Anand Giridharadas).

Complexity often exists to hide underlying truths.  When things are simple we can see them for what they.  As Newton said: “Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”  Businesses which spout guff at the expense of underlying, sustainable profitable operations should be avoided.  Beware Unicorns whose only purpose is to burn through other people’s money.  Although, to be fair, WeWork may have actually achieved its mission of raising the world’s consciousness, because we are all now conscious of just how egregious it was.  (While thousands of his employees lose their jobs, ex-CEO Neumann walks away with a $1.7bn package including a $185m consulting fee!!).

So, my advice is to forget adding purpose to the long list of statements and to stick to business fundamentals.  Don’t add to complexity, just keep it simple so that everyone gets it.  Aspire to the clarity of Marx when he said: “A child of five could understand this.  Send someone to fetch a child of five”.  (nb: that was Groucho not Karl).

August is peak holiday season, providing a brief respite from the daily grind of being busy.  Once three-week holidays were the norm.  Now most seem to take a two-week break (unless, of course, you’re in one of those European countries where a four-week break is still socially acceptable).  But by the time you’ve factored in travelling and recovering from travelling even a two-week break is never really more than ten days.  And how do most people spend their holidays?  By doing things.  Walking, cycling, swimming, sight-seeing the 10 things not to miss and, of course, checking emails.  Holidays are frequently little more than working by another name.   Work itself is a constant battle of trying to do more with less.  And it can be exhausting constantly trying to be the best you can be.  Holidays are often merely a recovery phase, rebooting energy levels, before another burst of work.

I confess that I used to be dreadful at doing nothing. For me inactivity was an alien concept.  I relaxed (or so I thought at the time) by doing things.  In fact, all I was doing was finding ways to avoid being with myself. I considered inactivity as being the same as inertia, indolence, lethargy, idleness and laziness with a bit of ennui thrown in.  There were too many exciting things to do, I felt, to be bored.   As Chesterton said: “There are no uninteresting things, only uninteresting people.” It took me a long time to realise that boredom is not the same as doing nothing or of having nothing to do.  Boredom comes from not being satisfied and of always wanting something else.  FOMO, as it’s now described.

Doing nothing is a state all of its own.  It is both an active and passive acceptance of non-judgemental inactivity.  It is about being comfortable with oneself in one’s own surroundings.  And oddly enough, things happen where you’re doing nothing.  Ideas, thoughts, memories, and emotions float into view.  New perspectives arrive casting a different light on seemingly intractable issues.  Things that seemed highly important become ephemeral.  Left alone, many issues heal themselves.  In fact, wouldn’t it be so much better if more people stopped fiddling and left things alone. “Don’t just do something, stand there” should be a motto for our times.

As a coach, I often try and help clients to be less busy.  I help them try to find time to think and, more importantly, to not think.  Or, to use the mot du jour, chill.  Of course, there’s a time to think and there’s a time to act, but without wishing to sound too like Ecclesiastes, there’s also a time not to think and a time not to act.  Embracing the gentle art of not doing anything and not feeling guilty about it takes practice.  We should all find time to channel our inner Oblamov.  As Mark Twain nearly said, whenever I feel the need to do something I lie down until the feeling goes away.

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And for a bonus track, here’s Bing Crosby singing Busy doing nothing

https://bit.ly/1KvtGMv