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In a world where we complain – not often enough, in my opinion – of constantly declining standards it was a refreshing treat to be among the audience at the Mariinsky Ballet’s superb performance of Don Quixote the other evening. I have seen the Mariinsky dance several times including (when they were still the Kirov Ballet) in what was then known as Leningrad. The city was returned to its original name of St Petersburg in 1991.

The first performance I saw was a sensational Giselle in 1974. The company danced a private performance on a Monday night – normally their night off; they had not danced on a Monday since the revolution in 1917. Because there was only a small audience of about 100 or so I asked that they allow anybody to come in off the street rather than waste the exquisite talent we were about to see. The authorities, uncharacteristically, agreed and housewives with their shopping bags and soldiers with their rifles joined the group for whom this ballet was being specially danced.

The joy on the faces of the Russians was something I shall never forget.

After the performance we had a party in the Green Room. I was surprised at how good the dancers’ English was, especially among the often very young corps de ballet. A few glasses of vodka liberated me to mention the name of Tamara Karsavina, the ballet’s Prima Ballerina in 1917 who had fled in time to escape the onslaught of the revolution. I had met Madam Karsavina in 1960 when she was 75 and fell madly in love with her even though I was only 28 at the time. We remained friends until her death in 1978 aged 93.

Mention of her name brought the whole party to a standstill. Everyone crowded around me wanting to know about Madam; her name was not normally mentioned as she was considered a defector. The eyes of the ballerinas lit up and they promised that they would dance for their legendary Karsavina any time.

The Mariinksky has continued its progress and gone from strength to strength. In the late 1990s we saw a memorable performance of Nutcracker together with its newly written prequel in St Petersburg. At one point there were 150 people dancing on stage.

The Mariinsky’s standard has again improved to a point where it must surely be the best ballet company in the world today. Certainly Don Quixote was a performance nobody who saw it could ever forget. It was not only beautiful dancing but the joy of doing it so well that captivated the audience.

What a wonderful example of satisfaction because what they did was their best. We knew it – but, more importantly, so did they.

Otlichno, Mariinsky!

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In a crisis of the sort the world’s economy has at present emergency action is needed. That is what five central banks have done at the behest of the head of the International Monetary Fund. The relief at such action is exaggerated as are most steps back from brinks but the action is needed and will provide a breathing space. It is not however a substitute for better strategy.

Bad strategy abounds says UCLA Management Professor Richard Rumelt. People who can spot it stand a much better chance of creating good strategies. Strategy isn’t only about business, it is about everything we do yet we neglect it all the time and behave as though tactics were the only thing that mattered. If we examine our lives over the recent past we see that we have necessarily been preoccupied with day to day living making our money go further and coping with the minor – and sometimes the major – disasters that befall everyone. When in the last few weeks did we sit down either alone or with our spouses or partners and consider our strategy for the next few years?

Let’s look at some of the really bad strategies in place worldwide at present:

Printing money in the West leads inexorably to inflation and robbery of the prudent. Poor quality production in China reflects on all Asian products and services. Information-driven education everywhere leaves children ill-equipped to make good judgments. Over-regulation of everyone, children, businesses, all of us, gives rise to endless time-wasting ways of avoiding regulations. Far too complex systems for most people to understand result in their giving up trying. Theft by businesses, especially in the finance area, leads to despair.

We cannot possibly reorganize the world but bad world strategies result from bad personal strategies. When did we last write to our member of parliament, the governor of our country’s banking system, our own bank manager, anybody, complaining about any of these things? When did we last make a fuss about poorly made products? When did we rebel against pointless regulations?

Why have we not done these things? Because we are too busy.

Look again at the world’s parlous economic situation. The action by the central banks is tactical propping up the current system temporarily. That is what we have been doing for the last forty years. We cannot do it indefinitely. It is time to consider the strategy that leads to the need for such action.

When a power source keeps breaking down replace the generator, not just the light bulb.

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Social Networks get a bad name when they are used by predatory stalkers, over-enthusiastic sales people and mobsters organizing riots and looting. They do need to be carefully handled. Transparency is good; too much openness about matters that affect your health or wealth is dangerous.

Our need for creative thought is greater than ever. The bankers are starting to say that they “cannot save the Euro” and that they are preparing for several “country defaults”. So we need top creative thinking right now. That thinking is not only about numbers, it is about how we run the world, our standards and ethics and lifestyles.

Joo Wong expressed it well when she commented on my Create or Croak Daily Paradox. Well, the good news about the Social Networks is that they are making people think beyond the purely material. Initially, largely used for information and gossip I notice that they are becoming more analytical, more thoughtful about life’s fundamentals, the forgotten basics, what makes us tick.

Much of the philosophy is obvious, some a little trite, but it is all making people once again aware that there is more to life than printing worthless money. If the basics are expressed as sound-bites at least they are in tune with today’s other forms of communication. Long dissertations on the meaning of life are unlikely to be read by the majority; short, sharp, snappy aphorisms probably will.

So here’s a suggestion for contributing to any Social Network discourse. Let’s see if we can take one point being made and analyse it just a little more deeply to reflect what its meaning may be for us all and for our future lives. Here’s an example of what I mean.

Someone is commenting on the rising cost of living and the depressing reduction in the value of earnings, perhaps by saying that something has cost them a lot more than the last time they bought it. Let that person ask – even possibly answer – the question, why is this happening? What can we do to stop it? I say ‘stop’ rather than ‘beat’; outgunning leads to more slaughter, not less.

Every action has a meaning and we will handle it better if we can fathom that meaning. Broad explanations of “greed” and “human nature” do not help to define or solve the problem. We need better thought than that – from everyone.

It’s an acorn of an idea but it could become an oak of democracy.

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“Playing a musical instrument throughout your life protects your hearing in old age, a Canadian study suggests.”

Of course it does, not because you are playing it but because you are listening critically as you do so. Players constantly appraise their performance. The study should include those who listen to music played at a less than a deafening volume, too. The key is not just listening but listening critically.

The implications of these results are far reaching. They suggest that critical or active participation in life is a big defense against ageing, dementia, loss of faculties and boredom. Actually, we all know that already but it is nice to have it (sort of) confirmed. What I suspect we overestimate is the activity aspect while at the same time I think we underestimate the critical aspect of it.

Among my younger Mentees are many who think their education is too information driven and not analysis driven enough. Exams, which are perfectly capable of encompassing thought as well as fact, tend to measure knowledge rather than what it means or how valuable it is. The young grow up believing that a display of knowledge equals wisdom when it does nothing of the sort.

Appraisal or criticism is not negative, although it has become thought so by many because of the way it is handled when we are young. Clever critics extol the good so that it contrasts with the less good in such a way that the person who created or produced the piece is encouraged to do better, not to give up.

Whether educating, managing, training, recovering, correcting, or rewarding, many years mentoring experience has shown that simple progression of Appraising > Boosting > Convincing >>> Determination is the most effective concept for improving performance and self-confidence.  Easy as ABCD.

How can we all become better appraisers? Very simply.

When we observe we must ask why what we see is as it is. Everything has a reason of sorts. Working it out, with some guesswork inevitably, makes us look beyond the obvious for the unexpected, even the devious.

Having observed we must forecast. It requires a little courage and the confidence of knowing that everyone else would be as wrong as we may be. Once tried and practiced it becomes better than a game of poker. A consequence of our forecasting must be managing our and other people’s expectations. When we do this, outcomes improve significantly. Not only outcomes but satisfaction.

Critical participation in both physical and mental activity is not only active life prolonging. It is happy life enhancing.

Have a good ABDC day.

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Globalisation is not all good. Notice how the phrase “the global village” has quietly disappeared from our vocabulary? Wonder why?

The village is still the most stable community in the world because trust is a foundation of it. When that trust is broken retribution is seldom violent, more usually remedial. Helping each other is at the heart of village life. It is a rule without rulebooks, a pattern of behaviour void of checklists, a commonsense approach to live and let live, a harbinger of decent – if gossipy – relationships.

Villages are balanced societies with a good mixture of thinkers and doers. They include craftsmen and farmers, conservers and developers, professionals and labourers in proportions to the needs of the villagers. Being human they are not perfect but they cater for identifiable needs, demand acceptable standards of behaviour and provide a way of life that is both tolerable and agreeable.

Urban society is more complex, globalisation even harder and still largely unexplored. One of the less welcome side effects of globalisation is the reintroduction of slavery. Not, of course, personal slaves, although to see the way some foreign workers are treated makes me wonder if slavery really has been officially abolished. But a slave overseas is a slave unseen, removed from our personal responsibility, someone else’s problem.

Only it does not work like that. The cut price goods America and Europe – and the rest of the world – import from countries with low-cost production are the output of slaves just as much as personal slavery service was. As with slavery, the arguments about some earnings being better than no earnings are still trotted out to justify underpaying workers. If you want globalisation you must pay for it, enough to allow another to make a reasonable living.

Outsourcing passes work from high-cost societies to lower cost societies. The objective is to save money for the richer. The consequences are that the rich get richer and the poor get children to provide their pensions. That is why the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.

This can only happen for so long before the poor rebel, demand a decent standard of living and transfer some of the wealth by one means or another to themselves. At its extreme this means war or today’s equivalent, terror.

Nobody wants the world to become protectionist again because if it does it will precipitate more terror. On the other hand unbalanced societies where all the labouring work is outsourced become increasingly unbalanced. How can we deal with these two apparently irreconcilable problems?

The richer part of the world must recreate more balanced societies within it while at the same time transferring the knowledge and wisdom of how this balance is achieved to the poorer world. Funding to help build local versions of balanced communities to the poorer must be low interest investment rather than emergency charity. Skills, education and training will be the added bonus.

We can only do this when we are a better balanced society ourselves.

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We used to call him Uncle Hosni, until about twenty years ago when he appeared more wicked than cuddly. So he was deposed in the Arab Spring and all the Egyptians cheered and celebrated, though exactly what is not entirely clear. Freedom, perhaps, but freedom is expensive and requires discipline, order and strong leadership. Relief from tyranny, certainly, but tyranny has a side to it that the Israeli Ambassador and his staff rather appreciate today.

It’s not that there shouldn’t be progress and change; it’s just that destructive change seldom brings the brave new world we hope for but often leaves a powerful vacuum that becomes a centre for those with less than altruistic objectives. The message is: Don’t do away with the present order until you know where you are going. That Tree on the other side of the Field applies to countries as much as to companies, organizations of all sorts and individuals.

Nearer home, it is possible that the head of your company, your club, your religion is somewhat tyrannical. Perhaps his or her vision, worthy as it is, has blurred the purpose of all institutions, to serve their members and the wider society equally. Perhaps oppressive forces like shareholders or customers are making unreasonable demands on the leader. Perhaps he or she has been so busy issuing orders that they have failed to hear the voices of those they lead. They may even have failed to study the impact of the social networks.

Can they be retrained to adopt a more collegial approach without losing their grip and letting the mob hold sway? Will they understand both the timing they must delicately employ and the communication skills to effect change at the right pace and of the right sort? Will they begin with the Mirror Test to become more self-aware before engaging the cooperation of those they control?

There was a well-known advertisement for American Express that said “Don’t leave home without it”. I suggest that even more important than the credit card is where you are aiming for. Routes planned before the destination is clear have a habit of becoming a cruise to nowhere. Life is too short for many of those.

Dissatisfaction with the present is no reason to go into the unknown future without a map. There must be a logically thought out purpose, a method that is likely to work and an agreed order for the journey. Anything less will result in anarchy and suffering for the very people the revolution is supposed to help.

Hosni Mubarak was not a nice man but he was a big man. Much of the world depended on him to keep stability in Egypt and the Middle East. He did that and now he has gone. When a Big Man goes, who or what is to replace him?

It’s a question all of us must answer sooner or later.

—o0o—

No man ever listened himself out of a job – Calvin Coolidge

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“The last, clear, definite function of man, muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need; this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of manself and to manself to take back something of the wall, the house, the dam. To take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving…”

With these words John Steinbeck started the one philosophical chapter of “The Grapes of Wrath”, his 1930s masterpiece about dispossession of the poor by planet damage. His Cri de Coeur went unheeded and planet damage has continued unchecked since. But so did the message behind his story. Creative thought, that gift unique to mankind, was left underdeveloped and the human race lost its way en route to the bank.

Nobody knew then, nor do they know today, whether given enough creativity we might reach a wiser way to live. What is clear is that we didn’t. The inexorable search for happiness, described in the American constitution as a ‘pursuit’, became modeled on the Gadarene Swine with the consequence that greed for possession overtook need for balance. Now we are nearing the edge of the precipice our options are limited and our time is short.

Great creative thought of the sort that came from Socrates, Darwin, Leonado Da Vinci and Einstein requires great creative thinkers to understand and turn it into action. Technically, that has been achieved; socially, morally and philosophically we have lagged a long way behind. Where are today’s great religious leaders, politicians, teachers, business men, bankers?

Top football teams come from countries that encourage everyone to play football. Then not only do the best players rise to the top but everyone else appreciates good playing, understands the strategies and tactics of the field and, in their own way, contributes to the skill and success of those competing.

Courses to train creative thought are poorly attended. Our leaders do not encourage creativity, though they sometimes pay lip service to it. But they are frightened that new creative thoughts will threaten their positions, disturb their entrenched ideas and leave them looking like yesterday’s toast. Democracy was not intended to abolish leadership but to give it scope. Far from promoting the highest common factor it has been allowed to advance the lowest common denominator.

We are more than money and materials, we are spirit. That spirit is in – and can be seen in – everyone. It is not measurable, yields no cash dividends, and is not to be projected onto some other world or life. It is here and now. It is what makes life worthwhile, creates hope where there is little reason for it, brings joy even when sad things happen. It is brought to life only when there is great creativity, greatly understood.

“..minds aching to create beyond the single need; this is man.”

Can you encourage one more creative thought today and every day?

—o0o—

Creativity: The ability to perceive relationships

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Leaders today are torn between strong decision making, firmly communicated, and collegiality. They always have been but poor communications, lack of jobs and wealth and an established social pecking order made the choice easier, perhaps inevitable. Now the young are often better informed, if not better educated, than their bosses. Social networks allow them to exchange information about, even to persecute, who they like and dislike.

Collegial leadership is vastly more difficult than dictatorial control, as the old dictators have found, often painfully. It requires a sensitivity not previously thought to be an asset to a leader. It makes the balance between independence and obedience a fine one, shifting all the time as circumstances change and rules break down.

All leadership programmes should now be based on two-way learning and cooperative decisions but that does not mean that a leader listens to views, adds them together and produces an ‘average’ to suit everyone. Quite the contrary, in fact.  The leader does ask and listen, but still decides. The lengthening shadow is still his or hers whether politician, business executive or head of a religious order.

Possibly the best example of the conflict between asking and telling is demonstrated in a remarkable film “Of Gods and Men”. Set in a Cistercian monastery in Algeria in 1995, and based on a true story, it is remarkable for its ability to convey strong sentiment without a trace of sentimentality and for its success in sustaining a single decision as the core of the story through a long and well-paced movie.

Everyone who leads or aspires to do so should see this film. Those who care deeply about growing the people they work with will learn that the pain they suffer in the process is not weakening but strengthening. Those who think they know all about leadership will learn, quite simply, that they don’t. See it anyway because it is a great movie with the best facial shots I have seen in over fifty years of studying and reviewing for the film industry.

After you have seen it you will ponder much about the leadership that led to the dénouement, about the purpose of making any decision and about the entitlement of ‘self’ and the collegiality of ‘other’. You will marvel at the simple relevance of the title and how silence is still the most powerful communicator we have.

Most of all you will realise why being a leader yourself is inevitable.

—o0o—

Leadership is persuading others first to follow, then to lead

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As you will have noticed I am including occasional comments on the current educational system. In order to make this more than one person’s opinion, I have asked several people to contribute their thoughts. Today, John Richardson, Professor of Literature at the National University of Singapore, speaking in a personal capacity, has this to say:

My junior school in the north of England had three houses. One was named after a local poet, one after the first freeman of the village (whatever that means), and one after an educational reformer. William Foster had been an MP for the nearby city of Bradford in the nineteenth century, and he had introduced the legislation which made elementary education compulsory for all. In other words, he had helped produce something that we take for granted today.

Each of the three men was held up to us back then as an admirable person and a role model. Foster was certainly admirable; the reforms he achieved were long-lasting and beneficial. I’m not sure, however, that he’s really a good role model for the twentieth century – at least not for twentieth-century educators.

In my lifetime, I have witnessed a number of British politicians try to be latter-day William Fosters. They have overhauled the secondary school system at least three times, and the university system at least twice. And it goes on. Even this morning, I read in the news of the “revolution” taking place in British schools. My heart sank because we’re not in the nineteenth century any more.

Twenty-first century British schools do not – in my view – need a revolution. Nor do schools in any developed country. They need a series of small, incremental changes. The educational engine doesn’t need to be stripped out and replaced. Some pipes need repairing, some nuts tightening (take that as a pun, if you like). At most, a few new components could be added.

My own wish-list for education in the countries I know consists of two repairs and one new component.

First, I’d like to see a diminution of the grades culture. I don’t want to see it destroyed. Assessment is important and extrinsic rewards like grades can be great motivators. But there is too much emphasis on quantification. A student’s success, a school’s success, a university’s success – all are reduced to number.

And that is a reduction. The strange and unique quality of human beings is that they seek knowledge and wisdom. Education is, in part, the institutionalized form of that seeking. It can neither be measured nor driven by numbers alone.

Easily said – but how to effect such a change? That I don’t know.

Second, I’d like to see a greater emphasis on examining the sources of knowledge. This is not a call for skills over content. Knowledge is important in itself, and education should not abandon it for intellectual five-finger exercises. But students should know where knowledge comes from, and be able to evaluate how secure it is. They should develop a critical attitude to knowledge.

Of course, many students do develop that, and many teachers encourage it either unconsciously through example or consciously through teaching. But there is probably room for more of this.

That’s the second repair I’d like, and the second which I have no idea how to realise.

Finally, I’d like a very small practical new component. The keyboard has replaced the pen as the main tool of learning. Indeed, it has surpassed the pen. We do a lot more with our keyboards than we ever could with our pens. And yet, there is little conscious attempt to teach keyboard skills. My children, card-carrying members of the IT generation, are three-finger typists like me.

These are small things. Education in the developed world is nothing like education in the nineteenth century. It doesn’t need new William Fosters to turn everything round, or start everything anew.

It needs slow, thoughtful ongoing improvement through small, careful measures.

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How do you create a word picture of a 33-year-old mother who has trekked from Somalia to Kenya, given birth to her sixth baby on the way and not eaten anything for twenty two days? There is only one way and Mrs Weheleey Osman Haji has found it. She has called her latest baby Lisha, which means Life. Can you hold back a tear on reading that?

Lisha was born under an Acacia tree, the sort of tree that lines suburban streets in avenues named after them. The avenue that Lisha has traveled, so far in his mother’s womb, and must now still travel to reach a poor refugee camp is fifty miles long. There is little to look forward to for Lisha, his mother or his siblings.

On the journey, Lisha will pass babies left to die in the desert for want of their mother’s strength to carry them on. He will be accosted by touts offering to speed him and the family to a safe camp for money and then like as not be abandoned by the thieves who have taken the money. He will compete for any water that is available, a drop to drink being the most he can expect, if any.

For twenty years Somalia has been ungoverned and ungovernable. The current drought cannot be ascribed directly to the changing climate of the planet but it is probably connected with it. The anarchy that has left the country in such a state is not high on the agendas of most of us. The plight of the desperate people is so familiar that we are exhausted with pity, possibly even with giving our pennies to help them.

What can we do?

We can give more, but will our gift reach those who need it? Sadly the answer is often ‘no’. We can pray but is there anyone listening and willing to help? We can clamor for more attention by governments, by the United Nations, by the refugee organisations, but they are all stretched beyond what is possible.

We can even express our disgust at the President’s relaxing the pollution standards ‘to help business’ and further damage the planet but our letter won’t be read, let alone be acted upon. We can blog beg for aid but the pot is not full for most people and family is their first responsibility.

There is one thing we can do, however, and it is something that we should do now and keep on doing and doing until it is done. We can make our children, ourselves, our contemporaries, our educators, our politicians, our friends, our religions, look further to the years ahead to ensure that the legacy the last century is leaving will never be left again. We can promote a longer view than today’s profit. We can see lying in the desert our own grandchildren and great grandchildren if more thought and care is not forthcoming.

It may not be much but if we don’t do it, Lisha and Lisha’s children have nothing to look forward to.

Lisha deserves better than that.