‘MAN SPEAKS WITH FORKED TONGUE’

For a couple of years or so now I’ve puzzled over the conundrum of what appears to be two conflicting messages.

Businesses are positively encouraged to become ‘world class’ and sell to a global market. At the same time, individuals, businesses, local authorities etc. are urged to ‘buy local’.

We have initiatives such as Dales Made and Totally Locally to encourage us to shop in our local towns and villages. At the same time governments and regional agencies (which have come in many guises over the years) seem only interested in supporting ‘high flyers’ and ‘fast growth’ businesses. There has been very little support for the smaller, less ‘dynamic’ business that wants to remain local/regional whilst gradually developing and diversifying its range of products or services to attract a wider range of customers, with the emphasis on quality and personal service.

I accept that some products and services don’t lend themselves easily to a local market and must be sold on a wider scale. I also accept that there is no reason, especially with ease of online selling, why local producers should restrict themselves to purely local customers. However, I always come back to the same question: What is wrong with being very good and simply offering an excellent high quality product or service in your own local area? Is bigger really better?

The response of a pie-maker in a North Yorkshire market town, whose pies were sufficiently renowned that they attracted visitors as well as local people to his shop, when asked on the BBC’s Food Programme whether he couldn’t sell his pies online or mail order, will always stick in my mind. It was this –

“We have considered that but decided not to go down that route as we don’t want to dilute the quality of the product or service we offer to our local customers.”

So can we have a bit more support for selling local as well as buying local please?

Spread a little happiness!

“Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National product.” So said His Majesty King Jigme Siongye Wangchuck of the Kingdom of Bhutan; and for 30 years that has been the guiding principal of this remote kingdom high in the Himalayas.

I’ll go along with that!

Happiness, or contentment, is what most human beings strive for once the basic needs of food, warmth and shelter have been met. And, strangely enough, money is not the answer to everything. Possessions, and even a ‘bought’ lifestyle, don’t make for long-term happiness. They sometimes help to make things more comfortable but beyond a certain point it doesn’t make any real difference.

What makes us happy often can’t be measured in terms of money – and certainly can’t be bought. It’s the little things in life like a baby’s smile, a pet animal, music, a rainbow…………

Now, I’m not about to take up my backpack and hike off to Bhutan but I do believe we could take a leaf out of their book and work towards a more holistic approach to life – both domestic and commercial.

Gross National Happiness is founded on the belief that the pursuit of happiness is the strongest force of people’s desires. Therefore development should promote happiness as its primary value, with equal importance being given to socio-economic development, spiritual, cultural and emotional needs. No one of these factors is seen as the dominating factor in the equation. All are linked and interrelated and must be kept in balance.

 

Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness policy encourages everyone to embrace this principle, with individuals being encouraged to raise their vision beyond self-interest in order to achieve collective happiness

The country has even developed a formal set of nine indicators (or dimensions) by which to assess GNH. In this context happiness comprises having sufficient achievements in each of the nine dimensions.

 

• Psychological Well-being – including satisfaction with all elements of life, life enjoyment and subjective well-being
• Time Use – which recognises the value of non-work time and that personal, family, social and communinity activity add to the enrichment of life
• Community Vitality – the strengths & weaknesses of relationships and interaction within communities: trust, a feeling of belonging, caring relationships, safety in the home and community, giving and volunteering
• Cultural Diversity & Resilience – the diversity and strength of cultural traditions, the nature and number of cultural facilities, participation in community festivities and traditional forms of recreation
• Health – the health status of the population, including self-assessment information and knowledge about health issues
• Education – knowledge, values, creativity skills and civic awareness; the effectiveness of education in working towards the goal of collective well-being
• Ecological Diversity & Resilience – the state of natural resources, pressures on ecosystems, the impact of domestic supply and demand on the country’s ecosystems
• Living Standards – income at household level, sense of financial security, room ratios, food security, house ownership, economic hardship
• Good Governance – how people perceive various government functions in terms of efficacy, honesty and quality

Achievement above the identified ‘sufficiency’ level cut-off point for each of these dimensions doesn’t create any further increase in an individual’s ‘quality of life’ score. That is not to say that people shouldn’t strive for improvements or achievements, just that beyond a certain point we don’t need to continue automatically adding higher achievements. We should confine our attention more towards a middle band of achievements that, for most people, make a significant contribution to well-being.

I’m delighted to see that there now seems to be a desire in parts of the Western world to embrace the pursuit of happiness and a more holistic approach to life. A whole raft of books, workshops, well-being programmes and even holistic centres dedicated to achieving greater happiness and contentment has emerged over the past few years.

Even our own government seems to have ‘caught on’ to the idea. As well as measuring GDP, the Office of National Statistics has been conducting a survey asking people to rate their own well-being, based on a set of 10 indicators that include health, education, income, work, trust in politicians, environment, community and relationships, and lifestyle. The results – the first official Happiness Index – are due to be published in July this year. The aim is to provide a better understanding of how society is doing and could help to form government policy in the future.

Former US senator Robert Kennedy said that GDP measures everything “except that which makes life worthwhile”.

How true those words are – and wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could create a more peaceful and harmonious world simply through creating our own happiness and spreading it around us?

Communication…… or Distraction?

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blackberry, mobile phone, text, e-mail, voicemail, Skype……on and on it goes. So many ways in which to be in constant contact!

I know communication is important, but does it really have to be the incessant stream that so many people seem to engage in these days? I say ‘engage’ advisedly because that implies that there is some reciprocal involvement beyond a rather bored “Whatever!” at the other end.

I struggle to comprehend why everything has to be so instant. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with the benefits of technology, especially in business, making information more readily accessible and speeding up communications but I do wonder why everything has to be done NOW. Maybe it’s just an age thing – I was brought up in a household that didn’t have a ‘phone until after I was married and had long flown the nest (please don’t feel sorry for me). We just made a point of remembering what we wanted to tell each other – maybe jotting ourselves a note if there was any danger of forgetting. We still occasionally resorted to that rather quaint old memory jogger of ‘tying a knot in your hankie’ (we all had nice cotton ones then!) to remind you that you had something to remember.

Perhaps it’s also the reason why (to the intense irritation of some people) I don’t feel the need to have my mobile permanently switched to ‘on’. When I’m in the office or at home I have a landline, I use a telephone answering service for my business (which picks up calls when I’m engaged or out), and my mobile has a voicemail and text facility which I check between meetings when I’m away from the office.

This current obsession with instant contact is the route to short-term memory and laziness, as no-one can be bothered to store anything in their own minds or make the effort to dredge up information from the depths of their subconscious (probably nothing there anyway as they didn’t store it in the first place) – it’s easier just to phone or text someone else for the answer. Verbal communication is often reduced to a series of grunts, and as for the ‘shorthand’ used in texting, e-mails, Facebook and Twitter messages, it’s no wonder we’re now seeing a generation that doesn’t know how to spell, punctuate or string a proper sentence together.

As for Facebook, Twitter – and even LinkedIn to a certain degree, they seem to unleash in some people a torrent of verbal diarrhoea, with an endless stream of little sound bytes and ‘updates’. Do I really need to know what you’re wearing, that you’ve just walked the dog, or when you last had a cup of tea?

All these forms of communication have their place and are great when used judiciously (as you see, even I have joined the 21st Century with LinkedIn and a blog – I’ll leave you to judge whether my use of them is judicious) but used incessantly and without proper consideration they are not really communication at all.

I recently attended a presentation on social networking during which the very enthusiastic presenter said it was great that she could be in contact with people all around the world, all the time. She seemed very proud of the fact that she’d even been using her mobile/Blackberry to read and post messages while she was in a queue somewhere, and one of the messages had been to tell everyone that she was meeting someone else later that day. I’m afraid my reaction was, “How sad!”.

Why is there such a need for non-stop ‘communication’? Is it a fear of not being needed, liked or loved? Is it compensation for lack of real personal interface and interaction? Is it a need to be seen to be busy and to create an impression of importance and self worth? Or is all this communication technology, along with I-pods and the like a means of distraction from the real world and their own real thoughts and feelings?

It’s not the mobile phone that ‘fries’ the brain; it’s the fact that the poor thing never gets a break!

I wonder how they would cope if it was taken away and they gave themselves time to ‘just be’ – a period of stillness, quiet and ‘me time’. Maybe they would find that just too scary. (And ‘Second Lives’ is not the alternative when you don’t even know how to behave in the real world and live the one you’ve got to the full.)

We really do need peace and quiet some of the time. Centuries ago the Quaker William Penn said, “True silence is the rest of the mind and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body – nourishment and refreshment.” I couldn’t have said it better myself!

What happened to loyalty?

So what has become of loyalty? Or rather what has become of recognising or rewarding loyalty?

It seems in this age of instant gratification and greed that common courtesies and considerations have become devalued.

So keen are suppliers and providers of services to grow market share that they vie with each other for new customers by offering a whole range of invitingly tempting introductory offers. More than that, there’s a whole range of benefits offered to people who switch from their competitors. Anything from cash rewards, 0% interest, discounts and special rates, to free gifts, payment holidays, free airtime, free texts etc.

None of these, of course, are offered to customers who have been with these companies any length of time. Do banks, building societies, electricity, gas and telephone companies, for example, offer their latest and improved benefit accounts to longstanding customers? They do not! They rarely, if ever, even attempt to retain customers who advise them they are going to switch – apart from slapping a penalty on them for doing so. Furthermore, once their special offer period has come to an end, new customers often find themselves ‘paying through the nose’ for their new service……..  And so the cycle begins again.

People regularly spend hours searching for the best deals, or ‘pay’ someone else to do it for them. A whole industry has grown up around helping people make comparisons and find the best solutions – for the time being, that is. Of course, there are a whole lot more providers to choose from than there used to be when we had one gas, one electricity and one telephone supplier. Competition is supposed to be a healthy thing they say, but do we really need so much of it? No wonder we’re all ‘confused.com’!

The whole system has become geared to positively discouraging loyalty – a quality that used to be valued and rewarded. We are given no incentive to demonstrate our loyalty and the impersonal call centres, customer ‘service’ centres and hard sell tactics only aggravate the situation.

Why is it, for instance, that the relatively simple transaction of cashing a cheque at the bank nowadays so often evokes the enquiry, “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”, or “Are you aware of our XYZ service?”

Well, no! Actually, I just want some of my own money to buy the week’s shopping!! Is that a problem for you? Don’t you think if I’d wanted anything else I might have asked? And if you’ve got something you want to tell me about, why don’t you just give me a leaflet and invite me to contact you if I want to know more – or even just put something in the post to me?  Quite frankly, I haven’t got the time or inclination right now to listen to any sales patter about something I didn’t know I wanted. 

If these companies are so keen to gain market share, why don’t they work at retaining existing customers as well as attracting new ones. By all means offer incentives to new customers but surely it makes sense to value and nurture existing customers.

 What is wrong with simply providing a really excellent, caring service to their customers and rewarding those who stay with them a long time? If people feel looked after and cared about as an individual they will be less likely to look for an alternative. What’s more, they’ll tell all their friends – without the need for any RAF initiatives – although, if you know that a new customer has come by recommendation, a little unsolicited ‘thank you’ gesture would increase the ‘feel good’ factor even more.

 So I say, bring on the loyalty – both ways. Show some loyalty to your customers and they’ll show some loyalty to you.

Why can’t we say what we mean?

I can’t be the only one to have noticed the ever-increasing number of euphemisms and PC phrases that are creeping into our everyday world.

Many of them are created in government and public sector agencies and by ‘do gooders’ who want to bend over backwards lest they might unwittingly offend someone. Much of it ends up drawing attention to issues that previously even those they are trying to avoid offending hadn’t given the time of day to.

The trouble is, the more we hear these phrases, the more we read them (especially those of us who work alongside these people – try ‘Education-speak’ if you really want to blow your mind!), however much we hate them, these words and phrases have a way of insidiously implanting themselves into our consciousness and before we know it we hear them coming out of our own mouths!

Have you noticed, for instance, that new housing developments no longer have a sales office – they have a ‘Marketing Suite’. Surely when you’re thinking of buying a new house or flat (or should that be ‘loft’ or ‘apartment’?) you just want to see what it looks like, find out what fixtures, fitting and extras you get with it, and, most importantly, the price. Marketing is what should be done before you even get there – it’s the bit that the estate agent does, the advertising boards, the press coverage – the very reason you were attracted to go and look in the first place. Certainly you might want to take a brochure or other information away with you to think about – and, yes, that is part of marketing – but the main objective of the people in the ‘Marketing Suite’ is to sell you a property.

Then there’s ‘pedestrian refuges’. I remember when we called them simply ‘road islands’ or ‘traffic islands’. I guess using the word ‘pedestrian’ does tend to clarify their purpose but this new description conjures up in my mind images of cold, wet pedestrians in thick coats, huddled together like penguins, in the face of some terrible threat.

‘Cash back’ is another when using a credit or debit card to pay for goods. Sounds great doesn’t it? Like a kind of bonus – “While you’re paying for the goods, would you like us to give you a few quid for free?” Unfortunately not….  nice thought though! What we’re really being asked is “While we’re taking the money for your goods, would you like to draw some of your own cash too?” Surely it’s not beyond the realms of imagination to just ask, “Do you want to draw any cash?”, instead of wrapping it up in a nice catchy phrase that is totally meaningless.

Computer-speak has also brought a whole raft of words and phrases. We now ‘access’ things instead of opening files, getting information etc. And we ‘key in’ documents and information instead of typing them but I haven’t noticed that it makes any difference to what my fingers do on the keyboard.

As for being PC, how daft is it to be called a ‘chair’ instead of chairman, chairwoman or even chairperson? Now, while I’m all for equal opportunities, I’ve never been one for burning my bra (in my case, it wouldn’t make much of a fire anyway!) and to my mind a chair is a piece of furniture that you sit on. Whenever I have agreed to take on the chairmanship of anything I have always been quite adamant that I would prefer to be called Chairman – but it’s a losing battle. Whilst this has actually met with cheers of delight in some quarters, few people are willing to go along with it and I’ve even been told that in official documents and on websites I have to be called ‘Chair’ in order to conform to what all the other ‘Chairs’ are doing. The worst part of it is that now I sometimes catch the dreadful word coming out of my own mouth!

‘Brainstorm’ is another word to have been declared non-PC as it apparently describes the electrical activity that goes on in the brains of epilepsy sufferers when experiencing a fit. We are now recommended to use the phrase ‘thought shower’ or ‘mind shower’, which just doesn’t adequately describe the (usually collective) process of firing a load of ideas out at random before considering the value of each of them. However, a recent survey of epilepsy charities and sufferers showed that neither had any objections to the phrase unless it was used in a derogatory or offensive manner against them.

It’s heartening, however, to hear that in some cases we have gone full circle. When preparing a press release about a particular piece of machinery that had adjustable height and was being used in a plant that employs disabled people, I said (trying to be PC), “So, the advantage is that it can be used easily by people with differing abilities.” “We just say disabled,” came the response. “It’s OK to do that now.”

Finally, just to emphasise my whole point about saying what we mean, I’ll leave you with a whole sentence that for me ‘really takes the biscuit’ (which is a strange kind of phrase in itself). It is the response of the Head Teacher of a new City Academy to concerns that there would be no playground or outdoor recreational areas as there would be no breaks between lessons:  “Pupils will be able to hydrate during the learning experience.”  And him a schoolteacher too!