Minding Your Own Business

Posted on January 26, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 14 – Being Well Advised

Knowledge never kills, I have preached for twenty years to anybody who would listen to me: but ignorance can.

Our Game
Sceptre 2006 p.138
John le Carré

I see in my dairy that next week I will chair the panel of judges for the public speaking competition that Young Enterprise runs every year in this area.

Every year for some years now I have been very impressed by the energy and commitment of the participants. They are entertaining as well as informative and if perhaps, out of nerves or a lack of familiarity in being looked at by an audience, they deliver their interesting thoughts a little too quickly to be given the highest marks for presentation, their argument is invariably fresh and therefore worth listening to.

They are about sixteen years old and they remind me of my ideal company. Given a free hand, and one hardly ever has such, I would make sure that my workforce includes at least two people of each decade of age. I would have two teenagers, two in their twenties and so on as far as I could get them. I would have two in their nineties and two centenarians, if they were available.

The reason for this is simple. I do not believe that I have the only opinion that matters. I don’t know everything and I believe that the opinion of every age group is important to my business. It may be me who has to make the final decision on something but it will be a decision that is informed by the perceptions of all those age groups. They will have varying degrees of experience and their experience may be very relevant or somewhat distant from the matter under consideration but they can all offer their perceptions and that will help me make a better final decision.

It’s a bit like an in-house focus group. How useful that could be! In so many organisations the power is in the hands of a single narrow age group. Their perceptions could easily be too narrow because of that. Take any age group and you could punch holes in the value of the decision making if there is a narrowness in its profile. Take for example the forties. By that age, people have all been about a bit. They’ve learnt the business and its business environment very well. But here I will generalise and invent a worst case scenario – this could be a dangerous age group because it connects with people in their teens or seventies mainly through having children or parents of that kind of age. For people of forty, teens and parents are people to be looked after and protected and that’s not the best way to think about and relate to your customers and clients. I agree it’s a pretty poor portrayal, but it’s possible!

So, I would want a focus group of people I will listen to with great respect so that I can understand every age group’s needs in relation to my business. Le Carré is surely right, such knowledge and understanding can only be useful, such ignorance might kill off the business.

Frank McConnell

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk  

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Pascal’s Wager

Posted on January 20, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 13 – Freedom and Uncertainty

‘The gaining of freedom,’ said Dr Grene pleasantly, ‘is always accomplished in an atmosphere of uncertainty. In this country at least. Perhaps in all countries.’

The Secret Scripture
Faber and faber 2009 p 29
Sebastian Barry

‘In all countries’ would be my first reaction! It almost doesn’t matter what your current situation is, it is the situation you know. When a change comes along, uncertainty comes with it. It may be an excited uncertainty where you look forward to the new way of being but it is still uncertainty. It may be dread that you experience as you move towards these changes, whatever they are.

‘Better the devil you know…’ Really? I’ve always thought that a daft thing to say. Imagine this. A friend comes to you and describes what it’s like at work and you listen and you think, that’s awful! You’d think, that can’t be right, that needs to be changed. And then your friend continues and tells you that they have someone new coming in and everyone is dreading what they will do. Wouldn’t you tell them not to be silly? Wouldn’t you say, ‘It can hardly be worse than what you already have!’ And your friend replies, ‘Well, better the devil you know…’ You would probably tell them that that really is a daft thing to say!

What is it that people fear? The change or the uncertainty?

You know what you’ve got and you know how you feel about it. You don’t know what you are going to get so you can’t know how you are going to feel about that.

Now imagine that you are the ‘someone new coming in’. Some of your people will be very glad that you are coming and some will not. Some will have high expectations of you, some will not. How are you going to handle that?

The last time I was the ‘someone new coming in’ I was, I think, the fifth someone new in about three years. What could I say that they hadn’t heard before? How many of those before me had offered a new start, positive statements, belief in the future? What chance did I have that their response to me would be ‘Heard all the codswallop before.’ Pretty high I would have thought.

All I could really offer was uncertainty. So I offered them Pascal’s Wager.  Pascal’s Wager suggests that there is a massive gamble on eternal life.

If you don’t believe in God, and when you die, there is a God, then you have lost everything.

If you don’t believe in God, and when you die, you were right, there is no God, then you have lost nothing.

If you believe in God, and when you die, there is no God then what have you lost?  You have lost nothing.

If you believe in God, and when you die, there is a God then you have won eternal life i.e. everything.

His conclusion was that the safest bet was to believe in God.

I made it clear to my managers and staff that I believed we could do a great job but my suggestion to them was that they did not have to believe that we could make this work, they could just take Pascal’s Wager. After all, what did they have to lose?

We made it work, but there was huge uncertainty nearly all the way. So, do you believe in yourself?  Would you take your own bet?

Frank McConnell

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk  

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Doodah Doodah

Posted on January 14, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 12 – Presentations

‘We must all try to keep the quixotic element,’ said Thomas. ‘Throw the old knight a pie. Give oats to Rosinante.’

Human Traces
Sebastian Faulks
Vintage Books 2006

I was at a meeting yesterday which was actually quite important. It was about changes at our local hospital and the crowd of about 30 members of a particular club listened to a senior official explaining what was happening and why. As I was on Grandpa duty at the time, I heard the first hour before I had to go and stoke up the horse, get my grandson, take him to Grandma and scurry back to the meeting. I had left just as things were getting interesting. Questions had started and the mood was changing. There was a certain energy in the room. After my 30 minutes away, I returned to see a quite animated senior official answering a challenging man near the back of the room.

What a difference I saw!

The senior chap had delivered almost his whole presentation whilst engaging the carpet with eye contact. He barely looked at anyone in the room. The only time his head went up was when he was referring to the slides being projected on to an inadequate screen, from my position in the back row, I could only read the very biggest words on display. When I returned, he was definitely in eye contact mode but he was animated too, and responding to questions in a way which suggested he believed in what he was saying.

How different the two parts of the meeting were. I felt that in the first part he was making a number of unconvincing statements and at the end, when the questions had just started, a sluggish set of responses did nothing to convince me of the arguments being made. Yes, all the facts were there, but I was left wondering what I was not being told. When I returned, I saw and heard a convincing person who had quietened a potential uprising.

The differences were simple. He never looked anyone in the eye in the first place but he did in the second: he had done the presentation before and was very familiar with it (but we weren’t) and he didn’t look as though he had any belief in any of it at the start but he did at the end.

If you don’t suggest that you believe in what you are saying, why should your audience believe in it? Like a fake medium at a séance we must pick up thoughts about our audience and when making a presentation to them, we must keep a lively element and throw out to our listeners snippets that they will want to catch.

Over the years, and because of my experience, I have often been asked if I had any tips about making presentations. Bear in mind that most people get nervous before they make a presentation, and if you don’t I might be a bit worried about that.  I think the best tip was this.

Before you make your presentation you will have a moment whilst you are being introduced and that moment is a pearl without price. What I always did was this. I would take a slow and gentle, but quite full, breath. As I stood up to walk to where I was making the presentation, I would sing to myself a little song to the tune of the Camptown Races (if you don’t know it, it’s bound to be on Youtube – yes it is, I just looked!). My words go ‘I know something you don’t know, doodah doodah, I know something you don’t know, doodah doodah day’.

That’s why you’re there. That’s why you’re making this presentation. You know something and they want to know it – they want you to do well. You won’t disappoint.

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk

Frank McConnell, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, has specialised in Change Management as an operational manager, strategic manager and consultant since 1974. He also runs a Plain English business and doesn’t like words and phrases like Change Management, Operational Manager, Strategic Manager, Consultant, Fellow, Chartered, Institute, and Personnel but grudgingly accepts them. He loves ‘Development’.

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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One Man’s Reinhardt is Another Man’s X-box

Posted on January 7, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 11 – Perceptions and Attitudes

Bass Rock looked like a nugget of white gold…
“See how Bass Rock is shining?” George said.
“Yes.”
“It’s the sun reflecting off all the bird shit.”

Set in Darkness
Ian Rankin
Orion Books 2000 Reissued 2005 Page 194-195

‘You might find this surprising but I find that music just about as irritating as that awful repetitive noise on those X-box games.’

My wife’s comment on irritating musical noise came a good way through the Concert d’Hommage à Django Reinhardt recorded in January 2010 in Paris. I was glued to the sheer brilliance of the music and the performances. Guitarist after guitarist came on stage to display musical genius in stunning performances. My wife had been in the kitchen and had been hearing rather than listening to some rather more modern jazz versions of Reinhardt tunes than people often play. Her comment surprised me but modern jazz is not to everyone’s taste and the intricacies of guitar technicalities are probably only for guitarist nerds.

Our grandson does like his X-box racing games and I do play with him at times. I say ‘play’ not ‘compete’ as I get hammered every time. I don’t understand why he sails in first almost every time whilst I end up eighth on every single occasion. I would be tenth if there were ten places. The ‘music’ hurries us on, clashy, dashy, brashy. The over bright colours and flashing lights migrainly urge us through to FINISH. He loves it and advises on fine detail on the course whilst he white waters along. As I frustratingly chase him, at first tantalisingly and very soon, pointlessly, he disappears into the distance into convoluted turns, fast changing patterns, and clashing instant colour changes. “Press ‘A’ Grandpa, press ‘A’ now”. With all the attention on the visual (staying on the track for me!) you barely notice the music.

I have seen Bass Rock many times. I have seen it in sunlight when it is an awesome sight, gleaming, a nugget of white gold. I have also seen it in the greyness and the rain. It remains awesome but now dour and indomitable, the very definition of solid. White gold or guano, it is a matter of perception and sometimes one of attitude.

When someone is looking to move things on, to change or develop, often the biggest problem is the attitudes people have. They are often very strongly formed. I have seen people holding onto a single view of things, one perception, one solid refusal ever to believe that something might be viewed in a different way by a different person or at a different time. If you are the one charged with change it may be that your biggest problem will be with people’s attitudes. How do you change them? If only people would accept that their attitudes quite often impact on their work.

By 1950, I had grown some interesting attitudes about Germans. I was four then. I grew up fighting Germans on our playgrounds. My post war toys were tin helmets, a Luger pistol and hand grenades (I presume the grenades had been neutered but I don’t really know: come to think of it, I don’t know about the Luger either). By the time I was ten, I hated Germans. Then around the age of thirty, I actually met one for the first time. In fact, I met two.

The family camping trip to France found us somewhere far down the left hand side in mid August. For the Feast of the Annunciation, the celebrations included a football match between two camp sites and the camp host invited me to play in a multi-national campsite team. I was still quite fit and fast and played Sunday League football at home. It took only minutes to build a good working partnership with the two Germans playing close to me. What lovely fellas, what nice people the Germans are.

After that I realised I needed to question all the attitudes that I had built up over the years. They were so often based on childhood experience or poor facts. I grew the ability to look at the Bass Rocks of this world with open and positive eyes.

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk  

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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Ahead of Hair

Posted on January 2, 2012 by admin

Literally Managing 10 – Expertise

The only people who despise themselves are labourers; when they’ve learnt to jeer at others the circle will be closed and we’ll start all over again.

The Leopard
Panther 1962
Page 136
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

I’ve been going bald for some time. This is the future ahead of me or perhaps more precisely on top of me.

It’s not too surprising that I am thinning out, men especially often do. It’s a part of the aging process and genetically, if your mother was bald, you will probably go bald too. My father went the way of the garden boot cleaner, hairy on both sides and nothing in the middle and had stopped saying ‘Short back and sides’ to the barber years before my childhood. I only ever knew him as long middle and short sides.

A succession of barbers has had a go at my hair. I tell them all ‘I’m going bald, don’t worry about it’. And each one creatively scissors my hair into something that will cover the bald patches. ‘No glue please’. And each one reaches for the hair spray to keep the comb over in place.

My hair is very light, not just in colour (I am a genuine dumb blonde) but also in its wind resistance. I know that before I have even got to the door, it will have dropped out of its careful cut into a whipped thread miscellany. By the time I arrive at my car I will look like something just dragged out of bed.

I’ve had combovers left long towards the back which taper to shorter lengths towards the front. I’ve had equality all the way. Neither of these works because, in collusion with any breeze no matter how slight, the longer lengths throw themselves off the top, over my left ear, and down my cheek. I can hear my hair having a giggle at the time. The current effort has left so much hair hanging down over my eyes that it is threatening to act as a handkerchief. Yes, I am going to have it cut – very soon! Probably tomorrow.

There’s a Turkish Cypriot who really knows his stuff and does interesting things with a lighted taper and my ear hair (slightly tickly but not unpleasant) as he ignores what I asked for. There’s a Scottish Lady who appears to listen to my responses as she ignores what I asked for and a Polish chap who actually converses with me rather than just exercising his half of two simultaneous vaguely linked monologues. The Turkish Cypriot and the Scot are remarkably like London black cab drivers. The Pole enjoys the chat as he ignores what I asked him for.

What they all have in common is that they are experts. I am just the object of their expertise. I don’t really count but I am necessary as, without me, they’d have nothing to do. Expertise is often exercised like that. Wouldn’t it be nice if experts at least listened to your opinion before dismissing it, or even better, before explaining why what they are going to do is better!

So,

1 Congratulations on being an expert, we need them!

2 If you see yourself as an expert, you need to involve your client.

3 There is no reason why people should automatically respect your expertise. The world is run by experts, look at how well they are doing.

4 The best experts are human beings too.

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com

Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk

 The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2012 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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Charles Darwin and My Friend Mike

Posted on June 10, 2011 by admin

 Literally Managing 9 – Thinking

 ’The trouble with Mr Thomas’, said May, ‘is that he’s wore himself out with thinking’.

Sebastian Faulks
Human Traces
Vintage Books 2006
p.593

I had a new job in the Chief Executive’s Department and my boss was Mike.  On the first Friday, I was there, it was not difficult to be aware that Mike spent the first hour of the day looking out of the window.  Whilst curious, I did not ask him what on earth he thought he was doing.  After a couple more Fridays of the same, Mike broke first.  ‘I suppose you’re wondering why every Friday I look out of the window for an hour.’  ‘It had crossed my mind’.  I knew it wasn’t the view, we looked out at a prison wall as high as our second floor window.

 ‘This is my thinking time.  I consider what we have done in the week, what’s going on around us and what we need to be doing next.’

 I understood the importance of that but I did wonder what the CEO might think if he had walked in before ten on a Friday.  Mike and I discussed the importance of not just ‘doing’.  Many people want to do things all the time.  Perhaps it justifies their existence (at least to themselves).  Mike’s point was that ‘doing’ without ‘thinking’ was not only astonishing it was potentially dangerous.  He was right, so much of my consultancy work has come from things getting out of focus or going in the wrong direction because people didn’t think.

 I saw a television programme about Charles Darwin.  In the garden of his house at Down in Kent he built a Sand-walk where he would exercise, and think!  This business of thinking is not uncommon it seems.  A little bit of research tells me that Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher would walk every day at 3.30 on what is now known as the “Philosophengang” (The Philosopher’s Walk).  The Japanese philosopher, Nishida Kitaro, is to blame for a Philosopher’s Path in Kyoto.  There are others around the world.  I know that philosophers are supposed to be thinkers but so are you.  When do you allow yourself the luxury?  Do be careful if the boss is around though, he or she might not understand!

 Frank McConnell

 If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com

Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk

 

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2011 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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The Sad Spanish Cucumber

Posted on June 6, 2011 by admin

Literally Managing 8 – Being Decisive

The trouble was that so many people seemed to feel a need for certainty, for clear paths leading to set objectives with tickable goalboxes, for the assuredly do-able with guaranteed happiness or fulfilment or enlightenment apparently promised as a result.

Iain Banks
The Steep Approach to Garbadale
Abacus 2008
p365

I see today that the German authorities are being reported as advising that people in their country should not eat bean sprouts. The devastating outbreak of e-coli in Germany and throughout Europe is now being linked with a farm south of Hamburg which produces a number of different bean sprouts used mainly in salads.

Of course it was only a matter of days ago that those same authorities told the world that Spanish cucumbers were the source of the outbreak. That statement will have decimated the economy of cucumber growers all over Europe.

The German Health Minister is quoted on the BBC news site as not yet able to recommend that people go back to eating ‘raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce in Northern Germany’.

In the earliest days of my own management career, decisiveness was one of the fashionable themes of management. I am always suspicious of these fashions. Everyone seemed to talk about the importance of decisiveness and that never fails to ring alarm bells for me. It automatically makes me stop in my tracks, dig in my heels, and question. Mass hysteria (even in the form of unquestioned enthusiasm) is a human possibility at any level of management. Search the web for Bay of Pigs and Groupthink if you want more on that.

Senior people in Germany had to act quickly to solve the problem and prevent it from spreading – this has been an awful situation especially for those families worst affected. Those senior people also needed to be perceived as capable of dealing with a terrible situation. They may have felt that they had to be seen as active: they could not be seen as inexperienced ditherers.

All of that might be summed up as - they had to be seen to be decisive.

But that is not what decisiveness is. It is not about acting quickly. It is not about acting with great certainty. It is about acting quickly and with sure footed certainty at the right time.

The right time may only be when you have the facts gathered properly together – and that might not be immediately.

In this world of almost instant communication across every continent, any wrong move will be analysed and spotted with undue haste. People hearing of the story and its dreadful consequences will leap to conclusions on the skimpiest of evidence. Persons in authority can then feel pressed into action and hurried decisions are rarely good ones.

In this case, we still don’t actually know what the source of the outbreak has been but we do know that farmers all over Europe are already counting the cost of someone being ‘decisive’.

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk  

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2011 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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The Wallander Pivot

Posted on May 30, 2011 by admin

Literally Managing 7 – Decision Making

It was impossible to analyse these things, and that was how in the end she had made her choice: out of instinct, because estimation and judgement had failed her.

Sebastian Faulks
On Green Dolphin Street
Vintage 2002
p.324

I’ve become a regular watcher of Wallander on television.

Like most police series, it has that leached out reality which filters out all the dirtiest and nastiest bits of police experience so that we can somehow see all this as ‘entertainment’. But there is a clue for me in my trying to understand how good management works when I watch the great detectives.

At some stage in the story, Wallander, like so many film policemen, often has a perceptive moment when everything falls into place and the solution for the crime suddenly hurries towards our hero.

That happens in management situations too. Often when you need to make a decision, the facts are not conclusive. The facts might be pointed in a particular direction but you don’t feel you can move that way because it’s all too vague.

Equally, sometimes you feel that the right answer is in a particular direction but it’s only a feeling so you are not comfortable that you can decisively move that way. You may even feel that if you do move that way you could easily trap yourself in a blind alley. It’s not too hard to fool yourself if you’d like the answer to be in a certain place.

The ‘Wallander Pivot’ is that moment when, with a breath taking surprise, some flash of inspiration meets the facts that he already has and allows him to see those facts in a new way. Suddenly he knows how to act. In the good old days, this was called ‘having a hunch’ but acting on a hunch used to get policemen into trouble because they might be inclined to bend the facts to fit their hunch. So ‘hunch’ became a dirty word. People insisted that we had to be very rational in our decision making and so instinct became unacceptable.

That’s the kind of pendulum swing we get in management thinking too. Thus I would advise anyone in management to watch carefully for the latest fad and be careful how far you ride it. Probably every fad I’ve known has started as quite an interesting idea and become an out of control pendulum swing.

Sometimes when you are the decision maker, you need to listen to your instinct as well as your reason. Sometimes neither one on its own will bring you to a decision. What you really need is a mix of the two. The trouble is you can’t just blend instinct and reason and stick them in the oven at Gas Mark 6 for 40 minutes. You need a Wallander Pivot – an inspirational flash of perception and you will never get one of those unless your thinking style is always open to looking at things in a different way. You can never be fixed in your ways, or your thinking patterns, or your decision making processes if you ever want the possibility of being able to pivot like Kurt.

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk  

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2011 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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Pandora’s Joy

Posted on March 21, 2011 by admin

Literally Managing 6 – Culture

‘If you’ve been happy too long, you become banal.  By the same token, if you’ve been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic powers… . Happiness and poetry can only co-exist for the briefest time.’

Orhan Pamuk
Snow
faber and faber 2004
p.129

Well, that was the most fun I’ve had this week. Thank heaven it’s only Monday. Fifty years of guitar playing has hit a minefield recently as a trigger finger in my left hand has made some arrangements a little difficult to play. It’s ironic that I was formulating this article before I went to the surgery. So where was I in my thinking? Ah, yes…

Joy!

With the economic, political and human problems we have around the world, it feels that there is a shiver of doom in many places. The UK Government tells us firmly and regularly that we are in a complete mess. I’ll believe them (this time), all the evidence appears to point that way but by keeping us constantly aware of the Bad News, the politicians have prised open Pandora’s Money Box and Private Frazer’s ‘We’re all doomed, I tell you…’ has flooded out.

At work, should we be trying to cheer people up? Is it another 1939? Do we need two rousing choruses of ‘We’ll meet again…’ . Or should we beg everyone to start singing ‘Things can only get better’?

Perhaps we shouldn’t bother? Who cares about joy?

As a Consultant, I’ve worked with many struggling organisations. I’ve seen the lack of joy and juggled the problem of how to right the organisation and keep up morale. Often there hasn’t been much ‘morale’ there to work with. In more than one, closure had been a daily possibility but none of them failed. I was always aware of the need for joy and celebration and the importance of giving people something positive as often as possible but I am not sure that as organisations they successfully encouraged any joy. When things are that bad, it needs the help of a significant number of people to tip the organisation into something between realism and optimism. You can’t do it on your own.

According to Orhan Pamuk, we need the odd sadness so that we can spring up from it and be creative but he says that sustained doom is not much use either not if you are trying to create a positive place. He suggests that joy helps but he also suggests that creativity comes from a mixture of ups and downs. So, should managers ensure that joy has a place? And should it be unremitting joy? Or should there be an occasional, even manufactured, difficulty to face?

Now I wonder how my own creativity will deal with my digital difficulty with its dexterity: let’s see how the cortisone works on my Epiphone Cortez.

So,

is there any room at work for being happy? 

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com
Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2011 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

All articles on this website are copyright Frank McConnell
and may not be used without written permission from him.

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Eighteen Across?

Posted on March 10, 2011 by admin

 Literally Managing 5 – Decision Making

 I began to see what had been right in front of me all along – what I would have seen sooner if my mind hadn’t been flying around in a blind panic, like a sparrow trapped in an attic room.

Stephen King
Dolores Clairbourne
New English Library paperback edition 1993
p.150

Yesterday,  my wife said, as she so often does, ‘Got them all but one’ (or maybe two or, occasionally, even three!)  I am then required to look at the crossword and see if I can supply an answer.  I am not allowed to look at her crossword even from across the room with a telescope until this impasse has been well and truly reached. 

I tend to look at the space where the missing answer is first.  ‘Eighteen across?  Charcoal’ I said. ‘What’s the clue?’ 

Sometimes you look at the spaces and the sprinkle of letters and you see the word straight away even without reading the clue.  So why couldn’t she see it, she’s far more able with words?  And our daughter!  She’s Billy Whizz.  I don’t even get asked when she’s around. 

When some thought is being chased, you can get into a particular thinking rut, a false logic path that you scour down briefly glancing into all its side tunnels until you find your success, or the realisation dawns that this is getting you nowhere. 

Like some Hound of Heaven you may try again perhaps starting from a different place but by now you can be so conditioned by your previous thinking that it can be very difficult to ignore all the stuff you’ve just worked through and be truly open to a new way.  It’s the old Irish joke isn’t it!  ‘If I were going there I wouldn’t be starting from here, Sir, not if I were you’.  Then someone else comes along with no knowledge of where you have been and sees the answer straight away.

Sometimes when you are trying to make an important decision you can go round in circles, life’s like that. 

So,

Sometimes, no matter how experienced you are, you need to ask someone else what they think and you need to listen to them (not just hear them). 

Frank McConnell

If you have an interest in Plain English, take a look at
www.frankmcconnell.com

Frank is a keen supporter of www.burning2learn.co.uk

The Literally Managing Project ©2004 – 2011 aims to help people to deepen their understanding of their management skills.

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