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Trying to book an apartment in UK in December we received the following reply:

Due to the long stay nature of our corporate clients

with options to extend, it would be to (sic) early to

offer availability. I suggest you re check in October.

While this is a poor illustration of the depth of the UK recession it may partly explain the cause of it. It is certainly a vivid example of the problems attitude and culture can create. How does an employer interview for attitude? How does a business create a culture of care?

It is fairly easy to find out if a candidate for a job has the technical skills needed to do it successfully. Qualifications, experience and simple tests can predict with reasonable certainty fitness for purpose. So why is it reported that nearly half of management hirings fail within the first eighteen months? And if the reports are true that 90% of these failings are due to attitude how can employees demonstrate good attitudes both at interview and when they start work?

Contrary to popular belief, employers seldom look for people to join them who merely perpetuate the existing business. All businesses are subject to swift, sometimes dramatic, change. That implies that the existing culture will need modifying from time to time. This is not to throw out the good aspects of it but to recognise that changing technological and competitive situations will demand a developing, not a static culture.

When interviewing a candidate for a job I look for one vital ingredient beyond the skills needed to perform the work – determination. If everyone I hire is determined it won’t make for an easy ride for me as a boss but it will make the business very successful. How do I recognise that determination? By the candidate’s enthusiasm in preparing for the interview, by the focus the candidate has on the business and me, the interviewer, rather than on himself or herself and by the intelligence and appropriateness of the questions s/he asks me.

What does a determined candidate offer for the business that others don’t?

First, an attitude of success. People who are determined to achieve, achieve. Second, the ability to build on their determination by the key management technique of encouragement. Encouragement spawns enthusiasm; enthusiasm fuels determination. That does not work unless there is a spark of determination to start with.

So when employees have run the gauntlet of an ‘attitude interview’ and got the job what can they do to reinforce and build on the expectations they have so enticingly raised?

For the answer please see my article of 29Sep11 ‘The First Five Hundred Minutes’ http://www.terrificmentors.com/2011/09/the-first-five-hundred-minutes/

Whoever called these the ‘soft skills’ ought to be sued for misrepresentation. They are seriously harder than most of the technical skills. Let us call them the Attitude Skills. They can be found in a wide variety of types and styles of people. Their common factor is that they succeed.

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You may often have heard me refer to The Tree on the other side of the Field. It is a vital part of life’s fulfillment; without it you will never have a destination, never feel that life is, has been or will be worthwhile. If you’d like the story of the Tree, please ask me.

Two men were walking down a road together. It was early evening and the sun was soon to set. They were weary because they had walked a long way already and there was nowhere in sight that could provide them with shelter and a night’s refreshment and rest.

“Please tell me,” said the younger man, “when do you think we will reach the nearest inn? I am tired, my feet hurt and I am hungry.”

“We do not know when we shall reach the inn,” replied the older man, “the map is not clear. So we have two opportunities. We can rest, which will help your hurting feet and weariness but won’t solve your hunger, or we can continue without pausing which will get you food and rest sooner but will make your feet hurt even more. Which would you prefer?”

The young man thought about it and replied “Why did we not get a better map so that we could judge the distance to the inn and make a rational decision?”

“Ah,” replied the older man, “that is because you were anxious to set out so quickly that we skimped on our preparation for the journey.”

It is not possible to map out your whole life’s journey. There will be opportunities, challenges, accidents, events of good luck along the way. If you know where you are aiming for and you have prepared adequately to get there you will be able to assess those chance events, both good and bad, and decide whether they are worth pursuing or not.

To blossom fully a Tree must have Roots. Only when its Roots are deep and firm can it sway successfully in the high winds and handle the storms that come its way.

Where do those Roots come from?

Parents, home, family, school and university teachers, close friends. These good, and sometimes not so good, people all contribute to the roots of our tree by helping to shape our purposes, our principles and values, our hearts and courage and our relationships.

All these people have agendas which range from their success to yours. Most agendas are mixed. These roots become less influential and effective as you grow up. Children and parents go their own ways, as is right. School and university pass; friends change and move on.

The Tree must renew its Roots, delve even deeper into life if it is to continue growing. The Roots that the Tree must grow are not concrete pillars or iron girders. They are unique, living, growing roots – your own, nobody else’s. They do not come out of a recipe or result from a prescription. They grow by experimentation, encouragement, enthusiasm, determination.

Mentors are the gardeners who help those Roots to grow. If your Roots seem shaky, a little underdeveloped, not substantial enough to support your Tree in a storm, a Mentor will help you to find the Tree, map the journey and grow the Roots.

That is what Mentors do.

One of our Mentor’s, Denise Pang, has contributed much to the idea

and shaping of this Daily Paradox. I am very grateful to her.

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When you draw a dotted line on your organisation chart do you think that you are causing confusion? May I suggest that you should? I have seen many dotted lines in my time and drawn more than a few and I have observed the damage they can do if not handled properly. Line managers run a business and carry the profit responsibility; staff functions are there to serve them, not to boss them.

That is not to say that staff functions are unimportant. They are vital to the smooth running of a business. Whether accountants, HR, marketing services, CSR, Health & Safety or compliance of any sort, business would be in deep trouble without them. But, as the old saying goes, ‘accountants should be on tap not on top’. One of the reasons that capitalism as a concept has performed less well in recent years is that it has become purely finance oriented. It is now dominated by ROI and KPI at the expense of the sustainable and socially acceptable.

Unravelling this situation will not be solved simply by making the lines of authority clearer. There will need to be a change of purpose imposed by – or at least accepted by – shareholders. Moral behaviour of business people as well as their better treatment of the planet is a prerequisite to making a new capitalism work. However, clarity of control and responsibility will help to achieve these aims.

I have come across organisations – not just businesses – where, for example, HR controls pay and conditions, overriding line managers whatever their seniority. That is clearly wrong. It is desirable that a line manager should consult the experts in any function in order that he may be well informed and keep within the law in making his decisions. It is wrong that they should normally have control over him.

One of the keys to good management is leadership. Leaders’ styles will differ but they must be accountable and responsible, something that can only happen when they have authority to make decisions. How is the balance between line and staff to be maintained?

Since line managers make the profits of a business the staff functions are indirectly paid by them. This gives rise to some antagonism between the profit centres of a business and the so-called head office costs. The simplest way to make sure that services are used is to charge the profit centres for them. This may sound contradictory. If the profit centres have to pay won’t they resist using the services? The evidence is to the contrary.

A modest time-based contribution for the use of services actually makes them more efficiently used and more appreciated. It is not necessary to charge the full economic rate; an element of subsidy is normal and leaves the centre in part control of what service is to be provided. We all appreciate what we pay for more than we appreciate the wholly “free” – even when we know perfectly well that ‘free’ is a rare occurrence in this world.

Next time you draw a dotted line on your organisation chart, think about how confusing it can be – and how easily the confusion can be mitigated.

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A school in Singapore has broken twenty-seven records aiming to get some of them into the Guinness Book of records. Well done them. Of course breaking records in such diverse ways as largest number of people standing on one leg simultaneously or biggest sand art montage or largest logo made of balloons does not necessarily improve exam results but it is worthy of celebration for another reason.

Singapore built its amazing success on discipline and obedience. It could not have been achieved otherwise. Singapore has only one natural resource – people. In the early days of independence in the 1960s, people had to be harnessed to the tasks first of survival and then of building financial success. The prices paid for this were some loss of political freedom and a failure to develop creativity.

Every society has creative people in it and Singapore had its share but creative thinking was generally not encouraged because of the inherent questioning of authority and ‘stepping out of the box’ that goes with it. It was assumed (in my opinion, correctly) that such questioning would weaken the discipline needed to build a city-state. So creativity was not then encouraged.

All that has changed in the last few years and Singapore is starting to produce high level creativity in digital media, the world of high technology and the arts. We have an outstanding Symphony Orchestra, excellent local writers and actors plus computer and internet innovation as good as any silicone valley. There is still room for improvement.

Great footballers and cricketers come from countries where most people play these games; great music, from countries where everyone learns an instrument. So it is with great creativity. The more people engage in it the more successful will be the creative output.

And that is why breaking records is a good idea. It gives pupils the chance to think of the next record to break, to invent ways of exploring what is a record and the opportunity to think about the relevance of records as a measure of human achievement.

Education – not just in Singapore but all over the world – has become too dreary, joyless, financial-reward focused. The thrill of discovery has been replaced by the drudge of repetition and regurgitation.  Dish up the stock answer and get your certificate; challenge the established order and get labeled ‘difficult’. We have to learn to play in teams, for sure, but we also have to learn to build teams, our own teams with our own new ideas.

I have a challenge for enterprising Ng Shok Yan, Principal of the Fajar Secondary School. She encouraged the ‘record breaking’ experiment that has such possibilities. Can she now see if the school can break the most important record of all – to bring more joy and laughter than any other school to the children she so clearly cherishes?

That would be truly an outstanding and worthy record to break. Go for it!

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New Zealand is one of the last frontiers of Paradise. Beautiful, varied, offering climates ranging from sub-tropical to sub-Antarctic these larger than life islands are clean, fresh and unpolluted. With mountains to rival the Highlands of Scotland and the three million year old gravel Canterbury Plains with their windbreak hedges at times dwarfing even the Great Wall itself, New Zealand can truly claim scenery and sights to stir the heart.

Climate is important in a world becoming prone to violent extremes of weather. Even at the top of North Island and the bottom of South Island the climate is temperate permitting sunbathing at noon and cosy fires in the evening for much of the year. The environment is significantly undamaged because there is not great commercial prospect from hurting it and not enough people to support to make doing so essential.

With a population of under 4.5 million there is plenty of space in a country whose land mass is bigger than the UK which houses 65 million people. It’s an outdoor place with skiing, white-water rafting, rugby, cricket, wonderful horses and great equestrian events of all sorts.

Getting from one place to another is easy even when the drive is long because there are virtually no traffic jams and the roads, though seldom dual-carriageway, are well maintained – no mean feat in a country where rockfalls are common and many roads explore passes chiseled out of energetic terrain.

Altogether a place for the young – and yet the young are leaving for Australia and for the world’s cities. New Zealand has a net outflow of people. Some come, mostly to retire and find breathing space, air and pristine water. More leave to find jobs, the attractions of urban living and those material advantages which only large populations can provide.

Multiple choice means multiple people.

The attractions of being well away from the action, of potential self-sufficiency, of trees so deep-rooted they can grow to Amazonian heights, of grapevines glistening in the damp sunshine, of a pace of life to restore the soul and permit time to wonder at the glories of the world – all these seem overwhelmed by the need to congregate in bigger masses, to seek the glitzy world of high tech and celeb and the material standards that go with them.

Why is it that the grass of paradise always seems greener on the other side of the fence?

New Zealand’s paradise was partly fashioned by earthquake and there are still many of them to remind the inhabitant that the country lies on a major fault. Mercifully, most of them are confined to limited areas and do little damage. It seems that whenever there is potential paradise on this earth there is some compensating distress to counteract it.

Perhaps that is true of all paradise?

The first time I landed in New Zealand over thirty years ago the pilot announced over the aircraft loudspeaker “Welcome to Auckland, ladies and gentlemen, please out your watches back twenty-five years”. The jibe would never be permitted today. For all that it is unfair in many respects it still has a comforting ring of permanence and stability about it that few other places can boast. Whether to live there is one question; there is no option that it is a paradise that must be visited.

We don’t have too many of them left on the planet.

CLICK to listen to the audio version of this greeting

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Gong Xi Fa Cai  – Happy New Year – to all readers and listeners to The Daily Paradox.

The year ahead looks challenging so we shall need all the help the Dragon can give us.

May you prosper in health, happiness and fulfillment.

From all of us at Terrific Mentors International:

Eliza Quek quekeliza@gmail.com +65 94567360

Denise Pang denise.pang@terrificmentors.com +65 97871420

Mike Langton mike.langton@gmail.com _65 98166076

Tan Chi Chiu tancc@terrificmentors.com +65 98629755

John Bittleston john.bittleston@terrificmentors.com +65 94568785

www.TerrificMentors.com

The next Daily Paradox will be on 25Jan12

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There are two distinct camps on the subject of transparency and secrecy. Whichever side you are on you will likely have a feeling that the other side has a case, too. Some of the people I have talked to about the subject would indeed be on the other side if it were not for their personal  interests or those of others they care for or about. The issue is important to our creative future.

As an author I want my royalties. They don’t amount to that much but they reassure me that someone, somewhere is reading what I have written. Authors like that. They like it so much that they do about 96% of their writing without pay, anyway. They have something to say; they want to be heard. As a human being I want everyone to learn as much as they can, to make as much use as possible of the tremendous gift of knowledge that we have and to lead ‘forfilled’ lives – lives fulfilled for others. Half of me says ‘you must pay’, the other half says ‘please take’.

It is right that those who invest their time and money to make new discoveries, to illuminate the path of humankind and to help towards that desirable goal should be rewarded. “The labourer is worthy etc.” It is also right that knowledge should be free, that transparency and openness is the road to better behaviour and less corruption.

Although intellectual property protection is the focus of the controversial bills in the US and has led to Wikipedia making its grand gesture, there is more to it than creative protection.  Your time is valuable. When someone calls you about work outside your working hours you answer. They are now intruding on your time. Should you be paid for that? The Brazilian President thinks you should. He passed a law. It is proving unworkable but the thought is there. Overtime in Brazil has become very popular.

How about the government department that demands your time to complete forms and business returns? You pay them for their time through your taxes. How do they pay you? Or the bank that keeps you waiting on the phone as they rattle off advertisements while you queue for attention? Perhaps you should even be paid for standing in a taxi rank – after all, you pay them if they wait for you.

What to give and what to sell – that is the question.

All reasonable people want the world to take advantage of our increasing knowledge. Apart from anything else it may be the way to save the human race on the crowded planet. It is certainly the way to longer, fitter life and to more enjoyment from it. But so much have we concentrated on the importance of wealth that we have become used to measuring everything in money and are inclined to be cynical about those things that do not have a cash value. This is ironical as we see money being devalued daily by the printing press.

Our inclination to measure everything is inherently sensible – up to a point. It leads, however, to our trying to measure the immeasurable and ignoring anything that does not fit the model. A good example is smiling. We know that people who smile make a better living and live longer than those who don’t. Yet we cannot measure the value of a single smile in dollar terms.

An additional problem where IP is concerned is that some countries ignore the laws of intellectual property protection altogether. Trying to enforce one set of rules at one end of the pitch and a different set of rules at the other is neither possible nor sensible.

There is no easy answer to what should be protected and what should be free. A complex answer will be unworkable. What should we do?

I hope that some of my readers will want to contribute to the debate. It is going to continue for a long time.

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Railway staff in Indonesia have started hanging concrete balls above

train tracks to try to prevent commuters from riding on carriage roofs.

I challenge any writer of a Daily Paradox to resist this one.

The problem, of course, is serious. Indonesians, and others, enjoy a free ride on top of a railway carriage any time. Apart from the economic benefits there is the relatively fresh air, the cool slipstream ruffling the hair, a sense of adventure found in few other places.

And the views! Short of Nat Geo Wild where else can you be part of a fast-moving safari, safely above any dangerous creepy-crawlies but very much part of the environment. It must be exhilarating, challenging, scary as a bungee jump, satisfying as any armchair theatre. Alas, it is not risk-free. Indeed, many lives are lost in the search for the adventure perk that is about to go.

It is not as though the authorities have been idle. Several attempts have been made to discourage the practice of mounting the carriages. Water canon, beloved of the French authorities in clearing protesters away from Place de la Concorde; grease with its successful record discouraging pigeons from gaining a ledge about Nelson’s head; red paint to identify infringers of the Railway Company’s regulations; all have been tried to no avail.

The system has its own built-in corrective technique – electrocution by the wires supplying power to the vehicle. Even the most authoritarian enthusiast would find this a bit drastic especially as most contacts with a live wire prove fatal. ‘Better,’ it has been decided, ‘to deter rather than to decease’.

So bring on the grapefruit-sized concrete balls.

Aficionados of the Dad’s Army comedy series will recall the enthusiastic promotion by the Sergeant for the use of bayonets applied rectally and accompanied by his immortal phrase ‘”they don’t like it up them”. Concrete balls will not, mercifully, have the same effect as bayonets but they can deliver a sharp smack to the head, and likely one that will never be forgotten. Or, perhaps, remembered.

And so an era of top-of-the-carriage riding is coming to an end. Mourned by those who will be deprived of free personal mobility, it will, I am sure, be welcomed by the railway staff as a preferable alternative to actions with more dire consequences. Personally I shall regard it as one more freedom ruthlessly removed by authority determined to make life risk and adventure free.

But then I have never got to the top of the carriage, so I am hardly qualified to say.

CLICK to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox

Now we are in between the gift-giving season of Christmas and the Ang Pow (Red Packet) season of Lunar New Year it is a good time to ask about Greetings and Thanks (G&T). You probably have been – or shortly will be – on the receiving end of greetings, perhaps in the form of cards, and gifts. What has been your response? Did you say thank-you? If so, how? Was your ‘thank you’ a perfunctory mantra or did you write imaginative, creative thoughts for the person whose kindness you were acknowledging?

‘Thank you’ is a two-little-words phrase most people are taught to say when they are growing up. Have you noticed them saying it after reaching maturity? Would you say ‘less and less’, perhaps? If so, that seems to me to be a shame. But even if you get the two little words could they not be more elegantly expressed, accompanied by some information, news of what has been happening to the thanker? To me, two-little-words is sometimes too-little-words.

Sending colourful cards at times of festival and joy is a lovely idea. Even better if you have made them yourself. Many today produce a ‘round robin’ newsletter. Some scoff at these but they are a genuine attempt to keep friends and relations informed. As such they are valuable, even if the saga of the cat up the tree was more impactful locally than internationally.

Maybe you did not get thanked for your gift. How did you feel about that? Did it predispose you to redouble your efforts to think of something nice to give the next time or was the recipient relegated to the “we can re-cycle that” pile? Novel and imaginative ways of saying thank you are always welcome. At least the giver will remember that s/he has been thanked.

A kind and knowledgeable boss and Mentor once took my wife and me to the opera at Covent Garden in London. It was a touching performance of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. The lead singer was Yvonne Minton, then a brilliant up-and-coming Australian soprano. My boss was a rich man who lived alone. Flowers seemed inappropriate, a bottle of wine, superfluous. So to say thank-you I arranged a small dinner party with Yvonne Minton and her husband. We went to a famous restaurant called Boulestin near the opera house. At midnight, Miss Minton sang an aria for us all. My friend said he had never been thanked so imaginatively. He remembered the gesture for the rest of his life.

Less happy occasions are when we have to write to console someone for a lost friend or spouse. It always surprises me that condolence letters talk about the deceased when they should be addressing the living, those who have suffered loss and bereavement. At these times the person needing help is the one left behind.

Elaborate, gushing thanks are not what are required. A little effort to show that some thought and time has been spent on acknowledging the kindness shown is an investment in something more than future gifts or relationships.

It is a prayer of gratitude that comes back to our own spirit.

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Is the mission of your organisation to achieve excellence? No-brainer, really, isn’t it? Every organisation wants to achieve excellence whether it says so specifically or not. I cannot imagine anyone wanting their output to live ‘down’ to mediocrity. Many companies include excellence as part of their mission statement; others just imply it.

Where do we see excellence around us? Think of the products or services you have bought over the last few weeks. Were any of them truly excellent? I am sure many of them fulfilled their purpose, were adequate for what was needed and got the job done. But ‘excellence’? I am not so sure.

Surely if a job is adequate, that is all that is required? After all, quality control is set deliberately to satisfy the customer, not to amaze him. In fact, quality today is often minimum acceptable rather than maximum attainable. Are we as buyers getting a better than fair deal?

For the problem, if problem there be, is with us, not with the supplier. We are the people who suffer. Suppliers are trained to outsource their problems, to externalize their costs, to leave themselves as invulnerable as possible to criticism and complaint.

Over the holiday period I did an experiment – not at scientific but at anecdotal level. I have many people to buy presents for, several of them overseas. I did so using the internet extensively. The outcome of my experiment was not what I had expected.

Older companies gave intelligible, easy to use directions on buying; they provided a person to speak to if the process was not working properly or if the order needed amending. They offered good and intelligible advice aimed at getting the customer what he wanted. Their produce was of high quality and the descriptions of it, while inevitably involving enthusiastic promotion, did not raise expectations too high for me to be generally delighted. And, significantly, they all asked me afterwards if I was satisfied with what I had ordered.

More technical purchases ranged from merely unsatisfactory to disastrous. Getting refunds for mis-sold products was a nightmare. Seeking advice on making the products work was little short of impossible. The attitude was ‘you have already purchased this and will receive repeat purchases whether you want them or not because we have your credit card details’.

I said the problem lay with the customer. This is true unless the suppliers are effectively in a cartel, agreeing unacceptable terms among themselves. It is, of course, impossible to say which internet suppliers are in cartels and over what aspects of selling. Many clearly agree the after-sales level of service to reduce it to a minimum. Others may or may not ‘ring’ prices. I had naively thought they were all too competitive to do that.

It is not possible to draw firm conclusions from my limited experiment but I think the following lessons can be learnt.

No customer will be happy if the service and goods he receives meet only the minimum standard.  A feeling of being cheated, unsupported and generally let down is not the basis of a lasting relationship. Happy customers think they got that little bit extra service or quality.

No supplier’s staff will be satisfied in their jobs if all they receive is complaints and returns. Good morale is achieved by customers praising the business for its efforts. When such praise is lacking the effort becomes sluggish, compounding the poor service into a downward spiral.

Excellence is tangible and visible but the cause of it is an attitude, not a rule book. A famous actor once claimed that his success was down to his having “a talent to amuse”. Everyone serving others should aim to have “a talent to please”.

That way lies excellence.