Signs of the future

Most weeks I undertake a routine trip driving through the suburbs of south London. It’s a distance of some 10 miles and when traffic is light can take 40 minutes – and much more at busier times.

Out of curiosity on one trip I counted the number of sets of traffic lights I went through; there were 76. It prompted me to reflect on the amount of street furniture in the urban environment.

It may be that your regular commute is along unmarked country lanes; or that they have the next level of guidance, being a white line in the middle of the road, or white line boundaries and cats eyes. But as you arrive at a town you may find pedestrian crossings, extensive (and sometimes incomprehensible) road markings; limitations on directions of travel in a street and traffic priorities; and of course those traffic lights.

Imagine our towns if all these disappeared.

Such might be the case if intelligent cars are able to navigate without these visible aids to navigation. Most street furniture comprises signs for the regulation of traffic and so could be dispensed with. And as far as parking is concerned, a driverless car could work like a taxi – dropping you off where you wanted but then moving to a convenient parking space, perhaps some distance away, until required. On motorways our attempts at variable speed limits, aimed at avoiding turbulent flow, would be better regulated by computer-based navigation.

Some signage would be required in urban spaces for pedestrians – but of course with intelligent cars there would be less need for road space (after all, most of the time roads and streets are empty) – so perhaps there would be more space for pedestrians and more opportunity to separate motorised traffic from pedestrians.

With automatic drivers could come a rearrangement of the seating of a car; no more need for side by side in rows – four passengers could travel facing each other around a table; perhaps even sharing food and drink as the responsibility for navigation lies elsewhere.

And of course, we are all familiar with this mode of transport as that is exactly what we can get on a train!

Calvert Markham

A good word for 2021

In one exercise while undertaking arduous training soldiers have to run in full kit over a long course through the Welsh mountains. After careful navigation they eventually arrive at their destination, exhausted, looking forward to deserved rest and relaxation; but on arrival they are told they must turn round and run back to the starting point.

The purpose of this exercise is not to satisfy the whims of some sadistic drill sergeant but to practise dealing with this type of setback. One of the features of motivation is that it becomes stronger the nearer you get to the goal. Being told at breakfast you will miss lunch is far easier to cope with than having the meal snatched away from you just as you are beginning to eat it. So it is for these soldiers; it is tough to cope with the disappointment of being denied rest and refreshment when they thought it so close.

(And it is worth remembering this when negotiating. For example, in England the rules of house purchase allow an unscrupulous buyer to find an excuse to reduce their offer price just before the deal is complete to get the seller to reduce their price!)

Disappointment is the emotion here and disappointment is my word for 2021, as we have had to deal with the varying restrictions placed on movement and socialisation to restrict COVID infections. Plans have been repeatedly made and then unmade at the last moment to everyone’s disappointment.

We can only guess at the effect of these recent repeated disappointments on individual and collective psyches. Perhaps this is linked to another of my disappointments: the apparent loss of civilised debate in so many areas of public discourse.

The advance of strongly held opinions has always provoked disagreement, and the attack on the person rather than the principle has been perennial, even meriting the Latin term ad hominem. But of late the accompanying aggression towards those holding different opinions seems to have become unprecedentedly violent, seeking sanctions and even threatening death.

A further related disappointment is the response of those in authority, which often seemed unduly accommodating to strongly expressed opinions of a minority. Volume does not equal value!

My word for 2020 was ‘appreciation’; it is only when you are deprived of some habitually available facility that you appreciate its value. During 2021 the recovery of those facilities has come, gone, come again, and then gone over and over again, with much disappointment.

So what might be the word for 2022? Let’s hope it’s ‘restoration’!

Calvert Markham

The failure of colonialism

Some 40 years ago I arrived in Juba, what is now the capital of South Sudan, but at a time when Sudan was undivided and the largest country in Africa. The road from the airport was lined with handsome villas but in sad disrepair, as was the tarmac on the road on which we travelled.

My colleague, an old Africa hand already in Juba, had told me to load up with provisions in Nairobi as supplies were short in Juba.

It seemed that Sudan had regressed since the departure of the colonists (it gained independence from the UK and Egypt in 1956) and its history since has been riven by internal conflict. It unhappily illustrates what often happens when a colonialising power departs.

We in Britain saw it with the departure of the Romans 1500 years ago, when their constructions subsequently fell into disrepair and decay; and more recently we have seen it with the invasions of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan where well-meaning western interventions have destabilised despotic regimes but led to benefits that little reflect the cost in time, money and indeed lives that have been deployed.

‘What has failed here in Sudan?’ I asked my colleague 40 years ago. ‘Have they lost the techniques of government that we left them with?’

‘No’, he replied. ‘They have them, but they don’t work for them.’

It seems that those techniques that have worked so well in administering empires from the Roman to the British fail when that governing authority leaves; they don’t fit with the local culture.

The impact of culture was brilliantly illustrated for me in a lecture by an anthropologist who posed the following situation.

It is late at night and you are the only passenger in a car driven by a friend, who is considerably exceeding the speed limit. He briefly loses control of the car and there is an accident; no one else is involved and there are no injuries, but there is some damage to property and the car itself. There is an investigation and you, as the only witness, are called to give evidence. The question is, what right has your friend to expect you to lie about his speed?

Note that the question is not about whether you would lie, but about the right of your friend to expect you to lie.

The anthropologist went on to explain that the answer varies according to culture; perhaps in the UK the prevailing view would be that the friend has no right to expect you to lie, although you might do so. In other cultures, of course you would be expected to lie, as exemplified in the rule of silence – omerta – in the Sicilian mafia.

There are a couple of insights from my training as a management consultant that shed light on the challenges that confront those trying to remake government in a different culture.

In trying to understand human behaviour, we were taught that no man is a fool in his own estimation. Apparently aberrant behaviour may make no sense to us but makes perfect sense to those exhibiting it. So for some it is obvious that someone from my family or tribe should be preferred to a more competent person from elsewhere. (And before we congratulate ourselves that this is a feature only of developing countries, recent studies of unconscious bias show that a similar phenomenon is alive and well in terms of class in the US and UK!)

Second, that if the only power available is to say no, then that is what is exercised. At its worst this is manifest in the dominance of economic rentiers who add cost but nothing of value; individuals who need bribes to facilitate a decision or turn a blind eye to some infraction of a pointless regulation.

It may of course be possible to prescribe some intermediate technology that allows the transition to governance that is just and optimises the development of a nation state; the challenge is of course making that transition. Those who are invested and well rewarded in any status quo will be reluctant to change.

It would be nice to finish this piece with a message of optimism but as I write, the current news is of terrible famine in Afghanistan; a flood of migrants leaving their countries seeking a better life elsewhere – with many being inhumanly exploited on the way; and brutal repression of those protesting against unjust regimes.

It would be easy to despair. We might look to others – government, aid agencies perhaps – to act. But perhaps each of us if we do not already do so can light a candle of some kind to help. And although each candle will be small, collectively many candles should bring about betterment for all.

Another country

It is with some shame that I share with you a cautionary tale from my childhood, delivered by my mother in private horror. She and my father had been at a formal dinner when one of the diners broke his bread roll and dropped it into his soup and then ate soup and sodden roll together! I knew my father did this at home, so asked, ‘Was it dad?’ My mother sadly nodded. What must people have thought? Would my parents ever be invited out or be able to show their faces in public again?

My father seemed unperturbed by this, but obviously my mother was stricken. Happily I can report that I didn’t see my parents being subsequently ostracised from polite society

From today’s perspective, in 2021, my mother’s concern seems trivial, but that was then and this is now. ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’ said LP Hartley, opening his novel, The Go-Between. In that foreign country – provincial mid-twentieth century England – that soup lapse mattered far more than now.

Standards of good manners and respect for others change with time. The casual misogyny and racism in much-loved TV shows of 40 years ago when shown today create discomfort, while the frequent swearing, explicit sex and commonplace infidelity portrayed in today’s TV would have shocked those earlier audiences.

The concept of culture shock emerged in the 1960s, particularly associated with the US Peace Corps; it is defined as ‘the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone when they are suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes.’ This is commonly experienced in visiting another country. For example, when living in Saudi Arabia many years ago I was advised to avoid taking a woman as a passenger in my car (and of course, women were not then permitted to drive in Saudi Arabia) as if she was not from my family the authorities would regard it a crime.

Alvin Toffler in his book Future Shock, published in 1970, suggested that the impact of rapid societal and technological change would produce an impact similar to culture shock. We don’t need to relocate to experience the shock; the world simply changes about us.

And so for me, born and brought up in that foreign country of the past, the much-publicised recent discourse about woke-ness, virtue signalling, the repugnance of funding from the historical profits of slavery, and the like provoke – in me and perhaps for many others – a sense of culture shock. A shock not confined only to protest; protest has been with us always and is often an engine of beneficial societal change. It is equally shock about the response to those protests, which can be presented as an openness to change or, at the other extreme, a too-ready capitulation to the demands of those protesting.

The question is about ‘what really matters?’ Acceptable in one culture, the same behaviour will be unacceptable in another which has a different view of what really matters. Bread in soup may now be acceptable; today the use of descriptive words and expressions of opinion are contested. And tomorrow? Some of today’s concerns will perhaps seem as quaint as eating soup with bread.

Calvert Markham

A little-known celebration

Napoleon is said to have declared (presumably in French) that ‘every French soldier has a marshal’s baton in his knapsack’, implying that given ambition, talent and opportunity the humblest soldier could ascend to the highest rank.

And so it was when I started work with a large international business a frightening number of years ago. In many ways it was modelled on the army: as a young graduate I was a member of the senior staff to be knocked into shape by the experienced NCOs – non-graduates – with whom I worked. My career was potentially to be with this single organisation, developed so that with increasing skill and experience eventually I would rise to senior positions. This was the time of long service awards, faithful employees being presented with a watch to reward 25, 40 or even in some cases 50 years’ service.

But then we had some redundancies. We were told that cutting staff would help to ensure the security of those remaining. But redundancy is a terrible breach of faith from an employer saying in effect, ‘that endeavour, to which you have committed yourself and which you have diligently pursued is actually worth little or nothing!’ Redundancies occurred across many industries; employee loyalty was not reciprocated by employers.

Those of us remaining (in HR parlance, the ‘survivors’) may have had the sense that ‘there but for the grace of God go I’; all were vulnerable. Any loyalty that employees may have felt towards their organisation had been misplaced.

So since those early days workers have defined themselves tribally less as working for a specific organisation but in terms of their profession – an accountant, a lawyer, or even a management consultant. And what I have noticed is that members of the same trade or profession often have more in common with each other than they might with those from the same employer or even from the same country. What they have in common are knowhow, similar challenges and experiences of success and failure, and the opportunity for productive fellowship.

And so the little-known celebration I would like to draw to your attention is International Consultants Day marked annually on the first Thursday in June, this year being celebrated on June 3. This is begotten by the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes – an organisation dedicated to improving standards of consulting around the world, and in which I served in a voluntary capacity for many years, during which time I travelled and met management consultants from some 50 or more countries. We had much in common: complex projects; difficult clients; ethical challenges, all of which drew us together.

International Consultants Day allows us to celebrate the fellowship of management consultants across the world*. Despite critical media comment, management consultants exist to improve the lot of their clients and – judging by the continuing growth of the sector – are successful in doing so and being recognised as such.

So my best wishes to all of you who are management consultants, and may you continue to faithfully serve those who aren’t.

Calvert Markham

*And it is also being celebrated in the latest edition of the Management Consulting Journal – see https://www.linkedin.com/company/management-consulting-journal/

A perfect fit

As a fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of stories, I have often used Captain Samuel Vimes’ ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness to preach the virtue of buying quality.

To summarise for those unfamiliar with this profound observation, it points out that a poor person can afford to pay only a little for their shoes, which then need to be replaced after a couple of years, while the wealthy person pays for a high quality but expensive pair that will last many years. Over a period of years the poor person will then have to spend more on shoes than the wealthy.

Soon, as the UK emerges from lockdown, Zoom attire will need to be replaced by the smarter clothing in the deeper recesses of wardrobes for face-to-face encounters. But will that clothing fit 12 months on? The incidental exercise of commuting – walking, climbing up and down steps – may have resulted in (how do I say this delicately?) a small increase in portliness. Some adjustment of wardrobe may therefore be needed; if not acquisition of new clothes, perhaps in a relaxation of girth.

So my song today concerns how well clothes fit.

The popular TV series What not to wear finished some years ago, but it served to show how careful choice of styles, colour and in particular, clothes that fit could quickly upgrade appearance. Around that time, my training for consultants included sessions from image advisors on how to select the right colour and styles for workwear. (With good reason; as one advisor put it, ‘Imagine how much thought goes into the design of the packaging for a product on a supermarket shelf that costs only a few pounds. Dress is the packaging equivalent for you consultants who charge hundreds of pounds a day!’)

The cost of manufacturing in short runs in recent years has reduced, so it should be possible to create made to measure clothing cheaply.

My experience of made to measure clothing is that the tailor will take measurements and then there will be fitting to ensure that the clothing does indeed fit and whether further adjustment is required – for example, to ensure that a jacket hangs well on the shoulders. So much of the effort is determining what is required, not manufacturing the garment. (The results in my experience have not always been good. Last time I offered measurements that were aspirational rather than actual and so the results are rather tight…!)

Shoe fitting is even worse. New shoes take time to relax and so a good fit when buying in a shop may change for the worse.

So here’s my recipe for a revival of high street shopping as we emerge from lockdown: set up in-store booths where we can strip down and have our essential dimensions of body and feet accurately measured. Link this with cost effective manufacture so we can then order clothes and shoes that actually fit first time!

Calvert Markham

Sex, sadism but less snobbery

‘Please sir, can I go to see Dr No?’ I was at a boarding school, but even though I was a day boy, you needed your housemaster’s permission to visit the cinema in the small town.

‘That’s one of those Doctor films, isn’t it? That’s fine.’ My housemaster had confused this first of a long series of James Bond films with the gentle comedies featuring Dirk Bogarde, and I wasn’t going to disabuse him.

It is now almost 60 years since Dr No was released and more than 20 films have since followed, with a variety of personifications of James Bond, so as part of our lockdown viewing programme I am watching all the films again – one a week – and it is a revelation.

Twenty-first century eyes will find it hard to understand the impact of those early films; frankly they are a bit clunky. Some of the acting is wooden; the use of models is obvious, comparing badly with modern animation; and what were original ideas in the films have since become cliches.

Even so, for many years every bank holiday afternoon was marked with a TV broadcast of one of the James Bond films. And there are joys in the films that continue to this day, particularly Q, the quartermaster – for many years played by the excellent Desmond Llewellyn – issuing Bond with gadgetry all of which will prove useful. (Eddie Izzard’s comedic riff on this suggests items that were given but never used, such as jam trousers or a sombrero with built in Subbuteo.)

The Bond stories were castigated for their sex, sadism and snobbery. They offered poor counsel for this young adolescent seeking courtship advice; and show questionable HR practices for all villains, whose disciplinary procedures almost always involve an unpleasant death. But the biggest change since the 1960s is their snob value. The exotic locations with tropic beaches and clear blue sea have since become familiar through the package holiday. Bond’s meals may have been privileged in the early 60s – food rationing in the UK had finished only in 1954 – but now the ingredients are readily available on supermarket shelves.

What are outstanding in Bond films are the opening credits. There is of course a linking visual style with them all, but the theme songs are classic and sung by world class singers. Revel in Shirley Bassey with Goldfinger, or Tom Jones in Thunderball – both then in their prime!

So I will press on with my weekly diet of Bond and who knows? By the time I get to it, the producers may have released their latest offering, No Time to Die.

Calvert Markham

The Power of Ten

I quite like driving in France because when distance is in kilometres, you go a lot faster; kilometres pass more quickly than miles. We have yet to change to kilometres in this country but we have seen metrication take over for instance in our shopping, buying in kilos and litres.

And this year marks the 50^th anniversary of currency decimalisation in the UK.

Currency decimalisation has made calculations easier. Try multiplying £1/7/6d (one pound, seven shillings and six pence) by seven without the benefit of a calculator! Before then, ready reckoners were sold which were books with the calculations laid out as a table. (Old joke: Salesman in bookshop to customer: ‘This ready reckoner will do half your work for you!’ Customer, ‘Great, I’ll take two!’)

One of the great benefits of the imperial system was that we learned to calculate in different bases: in money: 20 shillings to 1 pound, 12 pence to 1 shilling; in weight: 16 ounces to one pound, 14 pounds to 1 stone, 8 stones to I hundredweight, 20 hundredweight to 1 ton.

There was some decimalisation in these old measures: one gallon of water weights ten pounds; ten florins are worth one pound sterling; and an acre is 10 square chains.

But we grow up with a sense of value associated with a particular measuring system; for example, I found that when weather forecasts started reporting temperatures in Celsius rather than Fahrenheit I didn’t know whether to expect heat or cold. I still have a sense of value associated with pre-decimal currency, so was shocked when I read that a first-class stamp now costs more than 15 shillings!

Anyhow, I’ve regularly monitored my weight for many years in an attempt to control it. (I am still scarred by the efforts of a couple of kindly engineers with whom I shared a house in my salad days who regularly adjusted my scales surreptitiously to persuade me my weight had a menstrual cycle.) As a celebration of the anniversary of decimalisation, I have started to record my weight in kilos rather than stones and pounds. But like my weather experience, I have yet to understand the implications of my weight in kilos: is it OK or do I need to lose weight? What remains sadly constant, however, is that I have never needed to put it on!

Calvert Markham

A good word for 2020

One January many years ago I was leading a conference being held in a remote country house. It was late afternoon and already dark, when suddenly the lights went out. The weather was stormy, and a falling tree had cut the power lines to the house.

Conference activities were suspended so we hoped to console ourselves by candlelight at the bar; but the authorities declared that drinking in the dark was potentially dangerous; the bar was closed.

A few hours later we were transferred to a hotel in a nearby town and it is at this point that I realised how I loved electricity! Not just to provide light and heat, but also to recharge my phone and notebook computer…

The value of much is proved only in its absence, and so we have found during 2020. For some it has been the tragic loss of those we will never see again, with the denial of a fitting farewell. For many, the loss of employment, of business, or health.

Evenings out have been replaced by bingeing on Netflix; but scenes on films and dramas of meetings in homes, bars and restaurants serve also to intensify the sense of enforced isolation.

It would be tempting therefore to label 2020 as a year of unfulfilled hopes and broken dreams. Yet I would like to label it as a year of appreciation. Appreciation of all those things that we have missed and particularly those opportunities for face-to-face meetings with family, friends and colleagues; even to be surrounded happily by strangers. This is an essential part of our humanity, which I will appreciate all the more as a result of 2020 when, all being well, normality is soon restored.

Calvert Markham

Let’s hear it for Abe… and Desmond

Lesson 101 in social sciences for consultants ever features Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

For those unfamiliar with it, here goes: not all needs are ranked the same. Most profound are physiological needs, as those of us who have needed a pee while driving on a motorway with no service station in sight will readily attest. Next comes safety – confidence in ongoing security – followed by social needs – the need to belong. Next come ego needs, relating to a position in society, and finally the need for fulfilment.

The threshold of satisfaction for any of these needs will be different for each of us; contrast the bourgeois and the bohemian. But when any of these fails to meet our personal standards of satisfaction, it is going to be the more profound that take precedence. So as I am drowning in a river, when you pause upon the bank to show me the van Gogh painting you have just acquired, my appreciation of its artistic excellence is going to be subordinated to my urgent wish for you to help me get out!

Happily, threats to the more profound needs are rare for most of us – apart from the aforementioned motorway crisis – but the effects of COVID-19 and the measures to deal with it have raised our appreciation of those who help preserve our safety and security; health workers, providers of utilities, delivery drivers, refuse collectors – occupations that are unnoticed much of the time.

But I want to dwell on the impact of restrictions on the next level in the hierarchy: our social needs. The loss of social contact by lockdown measures – and even mask wearing – may have more severe effects than most realise.

Desmond Morris, in his book The Human Zoo points out that humans, like animals, need stimulation to survive. He wrote

When a man is reaching retirement age he often dreams of sitting quietly in the sun. By relaxing and taking it easy he hopes to stretch out an enjoyable old age. If he manages to fulfill his sun-sit dream, one thing is certain: he will not lengthen his life, he will shorten it. The reason is simple — he will have given up the Stimulus Struggle.

We look to social contact for stimulation, yet over the last four months have lived through an ongoing Groundhog Day. No surprise then the exuberance of those who, given an inch of relaxation of restrictions, have grasped a mile of beach trips, pub socialising and other face-to-face engagements that many worry have gone too far, too fast.

By contrast, many of those in office jobs have celebrated the loss of the daily commute, and bosses are now re-evaluating the need for expensive real estate to accommodate office workers who previously inhabited the paperwork successors to Victorian factories. This fails, however, to take account of the need for social capital to make business run. Within a business there is a shadow economy of relationships and favours given and received formed face-to-face that accelerates the capacity to get things done. Likewise, relationships are established and maintained by face to face contact; why otherwise jet halfway round the world for a business meeting; or consummate the successful completion of a deal with a meal together?

The young entering the workforce will find adapting to the world of office work difficult in the virtual world. Gone will be opportunities for casual water-cooler coaching that is so valuable; and the workplace is a major source of new friendships for the young.

Likewise at business school. Some years ago I had the task of interviewing would-be MBA students to see if an MBA was right for them, and they were right for an MBA – a course that is expensive in both time and money. The teaching and studies were ranked important by these candidates, but so too was the opportunity of creating an international network of high-flying contemporaries that would last a lifetime.

Physical proximity is still restricted, and so virtual meetings will dominate for a while. But I’m willing to bet that once those restrictions disappear, the opportunity for face-to-face engagement will once again be happily embraced.