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There are many reasons why businesses go bust. Poor management is only one of them. I have seen a high-tech business that has much potential and a superb team of people working in it, heading for the rocks. The leader lost his sense of direction about eighteen months ago and started making mercurial decisions. I do not know what his objective was but it seems he thought by displaying enough creativity everything would come right. Mercurial behaviour causes crises, it does not prevent them.

I have much sympathy with this man who entrepreneurially set out to build a modern business. When things go wrong it is tempting to try outrageous solutions if only to relieve the monotony of the day to day pressing cash flow and insecure staff problems. Those at the heart of a business crisis have a belief that only they know how bad things are and they should at all costs try to avoid others knowing. This is a mistake.

Rumour is the biggest killer of enterprise. The “no smoke without fire” syndrome has caused more businesses to fail than any amount of bad management. Attempted cover-ups do not work in today’s world. There are too many social networks and investigative journalists out there to hide the truth. It is better to be transparent and demonstrate a cool head.

When a business starts looking shaky the first rule is to secure your most important employees. Depending on the nature of the business this may require one or more sessions. Key staff should be told the truth. Not all of them will stay but the ones that go were not going to help in the crisis anyway. The stayers will pull the business round if you give them a chance and listen to their views.

You lose no authority by enlisting others’ help in a crisis. You remain leader and have to demonstrate that you are doing so but you do not need to carry the weight of all the work yourself. Giving others a share of the problem makes them feel more responsible to see that the storm is weathered.

The biggest mistake about failing businesses is to think that a plan will not help and that everything has to be hand to mouth. A strategic approach to dealing with a crisis is vital. It should have begun before the crisis appeared. You do not start to recruit a fire brigade when someone shouts ‘fire’. Your preparation for a crisis is key to all successful survival. Nevertheless, a plan at any stage is better than no plan at all.

Businesses without crisis plans are foolhardy in today’s crisis world.

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In any new situation, domestic or work, the first five hundred minutes are vital. Seems a lot of time? It is one working day. I will trace the day as though you had started a new job and you can translate the things I am saying to whatever your situation is.

“Welcome” – the greeting that can be so warm or so chilling. Observe which it is with each person who parades it. Observe the handshake, the body language. Is this person for you or against you? S/he is bound to be one or the other. Everyone takes sides with a newcomer, usually before they arrive.

Observe their dress, their accessories and, if you see it, their office or desk space. The question you have to try to answer immediately is “Will this person be a kindred spirit?” You need one or two. Make a wrong judgment at this stage and you may be set back badly.

Ask questions. You must have thought these through beforehand. What do you want to know? The culture of the business is at the top of the list. Is this a political back-stabbing den of intrigue or an open, thoughtful, back-stabbing den of creativity? The latter is more fun than the former but also more tricky.

Make your number with the “little people” as much as with the bosses. The day to day support you need is from those who know where the bodies are buried – and are prepared to tell you. Almost all my progress in corporations was significantly down to the PA’s, secretaries and clerks I knew and who liked me enough to help. In Britain if you want to know anything about the government’s plans you ask a Minister’s driver – but only if you know him well enough.

Make your mark. To do this you must politely – no, charmingly – insist on three changes to the arrangements that have been made for you. They don’t need to be big changes, just things over which you can successfully assert yourself, establishing that you get what you want.

Change of office, maybe, or some simple facility you say is vital to your thought process or welfare. Leaving the provided computer outside the door with a note on it saying “Free – please take away quickly” sends a useful message.

What is the impact you want to make in your First Five Hundred Minutes?

S/he’s charming (smile for 498 of the 500 minutes), tough (assertive, gets what s/he wants), thoughtful (questions, probing and relevant, expanding the horizons of those being asked), open minded (adopt as many of the views expressed to you as you can but don’t be false about it); clear-speaking (don’t mumble or prevaricate).

Make your first five hundred minutes work for you and you are well on the way to success. Keep it up for the next five years and you will probably be boss.

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Whoever we are dealing with, and for whatever reason, we need to think about their agenda before we think about ours. We are not going to sing to their hymn sheet but we want to get them wholly focused on our agenda. We must either deal with, or distract them from, theirs. We cannot do either if we do not know what theirs is. Sounds obvious? I wish it always was.

People under stress want to talk, to explain the situation as they see it, sometimes to get it off their chest, sometimes just to be able to feel that they are doing something when it is difficult to know what to do. All very understandable. Pressure can make us forget that we are in a selling situation, just as much as if we were trying to get the listener to buy a car or a bottle of perfume. A good salesman observes, listens, questions and only then makes his pitch.

The analogy with doctors is a good one. The other day I visited a top surgeon. I had not met him before and I knew he was very busy. Because the questions I needed to ask him were complicated by a lifetime of mistreatments that had left me like an overgrown battlefield, I sent him a brief. Quite a long one as it happened. I have sent doctors briefs before. Usually they open them when I sit down. This doctor had read the brief and listed several questions about it.

Two things flowed from this. First, he immediately had all my confidence. Second, since the questions he asked were sensible and were matters not covered by my brief I felt that he was heading in the right direction. This is a man I would be prepared to allow to add to the scars of belligerent living.

Perhaps the two most important times to be on the lookout for the other chap’s agenda is at a job interview and on the first day of work in a new job. In both situations you want to – have to – impress. But what is the thing that impresses you most about the people you meet? Not their ability to speak but their ability to listen. People who talk very little, but always say something worthwhile when they do, leave a lasting impression of wisdom.

It is good to remember the first rule of communication. People will not remember much of what you say. They will never forget how they felt about you when you said it. So the question when planning a meeting is not “your place or mine?” but “your agenda or mine?” Obviously yours.

Strange how often that turns out to have been mine, isn’t it?

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There are many reasons to be joyful. As we learnt from The Life of Brian, we must all look on the bright side of life. To see today’s cause for rejoicing we do not have to look far – only as far as Greece, in fact. Well, half of Greece, anyway. That is the amount of its debt that Greece is going to pay back. So the financiers are holding an ‘O Be Joyful’ to celebrate the fact. Can you believe it?

It is now clear that half the world’s debt is about to be ‘written off’. If Greece, why not Italy, Portugal, Spain, Moonotu (the new tax-free, extra-terrestrial island probably in the process of being established for deposits with guaranteed 30% returns). The financiers have agreed that they can print Euro2Trn – that’s 2,000,000,000,000 Euros – to stave off bankruptcy.

Who is paying for this? You are, dear reader. Actually, only some of you are, those who have saved or who are on fixed incomes, eeking out their remaining money to see them through and pay for the last rites. I suppose half a rite is better than no rite at all.

Those who have been less prudent and borrowed – perhaps even more than they should have done given their prospects of paying it back – are in very good shape. You only have to pay back half of what you borrowed. You certainly justify an ‘O Be Joyful’.

Those with young children emerging into their teens have a problem, of course. What to teach the young? Save and you will lose at least half of your savings in order to bail out those who did not save. Get into debt and you will be the new elite, demanding that your debt is forgiven, or half forgiven, at any time.

When young I was told a cynical but wise fact. ‘Give someone a dollar today and tomorrow he will think you owe it to him.’ For a while I did not believe it. Give someone a dollar and he will surely be grateful for it? Sadly, this is not often true. Resentment of charity is quite understandable for we do not even teach our young how to accept gracefully.

To those who would like to balk the trend and continue to encourage prudence, thrift, deferred gratification and commonsense, I say go for it. The world must one day come out of the madness it is now embracing. Time to make preparations for that day.

Starting now.

It is better to receive gracefully than to give grudgingly

John Bittleston

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More people than ever are asking me what Mentees must do to make the most of their mentoring. The following six rules help to ensure success.

[1] Both Mentee and Mentor must agree the objectives and goals at the outset – keeping open minds so that as opportunities and problems emerge they can be accommodated. Some Mentees approach a Mentor not knowing what to expect. They must allow the Mentor to guide them in such a way that their expectations are realistic, understanding that they, not the Mentor, do the work.

[2] While Mentees drive the subject of the mentoring, certainly at the outset, the Mentor should also have a point of view at every stage about what is important to the Mentee. Over half the Mentees who come to us think they know what they need but on examination it turns out to be only partly right, and occasionally completely wrong.

[3] Mentees need to be given assurances that everything they tell their Mentor is absolutely confidential. Only with complete trust can they be transparent, an essential condition of good mentoring. Mentors quickly become friends, which is right; they must never become lovers.

[4] Mentors know how objectives are achieved but the best mentoring relationships are about strategy first, tactics second. For example, Mentees uncertain about their career objectives will make poor use of advice about their CV and the interview. Mentoring is holistic and developing, not remedial.

[5] Good Mentors ask questions and understand the answers. Mentees must learn the difference between listening and hearing. To make the best of your Mentor you must translate his or her stories and experiences into what they mean in your situation. Mentors do not prescribe answers; they help you to think them through. An answer you deduce is worth a thousand textbook solutions.

[6] Mentoring relationships, like all relationships in life, wax and wane. Some Mentees achieve their opportunity or solve their problem and happily end the relationship possibly reverting to the Mentor later. Others keep in touch through occasional meetings. We keep these informal, often over a coffee or a simple lunch.

To over-formalise mentoring, turning it into a set of procedures, is to deny the essence of it and make it a class or set of instructions rather than mentoring. Agendas are useful in many situations where two or more people meet. They are important for Mentees when urgent action is needed. They should otherwise be kept to a minimum. Agendas define actions; they do not build good relationships.

Above all Mentees must appreciate that their input is at least as important as their Mentor’s. True of most things in life, it is doubly true in a relationship that blossoms when it is informal and dies when the dead hand of process grasps it.

A good Mentee is a good Mentor in training.

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The scene is set for worldwide demonstration that the political and financial systems have led us to the brink of a serious recession. There can really no longer be any doubt that our current models of both capitalism and democracy – especially when combined – have failed.

They have been failing for many years but, like the drowning man swimming further out to sea, we have not heeded the signs or attempted to head back to the shores of prudence. Indeed, some politicians have actually quoted prudence as their goal at the very moment they were moving further away from it.

The disgrace is not exclusively down to leadership, though leaders must accept responsibility for raising expectations too high and persistently passing on the ensuing mess to their successors. “Buggins turn” has become a cause for fear rather than for rejoicing. Sooner or later we were bound to reach the last turn. So who now cannot find a chair when the music stops?

At present Greece is the fall guy. The demands of lenders are just too much for the population to bear. The level of strikes will soon amount to anarchy, unless someone prints a lot more money and pushes the problem a few weeks down the road. But even the man in the street is beginning to understand that printing money is folly, and not just in the long term. We have been adequately warned of the domino effect. Soon we shall see it happening.

Leaders should have known it was folly a long time ago. Chancellor George Osborne in UK has just said he is willing to print more but the US Fed is beginning to see that if it does it merely exacerbates the problem, almost immediately. Stop gap solutions without a sound strategy will no longer work.

The basis for that strategy must be the restoration of confidence in the world’s fundamental systems. This will only be achieved if we teach sensible living as part of our much trumpeted universal education. I see no item on the current curricula that resembles this. How can we modify material expectations? Not by exhortation to ‘do the right thing’. People don’t respond to sermons any more.

The renaissance of decent living has to take account of five factors.

First, the disparity of incomes and wealth must be seen by the majority not just as grossly unfair but as unsustainable in the global village in which we live.

Second, debt must become acceptable only in dire personal emergencies. All borrowing other than that charitably provided must be expensive enough for those who have saved to earn a reasonable return on their savings.

Third, rewards beyond the daily basic wage must be related to longer term success than this month’s results. Deferred pleasure will only come about when the wherewithal to get it is also deferred.

Fourth, the political circus must be redesigned to a more sensible way of electing those who supposedly govern us. While the stage remains a music hall it will be largely peopled by clowns.

Fifth, education must be about education, not about passing exams. No wonder the world is in a mess when the young are denied their childhood in order to sport certificates that prove nothing at all about their being educated.

What follows ‘twist’? In song, ‘shout’. In poker, ‘bust’.

The song is sung. The game is nearly over.

Most people just want more – mostly more money. They think that about 10% more than they are getting will make them happy. That applies to the billionaire and the pauper. Trouble is, it is always 10% more, however much you get. The greed inherent in all of us makes us believe that happiness is a dollar bill. It isn’t.

But not having a dollar bill when you need one does make you poor and can inconvenience your life, make it more uncomfortable, even threaten you very existence. This is especially true when you get old. Old age is not for the intrepid.

Essential to any future plan is knowing what we need when we are no longer of great value to employers or clients. They think we are worth less after about 60 or 65. It isn’t true, of course, but that is a market perception we cannot afford to ignore.

Coupled with the fact that anyone now aged under 50 is likely to live to 100 or more, and the later years will bring high medical costs or medical insurance premiums, we need to plan to have enough for life to continue to be as agreeable as possible.

Taking inflation into account, the figures can become overwhelming and positively frightening. We should not fail to produce them just because they give us a wake-up call. Anyone over the age of 30 who has not done the calculation is risking letting the most productive twenty years of his or her life drift by without a thought for old age. That is dangerous.

The simplest way to work out what you will need to see you reasonably comfortable you should spend fifteen minutes completing the Terrific Mentors International FUTURE FINANCIAL NEEDS exercise.

You can get it free by emailing John Bittleston here. Once completed you may wish to keep it to yourself or you may wish to discuss it with a Terrific Mentor. Discussing it will cost you a small amount of money.

Do it anyway. You have nothing to lose and much to gain.

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More than half the Mentees who come to us are referred by their companies. In many cases, Mentees are falling down on one or other aspects of their job. Often what appears to be the problem is only a symptom of a difficulty the Mentee doesn’t even recognize, or, if he or she does, doesn’t easily disclose.

Causes of poor performance range from difficulty in communicating – both ways – to bullying, to problems outside work but perfectly capable of being helped, even disposed of altogether. Clear objectives, both company and personal, are a prerequisite to success. When destination is obscure it is hardly surprising that the journey is muddled and unsystematic.

The first and most important thing to do is a good needs analysis. This does not demand complex or introspective personality tests but hard-headed assessment of a Mentee’s resources and requirements. Personality is involved, of course, but equally are Abilities, Skills, Dreams, Ambitions and Qualifications.

That is why a preliminary to mentoring is a questionnaire called the PASDAQ Review. 100+ open-ended questions explore these components in depth, requiring the Mentee to devote careful thought to providing himself and the Mentor with a sound platform to shape guidance and advice. PASDAQ is not a set of checklists or a score card but a more advanced tool, depending as much for its success on interpretation as thoughtful completion.

Mentoring is ‘non-prescriptive’ and relies on asking the right questions, enabling Mentees to develop their own answers. Lasting solutions do not come out of a book but from flexible handling, avoiding making a Mentee a clone of some theoretical ideal and fully developing his or her inherent gifts. People learn what they discover for themselves, not what others tell them.

People of all ages benefit from mentoring. My youngest Mentee at present is twenty; my oldest in his nineties. In between there are representatives of every age group, of both sexes, of all intellectual and educational levels. From finding a career when leaving university, through mid-life discovery of how to make the second half even more exciting, to retirement with purpose and usefulness, mentoring opens up opportunities modified by wisdom learnt from past mistakes.

Critical times for having a Mentor are when there is uncertainty over job future or when relationships seem to be less successful. Everyone goes through disturbing phases in life. Friends will help but a wise, experienced Mentor is the ideal – not just for troubled times but for longer.

Why do both companies and individuals stay with their Mentors, often for a long time? The non-prescriptive, flexible approach to problem solving is one reason. But it is more than that. Mentoring is not just problem solving, it is life-enhancing and that leads to major improvement in job performance, stability and confidence.  As Franklin D Roosevelt said at his inauguration in 1933: Confidence thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance.

We seem to be a bit short of some of those today.

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Although mentoring is about management and the business of life here and now many Mentees ask me about God and the life of the spirit. Some had no religious education. Others want to handle a spirituality within them and relate it to the world or to something less vulnerable to life’s vicissitudes.

They are all searching for answers, the noblest thing we can do.

I do not proselytize or promote either the idea of a God or a particular brand of worship. I do try to reflect their questions back to them. And I am always willing to tell them where I stand – at least as far as I know it – for the time being.

Brought up a Roman Catholic, I attended two good Catholic schools and questioned the inconsistencies that were offered as ‘mysteries’ I was told I could not understand until dead. My need for a religious belief was possibly enhanced by my mother’s death when I was just one year old. My father was a naval officer whose career demanded that he spend most of the next few years at sea.

So my early years were spent with kindly Aunts and Uncles, as a visitor.

I never questioned the existence of some Force or Power, perhaps Energy, that created the universe – the world then thought there was only one – although what created the Force itself remained puzzling. More confusing was the supposedly kindly nature of the Force.

Arguments used to convince me of this Benign God included the absence of traffic jams – yes, really. Pre WWII the reason was actually more prosaic – people couldn’t afford cars. But dear Miss Whitwell at my Prep School, one of the kindest, sweetest people I have ever met, claimed the orderly procession of the roads as irrefutable proof of this God for Good.

Like most young men I needed much forgiveness and Catholicism was always there with confessional and ritual to endorse it. There is something very calming about chanting mantra and the monks’ singing of the Benedictine Daily Office in choir was an excellent and high quality version of this.

That many of the monks taught us things not actually written into his modus vivendi by St Benedict merely made the ‘C’ in Catholic lower case – more universal than religious. They were the monks who became the best friends and actually gave us the exceptional education for which our parents paid.

The venality of the institution, and, indeed, of most religious institutions, over the years never made my faith in a God waver, only in his or her choice of earthly representatives. So where do I see God today?

The influences of my upbringing, undoubtedly mostly for good, gave me a basis for personal discovery for which I am truly grateful. My concerns about life after death, somewhat obtusely, have drifted into the background and become of little importance. I do see God, all the time, in the eyes of those I meet and care about. Even the less desirable members of society have for me an element of God in them. That is why I do not see someone who does wicked things as inherently wicked, merely a perpetrator of some wrong deeds.

In short, you are my God and will remain so for the rest of my life.

And the Devil can go to Hell!

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You would have thought that the Catholic Church had learnt one lesson from the scandalous history of the past few years – the need for transparency. It seems not. I have received a report of bullying that a Head Teacher has refused to investigate. The report is not yet substantiated as I am not an investigative journalist. However, it can be – and independently. Until it is I will not reveal the name of the school or the individual that has been brought to my attention.

Let us be clear that I am not in favour of mollycoddling children. The world for which they are being prepared is a tough one; they need to learn that early on. Too many children are spoilt by their parents today, often in an attempt to assuage the guilt attached to being a mother / wage earner. Society has yet to learn that women cope brilliantly with both without neglecting their young.

So the rough and tumble of school is a necessary rite of passage into the troublesome, unfair and often ruthless adult world. A certain amount of fighting for your corner is good – watch young jackal cubs at play on Nat Geo Wild. They learn in a thoroughly practical way that the hierarchy (where have I heard that word before?) of the pack is determined early on and democratic discussion does not figure high on the list of causes.

We are not jackals but the world in which we live is rapacious and we must be trained to handle it. Bullying is another matter. The process of toughening up our young is not to be left to indiscriminate mistreatment or behaviour that threatens the welfare or sanity of children. Even jackals know that.

Decisions concerning what to do about alleged bullying must, of course, incorporate the views of the professional teachers involved as well as those of the parents and a balance must be struck between over-protection and danger, if any exists. The job of the School Principal is to investigate. Apart from anything else it concentrates the minds of those who would report bullying, making then think about what is best for the child, not what is merely some theoretical right.

Teachers have a tough job today and so do parents. The old order of discipline, respect and good behaviour is threatened all over the world. Adjusting to handling it is difficult. Key is the partnership between parents and teachers. If that doesn’t work, children suffer, sometimes with tragic consequences. We do not bring our children up to be delicate flowers. They must have the guts and flexibility of the sunflower to cope with the bed of weeds in which they may find themselves.

If, like the sunflower, they keep facing the light, they will succeed.