Be an interesting guy

Dom Barton of McKinsey & Company

I'm on my first day at a new job. I've just joined McKinsey and Company, one of the world's finest organizations.

My cohort of new joiners is meeting the Global Managing Partner, Dominic Barton. Very nice for our first day in. Dom welcomes us into the firm, tells us about the firm's heritage and values, and gives us some perspective on what it takes to succeed at the firm. Dom's advice: "Be an interesting guy".

Not client-centricity, thought-leadership, value-creation or some such corporate-speak, but "be interesting". Interesting.

That advice really resonated with me. To me, being interesting is a goal in itself, an essential part of a life well-lived. That is sort of why I started this blog, and keep at it; it keeps open a window to worlds other than family and work-life.

Easier said than done. My blog posting rate, and the complexity of my posts, have dropped off sharply since joining McKinsey. But still, it is nice to know that Dom Barton thinks being interesting is good for your career.

James Bond style woozling

Sitting around staring at brick walls is called "woozling" in my family. I just discovered that James Bond woozles too. From this interview with Daniel Craig:

"I keep an energy level up through filming and then as soon as it finishes I just relax and drop. We all do. You’ll find most of the crew kind of sitting around staring at brick walls because it’s been full on, all day, every day. "

A simple solution to America's fiscal cliff problem

Allow congressmen to vote in private.

This isn’t my idea. I’m channelling the noted political philosopher, Sir Humphrey Appleby. Sir Humpy explains to Jim Hacker in the very first episode of Yes Minister that Jim’s election winning slogan, “Open Government”, is in fact an oxymoron. You can be open, or you can have government, you can’t have both. I’m also channelling Fareed Zakaria’s excellent (and serious) book, The Future of Freedom.

Zakaria’s argument is that most American politicians are not stupid. Most of them don’t want to drive off the fiscal cliff. Most of them would happily cut a deal to avoid disaster, if they could. They can’t. Because they lack the privacy needed to cut deals.

For most of America’s history, Congress could do its work in private. Politicians could imply one thing while talking to constituents, go to Washington, exercise their better judgment on what is best for the country, and go back to their constituents with a shrug and an I-tried-my-best story. For most of America’s history, that worked well enough.

At some time in the 1960s some well-intentioned people thought pols should not be allowed to tell lies to the public, and decided to make their deliberations and voting records public. As a result, politicians live in a fish bowl, utterly at the mercy of special interest groups. They can’t exercise mature judgment, and therefore can’t fulfil the design of representative democracy.

This shouldn’t be hard to explain. Perfect transparency is unhelpful in most everyday contexts: in family life, in sports teams, with friends or at work. But, unfortunately, even my ardent inner optimist doesn't think politicians are going to be allowed to escape their fish bowl world any time soon.

Wish you were here, Sir Humpy. We miss you.

Sir Humphrey Appleby

Hommage: Yannick Noah chante Bob Marley

I've been tripping on Hommage this morning. Its an album of Bob Marley songs, covered by Yannick Noah, a delicious double-dose of nostalgia.

Here's the album's trailer video:

 

Yannick Noah: stolen from Africa

Also discovered that Yannick's son Joacim Noah plays pro basketball for the Chicago Bulls. Will he do cover versions of Ziggy Marley one day?

Yannick Noah in action

Joacim Noah in action

Re-imagining Snow White

Snow White and the Huntsman

Just watched Snow White and the Huntsman. Enjoyed the movie, in much the same way that I enjoy watching Brendan Nash bat. 

Brendan Nash in action

Nash doesn’t strike the ball especially sweetly. However, as a white guy playing for the West Indies, he asks some interesting questions of unspoken assumptions, and for that reason is one of my favourite contemporary cricketers.

Similarly, Snow White and the Huntsman suffers from wooden acting, and a plot line that occasionally stalls. However, it does challenge the assumption that fairy tales are meant for children, and therefore need to be told in a brightly-lit Disney-esque style. This telling is dark. The palette is wintry: all greys, blacks, browns and whites, broken only by the occasional splash of blood red. This menacing mood works. It feels more true to the dark heart of the Grimm Brothers’ story than Disney’s incongruously cheery style.

I would love to see an even more radical reinvention of Snow White. Say, one in which Snow White is offered the throne, and refuses, because she prefers to live in the woods with her beloved dwarves. Unfortunately, this telling isn’t that adventurous or brave. It’s about style, not revolution. But its still worth the watch just for its style.

Michaelmas: the original thanks-giving festival

St Michael

Yesterday, Saint Michael saved me from a terrible fate.

I could have wasted my Friday evening watching the Indian cricket team getting savaged by Australia. Instead, I attended a very pleasant Michaelmas service at my children's school. I was grateful for having been saved from hours of TV-misery, and was a little embarrassed that I had no idea what Michaelmas was. Such ignorance is inexcusable in this age of Google, and so, I Googled-up Michaelmas.

The interpretation I like best is that Michaelmas is an autumn festival. It is a thanks-giving to the earth for the bounty of summer, a moment of reflection as the earth and the spirit turn inwards for renewal through the winter. Rudolf Steiner - the inspiration behind the Waldorf school my children attend - thought Michaelmas and Easter were the year's most important festivals, yin and yang, each completing the other, together forming the circle of life. Looked at this way, Michaelmas is like Pongal, the harvest festival of South India; Michaelmas is Shiva to Easter's Brahma.

If Michaelmas is so important, why is it so little known? Competition, maybe? In Britain, the Anglican church replaced Catholic Michaelmas with the Harvest Festival. In America, two big-budget blockbusters, Thanksgiving and Halloween, sit in the same perceptual space. In Latin America, Santa Muerte is venerated in autumn, typically on November 1. The top Google search term associated with Michaelmas is secular: Oxford and Cambridge refer to Fall Semester as Michaelmas Term.

Why is the heroic warrior-angel Michael, who defeated proud Lucifer in battle and cast him out of heaven, associated with this introspective autumnal festival? It isn't obvious. The Archangel Michael might have been a Christian element layered onto a ancient and much-beloved pagan tradition, like Christmas. Regardless, St. Michael has done me a good deed this weekend. Today is his day. Happy Michaelmas!

St Michael vanquishing Satan

Meister Eckhart on Noble Work

"Our works do not ennoble us; we must ennoble our works"

- Meister Eckhart.

I came across these words at a corporate training program, and liked them enough to latch on. 

It is easy to think school teachers and nurses do "noble work", and that plumbers, fork-lift operators, and corporate appartchiks like me, don't. Meister Eckhart's perspective feels more helpful, and more true.