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Don’t you love those commercials where a suave, coiffured air hostess appears with exactly what you were thinking about at precisely the right moment and gives you a smile as if to say “you are always on my mind”? Well, you do if you are a man.

And certainly, once seated, you are usually looked after very well in the air. It’s boarding and exiting the plane that is such a hassle. Take heart, things are on the up, as we say in the airline business. ‘Holding hassle halted’ is what the headline should read. Alas, as with roads, build a stretch solution and you just move the jam further along. That’s the reality.

Dr Jason Steffan has studied the problem of aircraft loading and he has come up with a solution. It is elegant, clever, methodical and above all, brilliant technically. But the question is, are we? I seriously doubt it. You see Dr Steffan’s idea is seat-related not passenger-related. Fill certain seats in a certain order and you will have everyone on board in the minimum amount of time. Well and good.

My mind goes back to the airport lounge, to the sprawling young and the drooping old, the empty soft drinks cups and the overloaded waste bins. This is the reality chaos from which the orderly embarkation has to proceed. It’s not the lost passports that cause the trouble, it’s the lost children’s teddy bears, without which no flight can possibly proceed.

Suddenly Daddy has to embark, without the rest of the clan. But Daddy has the passports and tickets and a skin full of duty-free – excess to what he is allowed to take in bottles. He is in no condition to carry out the orderly march to through the galley to the 119th row.

The pursuing family find themselves held back – their seat loading is not yet and they must desist from wailing for father or the loudspeakers will not be able to communicate the drill required to save five minutes of loading time.

The battle switches from Teddy to admission. Security is called. It is just such a group as this that could carry the destructive mixture intended to cause another disaster. Children must be searched – but with proper, qualified, supervision, not immediately available. Teddy must have his entrails spilled for fear that liquid dynamite is hidden therein.

Father, now comfortably asleep in his seat, must be summoned to the desk – are these really your children and this lady, you Partner? Enraged at the suggestion that he has not done the decent thing and married her, a fracas breaks out. Teddy is no longer the cause, Daddy is.

Settled, if tearfully, at last, seat belts securely fastened, the pilot makes an announcement. “Due to the late arrival of certain passengers we have lost our take-off slot so there will be a delay of twenty to forty minutes. Thank you for flying…” the last words are drowned out by a moan of disapproval.

From everyone except one, very quiet, family.

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We are all Mentors at some time in our lives. Parents and teachers mentor children; bosses mentor employees, religious ministers mentor parishioners, Sports Team Coaches mentor players – quite apart from their coaching.

In my lifetime I have been mentored by a father, two amazing wives, a ploughman, two craftsmen, four good teachers, three outstanding bosses and a few of the Mentees I have been privileged to mentor. It is always a two-way process.

Mentoring is the skill of enabling disciplined thinking, commonsense behaviour and wise creativity by questioning, encouraging and infusing wisdom. A Mentor is like a ship’s pilot, there to help guide when the destination is not clear, in difficult times and through stormy weather or tricky waters. The Mentee remains in charge; the Mentor helps navigate.

Mentoring and coaching are different although there are points of overlap. Coaching addresses specific problems or opportunities and is usually for a limited time. Mentoring, too, is often triggered by a specific event happening or anticipated. But in addition to addressing the immediate problem, a Mentor also helps find solutions to the underlying causes.

Typical of this is the person who is restless in his or her job, has failing work or home relationships or whose personal self-confidence is declining. Lack of a well-defined purpose is a major contributor in these cases and mentoring helps the Mentee find ‘The Tree on the other side of the Field’. Other causes of such problems are overworking, inability to delegate, low self-esteem and over-promotion. It is seldom one stress that makes people dysfunctional.

Although mentoring inevitably deals with individuals, companies are now widely adopting in-house mentoring. This way relevant experience is on hand for the Mentee; it has to be carefully handled so that it does not become another management tool and lose its mentoring value. Companies introducing mentoring must avoid creating another structural management layer. They should seek the help of those who have experience of setting up and monitoring a corporate mentoring structure.

Group mentoring is an effective way to solve problems of differing personal objectives and financial aspirations between owners and managers. It involves more than reconciliation and compromise. Very often tensions that appear as superficial personality clashes or minor personal vendettas are only the tip of the iceberg. Underlying personal strategies have to be accommodated if today’s collegial management style is to work.

Mentoring is a key tool for developing personality and enhancing performance. Now that it is firmly established I hope we shall see more people coming forward to help with the growing demand for Mentors. There are few more rewarding ways of engaging with the current world while making a contribution to its better development.

Are you a potential Mentor?

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Life is more important than death and life is sacred. That is not a word to be used lightly. It implies a value to life before birth as well as while the heart still beats. Nevertheless we destroy life daily on a massive scale, even when it could be fairly easily saved. The standards that condemn suicide and murder are cast aside when the interests of those with power are threatened by those without.

We rightly try to define ‘life’ before a baby is born but do not attempt to define it when the old become senile. There is a good reason for this. We do not know how much senile people are conscious of what is going on around them.

Not long ago a man in a coma for 23 years recovered to declare that he had been fully aware of everything that was happening to him all the time he appeared to be comatose. The worst horror movie made cannot begin to convey what most of us thought about a situation like that. How he retained his sanity is something I suppose we shall take years to find out.

It is not therefore for us to decide when someone else should die. But that does not mean that it is not for us to decide when we should die. The gift we were given at birth is the gift of decision – “free will” as it is often described – and it would not be choice if we were not intended to exercise it.

There is something disturbing about a world that insists that a person wanting to take their own life if they become incapable of appreciating it must do so before it is necessary because it is illegal to forward plan an assisted suicide. Who are the likely guides to show us the way to evaluate the sanctity of life?

Religions of all denominations, one would think. Yet they are either uncompromisingly dogmatic or silent – a different sort of dogma – on the subject. Faith should be touching, not dogmatic. It should combine the innate spirituality of man with the reason he has developed over time to produce answers that fit an underlying moral code but adapt to the society in which he now lives.

Sadly most organized religions have woefully failed in this regard.

With the forecast explosion of longer life and, at the same time, increasing senility and dementia the question of assisted suicide needs thinking through by those who have a rightfully high regard for life, both their own and others’. The matter becomes more urgent daily because the question of euthanasia may soon become a matter of survival of the species, and euthanasia is far from assisted suicide.

My own father sought the help of a kind doctor to end his life, not for his own convenience but to stop the suffering he saw on the faces of his family who had watched him dying a long and painful death. He was a highly religious and devout man. I believe his devotion was manifest as much by his death as by anything else.

I just don’t see why an act of charity had to be so covert and grubby.

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Following my “Back to School” item (110826) Sandy Oh wrote to me and, with her permission, I produce below what she said.

“On the subject of education, I heard a troubling story from a good friend last night.

MD of a large MNC’s Financial Services in Asia Pacific, she has been interviewing candidates from the Singapore Universities for a Management Associate position in her company.

All the candidates she saw were high-quality and ticked these boxes:

- good grades

- overseas work experience

- internship at a decent firm

- volunteered in non-profit work

- captain of whatever extra-curricular activity

But despite this “good CV”, she found they were all too similar, lacking in individuality. When she asked more reflective questions, for example ‘what was the toughest decision you’ve had to make’, she got answers that exposed what she regarded as a shocking level of immaturity among these candidates.

It is worrying that despite the investments in our education system and despite students having such an apparently well-rounded education, they still seem to be devoid of skills of meaningful contemplation and reflection.”

Thank you, Sandy, for your story. It is a widespread phenomenon and partly stems from lack of observation, a fundamental problem in our society and the cause of such poor leadership at every level from warehouse manager to politician. Poor observation leads to carelessness, bad quality and accident.

We have good teaching, possibly even good learning but do we have education? The definition of education is “the act of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment and generally preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life”.

Tick the boxes: general knowledge [_] reasoning [_] judgment [_] intellectual [_] mature [_]?

I am getting some students to write what I hope will be reflective pieces about the education they are receiving and I will put these on The Daily Paradox as further School Reports.

Hmm.

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A young Mentee recently wrote the following to me.

Maybe mistakes never exist –

only lessons and experience

providing opportunities for growth

Back to school and university after the break, it is time to ask what the young think of the education they are receiving, how it might be improved, whether they are making the effort expected by those who have worked to bring them such excellent resources and what learning is all about in the Google age.

Looking back on my own youth I can list the things that made a lasting impression on me and what I have done about them since.

Because of unfortunate and (partly due to the war) dysfunctional home arrangements I wanted my early schools to be a home from home, something they were, and are, not designed to be. Expectations like that inevitably lead to disappointments and I recall my childhood and youth as lonely, forcing me to become extremely gregarious and to seek company wherever it was to be found.

My early friends were all older than me, sometimes very much older. The consequences were not universally good but on balance I learnt more about life and its purpose than my contemporaries, and certainly much earlier. It was clear to me that communicating with others was a key need for everyone and even when still a child I regarded all literature as a way to connect with those I would never otherwise meet.

Well known authors from Hardy to Pepys, from Shakespeare to Dickens become as close friends as I had in my youth. It was inevitable that my interest in everything became philosophical first and material a long way second and for this I have always been very grateful.

Being of a naturally rather conformist personality I learnt painfully and slowly the importance of disobedience, something in which I still have quite a long way to go. It has made my mentoring of others focus on selective disobedience and contrariness as crucial to fully developed lives. Indeed, many Mentees will attest to the habit I have of asking ‘what if we turn everything upside down and look at it quite differently?’

Are the young learning the purpose of life, the ways to enjoy it without excessive damage to others and the planet and how to ‘fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run?’ I have asked some Mentees to ponder these questions and, with their permission, I shall bring their answers to you in the coming weeks.

Comparing those answers with what the world leaders think we need may be an interesting lesson.

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We hear about winning the hearts and minds of people as a prerequisite to their becoming convinced of the rightness of a cause. The evidence of success is however in the hearts and hands, as anyone who has ever started a charity knows. Donors and helpers must be in sympathy with the purpose but their expression must be more than money, it must include their sweat and effort.

Twice in the last few days I have seen first-hand evidence of how the heart is expressed by the hand. A long-term Mentee and I had dinner as we do from time to time. Tracy wanted to say thank you for the help I have tried to give her. She is good at saying thank you.

This time she had spent hours making a beautiful montage for me, bits of memorabilia about the work I do surrounding a picture of her Mentor. It was especially touching because she is a very busy, hard-working lady and this had taken precious time she could have spent enjoying herself.

In a quite separate event I have watched an old friend who has sold his business setting himself up for a new round of life in a company he has formed called “Helping People Win”. Paul built a successful business helping many people and companies, sold it and without pausing to draw breath has started this new venture.

Both Tracy and Paul are wonderful examples of what I call the Hearts and Hands of life. Neither is given to a lot of rhetoric about doing good. Both save the energy they would spend talking about it, actually doing it.

There are many people in the world like Paul and Tracy, unsung heroes of practicality who long ago learnt the NIKE phrase “Just do it” and applied it. They are not just retirees, or grown ups; youngsters also often have the patience and drive to help in a way that makes a real difference to another’s life.

How can we spread the urge to play a part in this movement?

Example is the only way. A powerful tool and a memorable teacher, example can come from all those we meet. In particular, the people in highly responsible jobs whose decisions affect the lives of billions can do more good by example of generosity of spirit and time than all the technicalities of regulation and control.

As we anxiously watch the world’s leaders bringing their brains to bear on seemingly intractable problems let us hope that they understand that what they will be remembered for are the Hearts and Hands they show in practice.

That will remain long after the rhetoric has been forgotten.

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Quantitative easing (QE) is a euphemism for printing money. We’ve already had QE1 and QE2. That is why we are experiencing increasing inflation in the world. Flooding the market with worthless money causes inflation. Money is worthless when it does not represent goods and services created and sold – in other words when it is printed.

At the end of this week the “world’s leading central bankers”, as they like to be called, meet Ben  Bernancke, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve at aptly-named Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Mr Bernancke, together with Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, will address the problem of a world in which money value is being lost, as measured by the rising price of gold.

Inflation robs the prudent, those who have saved their money to provide for old age and emergencies and rewards those who are on wages that can be increased at a cost to the consumer or those on government or other support that is planned to rise to compensate for inflation. Governments print money, you see.

Inflation sends a clear message: Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow it will cost twice as much to do so. Whether Mr Bernancke will announce QE3 at the Hole remains to be seen but probably he will make statements that suggest that he will do so soon, anyway. The bankers will heave a sigh of relief. Their turn in their jobs will be over before the financial pigeons come home to roost.

What is a banker? Someone who looks after your money?

The dictionary says is it a person skilled in large scale financial transactions and goes on to describe a central bank as somewhere that circulates money on behalf of a government and implements its monetary policy by regulating the money supply. Pretty important stuff, you may say, deserving of substantial rewards. That is how they see it, too. Indeed they have received mighty large bonus payments for doing such an important job so well.

Why is it, then, that we have had a string of world financial crises and increasing inflation and one of the world’s top three currencies, the Euro, under threat of self-destruction and major banks like Goldman Sachs under investigation and other top banks like Lehman Brothers going bankrupt?

Whatever else the bankers are skilled at, communicating what is the problem and how it can be solved is not one of their main achievements. You might think that for their wages communication would figure quite high on the list of requirements but apparently not.

Perhaps that is all about to change. Maybe Messers Bernancke, Trichet and fellow top bakers will explain to us all, from Jackson Hole, what on earth is going on and how their highly-valued skill is going to put it right.

Or maybe we shall all just end up in an even bigger hole than Jackson?

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‘Disclaimers’ produced a battery of comments, from the doctor who pointed out that the medical profession are not allowed to use them to the business lady who makes the point that they may often be illegal.  Trouble is this is a one-sided law with little reference to justice.

Today – beyond disclaimers to externalised costs.

There can be few more infuriating responses to a phone call you are making than “Your call is important to us” followed by an indefinite period of reminders about this demonstrably untrue observation. But you should be proud; you are an externalised cost. It can’t get much better than that.

We used to call them queues. In today’s jargon-obsessed world this is not grand enough, hence the pompous, patronizing expression ‘externalised cost’. But you are in a queue, however they say it. The reason you must queue is because your time is of no value (they think) while theirs is priceless (they know).

As you sit in the bank waiting to get at a little of your money you might ponder the incredible profits your bank has made, partly by externalizing you as a cost. Actually, you can’t. Banks do not leave their annual reports lying around in queuing areas. I am sure you can guess why.

We’ve all seen the joke about the bank customer who demanded the same caveats and attention from the bank as the bank demands from him. A laugh, maybe – but, for all of us, a hollow laugh. We’ve all been on the receiving end of lousy after-sales service under the accurately described ‘limited warranty’. Even medical waiting times, where doctors must have some latitude for the unplanned emergency, are quite excessive. How do I know that? Because I have seen better time planning in both GP’s surgeries and teaching hospitals.

It’s time we did something about it. So, what?

The balance between the corporation and the consumer has got totally skewed. That is because the powers that exist to prevent cartels and break up monopolies are not used. Why? Because those supposed to be exercising the powers are part of the corrupt system themselves.

Ralph Nader could force car manufacturers to improve safety in 1965 and his consumer protection work continued fruitfully for decades. It is time for a new Nader and a new approach to corporate power and the consumer. I describe it as a revision of capitalism to suit a modern world.

We’ll only get it if we ask for it.

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A disclaimer is an attempt to transfer responsibility from a supplier to a customer. You get them all the time but I doubt you read them very often. Called the ‘small print’ they are usually presented in a typeface and size that is unreadable without a microscope. They absolve – in advance – the supplier, whether bank or doctor, government department or electronics manufacturer, from all responsibility for any unwanted consequences arising from your obtaining or possessing the product or service.

In marketing they are called inertia selling and they are illegal. Many years ago the Readers Digest used to employ this method of conning money out of potential customers. “Unless you respond within 24 hours you will be deemed to have accepted our offer” was broadly their message.

One day in New York they sent such a letter to the head of a demolition firm. He replied with a somewhat different offer. “Unless you reply within 24 hours you will be deemed to have accepted our offer to demolish your building next Thursday”. The Readers’ Digest had quite a fine building in New York then.

Disclaimers extend not only to goods and services but to places you may find yourself in, to contacts you may, even unwittingly, make, to people you have never heard of. Their message is simple: Nothing undesirable or unwanted that happens in the world can ever be our fault. You hereby accept that everything undesirable or unwanted that happens in the world is wholly, exclusively and solely your fault and you will be responsible for any and all of the consequences.

I said that disclaimers were an ‘attempt’ to transfer responsibility. Courts do not always accept that they have succeeded in doing so. However, in any action you will be pitting your probably limited savings against the weight of a large organisation to which the maintenance of their disclaimer is more important then your patronage or welfare. Caveat litigant.

It is time the consumer had rights more clearly spelled out and enforceable. Try making your bank or other supplier accept a disclaimer from you. Your effort will not be successful because their disclaimer will out disclaim yours.

If George Soros and his rich friends would like to help the world with some of their wealth they might devote it to balancing the suppliers’ and the consumers’ rights.

That would certainly help to level the playing field.

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Let’s face it, the young are getting cleverer and cleverer. The “A” level results in UK have improved for the 29^th year running. This is an achievement we can all be proud of. Education is clearly improving. If what I say sounds cynical I don’t mean it to. Like you, I want a well-educated world. It is the best chance we have for survival.

When will we see the benefits of this better educated population? Recent riots and the looting that accompanied them do not endorse modern education but of course the rioters were not the people who had achieved the increasingly successful “A” levels, I assume. When can we anticipate better behaviour, more attention to the urgent needs of the planet, higher ethical standards to flow from the high level of exam passing?

Or is our education system merely creating another divided world, one in which some are and some are not? Just as the financially divided world has created a split that may have become irreparable could educating some and not others do the same thing in a different context? A class structure, however inevitable, is undesirable and all progress implies its dismantling over time.

I have searched for the education systems for those less academically inclined. There are courses for digital techies but very few for other craft and art students. Where are our apprentice schemes with their strong personal standards and their excellent mentoring of the young? I learnt more from my carpentry master than how to be a carpenter; more from a ploughman than how to plough a field; more from a thatcher than how to make a thatched roof.

Looking back, much of my education, including the hard subjects, was reflective rather then regurgitative. How are the young today being encouraged to reflect? And about what?

While not for a moment doubting the accuracy of the enhanced “A” level results, might we not think about the value of exams in anything like their present form in a Google world? Is Denmark to remain forever the only country that allows Google into the exam room? Are we never again to see qualitative assessments of students for fear that they will be corrupted by biased invigilators?

In America parents are taking the matter into their own hands. The number of home schools has burgeoned. Curriculum-free education is on the rise. It is time we reexamined the whole basis of educating people, young, middle aged and old. What we have now is a charade of memory parading as an educated population.

And that includes “A” levels, too.