Are "nice" people always really nice?

We all know the "nice" person who is always ingratiating, says nice things and is always pleasant. Now perhaps the person is exactly what they seem. Howver, all too often they are actually cowards. Too frightened to risk confrontation, they tell people what they want to hear and then behind their backs act differently. These are the people who cannot tell a subordinate he or she is performing poorly until they fire them. This is the person who "strings along" a supplier and then won't return their phone calls. This person will tell someone they love them, but then disappears and says nothing. So be careful to differentiate between the genuinely decent person and the coward.

Lots of Opportunity for misunderstanding

We each have to deal with others. whether it be in business or in out personal lives, we soon learn that we can not alwsys take others at face value. So what you see is not alwsys what you get. Being accurate at this is critical, because just as we can be fooled by someone who does not mean well, so we can fail to value someone who should be. Recently, in my life, I was faced with the fact that in juxtaposition, someone who meant me harm had been positioned as meaning well, while I had come to be suspicious of someone else who mesnt me nothing but well. Some people feel no compunction about manipulating a situation, while others never will. While this has been the raw material for farce for many years, in real life the results can be sad.

Progress takes many forms

Recently, while on a flight, it struck me that in 1950 we were still flying on DC3s and other piston-engined planes. By the mid-1960s we were usuallu travelling on modern jet aircraft. Today, 40 years later, we are still on planes which look little different. Yet as in so much, the technology under the skin has changed enormously. Jet engines are far more efficient and quieter, pilots "fly by wire," and avionics have changed beyond recognition. On the ground, cars have been transformed by technology and consumer electronics would seem like science fiction to people 50 years ago. We routinely see TV pictures from the farthest corners of the world, we carry digital music with us. Medical science has transformed the way we live and die.

There is every reason to believe that the next 50 years will see even more accelerating change. All we can do is wonder if humans can adapt and change fast enough.

Why so much stress?

In the US today people are under much more stress than they used to be. Recently, the New York Times had an article which discussed how as Ireland has grown wealthier, the quality of life has diminished.
We see in so many societies that as wealth grows, so do hours spent at work responsibilities are added and employees see colleagues losing their jobs.
All this puts more pressure on people. Bad tempers and impatience are on the rise. "Me first" is one of the results. Families become less cohesive. Recent studies suggest that mental illness is highest in wealthy countries and that the US is highest of all. This cannot go on increasing. There must be an end to this. Some of this must come from governement but much from industry. Leaders must take and be assigned personal responsibility for this. Society should make it clear that it holds leaders responsible.

Can anyone know what they don't know?

We say that someone does not know what they don't know. There are lots of people who act as though they know everything and do not have anything more to learn. Well, none of us know what we don't know. The critical characteristic is to recognize that there is more that we do not know than we do, and that there is no shame in it. In fact, the shame is in not recognizing this. An eagerness to question what we know and to learn more is part of being a mature adult of any age. As I grow older, I am humbled by the immensity of what I still have to learn.

Are business people handicapping themselves?

The more senior the manager, the higher the proportion of his or her time spent in meetings. Meetings rarely drive the business forwards. In fact they magnify the inefficiency by using up the time of many people.

Similarly, many managers have to deal with hundreds of emails a day. Most of these are informational, courtesy copies or purely political. Yet they have to read before being deleted.

Turnover of senior managers is much higher than it used to be. Spencer Stuart recently published a study which stated that the average length of stay for a Chief Marketing Officer in Fortune 500 companies is 23 months.

None of the above improves effectiveness ot efficiency. Yet it may be getting worse.