I had a light-bulb moment the other day. George Michael’s music is a garden, not a journey. That may make a kind of intuitive sense to you. More likely you’re wondering if I’m mad. For all I know you’re not in my age-group and have no idea who I’m talking about or why. For now, hold the thought, at least, that music can be like a garden, or like a journey, and that these can be contrasted....
Two books I read in recent years stay with me and keep bouncing off each other: One is called “The Invention of Good and Evil”, and one of its core themes is that human society is the product of evolution just as much as any species. That what that society considers important and moral and ethical is shaped by its response to the pressures on it and the solutions collectively found that allow it to thrive....
I’m an odd person in several ways, and some of those – not all – are down to how I grew up. This isn’t where I’m going to go into the detail of that. But there are a couple of things that feel like major differences that have an ongoing effect in ways that surprise people. One – no TV I grew up without a TV. Also without radio or recorded music, but it was the TV that people noticed, for example at school....
I have a love-hate relationship with project management. But it’s 95% hate. It’s OK, I’m a grown-up and I don’t show it. I do what needs to be done, I show up at the meetings, complete the tickets, update the statuses, I keep people in the loop. Inside, though, my inner teenage anarchist is ranting and rebelling. Probably more, the better and more professionally the project is being managed. Notice, in my list detailing my compliance, there’s no mention of the actual work being done....
“Prove me wrong.” This is a topical phrase, as I write, for tragic reasons, but this is not about that. It’s about me trying to work out why I’m uncomfortable with it, really. Because I wouldn’t expect to be. By instinct, I’m close to a free speech maximalist. Saying things and being able to say things feels extremely important to me. And countering bad ideas by talking about them is better than suppressing them....
Toby is brilliant. And a problem. Somebody I know calls everybody of a certain type “a Toby”, because that was the name of the first one she encountered. If you come into a company as a consultant and begin asking questions, Toby’s name will come up a lot. Because Toby knows the things that everybody else just takes for granted. Toby can do the things nobody else can do, and understands the things that nobody else can quite grasp, so everybody else leaves them to him....
I don’t think about mountains much at home in the UK. In Taiwan, I think about them a lot. They’re right there, though they aren’t what most people associate with the place, I think. Taiwan is shaped by mountains. It’s a leaf at the edge of the pacific, twisted a little in the water so the spine is off-centre, and the spine is rugged. So the mountains make the land what it is, and in many ways human society what it is, too....
I have a problem with socialism. I can discuss it intellectually and rationally, and see why it appeals to others. But, like a lot of core political things, I conclude that most of us have emotional instincts, and one of mine struggles with the concept of taking things from some people and giving them to others, no matter how well-intentioned and for everyone’s good. So, while I do accept redistribution is necessary to some extent, and am open to discussion about what that extent might be, fundamentally those who believe in equality of resources are always going to have an uphill struggle persuading me....
“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.” I have never really understood the English class system. I’m English. Very English. I nodded to myself when Hugh Grant said we’re born one gin-and-tonic below par. And we all swim in this sea of class consciousness, whatever we might like to say about it being a relic of the past. For all we ignore it and pretend otherwise, it makes a massive difference to almost everything experienced by anyone, like me, who comes from a very obvious long-standing English background....
Some time ago, working for a company that was growing fast, I was asked to write an article to appear in a trade magazine. That wasn’t my job, but they liked my writing and my know-how. When the result was passed around the upper levels of the company and the sales team, some people loved it. But overall, it made senior people too nervous, and it was revised beyond recognition, with just the core message still retained for those who could detect it....