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At an interesting talk last night at the Singapore Management University, Sir Brian Fender, a man with a distinguished career in Education and Science, spoke of the Institute of Knowledge Transfer of which he is President. Most of his audience had not heard of the Institute before, although all knew of organizations addressing technology transfer. Sir Brian made a compelling case for the Institute and the need to pepper knowledge transfer with creative and entrepreneurial thinking.

Inevitably, the question of measuring knowledge transfer came up. I was much relieved when he said that broadly you couldn’t. It is a good moment to remind ourselves of the pros and cons of measurement.

Measure is good. It produces numbers, a more accurate form of words. Where we might have said ‘better’ we can now say how much better. From the day man looked at his foot and use it to describe a distance, measurement has enabled the species to create engineering that works, buildings that stand up and a value for goods and services, symbolized by money. It is right that we should measure as much as we can. The operative word is ‘can’.

When we seek to measure certain things we fail. Pain is notoriously difficult to measure because so subjective. Beauty, love, fear, jealousy, hatred are likewise impossible to measure objectively. Minimum quality can be prescribed but outstanding quality goes beyond the five golden stars. I have seen quality in something as prosaic as a barbed-wire fence that has been breathtaking and memorable.

While it is good to measure as much as we can it is important that we never delude ourselves that measurement is a substitute for judgment. It is an aid to judgment, never a replacement for it. Statistics, we know, cannot lie. Unfortunately, men can. The misleading manipulation of ‘measures’ of performance of companies and other organisations, of shares and even of academic results is often more damaging than the absence of such spurious figures.

A danger of too much reliance on measurement is the potential abdication of personal thought, rather in the way that experience is often used to let someone in authority off the hook when a decision goes wrong. Judgment is about forecasting not about amassing data.

I wish Sir Brian well with his interesting Institute of Knowledge Transfer. The faster we can spread knowledge, the sooner we can begin to dig our way out of the poverty trap that engulfs so much of the world. Who knows, it may even be able to help Europe.

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When the big companies started in Hong Kong they were called The Hongs. They were financed, owned and run mostly by European bosses who had shrewd business heads, fairly easy business ethics and a good sense of what made money and what didn’t. They faced a problem not unknown today – they could not speak the language of the workers or the vendors from whom they were buying labour or raw materials.

Their solution was based on an age old concept of the middle man. You find them everywhere. In the armed services they are called Sergeant Majors, or equivalent depending on the service. They were the go-betweens linking the bosses to the implementers. Their interface turned orders from above into the language the worker understood and, on the reverse route, the workers grumbles and concerns into language that bosses could understand and react to.

The ham in the sandwich is not always the best place to be. However, if you play your cards right it can be interesting, powerful and extremely profitable. In the early days of the Hongs the Compradors were key to the success of the business – and they knew it. That is why Robert Hotung, a Comprador in Jardine Matheson in the late nineteenth century was supposed to be the richest man in Hong Kong.

Middle managers today have had a rough ride. Many have lost their jobs as the inexorable advance of technology has flattened the management pyramid. Even if you have a PA or two you now probably look at and possibly answer your own emails. The days of the secretary and the shorthand typist are a distant memory.

The gap between bosses and workers is however bigger than ever. Many bosses seldom visit their factories or mines. Few know the names of the workers who produce their wealth. The days of having to reach out to the Trades Unions have passed with more labour available than jobs to meet the demand. The boss’s car has darkened windows now so that he can read his papers without the distraction of the real world outside.

Where there is a gap there is an opportunity. The middle manager is ideally placed to fill that gap and to become as powerful as the Comprador was. He understands the language of management with all its jargon and politicspeak. He can talk to the workers and the geeks at the technological coal face. Where one language – often literally, as in the old days – does not meet the other he can interpret and created understanding.

Like the Comprador he can expect reward from both sides – the service must be even handed and not biased. That demands double payment, naturally. A middle manager who sees miscommunication lurking should position himself to represent each party to the other. His power – and wealth – can grow dramatically when he becomes the Comprador.

Do you know of situations where a middle man could help?

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We all know people who have poor feng shui. Pessimists at heart – though they may cover this with a false outward optimism – they often look sad and tired, as though weary of life. The bottle is always half empty to them and the future holds nothing but whatever they think they are suffering from or deprived of. They take no risks because they believe they will fail anyway.

Strangely, they are seldom the people who have been treated really badly by life. Victims of distortions at birth, of injustice and of life-changing accidents often learn the value of life better than those who appear to have everything. A possibly shortened life encourages ‘maxing out’.

I once spotted the wife of one of the richest men in Asia sitting at a jewelry counter. She was not paying attention to the lady enthusiastically serving her but was glancing around. Her eyes were begging for attention – attention from anyone. It was so sad. Money seldom buys optimism or a sense of personal security, more often fear that you are loved only for it.

Some people develop a tendency to fail because of their personalities, some because of their treatment while children. Much damage is done by unnecessary scolding and criticism. The way to a child’s future is through encouragement not punishment. We fuss about the protection of children from all sorts of often imagined horrors while at the same time ignoring the source of greatest damage – discouragement.

A person whose early life has been dominated by negativity will probably grow up negative, expecting the worst, anticipating failure. I know of some who are so imbued with their – as they see it – inevitable failure that when they do succeed they immediately give the credit to others. They suffer from the second worst fear of all – the fear of success.

How can poor self-esteem be turned around? The process is simple, the discipline, hard.

First, all self-pity derives from an over-active self-awareness. It is good to be self aware, to know one’s strengths and weaknesses, to accept oneself with aspirations to improve. When self-awareness becomes naval-gazing, obsession with whom one is and what makes one tick, it is destructive. All the real or metaphorical self-flagellation in the world will not make a huge difference to your personality but a minor change in behaviour can make you a new person.

Second, to refocus attention on other people and on what is going on in the world is the surest way to optimism. I see you have a startled look – surely it’s the other people who cause all the trouble? Not at all. Of course, they do things we do not like sometimes but they remain infinitely fascinating, always compellingly complex and inevitably with much to teach us. There is no human being without a good side to them and the bad side is our best source of learning.

Apart from other people, the world is an overwhelmingly interesting place. Not to be interested in it is, of course, a right but it is also a tragedy. You pay good money for theatre performances, for movies and for other entertainments. Current events is the best entertainment.

Enthusiasm is something we expect from other people. In practice, we need look no further than ourselves for it. Think of the moment when your foot touches the floor as you get up in the morning. That is the truly magic moment of life. Things to do, lots to learn, objectives to be achieved, life to be lived.

Who needs external enthusiasm? It’s all there for the taking.

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One of the greatest causes of profit failure in a business is under using its resources and the most underused resource is people. Much is said about the value of human resources. For all the rhetoric, they are still regularly undervalued, underdeveloped and often treated poorly. Bosses behave like accountants, not mentors. When faced with either understanding the people who work with them or understanding the figures they prefer the latter; figures don’t answer back.

The change from the long established system of Bosses Orders (BO) to Authority Collegial (AC) implemented by Directive Control (DC) is happening so fast that some are failing to understand what is going on. The new AC, DC order requires that everyone in an organization takes part in its running and, more importantly, its development. This means that everyone must think and a key part of that thinking is being wiling to experiment with ideas – and fail.

The lesson now must be to fail fast and fail smart.

What does it mean? Surely failure is often the result of going too fast? And how can you fail smartly – the word failure means not achieving the desired end. Can that ever be smart?

Failure is regarded differently in different parts of the world. In Asia it is the equivalent of a mortal sin. This is a pity and is the cause of much lost creativity and many un-launched products and services. So much has failure been castigated that courage has been suppressed and risk-averseness has been introduced into many systems from education to management.

More kindly dealt with in Europe and positively encouraged in the United States, failure is seen as a useful learning tool and something from which others can benefit since they do not want to repeat mistakes already demonstrated to them. Failing can never be fun, but seen as part of a learning process it can be turned to good use for those who fail and for those who have not – yet.

Preparation for any event is important but too much preparation is debilitating. The phrase ‘decision paralysis’ comes from a habit my very first boss had – making a list of the pros and cons of a decision and never reaching the end of the list. I once worked with a huge corporation who regularly put four or five people on one decision where others would have had only one person making it. They made very slightly better decisions as a result but they always made them too late by which time the boat had sailed.

Failing smart means calculating the risk of failure and its consequences – and having Plan B. This also requires courage – risk assessing is not a scientific process. It means guessing the likelihood of this or that sequence of events, itself a risky business.

Involvement of everyone in the new order of authority, for countries and well as for organizations, works when the act of failing is part of the acknowledged process, is accepted and recognized as a learning system. Only then can authority become truly collegial and control become directive rather than imperative.

Forward to AC, DC.

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Actually he wasn’t very old but a title “The Young Man and the Goat” wouldn’t sell. He was only born in 1993, although he had had some presence through his parents since 1958. His age did not matter too much. What mattered was his Goat. The Young Man and his Goat were inseparable; where one went, so did the other.

One day, not so long ago, The Young Man was asked to A Gathering of the twenty-seven members of his clan. He had to walk a long way, over rough ground, up hill and down dale. As he approached the appointed rendezvous he was stopped by a Guard who pointed out a notice to him. It read “NO GOAT AREA”.

The Young Man was disconsolate. He could not just dump his Goat to go to The Gathering but the notice was clear and the Guard, adamant. But also, The Young Man could not be separated from his Goat because he was very attached to it. He turned back, troubled that he might miss a jolly Gathering. As he walked away, alongside the track he came across a Wise Owl. The Young Man consulted the Wise Owl, who gave him very good advice. (The Wise Owl was a well-known Mentor, you see.)

Encouraged, The Young Man returned to the site of the gathering and when the Guard tried to stop him he protested that this was no goat.

“So what is it?” enquired the Guard.

“It’s a Git,” replied The Young Man, explaining that the creature was a cross between a Goat and a Nit. To the Guard’s protests that there was little evidence of Nit about the animal, The Young Man replied that, since the Nit was very small you wouldn’t notice the genes he had contributed to the cross-breed.

After much argument, the Guard referred the matter through the chain of command to the Head of The Gathering, one Merrylee Merkel. She thought hard and long about the problem. Allowing the Git to the gathering would be a precedent for other aspiring creatures but refusing it admission would certainly mean The Young Man would miss The Gathering, and perhaps go away for ever.

Merylee Merkel smiled, a rare and hopeful sign in itself, and agreed to admit the Git. So The Young Man and his Git joined the twenty-six other members of The Gathering.

And that is why, the Wise Owl explained, any Goat can get to The Gathering if only he is prepared to identify himself as a Git.

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‘Creative destruction’ is used to explain and justify forces in the evolution of more efficient companies in capitalism. Ironically, Schumpeter, who coined it, argued that capitalism’s creative-destructive force will eventually destroy itself.

Since the fall of communism, capitalism emerged as the sole ideological victor. Free market policies, in varying forms, are now implemented by communist parties from China to Cuba. There is in reality capitalism on the one hand, and North Korea on the other.

We do not have an alternative to capitalism. At the same time, we are painfully aware that capitalism, in its unrestrained form may destroy us.

Are we facing self-destruction or are we on the brink of a paradigm shift?

A paradigm shift occurs when new ideas challenge old ways of thinking and doing. These new ideas create fear and uncertainty as they are being debated, applied and tested.

John Bittleston’s Capitalism Commission (http://www.terrificmentors.com/2012/02/brief-for-the-new-capitalism-commission-1/)  lists the inherent opposing tensions. As the world decides which trade-offs to make, it is crafting a new form of capitalism.

Concurrent with the spread of capitalism is the intensification of globalization and accelerated advancement of technology. This has rearranged the balance of power among states, individuals, corporates and the invisible markets.

The Industrial Revolution facilitated the growth of big industrialists, and influenced the economy in terms of producing workers suited to such employers. (The factory-like process and characteristics of many schools is sadly, a reminder of that effect.)

However, technology has empowered individuals and given them a voice. There are seismic changes occurring in the hearts and minds of individual consciousness. Individuals are no longer content to be treated as a unit in a profit equation.

Now, whether you are a retailer, miner or even a government, you are forced into better governance. Chasing profit or power at the expense of the environment, worker conditions, or the population is not possible without incurring the attention and wrath of activist individuals, groups and the invisible markets.

I am hopeful, as the world gyrates through these turbulent times that we land in a better place. Capitalism has allowed the pie to grow much bigger than any other system. Those who have been left-out want a more equitable share of the pie. Many of those who have benefitted from it want to give back – as in the Buffet rule.

Individuals and groups, from the powerful to those not in the limelight, are organizing and making themselves heard and felt in the evolution of a fairer form of capitalism.

As Schopenhauer said “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

A new view of capitalism is entering the second phase. May it soon reach the third.

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All stories have lessons in them but from time to time I like to tell a story not for its lessons but just because it is a good yarn. Today’s true story is one.

In the 1970s my family and I used to worship in a church called St Edward’s at Sutton Park, the home of the then richest man in the world, Paul Getty. Not a churchgoer himself, Getty would come and sit in the church sometimes when there was no service going on to chat to the priest, our old friend Fr Gordon Albion. Occasionally he would say The Lord’s Prayer with Gordon, always remarking afterwards what a wonderful, all-embracing prayer it was.

Gordon Albion was a controversial priest, a broadcaster and a bit of a rebel. He enjoyed his glass or three of wine, smoked like a chimney (it was before the Government health warning had appeared) and ran his parish in a relaxed, fun and easy-going way. Every year he would be invited to give a talk to the local United Reform Church congregation. At the end he always reminded them “URC, me RC, so we must be on the same side”.

Gordon married the eldest and the youngest of my children, the former now himself a Minister in the United Reform Church. We’re all still on the same side.

Highlight of his Sunday was the children’s Mass at which I played the organ. It gives a flavour of the parish when I tell you that some friends brought their new baby, a sixth girl, to be baptized. Obviously they had been hoping for a boy but, as always, they rejoiced at a new baby of whichever sex. At the end of Mass I played Maurice Chevalier’s famous song “Thank heavens for little girls” on the organ. My friends’ new baby got a round of applause.

Mass ceremonies were respectfully observed but for much of the time Gordon would walk up and down the aisle chatting to the children and making them laugh. They looked forward to his quizzes about Jesus and the stories of that time.

At the point in the Mass when the creed had been said there is a session of what then were called The Bidding Prayers. These were the supplications of members of the congregation. In order that they should not be overwhelming – every child has a request – one child each Sunday would be given a chance to say a few prayers, typically for their parents or perhaps a pet spider who seemed to be sick.

The Vatican subsequently high jacked this period and pompously renamed it “Prayers of the Faithful” printing requests for blessings for those at the top of the hierarchical tree. They were, I am sure, much in need of them.

One Sunday it was the turn of a little eight-year-old girl called Susan. Sue was spina bifida baby. She was brave and, with the aid of heavy leg calipers and a supporting hand from Mum could walk a little – enough to reach the front of the church. Then her mother would lift her so that she could stand on the altar rails and see – and be seen by – the congregation.

A few days before Sue’s Bidding Prayers a giraffe called Victor, resident of the Marwell Zoo in England, had spread-eagled and fallen and could not get up. It does sometimes happen to giraffes, especially on slippery ground. Poor Victor, heavy lifting gear was brought to try to help him onto his feet and the country held its breath as every attempt was made to rescue him.

Sue started with a couple of prayers for her parents and siblings and then added “And please help Victor to get back onto his feet because I know how he feels”.

Many people blinked that day.

Wherever Sue is, I hope she is much blessed.

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The late Eddie Barker, then a Minister in Singapore, once said “John does me a great honour by introducing me as Minister of Justice. I am actually the Minister of Law because in Singapore, as elsewhere in the world, we know we have the one but are not certain that we have the other”.  Never was what my friend said truer than today. The law needs to be reexamined.

The basis of law, that a person is innocent until proved guilty, has slipped in recent years. There are now many situations in which an individual is assumed to be guilty until they have proved their innocence. Aided by the media, authorities are often put in a position of judge and jury and the accused becomes guilty by innuendo or inference.

Just as capitalism, religion and other aspects of our lives served us well in the past but need reviewing in the light of today’s needs and capabilities, so too the law, the foundation of a civilized society, needs bringing up to date and re-thinking. Justice can be better served.

Witness is so important that bearing false witness is built into the list of serious sins for most religions. Yet today many go into the witness box to give false witness and never get accused of perjury when it is proved to have been so. Lying under oath has become acceptable.

Obtaining a conviction is the prime criterion for success for police and prosecutor. So much is this the case that plea bargaining, a convenient form of compromising innocence and guilt, has become the norm in many trials leading to outcomes known to be incorrect but adequately agreed by the opposing parties. In criminal law, plea bargaining should generally be unacceptable.

Adversarial law, based partly on destruction of the other side’s case, makes good theatre but less successful justice and poor subsequent harmonic living. It may be that the best form of defence is attack but the purpose of law is to move arguments from the battlefield to a more civilized and hopefully more dependable method of determining right and wrong.

Especially in civil cases such as divorce or claims of material ownership the “more reasonable of two” approach is likely to lead to greater fairness of outcome than much more expensive charge and counter charge – something that must, inevitably, still end in compromise of sorts in these disputes.

At the same time as law is reviewed we should look carefully at the way the guilty are dealt with once convicted. Prisons in many parts of the world have become universities of crime, unruly, drug-dominated and with prisoner behaviour just as unacceptable as Guantanamo Bay.

The purpose of prison is to protect society from dangerous people and to reform and equip the criminal for a crime-free life once she or he is released. The exercise of strict discipline is a prerequisite for a successful prison but so is the protection of prisoners themselves and their rehabilitation. Present systems vary in their success in achieving this; many are very poor. How to minimise time wasting and expensive detention while maximizing learning for a useful future is the subject of much study but little reform.

Justice is one aspect of life a wealthy society can afford to invest in. Maybe we could use some of the time of the unemployed to help to make it fairer.

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Corruption in the media

In bringing us the latest news journalists have to be enterprising and take the initiative. They do not get the kind of information we want by gentle methods. When they talk about “the story behind the story” they mean ‘the dirt’. We all want to find out about the bad things that happen in the world. It is better than a good movie or a violent computer game because it is real.

At least the basis of the story – the underlying fact – is probably real. After that, how the story builds is a complex of creative imagination and investigative probing. Ask someone in the know to give you the details of a good story and they will ask for money, sometimes a lot of money. There are specialists who value the dirt and can tell you what to expect for your information. And, let’s face it, the better the story the better the payoff.

What started as an investigation into phone hacking in Britain revealed a cultural practice of eavesdropping on others’ conversations. Listening in to mobile phones is not difficult and journalists did so at every opportunity when there was a story in the wind. The behaviour was so widespread that Murdoch closed The News of the World, a long established and big British Sunday newspaper, to the astonishment of many of us. It seemed a total admission of guilt.

Now several senior journalists at another Murdoch newspaper, The Sun, have been arrested in connection with corrupt payments to police officers and others for information. They are innocent until proved guilty, of course, but it does begin to look as though the stable of newspapers that Murdoch owns is in need of some serious cleaning out.

While we castigate the media it might be as well to look in the mirror, too. It is readers’ demands that create the culture in the first place. Managers are responsible for policing it to see that it stays first within the law of the land and second within the commonsense laws of decency. The managers appear to have fallen down on their jobs. We were the people who pushed them.

Investigative journalism has a noble record of uncovering corruption and wickedness. It is, or should be, part of the fabric of a healthy society. Its role is increased today with the social media producing a lot of whistle-blowing as well as much untruth. Reining in the media so hard that investigation is made virtually impossible would not only be difficult, it would be crazy.

There is no easy solution and exhortation is unlike to have much, if any, effect. Journalists severely restrained from taking the initiative in story-collecting produce excruciatingly dull news. Our appetites are so jaded that unless we get a top scandal we are not satisfied. Balancing investigative journalism and personal privacy is a trick not yet learnt by any society.

Media do an important job and they need to be clean. Regulations cannot guarantee this. It is an example of how, in some situations, the only security is personal self-discipline.

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It is good that people protest when things are wrong. Whether giving feedback to a restaurateur or criticizing political or religious leaders, making your views politely known is a start to putting things right. But what if polite does not work? Polite is easily ignored, dismissed with a witty word, sent scurrying for a dark corner to avoid further embarrassment. Polite may be for the debating chamber and the after-dinner discussion, not for a forceful change of direction.

The French Revolution started with polite, coffee-shop debate. That didn’t work, so it turned violent. Violence is clearly justified at times. Indeed, restraint from violence can seem to endorse a wrong, as Fr Antony Sutch pointed out in response to yesterday’s article on The Syrian Conundrum. However, violence merely to assuage our conscience that we have tried to do something, however illogical, may be more damaging still.

Protests are set to increase. For generations politicians have promised that austerity was a thing of the past and we could now spend, spend, spend. Pulling back from those excesses will be painful so people will protest; they are already doing so. While being broadly in favour of what they want perhaps we should make protesting conditional on their making their protest positive and not merely negative. It would be even greater if it also reflected less greed, more concern for others and a healthier regard for the capabilities of the planet. Just positive would be a start.

In many countries formal protests have to be licensed. The granting of such licenses should be dependent on the application being supported by a reasonable alternative to the present situation. This is not as difficult as it sounds. Most applications will be granted anyway even if the reasoned alternative is none too logical. But at least the protesting group will have to think of and, more importantly, agree upon their alternative. The process of doing that will make them deliver a more meaningful protest.

Inevitably many protests are anarchic and therefore not subject to such niceties as licenses and approval. There is no way they can be stopped but the world is currently undergoing a change to transparency and – maybe – to more logical thinking. Changing any culture is difficult. Changing the culture of protest may be doubly so. It is worth doing, however, because the end result is that everyone has to think more about the things that matter – or perish in the wake of violence.

Purposeful protest is a legitimate aim. We should think of ways of encouraging it.