Alexis Tsipras, of whom you are going to hear a lot more, has a wonderful idea. It can be summed up as ‘jam’. Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow and, above all, jam today. ‘Jam’ in this context means sweet living, happy, carefree times, not a cloud in the sky. Why on earth didn’t some more experienced and prominent politician like Merkel or the late lamented Sarkozy say so? What kept them thinking we should pay our way, earn our livelihoods, work for a better world? Work is a four letter word.

Mr Tsipras heads the left wing Greek political scene. He wants Greece to stay in the Euro while abandoning the new policies to tighten up the Greek economy. Not for him the concept of a day’s pay for a day’s work. He has a lot of support but, alas, not mine. I go further and say I think he is being irresponsible. Perhaps politicians have different rules.

Many years ago Enoch Powell, a British Member of Parliament, made a speech saying “rivers of blood” would follow a relaxation of the immigration policy. I admired Mr Powell but I did not admire that speech. I said then that the duty of a politician is to lead, not to incite. That is still true today.

It is unarguable that the kind of belt-tightening that many European countries are being asked to do is painful. Why is it necessary? The developed world has lived too high on the hog for too long and the consequences have come home to roost. They are manifest by the trillions of dollars being “created” right now. I had thought it was about $20 trillion but it seems more like $50 trillion. Once you achieve these numbers you get dizzy and start reaching for the next bracket – the “quad-something”.

This is the time when the world needs its political leaders more than ever. Not to incite constituents to visions of miraculous salvation but to ways in which the realities of a declining standard of living can be reconciled with the need to provide the basics for everyone and start to build a new world that works.

Grand gestures and promises that can never be fulfilled won’t do this. If the solution was simple we’d all see it. The solutions are complex and need thinking out and selling carefully with realistic goals and much improved standards. Go back to your drawing board, Mr Tsipras, and come up with something that spells out the realities but also gives hope. There is plenty of room for responsible politicians.

We need them now or the kind of jam we are going to be in will be very different from what Mr Tsipras claims to have on offer.

We know about good and bad losers. Often exemplified by lessons on the playing fields at school, we are encouraged to be good losers, not to become over-discouraged by failure, to learn from our mistakes and to give the winner a pat on the back and buy him a beer. These are important lessons for conducting a life that is both useful and fulfilled. It is true that ‘jolly good chaps’ from school days often go on to become captains of industry, Nobel Prize Winners and top politicians. But not always.

Translated into commercial and business life the lessons are valuable for maintaining stability, even among rivals, and for considering the greater good when petty irritations could lead us astray.  The business of leaving a company or organisation is becoming so public that decisions about a man’s character, not to mention his bonus, increasingly depend on his ability to lose, however painfully, with a smile on his face.

Recently Aviva’s CEO, Andrew Moss, lost a GBP2.4M bonus share handout because he was deemed not to be a ‘good leaver’. Investors did not care for Mr Moss and were prepared to cause a stink at the company’s shareholders’ meeting. The Board took the hint and withheld the goodies. Mr Moss was left to roll away, gathering nothing except, of course, his GBP1.5M severance or whatever-they-call-it booty.

What constitutes a good leaver? The time to think about it is well before you have to go. Like all public actions, those made in haste are usually flawed, often try to cover the real reasons for whatever is happening and can be damaging to both leaver and left. Public relations experts know that their work is most important when there is no news. By the time events happen it is too late to cultivate the relationships, even to look up the phone numbers.

A good leaver is aware that he may quit his job at any time. He is prepared for it. His affairs are in order and transparent, his comments modest and honest. His demands, reasonable and in line with what he has done for the business. He leaves a sense of duty accomplished and prospects of more achievements ahead. Even if he is leaving for reasons of failure he will exit with a sense of best efforts having been made.

Good separations of any sort require a generosity of spirit that demonstrates as much thought about the people left behind as about the departing player. When achieved with style, leaving can be as positive an act as joining.

SERVICE – a true story of two days ago

Text message from me to Singapore Courier Service:

“Please collect package of four books today from (address) for delivery to (name and address). Please advise time of collection and cost. John Bittleston”

Text message from Courier Service to me:

“$7 for document only within the day collection and send within the day. let me know if you need”

Text message from me to Courier Service:

“As I said it is a small package of four books. Can you take it?”

Text message from Courier Service to me:

“There will be a surcharge from $3 to $10”

Text message from me to Courier Service:

“OK when will you collect?”

Text message from Courier Service to me:

“You want to collect today or tmr”

Text message from me to Courier Service:

“Why don’t you read message? I said today”

Text message from Courier Service to me:

“I can’t tell you the exact time they will collect from you”

Text message from me to Courier Service:

“Roughly when?”

Text message from Courier Service to me:

“You look for other people better”

Service?

Are jobs coming home?    by John Bittleston

Is it ridiculous to think of in-sourcing when most people are in the throes of outsourcing? Are they still outsourcing? There are several reasons to think that jobs are no longer automatically being outsourced or moved overseas to the country with the lowest cost production. Perhaps some jobs may even be coming home. Top of the reasons, equally, are quality and urgent need for governments to provide work. As jobs worldwide inexorably disappear every employed voter will be predisposed to support whichever party is in power. Everyone unemployed, will champion the opposition.

Whatever clever solution we find to the approaching workless era, we will still fight to keep as many people as possible in what we currently regard as gainful employment. The capitalist ethos will change but not that quickly. Every country needs jobs, even the less desirable jobs, the dirty jobs, the jobs for which we import overseas workers. As we get desperate for earnings we will again do those jobs ourselves.

Appalling quality of products produced in low cost countries is beginning to tell. Seeking advice from a high-tech company MD the other day I was shocked but not surprised to hear her say “Buy twice the number you need. They are all made in China. Some survive a week, some, even a year. I just chuck them when they fail and buy another.” Apart from the false economy involved, the concept of so much material waste is totally at odds with a planet going to pot.

Then there is quality control and who to seek redress from when a product fails. Try tracing the culprit. Better to run a paper chase through a jungle full of snakes. In house, we know where the bodies are buried. Another consideration is that as workers learn of the joys of work and not just of earning they expect to get some satisfaction from what they do. Making one rivet for an ocean-going liner is hardly a pride-inducing event. Contributing to building the whole liner makes you hold you head up. Economics do not substitute for job satisfaction.

The movement to bring jobs home is dictated almost entirely by the price at which they can be done elsewhere. As long as China prints money in order to avoid revaluing their currency they will keep production there competitive and the market unassailable by other countries. This is likely to continue for some time. However, in the end the pressure for China prices to reflect the true cost of rising wages will overwhelm their currency.

Jobs will certainly come home then.

The problem with “best interests” by Dr Tan Chi Chiu

In medical ethics, the concept of “patients’ best interests” is a guiding principle for doctors to act not only according to supportable and acceptable norms of medical treatment, but also according to patients’ values, preferences and desires. For example, no matter what a doctor thinks, if the patient has made a conscious decision not to accept further invasive and undignified medical interventions at the end of his life, he has a right to this. Conversely, “futility” of treatment is a value judgment.  Provided that the treatment is legally and ethically allowable, a doctor should abide by the patient’s wishes and concept of “quality of life”.

The broader application of these considerations is that it is probably inadequate to construct values and to formulate courses of actions based on one-sided or internally generated frames of reference. It is an aspect of arrogance and paternalism to decide for others what is in their best interests, although professionals tend to do this all the time. The understanding of “best interests” can only be achieved by considering many factors, including the laws of the land, balancing benefits and harm, the values and views of those for whom actions are designed, the competing needs of different constituencies and a sense of justice. While it is perfectly legitimate to also throw into the pot one’s own beliefs, they do not necessarily take priority, but should be there in order to achieve a well thought out and carefully constructed picture of what “best interests” should be in the circumstances.

Let’s ook at the example of the “best interests” of Singapore. The Government had decided that it was in the nation’s best interests that economic growth was an overriding priority. The distinction between Singapore’s best interests and those of its residents was not obvious for decades because the prosperity of Singapore and its citizens were intertwined. But with economic maturity and forces of globalisation, what might be good for Singapore as a “corporate entity” and the aspirations of its people began to diverge. Hence the results of the last general elections and the government’s subsequent re-evaluation of what is the best thing to be done, based more than ever on the true “best interests” of the people.

In conclusion, we should be wary not to allow our own sense of values to dictate our concept of others’ “best interests” but must carefully consider all possible aspects of a situation and a wider range of opinions to decide the best course of action.

Doing the right thing by Dr Tan Chi Chiu

How many times have we heard that we must “Do the right thing”? It is both a platitude and a redundancy. After all, would it make sense for anyone to be exhorted to “Do the wrong thing”? It is a phrase bandied about but it is unclear whether anybody has actually thought about the true meaning of this phrase and how to put it into effect without harming others.

A recent newspaper report quoted the Singapore Education Minister as saying to the effect that we must teach students to do the right thing and to uphold their values. At first sight, this seems infinitely laudable. But the elephant in the room is: Right thing and values according to whom?

“Doing the right thing” often becomes camouflage for doing something for one’s own benefit and interests. It can be mutated with an added dose of cynicism to become exculpation for often doing quite the wrong thing, in the guise of virtue under a particular frame of reference.

There is a particularly odious aberration of “doing the right thing” in the ranks of middle management who have a tendency to “check the direction of the wind” to see what those at the top want before “doing the right thing” which to them is to please their superiors and ensure their own survival and prosperity. Worse still are those who, in the popular expression, “kiss up and kick down”, people we can all identify from our own experience.

So the Education Minister really ought not to simplify it as though values are so obvious, or that they can be prescribed in some way. It was especially worrying to read that the government’s Edusave fund would now award students who inter alia exhibited the right values and are helpful towards others. This must surely ring alarm bells all over the belfry. It seems evident that students will learn to exhibit good values and be helpful only when seen and under assessment (no doubt based on some formal and inflexible assessment checklist), but otherwise probably not. There can be no more pernicious way of demeaning social values than a financial reward scheme. 

What is needed is the ability to think through the considerations that go into constructing a person’s values and not just abide by political correctness.  From whatever source a person draws inspiration for the creation of values, it seems that if well-constructed, these values, with individual variations no doubt, are likely to be mostly consistent with what humanity regards as universal. We should each be challenged about how we have arrived at our own values and how we express them in our lives and our work.

The meaning of meaning by Sandy Oh

An evening of two halves. First, I caught up with an old friend – a successful banker who has been in the game for 30 years. He confessed “I fell out of love with banking after the tenth year.”  “Then why do you stick at it?” I asked. “Because it is one’s duty to have a job and income,” came the self-assuring reply.

Later, a group of us were desperately trying to flag two taxis to take us to East Coast Seafood Centre for dinner. After a few failed attempts, a huge limousine taxi miraculously appeared. I sat in the front and struck up a conversation with the driver. The smiley, good-natured driver explained to me his taxi was a special limousine and normally, a ride in it would cost forty dollars. But he wasn’t going to charge that because we looked so happy and relieved to find him and he wanted us to have a smooth pleasant ride to a delicious dinner.

Two different jobs. The banker – way better paid, more glamourous but devoid of meaning. The driver -  lower paid, less glamorous but he has repurposed the work to give a higher meaning. The driver did not view his job as simply moving passengers from point to point. He saw himself as a facilitator of our joyous experience and in the process, his job became more enjoyable.

Creating meaning in the day-to-day work of even the most apparently mundane activities is about changing the perspective of the doer. Meaning is truly in the eye of the beholder.

There are two types of meaning. Meaning at work relates to how an employee feels about the company and its mission, and their work environment. Meaning in work relates to how an employee feels about the specific job task. A thoroughly inspired person is someone who finds both meaning at and in work.

How do you rate your job and work environment in these two spheres?

If you run a company or are a leader at work, are you actively fostering meaning both at work and in work for those around you?

It is possible to have both meaning in and at work. As Studs Terkel once said “Work is about daily meaning as well as daily bread; for recognition as well as cash. We have a right to ask of work that it include meaning, recognition, astonishment and life.”

As a colleague or manager how can you add meaning to your fellow-workers’ jobs?

Fr Antony’s piece yesterday made me examine a government scheme for helping those who are unemployed in Britain. It is called ‘workfare’. If you receive benefits from society perhaps you should work for them a little? Reasonable.

Several MNCs joined, providing jobs at low wages. Their motives were mixed. A desire to help keep young people occupied – that was certainly one motive. Cheap labour cannot be ruled out as another. Interesting that a high proportion of those on ‘workfare’ went on to get jobs in the companies for which they worked, which is good.

Then the green eye of the little yellow monster appeared. Unions saw this as a way of undercutting members’ pay, even of flouting government’s minimum wage levels. Several MNCs have withdrawn from workfare. They have discovered that they are damned if they join it and damned if they don’t and they resent the hassle and potentially poor publicity. They may even have felt a little guilty?

Discussing wages rationally is not something that comes easily in today’s world. This is partly because all our expectations have been raised far too high, partly because of the rapidly widening gap between rich and poor, even when they are living cheek by jowl. Difficult as it is we need to discuss wages, unions, the law of supply and demand and above all the rapid disappearance of work.

A Mentor comes across the views of the young as well as those of the middle aged and old. The young are often more vociferous. They are always critical, sometimes with good reason, sometimes not; always worth listening to. Of the many who talk to me not one has raised the subject of a workless society. They are all educating themselves to get good jobs, satisfy employers’ needs, lead responsible lives and bring up the next generation. Trouble is there will soon be no work.

Educating more people was intended to lift them out of poverty. It has been successful in doing so until now. Today there are more graduate taxi drivers than non-grads, more redundant managers than employed ones, more unemployed thinkers than doers. Worst of all, many more people in unproductive jobs than in productive ones.

What should we be educating the young for if not for getting and keeping a job?

All our institutions need refurbishing. Our standards of behaviour need redirecting. Our purposes – the very purpose of life – needs rethinking. There are too many rats in the cage. We have not started eating each other yet but we are doing everything else that too many rats do.

We must educate our young to think about how the human race is going to survive. If we don’t, it won’t.

Our pain at others’ unemployment by Fr Antony Sutch

It is often said that Capitalism as a system demands that some at least be unemployed. This stimulates competition and eliminates any stranglehold over wage costs. Communism fails, they say, because there is no competition. It seems now that our leaders search for a happy mean; without it anarchy and destabilisation of society are a real threat.

To be unemployed, especially to be made redundant, to find oneself suddenly without a job, is a terrifying reality. It often breaks peoples’ spirit. It is certain that it frequently leads to family disruption, loss of dignity, a growing purposelessness and boredom. It can precipitate anger, mental depression and an attitude to contemporary society that is aggressive and negative. This certainly applies to the young who have never found jobs, some of whom are articulate, well educated and prepared to fight for their causes.

The image of society as a body is a strong one and has a long history. Recently a doctor spoke of my infected, painful toe. He will attempt to cure it and until it is working again he will give me pain killers so that I can function and walk. I will not need an amputation of it although if I had one I would still be able to function efficiently. So a part of my body is causing the rest of me, especially my mind, to be anxious and to work below par.

Think now of an unemployed person. He/she is a part of society. They can be dealt with, cared for, by benefits so that they cope and society continues to function well. If they grow in number, in anger, and benefits get beyond the ability of society to provide, trouble brews.

My thesis is that the unemployed affect society deeply. As ever there needs to be treatment of the unemployed on a case by case basis. There needs to be real sensitivity. There must not be generalised condemnation, dismissal and disregard. If they suffer, we all, however subconsciously, suffer also. It is to the mutual benefit of all that we care.

We are told that we are all a pay cheque away from unemployment and two pay cheques away from homelessness. As the great poet John Donne noted “ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”.

John Bittleston adds:

Fr Antony is right in what he says but jobs are now disappearing very fast. Automated clerical procedures, increasingly robotic processes, algorithmic transactions all reduce the need for people. The jobs market is being sustained by employing civil servants but as mentioned in Daily Paradox of 25Apr12 government spending is often unproductive. (http://www.terrificmentors.com/2012/04/productive-and-unproductive-debt/) Watch for a Daily Paradox on this soon.

            Our brief journey through the world of creativity led us to three conclusions. First, we can all be more creative. Notice the word is “more”. We are already creative. But then we can all play football. It’s being good at it that counts. Some practice will make us experts both at sport and creativity. The latter is the easier to master.

            Second, our creativity needs stimulus. Part of that stimulus is observation; part is tickling the synapses to relate one event to another. Learning to see, to hear, to think, is what our education was supposed to be about. Sadly it turned into an exam-passing, box-ticking event abut ‘what’, seldom about ‘why’. The ‘what’ purpose of education is over. Google has made it redundant. Who is addressing the ‘why’ purpose? Are you?

When our doctor tells us to get our heart rate up a couple of times a day we resort to exercise. Initially it is boring and we do it resentfully. Once it is established as a regular part of daily routine we learn to love it, to find it adds a whole new aspect to our being. It brings us back to life. Same with creativity.

Third, the discipline required to exercise our minds is no less demanding, at least at the outset. The rewards of doing so are infinitely more satisfying, even in the short term. Instead of sitting around waiting for Godot we see very quickly that we can create the world we want to live in, we are in charge of our future, our joy and our happiness.

Michael Ruppert’s stark ‘peak oil’ warning is correct. He fails because he does not impress on us that mankind’s survival is due to our ability to adapt. We have faced Armageddon before but our adaptability has saved us. That facility is due wholly to our creativity, to our ability to perceive relationships. Not to someone else’s but to yours and mine, to our children’s, to our grandchildren’s.

‘Necessity’, they say, ‘is the mother of invention’. Necessity is knocking on the door. Is our inventiveness up to dealing with her demands? If we are not certain about the answer we should take steps now to correct the situation. A society that wants to play football well must get football universally played. The best players come from the most unlikely places.

Take a creativity course at your own pace in your own home. It will make you a hundred times more creative than you are now, however imaginative you already are. Your ability to liven up discussion about survival will stimulate others. It could be what makes the rest of your life fulfilled. It will certainly contribute to the survival of mankind.

Creativity is the ability to perceive relationships,

humour is the ability to create them

Francis Harmar-Brown & John Bittleston