I have issues with...

• work
• patience
• excess
• discipline
• walls

Any surprises there? similarminds.com can tell you what you have issues with.

The world is flat

There have been plenty of people banging on about Google Earth already. But if you haven't had a chance to see it or you don't want to install yet another beta product from Google on your machine, you can view it in your browser via Flash at this excellent site.

Another day, another $

Three days ago gloom, today everything's coming up roses. So goes the world of professional services. (If we're one of the world's newest professions, why do we sound like we're the oldest?) The company has won a big pitch that should keep our stock high for the next six months. I know I've been slagging off the sales team, so is now the time to recant?
No.
Not one member of our sales team was involved in the pitch. Tossers.
Of course this only goes to mask some deeper problems: some people in operations have no work for the next two months and all our historic data is inconsistent and unreliable. I think this may be deliberate, as certain people in the company look more efficient as a consequence. That's going to change if I stay.
But today is my birthday. The Sugar Cubes are smoking cigars. And it's time for another — more successful — exit strategy.

Getting from A to B

Business education, in an attempt to convince itself that it is a serious discipline rather than vocational training, has long incorporated aspects of psychology into its courses. At its most basic, this involves proto-Jungian psychometric profiling between types A and B. Type A people are characterised by their competitive need to achieve, a sense of urgency and a general hostility to others and to the world. Conversely, type B personalities are more relaxed, probably seeking a more spiritual path through life.
In my view, type A's aggressive attitude may be ascribed to an underlying dissatisfaction. This type, by its competitive nature, expects external recognition for what it achieves. Type B personalities may be more secure and self-satisfied. The irony is that despite type A's disdain for world, this personality requires an approbation that it should know it will not value, leading to frustration and seeking out more challenges in a spiral of dissatisfaction that tends to terminate in a coronary.
While this typology is highly simplistic, it is easy for me to identify myself with those in type A. Although my aggression is usually confined to sport, commuters and this blog, I always try to do more than one activity at a time (hence my PDA dependency). This is not a healthy position to be in. Can a type A ever be satisfied or even accept satisfaction as a good thing?
It is possible to get from A to B. A striking example is Heinrich Harrer, author of Seven Years in Tibet, a book that I read much of from my mountains-obsessed father's shelves when I was nine or ten years old, though it held no meaning for me then. Harrer was an archetypal type A, a hugely competitive and successful sportsman living the Aryan dream in 1930s Austria. In 1939 he headed to India in an attempt to climb a mountain that had defied numerous expeditions; he failed. War broke out, he was imprisoned by the British, but escaped to Tibet where he was eventually allowed to live. While there he met with the young Dalai Lama, through whose friendship he achieved a sense of calm and compassion he had previously struggled to understand. He returned to Austria after the war, just as the Chinese took over Tibet.
It was a Saul of Tarsus-like conversion, one to bewilder a type A atheist. How does one move from A to B? Do you need to find a god three miles high? Do you need to abandon the twice-daily rush hour for a hippy kibbutz? Or tell a type A world to forget about deliverables and milestones and just relax?

The world is a book

I've half a dozen books on the go and, not atypically, I'm making little progress with any of them. They all suggest some kind of world view which I attempt to summarise here without pretension, in case you should want to follow up and in case I forget what I'm reading.

• Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore: the world is full of clandestine mysticism and illogical aggression.


• Franz Kafka, The Penal Colony: the world is lonely and unpleasant, though a few have sufficient fortune to ensure that they evade suffering.


• Albert Einstein, Relativity: the special and general theory: it is difficult to make a true measure of the world from our vantage point without it being based on axiom.


• Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics: while we cannot know what is good about the world, all our actions may aim at something good.


• Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism: what the world is not but may be is far more important than what it is now.


• Gavin Menzies, 1421: most of the world was discovered by the Chinese before the Europeans, but the evidence for this was subsequently destroyed.

Business case

Attendant to the dazzling managerial incompetencies of Gate Gourmet in recent days, it struck me how fortunate I should think myself to be employed by a company that does not deliberately induce industrial action so that it can sack its staff over a loudhailer in order to replace them with still cheaper casual labour. I now realise that my employer's apparently generous attitude should be ascribed to FUBAR forecasting rather than to any sense of moral obligation. Management has been incapable of gazing a couple of months into the future to see what our crystal ball holds in terms of sales and revenue; an absolute fundamental of any business.
My promotion — without salary rise — has proved serendipitous, however. Just as the executive in the Netherlands were starting to get twitchy again, I have provided the information that reveals all, gleaned with no little cajoling, supplication and bloody mindedness from relevant sources. And that information is not great. Simple mathematics across the operations group will now demonstrate that we are carrying five people more than we should be.
What will happen now? Management will decide how long they can hold out for without releasing anyone (I hope) and then dismiss those who are doing the least work (again) rather than firing the idiots in sales who are too lazy and too stupid to sell the work we have skills in. If any of them actually took the time to understand how we work, the business would run far more smoothly. Instead, we'll whittle the operations group away until it reaches the relevant profit margin without touching sales, for as we all know, the purpose of business is to make money.
Well no, it isn't actually. In business, just as in individuals' daily lives, money is not an end in itself but a means to other things. If a business is successful it will recruit new staff, invest in emerging revenue streams, improve conditions to retain its better staff, diversify... all of which cost money. Indeed a company that has made a great deal of money and has more assets than it can make use of is ripe for take-over. It is easy to tell us that shareholders are interested only in the bottom line, but the bottom line for shareholders is selling at the right moment to get a return on their investment.
The purpose of business is to do well. That means providing a service that customers require to a high standard, while encouraging staff to do well and rewarding those who have invested their faith and money in the enterprise. Are we heading towards this principle? Or are we a bunch of self-interested under-motivated whingers?

'scuse me while I kiss...

I have finally bitten the satellite bullet and handed thirty pieces of silver to Sky (prop. R. Murdoch), ironically in what augurs to be Arsenal's worst season in nearly twenty years. Leaving my misery guts to one side however (possibly via a pancreatic duodenectomy), there is a modicum of financial logic to it. The sports package costs £33 per month, with the first six months at half price; that's £297 for the year. We don't have a properly fitted standard TV aerial, so that would cost around £130 plus installation. So effectively we're paying twice the price for at least ten times the channels, some of which I actually want to watch; that's only £3 a week extra.
Before you think that this is an advert for Sky, however, remember that my money will be lining not only Murdoch's pockets but those of Roman Abramovich, Lee Bowyer, Phil and Garry Neville... Moreover, from Spring next year, Sky will be broadcasting in high definition , so we need to buy a HDTV. That means it's got to carry digital inputs and be big (at least 27"), flat and expensive. Our current 14" portable certainly does not fit the bill. Time to break out those ISAs and fully adopt the couch potato lifestyle?

I was really moved

So we have finally been released from the urban shackles of Bermondsey into the semi-detatched suburbia that is Barnet. Long commutes on the underground terminate in verdant tranquility and provide potential respite for blogging via PDA.
There had been an extended hiatus while I attempted to deal with paperwork and the practicalities of moving, coming into a house where locks are jammed, appliances incorrectly plumbed and radiators are more tempremental than temperate. Fortunately I am now equipped with the solution to all these problems: WD40 and a monkey wrench. Dodgy valve? Spray it with some WD40 and wrench it. If that doesn't work, give it a whack with the wrench until it is fully subdued. This highly practised technique is a universal panacea, applied to plumbing, heating and any other elements of the building, including telephone sockets. It has proved so successful I plan to bring it into the office to use on the sales team.