I like Eleanor Roosevelt's quote:
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Just because a prominent person makes a statement, doesn't mean you have to agree with it. After all, it was her opinion. But to me the quote does ring true for reasons that I will now explain with this short story.
Jack was invited to attend an interview for a new job, the Manager at a large DIY store, which was part of an international group. He was young, ambitious and with relevant retail experience but not at managerial level. He had also recently completed a BA in Business Studies through intensive part-time study. So at the age of 32 he was looking for a real career challenge. His interview was to take place at the headquarters of the DIY chain in Amsterdam but at his own initiative, he decided that two days prior to the interview, he would visit the store in Antwerp, where the vacancy had arisen. He would go as a 'customer' purely to get a feel for the environment. He arrived at the store and asked one of the sales assistants for help to purchase an electric drill. The assistant said he knew nothing about drills, so pointed him in the direction of another assistant. The lady was busy labelling items to put on the shelf and told him to wait until it was convenient for her to take a break. She then showed him a range of drills within the price range €30 to €150. He proceeded to ask her questions about the specifications of the different drills, to which she responded rather curtly that she wasn't an expert on drills and neither could that be expected of her on the money that she was earning. She pointed out that she was busy doing her labelling, couldn't spend any more time with Jack so he should make a decision but she did tell him that if the drill developed a fault in the first year, it was covered by the manufacturer's guarantee. Big deal and it wasn't a very good shopping experience for Jack!
When he returned home his partner was keen to know how he'd got on. Here are three possible responses depending on Jack's personality.
Small-minded Jack.
"I walked into the store , tried to find a sales assistant to help me buy a drill, which was difficult, but I eventually found this jerk who wasn't interested and pointed me in the direction of his colleague. Well this bitch was even worse, too busy to deal with me immediately and when she finally did give me some of her precious time, she basically just took me to the area where the drills were displayed and told me she knew nothing about the specifications. The decision was mine. She really was a prize prat and if I had my way, I would sack all the dickheads in that store and start from scratch."
Average-minded Jack.
"I walked into the store and eventually managed to get a sales assistant to help me buy a drill. Her knowledge on drills was very limited so I ended up with no real guidance. It wasn't a pleasant shopping experience and if a better competitor moved into the area, the store would really suffer."
Great-minded Jack.
I didn't have a good shopping experience purely because the assistants that I encountered were not sufficiently knowledgeable or motivated to assist. But I think this provides a tremendous opportunity for a change programme. If I get the job of Store Manager, my number one priority will be staff training and development. I would start by sitting down with each member of staff, explaining that my vision for the store is for it to be the best shopping experience in town. I would describe how it was going to be a tough, challenging and exciting journey for the team to achieve the vision. Then through a process of individual appraisals, each employee's strengths and weaknesses would be explored and appropriate training and development programmes would be initiated."
Great-minded Jack's enthusiasm was infectious and he could see his partner was also excited. She asked Jack if he would be expressing these views at the interview. Jack's response........"You bet!"........and he did........he became the Store Manager.
So there you have it, small and average minds are very narrow and focussed on the past, identifying problems rather than solutions. Great minds think about the future looking for solutions and opportunities.
I like Eleanor Roosevelt's quote!
Saturday 26 January 2013
Saturday 19 January 2013
I Wish I Could Sprechen Sie Deutsch
Danke Schön Bitte Schön Wiedersehn........I Wish I Could Sprechen Sie Deutsch.
This is an extract from the lyrics of a song released by Eddie Wilson in 1961. It is a song about the desire and difficulty to learn German. Maybe I should compose a similar piece based on my current struggle to gain proficiency with the Turkish language. It's very difficult - çok zor - perhaps because it is hard to get an old brain to adapt to an entirely new set of linguistic 'rules'. The main problem being whatever 'rules' appear to exist, they are invariably broken. I'm getting there albeit very slowly - çok yavaş - but I will persevere.
As I navigate my way through the maze of ambiguities and inconsistencies of the Turkish language, I realise that there are far more imperfections in English and how my command of English is perhaps not as good as I thought it was! This is particularly apparent when I participate in Internet discussion forums, which attract an international audience. It has been said that Britain and America are "two nations divided by a common language", a quote attributed to Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde! Whoever said it, I can empathise with the sentiment as many of my discussion points have been misinterpreted by American participants, so what chance do non-English speakers have?
There have been attempts to introduce more logical languages. Esperanto was created by Dr Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof in the late nineteenth century, his aim being to foster harmony between people from different countries. Although it is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world, the current estimate of Esperanto speakers is between one and two million people, which equates to less than 0.03% of the world's population. I would suggest this is insufficient to help improve relations between different nationalities. A more recently introduced constructed language is Loglan, which was developed in 1955 by Dr James Cooke Brown. It was the first among a number of languages known as logical languages. But Loglan has fewer followers than Esperanto and despite it's 'scientific' origin, there are no native speakers.
So in spite of attempts to introduce perfect languages, the old idiosyncratic languages survive and evolve. The evolution is, compared with other evolutionary timescales, quite rapid. For example, grandparents often have difficulty communicating with their grandchildren and vice versa. Keeping abreast of linguistic changes is difficult, particularly given most humans' natural resistance to change. The idiosyncrasies and lack of stability of human languages means that trying to learn a language by using an existing language as a 'reference' and developing translation 'rules' is fraught with problems. But that's exactly how I have been approaching my Turkish learning process, aided and abetted by my technical and analytical bent. One-to-one correlations between English and Turkish simply don't work, which is not surprising when you look at how the two languages have developed, almost independently of each other.
My teacher is very good and extremely patient, which he needs to be because my memory retention is sorely lacking. Beyond the basics he has taught me a considerable amount (but certainly not all) of Turkish grammar, which he believes will provide me with the 'foundation' and 'building blocks' of language construction. I agree with this approach but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Between lessons my Turkish is limited to a few short conversations each day interspersed with continuing to use my mother tongue. I now believe the next stage needs to be total immersion! I am not yet sure how I will immerse myself but I do know swimming is much more fun in the water!!
Watch this space and you will know I have cracked it when I publish a blog in Turkish........İnşallah........Hopefully!
This is an extract from the lyrics of a song released by Eddie Wilson in 1961. It is a song about the desire and difficulty to learn German. Maybe I should compose a similar piece based on my current struggle to gain proficiency with the Turkish language. It's very difficult - çok zor - perhaps because it is hard to get an old brain to adapt to an entirely new set of linguistic 'rules'. The main problem being whatever 'rules' appear to exist, they are invariably broken. I'm getting there albeit very slowly - çok yavaş - but I will persevere.
As I navigate my way through the maze of ambiguities and inconsistencies of the Turkish language, I realise that there are far more imperfections in English and how my command of English is perhaps not as good as I thought it was! This is particularly apparent when I participate in Internet discussion forums, which attract an international audience. It has been said that Britain and America are "two nations divided by a common language", a quote attributed to Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde! Whoever said it, I can empathise with the sentiment as many of my discussion points have been misinterpreted by American participants, so what chance do non-English speakers have?
There have been attempts to introduce more logical languages. Esperanto was created by Dr Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof in the late nineteenth century, his aim being to foster harmony between people from different countries. Although it is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world, the current estimate of Esperanto speakers is between one and two million people, which equates to less than 0.03% of the world's population. I would suggest this is insufficient to help improve relations between different nationalities. A more recently introduced constructed language is Loglan, which was developed in 1955 by Dr James Cooke Brown. It was the first among a number of languages known as logical languages. But Loglan has fewer followers than Esperanto and despite it's 'scientific' origin, there are no native speakers.
So in spite of attempts to introduce perfect languages, the old idiosyncratic languages survive and evolve. The evolution is, compared with other evolutionary timescales, quite rapid. For example, grandparents often have difficulty communicating with their grandchildren and vice versa. Keeping abreast of linguistic changes is difficult, particularly given most humans' natural resistance to change. The idiosyncrasies and lack of stability of human languages means that trying to learn a language by using an existing language as a 'reference' and developing translation 'rules' is fraught with problems. But that's exactly how I have been approaching my Turkish learning process, aided and abetted by my technical and analytical bent. One-to-one correlations between English and Turkish simply don't work, which is not surprising when you look at how the two languages have developed, almost independently of each other.
My teacher is very good and extremely patient, which he needs to be because my memory retention is sorely lacking. Beyond the basics he has taught me a considerable amount (but certainly not all) of Turkish grammar, which he believes will provide me with the 'foundation' and 'building blocks' of language construction. I agree with this approach but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Between lessons my Turkish is limited to a few short conversations each day interspersed with continuing to use my mother tongue. I now believe the next stage needs to be total immersion! I am not yet sure how I will immerse myself but I do know swimming is much more fun in the water!!
Watch this space and you will know I have cracked it when I publish a blog in Turkish........İnşallah........Hopefully!
Sunday 13 January 2013
On Probation
Probation
1. The release of an offender from prison on condition of good behaviour under supervision.
2. A period of training and testing a new employee.
So says the Little Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, which I sometimes refer to, perhaps nostalgically, rather than resorting to Google. The second definition can be loosely applied to the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK. When the two political parties came together after the General Election of 2010, no political party had a clear majority and the coalition was seen as breaking the mould of British politics. Will it work? Well to a certain extent it's on probation. It is, of course, an anathema to the political ideologists who see clear distinctions between left, right and middle-of-the-road politics and believe a fudged combination of two or more competing political philosophies will never work. The counter to that argument is that societies are best managed by the people with the requisite skills and experience, regardless of the colours of their political rosettes.
The coalition government took the reins of power at a time when the UK, in common with many other parts of the world, was suffering from debt-driven economic woes to which the newly-formed government's response was a menu of austerity measures. In simple terms, the country is spending more than it earns and therefore has to tighten its belt particularly in the area of public expenditure. The latest target is privatising probation (definition '1' from the dictionary) through outsourcing many of the existing services. Although reduction in re-offending rates has been cited as the reason for change, cost savings will probably be high on the priority list and if the truth be known, could well be the real motivation for change. Now I am not an expert on probation services but I have a good friend who is, having spent much of his working career as a probation professional. So over the years I have gleaned an appreciation of some of the salient features of the organisation. My current interest is the business model that the 'probationary' government is intending to implement for its probation services, because my long commercial career has been largely responsible for my avid interest in business models - sad isn't it?!
I am strongly of the opinion that any business is a complex system with inputs, outputs and relationships between them that are not always easy to understand. Indeed organisations evolve and do not always behave in ways that were originally intended. Stafford Beer is credited with introducing the acronym POSIWID - the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. As an example, the UK's Probation Service's 'purpose' is what it does and if that is not in accord with what society expects of it, then it will have to change. But let's take a step back because the Probation Service is a system within a much bigger system, i.e. society and its role in the community would be totally redundant if there weren't criminals! So isn't the government focussing on the symptom rather than the underlying problem? If there were no offenders then re-offending rates, would no longer be a consideration. Clearly my utopian fantasy is unlikely to become a reality but the point I am making is that only by considering the totality of the problem can we visualise a model that is likely to have a purpose which is more closely aligned to what we would desire in a perfect society. So if the 'probationary' government believes that carving up the Probation Service into a large outsourced entity and a much smaller insourced bit, is a step towards solving the nation's criminality problems, so be it. Personally I believe the 'probationary' government is perpetuating outdated business models that have failed miserably in other areas of the public sector. Someone once suggested to me that one sign of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing and expecting a different result! By repeating the 'offences' of previous governments, surely the 'probationary' (it's moved from definition '2' to definition '1') government is re-offending..........return to jail or plead insanity?!
1. The release of an offender from prison on condition of good behaviour under supervision.
2. A period of training and testing a new employee.
So says the Little Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, which I sometimes refer to, perhaps nostalgically, rather than resorting to Google. The second definition can be loosely applied to the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK. When the two political parties came together after the General Election of 2010, no political party had a clear majority and the coalition was seen as breaking the mould of British politics. Will it work? Well to a certain extent it's on probation. It is, of course, an anathema to the political ideologists who see clear distinctions between left, right and middle-of-the-road politics and believe a fudged combination of two or more competing political philosophies will never work. The counter to that argument is that societies are best managed by the people with the requisite skills and experience, regardless of the colours of their political rosettes.
The coalition government took the reins of power at a time when the UK, in common with many other parts of the world, was suffering from debt-driven economic woes to which the newly-formed government's response was a menu of austerity measures. In simple terms, the country is spending more than it earns and therefore has to tighten its belt particularly in the area of public expenditure. The latest target is privatising probation (definition '1' from the dictionary) through outsourcing many of the existing services. Although reduction in re-offending rates has been cited as the reason for change, cost savings will probably be high on the priority list and if the truth be known, could well be the real motivation for change. Now I am not an expert on probation services but I have a good friend who is, having spent much of his working career as a probation professional. So over the years I have gleaned an appreciation of some of the salient features of the organisation. My current interest is the business model that the 'probationary' government is intending to implement for its probation services, because my long commercial career has been largely responsible for my avid interest in business models - sad isn't it?!
I am strongly of the opinion that any business is a complex system with inputs, outputs and relationships between them that are not always easy to understand. Indeed organisations evolve and do not always behave in ways that were originally intended. Stafford Beer is credited with introducing the acronym POSIWID - the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. As an example, the UK's Probation Service's 'purpose' is what it does and if that is not in accord with what society expects of it, then it will have to change. But let's take a step back because the Probation Service is a system within a much bigger system, i.e. society and its role in the community would be totally redundant if there weren't criminals! So isn't the government focussing on the symptom rather than the underlying problem? If there were no offenders then re-offending rates, would no longer be a consideration. Clearly my utopian fantasy is unlikely to become a reality but the point I am making is that only by considering the totality of the problem can we visualise a model that is likely to have a purpose which is more closely aligned to what we would desire in a perfect society. So if the 'probationary' government believes that carving up the Probation Service into a large outsourced entity and a much smaller insourced bit, is a step towards solving the nation's criminality problems, so be it. Personally I believe the 'probationary' government is perpetuating outdated business models that have failed miserably in other areas of the public sector. Someone once suggested to me that one sign of insanity is to keep repeating the same thing and expecting a different result! By repeating the 'offences' of previous governments, surely the 'probationary' (it's moved from definition '2' to definition '1') government is re-offending..........return to jail or plead insanity?!
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