Your big opportunity
THE company you work for is broadly in one of two situations – it’s doing well from inflation or inflation is seriously harming it. Asking you to remain calm in this maelstrom of panic is a bit like asking someone being mauled by a lion not to worry. What else is there to do? Well, a surprising amount, actually.
Are your company pensions safe?
First, more people are in the same situation than you think. Just imagine the vast array of pensioners in the west who depend for their livelihood – for as long as the next thirty years or more – on their employment-related pensions. A lifetime of working with money set aside to provide for a comfortable old age is suddenly threatened by the fact that no pension provider anywhere has been able to hedge against an upset of the “secure” investments that accepted modest returns in search of dependable ones.
When will debt weigh your company down?
Second, your commercial debt, however small, is now a dead albatross around your neck. That is true even if the early part of it is on fixed interest. When that runs out you may have to realise assets that support the borrowings, just at the moment when many others have to do the same thing. I won’t go on – it is too gloomy a scenario. Basically, the system is robbing subscribers. Maybe we are learning that to pay as you go is not such an amateur idea after all.
Where are the opportunities?
None of that changes the third point to be considered. Every trauma is an opportunity. In this case, what is happening is a remarkable, and not-seen-before-in-my-lifetime, chance to look again at who is doing what and with what policies. You cannot accuse the new British Finance Minister (known as Chancellor of the Exchequer, but not for long, I suspect) of not being bold. But bold doesn’t have to mean daft. It can also mean sensible, logical, progressive, mindful and, at a pinch, even full of common sense. Bold in principle is right at a time like the present. What are the criteria for testing if your personal “bold” is the right sort?
First, is it going to make your business more sustainable on a more sustainable planet? This is not some theoretical question for those rightly worried about the polar bear. It is about your survival, your comfort, your happiness and your life. None of these will come about unless your policy is far-sighted enough to see beyond the next AGM and election. Ignore this at your peril.
Second, is it thought through? Of all the near and actual catastrophes I have come across – and participated in – in my career, over 90 per cent were caused by half-baked ideas. Being creative and having fruity, new concepts is a first step in any progress. Thinking whether and how they will work is the qualifier that should dismiss most of them before they eat the profits.
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A proposal I had for my parent company, Ranks Hovis McDougall, was that it should merge with the (then) business of Reckitt & Colman. It was a good proposal since the products of the two companies were complementary and not competitive. Together they would have dominated some big markets giving them a strong base for seeing off foreign intervention – inevitable with Britain joining the EU. The commercial reasons were sound. I failed to pay attention to the personality conflicts that such a merger would likely bring, believing them to be of minor importance. Half baked.
Changing attitudes to work
Inflation isn’t the only thing threatening many businesses. Employee’s attitudes, and the general view of work, have changed fundamentally and continue to do so. This is partly driven by new health demands. Covid made people aware that government departments are not always the best organisations to predict and plan for a healthy society. Moreover, Covid has made many more people believe that medical attention was their right whether they could pay for it or not. At the same time medics realised that they were ever more visibly in the firing line if they got diagnoses and treatments wrong.
The whole question of mental health and stability, in the past rather pushed aside as “your problem, not ours”, has been raised to a new level as it becomes clear that the relationship between mental and physical health is much closer than we previously thought. And what is mental health anyway? A wish to enjoy life rather than be endlessly enslaved to hard, boring and repetitive work seems to be a sign of highly desirable sanity, not laziness or sickness. That raises the question of how decent your boss and employer are.
Being treated politely at work is as important as being treated civilly at home. For many people, neither of these situations lives up to the legitimate expectations of the incumbents. We have kidded ourselves that rudeness, lewdness and crudeness are better taskmasters than politeness, kindness and decency. They aren’t. They are simply ill-disciplined exposes of our nastier selves. They lead to self-denigration and self-loathing.
What do you want to do?
While the present melee of disruption is taking place, you have two opportunities that may not occur again in your lifetime. The first is to decide what you want. The more you do this from a menu of options, the less satisfactory will be the answer. Menus say only what their writers want to promote as available. The authors of life opportunities are generally parents, teachers, clerics, career counsellors, universities, and politicians. All of these people have an axe to grind, a brief to fulfil and a paymaster to satisfy. Truthful information is what is needed for those choosing a career, not pressure. Financial security seems a highly desirable aim. After 50 years of grinding away to secure it, it can look more like a prison cell. You do not have to be a fly-by-night because you experiment with your career in the early stages of it. Seek first your innate talents and your vocation in life will become obvious soon after.
Understanding yourself while you are still young is a difficult job. You have not thought enough about life, nor have you had enough experience to ask yourself the relevant questions. Until you are socially at ease you find it difficult to know what the priorities are. Get others, including a good mentor, to help you. Admitting that you are inexperienced is the first step to maturity. Learning early in life to ask others the right questions puts you in a powerful position.
Make the world a better place
Your other opportunity is to make the world a better place. Oh yes, everyone will claim to be doing that. Actually they are trying to make the world a better place for themselves. That is legitimate but not the most rewarding way to have a fulfilled life. Enough to eat, adequate shelter and modest comfort are highly desirable objectives for us all. Fulfilled and happy people left behind when you go are different levels of satisfaction altogether. Real rewards only come when you see how well you have improved life for others.
We all shape our own life patterns within the constraints and opportunities we are given. My experience suggests that for many people, learning what constitutes a human mind, personal drive and the most rewarding thing you can accomplish is a wonderful circuit of life. It cannot be brilliant for everyone. The little bit of brilliance you make for someone else is valuable beyond anything else you can achieve. When you look in the mirror, you see it glittering. It is you.
The writer is founder and chair at Terrific Mentors International
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