My Way – 2012 Reviewed
The end of the year always gives me an opportunity to review life’s ups and downs, with the intention of learning and improving in the future. In 2012 my life could be summarised by The Sex Pistols and Frank Sinatra – “My Way”. Although Sinatra’s version is great, it has to be the punk rock version for me:
Regrets, I’ve had a few …
Recession does strange things to people and I’m still sometimes amazed at the heights and depths that people are capable of. A few months back, someone stole the lead from my basement window and two others in the road (estimated to be worth less than £10). Irritating, but not really important.
On a slightly higher level, perhaps the most telling sign of recession was when I was asked to send a proposal for some OD work for a central government agency of the M.O.D. Only four companies applied, so the odds of winning were good at 25%. At the eleventh hour, a larger company made a direct appeal to the CEO offering to do the work for free, claiming that they wanted to ‘give something back’. The only way I could have responded would have been by offering a bribe to ‘get the gig’. This badly crossed my values and made me question whether “the only way is ethics?”
More recently I’ve had problems getting paid by HR outsourcing firm RSM Tenon, who offered me a piece of contract work worth £3000 and then tried to vary the price to £2000 AFTER I had nearly completed the work. Desperate times produce desperate behaviours! It seems that RSM Tenon made a £100 M loss last year and borrowed £94 M to keep trading, which explains their eagerness to alter contract values at will. We shall see how this comes out shortly …
But then again, too few to mention
Low points affect many of us disproportionately compared with the rest of our lives and it’s important to see them for what they are. Admittedly, this has been the toughest year in business for me in 18 years, with false starts, project delays, doubtful negotiating tactics and so on confounding progress. However, the upside of this has been the ability to do some things that I would otherwise have missed out on. Starting with my family, I was able to spend more time with my youngest son James, preparing him for his GCSE’s. He had to take these two years before normal (the school runs an accelerated curriculum and he is the youngest in his year). He has worked very hard but struggled with getting the knowledge on board. I spent some time with Jim getting him to digest his ideas into a condensed form and then helping him summarise them as rich pictures. I’ve attached a page of his GCSE Biology revision with this blog
I was also able to spend time getting my older son Tom settled into University. His needs were trivial in comparison, involving teaching him to shop, learning to iron and offering cooking tips on a low budget! I have spent a lot of ‘man-time’ in Asda with him, discussing arcane matters such as whether it is essential to include onions in a curry if you don’t like them and how often does the bath mat need to be washed …
Recession also gave me the time to meet people that had just been “HR hashtags” on Twitter up till now. Including Perry Timms, Doug Shaw, Trevor Lee, Penelope Tobin and The HR Bird Kirstie Quinnin.
I got to play in a rock band at a corporate event I organised with Ozzy Osbourne and Ian Gillan’s guitarist Bernie Tormé, proof positive that you can mix business and pleasure. Here’s what Bloomberg TV made of the event. This year I am organising something similar with the CIPD and Richard Strange, The Godfather of Punk and actor in Batman, Harry Potter and Robin Hood.
I also found time to contribute to several charitable projects. The most notable of these was a soundtrack for a film intended to stop counterfeit malaria drugs killing children in Africa. The project will emerge in 2013 and I was pleased to be asked to apply my musical skills to something of great importance.
Finally, I found the time to write my new book “The Music of Business” and associated iPhone app for release in January 2013. I was delighted and surprised to get endorsements from Professor Adrian Furnham and Harvey Goldsmith. I’m currently working on Google and Richard Branson.
I doubt that this level of renewal and reinvention would have occurred without a global recession. For me, this is proof positive that it’s not what happens that matters. It’s what you do with what happens that counts. In 2013 I’ll continue to do it “My Way”.
2013 Resolutions
- Standing still during a recession is not an option. Keep on developing so that you have something to offer people when things start moving again.
- Enjoy the opportunities that are afforded by a quieter business cycle than usual. Family, Friends and new relationships.
- When life throws setbacks at you, stop, learn, adapt and move on. Don’t dwell on setbacks disproportionately.
And your new year’s resolutions? Post them here. p.s. Apologies for the html code that had crept in here. I cannot seem to get rid of it from this page.
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