Avoid The Crowd

One of the secrets of a pleasant life is to be where the Crowd are not. You don't always have to be where the In-Crowd go, but you can't ever be where the Crass congregate. It will do your equanimity no good and strain your tolerance muscles beyond their natural load. A lot of people don't always make a Crowd: once inside the stand at Twickenham, all those people are just a crowd: let them out and they become a Crowd. Any Hen party is a Crowd, and so are even two Dreadful Parents dragging tired tetchy children around a shopping centre. The teenagers in a skatepark aren't a Crowd, but the drunks on the High Street are.

The rule of never being in town on a Friday or Saturday night is still a good one. I leave the whole of Saturday to the Crowd these days, venturing only as far as a local supermarket, cinema or one of the royal parks within half-an-hour's drive of my house. During the week, the return commute takes some timing to avoid the later-evening drunks and fast-food scoffers, as well as the general air of wired exhaustion from people who should have left the office hours earlier than they did. I'd rather watch my films without the sound of popcorn and chatter, so I have to choose earlier rather than later performances and not see well-publicised films at the start of the run.

Avoiding where the Crowd go is one thing, avoiding what they do and consume is just as important. Very little of what is made for the Crowd is anything more than candy-floss and cheap hamburger, whether it's a TV programme (Big Brother), film (Funny People), book (Harry Potter) or music (The Saturdays). Avoiding the cultural equivalent of junk food is obvious enough, avoiding ostentation and crank-hood is not quite so. Test any purchase with this question: do other people buy it to make a point, display their wealth, because they are early adopters or they think it's cool / stylish / whatever? If the answer is yes, put it back on the shelf. Now. Unless you have a genuine business-related reason for using it. iPhones are still a little suspect: okay if you're a young blonde graphic designer, not so good if you're starting to lose your hair already. It's impossible to state all the don'ts – it's easier to state the do's: restrained, understated, classic, quality and, not to put too fine a point on it, European.

Tuesday Night Soho Rain

After my regular Tuesday meeting, I had espresso and pancake (jam and cream cheese) and a read of Aristotle's Poetics. Then the rain came down.

My route back involved finding out at Barons Court that there were no Richmond trains (flooding?) and taking the following route: Barons Court -> Victoria -> Vauxhall underground -> Vauxhall overground -> Clapham Junction -> change platforms -> home. I was tired and wet when I got back. It was this wet...

What Did She Say?

The other day our Director invited a number of us for a coffee session: it's a semi-informal Q&A with missing supervisors, so he has a remote chance of hearing something like the voice of the people. Which in The Retail Bank is very faint. The employee satisfaction figures had tanked so bad they weren't being circulated and he wanted some idea why – gee, d'ya think that's because they took seven months to re-organise us? At one point, however, Herself The Lovely One Whose Very Passing Makes Men Sigh, an intelligent, hard-working, sensible and no-nonsense early thirty-something, said in context that she “felt very cocooned in the brand”.

I swear. I am not making this up. I couldn't. I don't use language like that. “Cocoon” is a noun naming the silk casing round a grub silkworm and a “brand” is a set of tradesmen's marks on packaging. It's also a carefully-constructed (well, sometimes) fantasy in the minds of... well, consumers, media types and a handful of corporate managers. Fantasy. Not reality. So when Herself The Lovely One Whose Very Passing Makes Men Sigh said she “felt cocooned in the brand” she's saying that she is living inside a fantasy about what our mutual employer is like. Except she can't be, because she's way more practical than that. I think she was saying, in my language, that she felt as if she belonged in the company and it felt like a reasonably secure place to be working. But what she said “cocooned in the brand”. Which carries a whole other set of meanings whether you meant them or not. Even to the person saying the words, no matter what they thought they really meant.

The photograph? On my way into work the previous Friday, I passed this ice-sculpture being installed. Don't know why they were installing, but I do know that everyone who passed it took photos.

Tank Magazine Vol 6 Issue 1

Every now and then I'm entitled to a really trivial entry. I remember Tank when it first came out. It's always had more interesting essays than most style mags – check out The Cruel Jerk by Kevin Braddock as an example of one of the better essays – and an interesting line in photography and styling. Well, they've changed the format, made it larger, put in a spiral binder and in the latest issue, have lots of pictures of la Claudia. What's not to like? You can download a pdf of the shoot at their website, but here's something to be going on with.

You can, by the way, do a lot worse than see a movie just because it's got la Claudia in it (okay, other than Ritchie Rich): Black and White, The Blackout, Friends and Lovers and Love Actually are all a better way of spending your time than watching Funny People or The Hangover.

Why Sadness Follows a Politic Lie

Something I say all the time is “they don't mean that, they're just saying it to be nice / polite / because it gets them off the hook / whatever.” Remember how one the things I do is lie even when it would be easier to tell the truth? Well, I'm the one who says something polite, evasive, nice, vaguely sympathetic or ambiguously assenting when someone says something dumb, misguided, tasteless, crass, ignorant or otherwise fattening. For all I know, other people may be expressing their opinions honestly and with a minimum of editing and sugar.

So why am I lying? Because a) telling the truth (or telling my truth, which is not quite the same thing) would not achieve anything; b) because sometimes it's the polite or politic thing to do; c) because I can tell I'm dealing with a loony, a-hole, bigot, ignoramus, or someone who just doesn't get it and want to cut the whole encounter short. As for polite lies, no, of course your bum doesn't look big in those jeans.

As an example of the first type: somewhere out there is a woman in her mid-thirties who honestly believes that if the parents do anal sex, their male children will become homosexuals. She thought it said so in the Bible, and she's a fundamentalist. I know this woman exists because I've had lunch with her, and she was a guest of our mutual hosts. I said nothing while she spouted this hate-filled nonsense, and I haven't quite liked myself as much since. Why didn't I call her out on it? It was lunch and I was guest. She was the one breaking the rules by expressing such opinions. Anyway, nobody who believes such things would possibly be influenced by argument and facts, or even see the relevance of facts. (Fundamentalists believe despite the evidence – politicians and management don't believe and ignore the evidence.)

As an example of the third type: the other day at a meeting I found myself sitting next to a woman who, after we'd shaken hands and swapped first names as is an acceptable practice, proceeded to give me what ought to be hereinafter known as the “AA Check-Out”: how long had I been sober? How many meetings a week did I go to? Do I have a sponsor? Do I have sponsees? She was checking that I was an orthodox AA. From what she said later, she was hoping I would unwittingly admit to having some problem with my sponsor, so we could share. In my experience people who do the AA Check-Out are not so emotionally sober, and usually are having some sort of problem with AA as a social practice. Once again, I vanished behind some vague politeness and a comment that sponsors are like lamp-posts: she had to be sure she was using hers for illumination, not support. Get this person out of my life. Now.

When I started this entry, I thought what I felt on these occasions was guilt that I hadn't spoken up for myself. But it isn't. It's a little stab of despair that this is who I meet, an urge not to be near or talking to yet another head case. Somewhere there's a place with people I'd like to meet and who would like to meet me – and once again, it's nowhere I am.

Geoff Colvin's Talent is Over-Rated

I've been reading Talent is Over-Rated by Geoff Colvin, an editor at Fortune. It's a quick, clear read and a much more detailed discussion of the “10,000 hour” rule that Malcolm Gladwell travestied in his last book. Colvin is summarising a bunch of research which suggests that people who do anything – music, sports, mathematics, writing – at a very high level spend a lot of time doing deliberate practice: practice that is carefully designed to take you past your present limits and to remove any sticky spots in your present technique. Top-flight anyones do a lot of this. Indeed at the top level, you don't train to compete, you compete to train. Competition is there solely to identify the weaker points of your game.

Colvin is very good about the way that large corporations are set up exactly not to provide the environment and culture in which people can develop and perform excellently. “How often is feedback at most companies constructive, non-threatening, and work-focused? Evaluations at most companies are exactly the opposite: telling the hapless employee what he did wrong, not how to do better, and specifying personal traits (attitude, personality) that must be changed, all under the unspoken looming threat of getting fired.” Sounds familiar to me. What Colvin shys from saying why it's like this in most companies.

The research he's using suggests that the motivation of top-flight performers is intrinsic to the activity, it's about being excellent at what you do. It's not about winning, proving yourself to your peers, making lots of money, lavish praise, promotions and honours.

Well, unless you're a manager. Then your intrinsic motivations are exactly about proving yourself, winning, making money, status, praise, promotions and, who knows? Even honours, should you do the right thing by the incumbent Government. A manager's skills are the dark arts of seeking preferment, influence and advancement and avoiding responsibility, blame and ill-favor. Managers really are motivated by fear, praise, financial rewards and gee-gaws and they make the company in their image.

That's why most corporate appraisal schemes are fear-based and fault-finding; it's why the training is on the corporate intranet, non-accredited and shallow; why the courses they trumpet are about “leadership” and “effectiveness”; and why they can churn people and organisational structures every two or three years. That's why techies regard managers as untainted by the slightest skill or knowledge, and why the rest of the people who work there regard them as slightly sad or bad. Because they are motivated by the preferment of the powerful and the pursuit of power and influence, and there is something not quite right about that.

it's not to Colvin's detriment he didn't write that - because I'm sure he knows it - but it is a sign of how good the book is that it becomes obvious.

Never change your mobile phone number...

... and always have the phone charged and on. Lots of people don't update their records when you send out that mail about your new contact details.

Your work is what gives you satisfaction. It may or may not be what you do in your employment.

Your job is how you earn your money. You earn money now by doing what your current employer wants you to do, you earn money tomorrow by training on new stuff and finding your next job. When there was "full employment", that next job was with the same employer. Now there is a "flexible labour market", that next job might be with your current employer or it might be with another one.

Always keep in touch with your recruitment agents
Always go to every interview: you need the practice and you learn a lot
Keep your on-line CV's updated and consistent