Bloggin' All Over the World

I was in two minds as to whether or not to publish a blog this week; I’m sure that even the most enthusiastic followers of any blog (let alone mine), have enough on their plates this week to push reading a blog down their list of priorities. On the other hand though, as we are nearly at the end of the year it is as good a time as any to look back at my first year of blogging.

In one of my very early blogs, “It’s Life Jim, but not as we knew it,” (http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/its-life-jim-but-not-as-we-know-it.html) I said that “One of the reasons for starting this blog is that I’ve always enjoyed writing, either for work or for fun, and it can be quite a cathartic process, even if no one else reads it. For better or for worse, I’m going to try adding to this blog once a week at least.” Now it remains true to say that I enjoy writing and it is cathartic at times and when the need has arisen, I’ve enjoyed digging around for information to include in my blog. But did I care if people read it or not? Of course I cared.

As far I can see, there is no accurate or reliable information on exactly how many blogs there are out there on the net, but earlier this year Tumblr.com had over 101.7 Million blogs, WordPress.com had in excess of 63 Million blogs, Livejournal reports 62.6 million blogs and Weebly over 12 million, and a quick look at the worldometers website (http://www.worldometers.info/blogs/) shows that nearly 1.2 billion blog posts have been written in 2013 so far. With that number of blogs competing for attention, any number of hits I got was going to be a bonus but I would be lying if I said that I would have carried on if I had not had some sort of readership.

What did surprise me (and gratify me too) was that each week when I published my blog there would be a respectable number of hits, and while I knew that a few friends would take a look, there were always some hits from outside the UK. As you might expect, the bulk of my audience appears to be in the UK, but the US, Spain, Germany, France, Russia and Poland also feature regularly, which is nice!

Sometimes the subject matter for my blog readily suggests itself, possibly because of some news item I have read or seen; alternatively it may be because I have done something particular that week. Then there are the subjects that I just think would be interesting. One such was A Midland Odyssey (http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/a-midland-odyssey.html). Now when I say interesting, I have to admit that I thought of it as chiefly of interest to me (and possibly anyone who worked for or had worked for, Midland Bank or HSBC) but possibly not to many other people; I thought it might be a little self indulgent. To my surprise, this proved to be my most popular blog to date.

Like so many things associated with computing and the internet, blogging is so much easier than it was years ago; basically there is a template, you chose your design, decide on a name, type in your content and...well, that’s pretty much it really. The trickier thing is having some sort of inspiration as to what to write and the time to write it. The latter is of course far less of a problem if you aren’t holding down a full-time job. Before I actually started doing so I had hankered after the idea of writing a blog; there were a couple of false starts before I published anything. As with many things, I was uncertain as to how it would work and whether I could sustain the momentum, especially since it became clear that publishing every Thursday put a little pressure on.  But that has been a good thing; I’ve banged on about liking routine, so having to sit down once a week and write something and then publish it has been beneficial.

Having blogged for a year now I would thoroughly recommend it, so if you have been thinking about it and maybe putting it off, why not give it a go? It’s easy, it’s free and having people read what you have written is rewarding.

That’s it for 2013, thank you for reading!  Rules, Fools and Wise Men will return on January 2^nd, so until then, Happy New Year!

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Less than a week to go then; less than  seven days until Christmas 2013, less than seven days until midnight mass, Christmas dinner, The Queen's Speech, Christmas Top of the Tops, visiting relatives, waiting to see if it's going to be a white Christmas, opening presents, pulling Christmas crackers, listening to cheesy Christmas songs, sleeping off (or walking off) Christmas dinner, too many Quality Street, mince pies, mulled wine, Christmas carols...and so on.

The more organised among you will have already bought and wrapped the Christmas presents, written and posted the cards, will have the Christmas lunch menu sorted, made arrangements to meet family and friends and will be looking forward to a stress free Christmas. Others among you may be rushing round in a blind panic in overcrowded shops trying to find that essential gift, realised there is only one more day until last posting day for Christmas, so those cards had better get written, and be wondering when the hell you will be able to do your food shopping while suddenly realising that having invited Auntie Mabel  over for Christmas dinner, someone has to go and collect her and where on earth is she going to sit because the dining table only seats six and you've invited ten.

Somewhere between the two extremes is me; most of the presents are bought, the cards have by and large been posted and the food shopping can wait till Monday in all probability. Having a small family no one is going to be exiled to the conservatory to eat their turkey and sprouts. Mind you that isn't to say there won't be a last minute crisis when I realise that I have forgotten to get something essential.

Yes it will probably be Monday when I will be wandering around a supermarket buying a turkey joint, potatoes, vegetables (including the inevitable sprouts) and trying not to overbuy. All around me there will doubtless be shoppers with trolleys laden with enough food and drink to feed the five thousand. I've mentioned this before (http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/waste-not-want-not.html); the amount of food that is wasted in this country is scandalous and this is true at Christmas like no other time of the year. Unlike in the days when I was a child and the shops might be closed for three days, now they close their doors on Christmas Eve and open them again on Boxing Day. There really is no reason to buy as much as some people do. In this 24/7 world we live in there will even be some shops open on Christmas Day itself. No longer does the country shut down and sit in front of the television, stuffing its collective face with turkey and sprouts, nuts and chocolate...oh, wait a minute it does actually, just not for quite so long.

As enjoyable as Christmas is however, there are many people for whom Christmas is tinged with sadness. Anyone who has suffered a bereavement during the year will feel their loss most keenly at this time. I know from personal experience that the first Christmas after the death of a loved one is difficult; this Christmas there will be many people putting on a brave face while feeling sad and bereft inside. Then there are the lonely, those who live alone or who will not be seeing their families for whatever reason. I read an article last week about a man who has spent the last ten Christmases alone. This year, faced with only his own company yet again, he advertised for a companion to spent the day with him. Touchingly he has received a number of replies from people offering to spend time with him and he has received his first Christmas cards in years.  

Christmas dinner 2012 

Apart from the shops being open every day bar the big day itself, Christmas is different from when I was young in other ways too. Back in the days of my childhood it was always exciting to see what would be on the television on Christmas Day. The Morecambe and Wise Show, Christmas specials of all your favourite shows and of course the TV premiere of some blockbuster film. In those pre-DVD days it was always quite an event when the schedules were announced and as we had no way of recording anything, TV viewing had to be planned meticulously to make sure we didn't miss any of our favourites.  Not so these days; a quick glance at the festive schedules and there is nothing that falls into the "unmissable" category, at least not as far as I am concerned.

For those of you with young children, I have no doubt that Christmas is still as magical as ever. There is nothing quite like the anticipation of Christmas for a young child, even if it means that on Christmas Eve they become over excited. Most parents will remember (or be anticipating) the entry into their bedroom of a small child (or children) at some God foresaken hour and being asked if they can open their presents, to which the answer is usually, "No, it's only three o'clock! Go back to bed!" Cue exit of child or children, who will return and repeat their question continuously for the next three hours till their parents become too exhausted to refuse any longer.

"Has be been yet?"

Doubtless these days everyone is canny enough to check that any battery operated gifts contain the necessary batteries, or if they don't will have gone out and bought some, as most of us will remember from their youth one Christmas present that sat forlorn and unused until the shops opened and some batteries could be purchased. But never forget those dreaded presents that airily proclaim "some assembly required" on the box. I recall one year buying my elder daughter a Barbie camper van and having to spend most of Christmas morning on my hands and knees assembling it from its five hundred individual parts. Never again; a few years later a dolls house that was purchased was assembled a week in advance, thus avoiding any tantrums (mine or my daughter's).

The dreaded Barbie camper van!

One thing that doesn't change is that every year we wonder if we will have a white Christmas and every year we wake on Christmas morning, fling open the curtains and are greeted by grey skies and drizzle, or at best a sharp frost that at least provides the illusion of a white Christmas. I read somewhere once that it is more likely to snow at Easter than Christmas and I have to admit that I really can't recall snow on the day itself, not even in my childhood. Still, one year I suppose it might.

However you are spending Christmas, whoever you are spending it with, whether you will be at home, or visiting relatives and friends, or (as increasing numbers are doing these days) if you are spending Christmas at a hotel, in this country or abroad, I hope that your Christmas is a happy one. 

Happy Christmas Everyone!

There Is No "I" In Team

There have been times when people have accused me of being a cynic and in many ways I do not have much of a defence, although what others may see as cynicism I prefer to call healthy scepticism. There is probably no greater field of endeavour in which scepticism or cynicism is likely, nay inevitable, than at work and (in my experience), nowhere at work  more so than in the team building exercise or leadership courses.

I was reminded of this recently when Val and I went to watch a recording of the BBC radio comedy, Clare in the Community, which stars Sally Phillips as Clare, a social worker with all the right jargon, who likes to sort out other people's problems while ignoring her own. I am sure that we have all worked with people who know all the right jargon[1], all the right buzzwords and who are supremely confident that they are effective, efficient and productive when in fact they are generally pretty hopeless. Clare is a control freak who has lost control and what do you get when a control freak loses control? Yes, a freak.

Clare in the Community began life as a cartoon in The Guardian.

In the particular episode that we watched being recorded, Clare's team leader arranges a team building exercise. This being comedy, this exercise does not consist of paintballing or raft building (which the team were hoping for), but takes place in her flat. The location is unimportant, for what ensues is fairly typical of most team building/bonding exercises or leadership courses, principally that no one really wants to be there.

Over the years I went on any number of courses while at work. In the early years these were largely technical in nature, that is to say they taught you the nuts and bolts of the job. These tended to be quite rigidly structured; in many ways it was quite like being back at school. But, and this is an important but, by and large people came back from these courses with more technical knowledge of how to do their jobs and by extension usually became more effective or efficient. Gradually however, these courses began to include increasing elements of training in what may be called leadership or management skills until eventually there were no technical courses, only courses designed to make people better at working with other people or in managing them  without necessarily being able to do their core job any better.

Team building exercises tend to fall into two categories; the fun activity course and the earnest psycho babble course, but both have the same potential pitfalls. In the fun activity course everyone meets at an off-site location and a day of quad biking or clay pigeon shooting incorporating some subtle (or not so subtle) exercises in teamwork, you know the sort of thing. These may be fun and they may provide people with something to talk about at the coffee machine for a few weeks after the event, but do they make people more collaborative at work? Better team players? Better planners? Better managers? The artificial nature of the activities, the unreal setting and the fact that ultimately the outcomes on the day are pretty unimportant, means that it is unusual for anything worthwhile to be transferred back to the workplace. Anything beneficial that is learned tends to be eroded  quite quickly; everyone slips back into their normal patterns of behaviour sooner or later.

The outdoor life; team building walking on a rope.

The psycho babble course will generally take place indoors, albeit away from the workplace and will normally consist of the less outgoing members of the team desperately trying to avoid being picked out for some activity or another and hoping that one of their more gregarious colleagues will volunteer themselves. Personally I always disliked these types of courses and especially when the dreaded "role playing" exercise was on the agenda. Psycho babble courses may be run by other managers in the organisation and generally these courses are not so bad, at least the people running them usually have a certain sympathy with the participants. Worse though are the courses run by outside consultants; earnest young men and women, armed with motivational techniques and an apparently never ending supply of good humour, whose goal (unintentional though it may be) appears to be to encourage the participants to undertake activities with which they are uncomfortable to some degree or another.

The normal reaction to a team building seminar.

The greater incident of certain words and phrases, the greater the degree of babble included in a course, the greater the likelihood that the participants will tune out and, in inverse proportion, the greater likelihood that the course will have limited benefit. "Holistic," "empowerment," "leverage," "synergy;" these are all words that one comes to associate with these courses. Now there is nothing wrong with any of these words per se but they tend to be bandied about in courses with little relevance and thereby fall into disrepute. This can lead to the course organisers becoming annoyed as the participants appear not to be taking matters seriously, which may just be a defence mechanism on the part of the group members, particularly when they feel uncomfortable with whatever activity they are being asked to perform. Inevitably that old chestnut "There's no I in team," is trotted out, which means nothing to my mind; I am presumably part of "the team," so there is in fact an I in team.

In a perverse way these courses do sometimes work (although this is in spite of the content) by uniting the members of the group in their discontent and providing plenty of anecdotes once everyone has returned to their normal jobs.

It is possible that I am being overly critical, perhaps too sceptical, perhaps even cynical about this type of course or exercise. The last one in which I took part was actually quite enjoyable, if a little predictable, but it is doubtful if either I or any of my colleagues performed any better once we returned to the office as a result of taking part. The sting in the tail of that particular event was that we were given the task of taking away the lessons we had supposedly learned and applying them to performing some community based or charitable task. As a great many of the other teams decided to support one charity or another, including the immensely popular Help for Heroes, we decided that to avoid the inevitable compassion fatigue associated with the frequent demands on our colleagues'  finances, we would do something for the community. We linked up with the Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST)[2] to help clear a pond on Waterloo Green and later to install some raised flower beds at a school in Southwark so that the pupils could grow vegetables. Despite my misgivings about team building or leadership developing exercises, those tasks that we performed for BOST were immensely rewarding; they drew us all as participants closer together and enabled us to apply team working and leadership skills in an unfamiliar environment.

The pond on Waterloo Green.

Whether we would have done these things any differently, or any better, or any worse, had we not been on the course in the first place is moot.

---

[1] Actually there is nothing wrong with jargon when used correctly although it has been given a bad name over the years. Jargon is special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others, i.e. outsiders  to understand. If all parties understand what is meant then it is perfectly acceptable. Having said that I was once criticised for using "jargon" when using an expression that was fundamental to the business and which the listener should have understood; it said more about him than me, I felt.

[2] See their website here: http://www.bost.org.uk/

What's In a Name?

Football fans tend to be conservative (with a small “c”), more likely to embrace evolution than revolution. Supporters of every team will expect and accept change; managers come and go, players come and go: nowadays owners come and go too. Increasingly clubs are likely to move home; that prime town centre site can easily be sold for housing or retail redevelopment and exchanged for an out of town stadium with all mod cons. Okay, the new ground (with all those mod cons, albeit lacking a certain character) may be less convenient to get to; maybe it is a bus ride away or necessitates a trip by car instead of the convenience of the more centrally located, if slightly shabby old ground, but fans will tolerate that. It is progress and the greater capacity and better facilities offset the inconvenience and the loss of that ramshackle, scruffy old ground, steeped though it was in tradition and history. But tradition is something that supporters hold dear and which club owners trample on at their peril, as the owners of two clubs have found out in recent months.

While fans will accept many changes, some may be beyond the pale. How would West Ham supporters react if the club decided that their move to the Olympic Stadium at Stratford should be accompanied by a change of name to say, Stratford Olympic, in the belief that such a change might attract new support? Or how would Liverpool react to a proposal to revert to the Blue and White shirts the team wore when the club was first founded? Unthinkable, surely.

The Olympic Stadium will be West Ham's new home; is a change of name beyond possibility?

Well, fans of Cardiff City and Hull City have either had changes like those foisted upon them or have been made aware of similar potential changes that strike at the very fabric of their clubs. Cardiff City fans may have been ambivalent about the change of ownership that saw Datuk Chan Tien Ghee take over as chairman in May 2010 with Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun also investing and joining the board. They may have been happy that the new owners oversaw promotion to English football’s top flight but were less happy that the new owners changed the club’s colours from Blue, worn by City since 1908, to Red and changed the club badge to remove the traditional Bluebird, from which the club drew its nickname, replacing it with a Dragon. In May 2012, when news broke that the colour change was opposed by fans, the club announced that they “would not proceed with the proposed change of colour and logo and the team will continue to play in blue at home for the next season with the current badge.” Less than a month later the shirt colour and badge changes happened anyway. Tan was quoted on the subject of the changes as saying that “'A few (fans) were upset but like in any business if we get 80 per cent or 75 per cent of the customers happy, with 20-25 per cent not happy, that's fine. If they don't want to come to support our business, that's fine. We need the majority.”

Out with the old...

...in with the new.

It was significant that Tan referred to the fans as customers and that he was happy if the disgruntled among them did not want to support the club; he rather missed the point on what a football club should be. Yes, at the highest levels of the game they are businesses, big businesses that need to be run as such. But a football club is not a business in the same way that a supermarket is; if Sainsbury’s are no longer to your taste then you go to Tesco but you don’t lose any sleep over it, you don’t have a Sainsbury’s scarf and replica shirt that you can no longer bear to wear. If your football club does something that disenfranchises you then you tend not to go and support someone else. In this, and probably most other countries, football club owners are seen as custodians of a club’s tradition and heritage and because they are transient they are merely caretakers; they tamper with those traditions and heritage at their peril.

This man thinks that fans are "customers".

Meanwhile on Humberside, Hull City owner Assem Allam proposed changing the club’s name to Hull Tigers, prompting supporters to form a campaign group called City Till We Die. Allam retorted by saying that fans can “die as soon as they want.” He called the City name “lousy” and “common” stating that the Tiger brand would be more marketable. Fans behind the City Till We Die campaign ere hooligans said Allam; a “militant minority” who disturbed and distracted the players: inflammatory remarks that will have done little to appease supporters mistrustful of the chairman and his motives.

This man thinks that City is "lousy" and "common."

There is no doubt that to prosper in the Premier League, or even simply to survive, clubs need to compete both on and off the field. Gone are the days when football clubs, chaired perhaps by a wealthy local businessman who also happened to be a fan, could bumble along largely thanks to the largesse of their bank manager. To compete at the very top of the tree nowadays clubs need to match the investment capabilities of men like Roman Abramovitch at Chelsea or Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan at Manchester City; simply to survive in the Premier League now requires serious amounts of money, sums of money which clubs can often only attract by providing their new benefactors with pretty much a blank sheet of paper on which to draw their designs of the club, moulded in its owner’s image.

Should either Cardiff or Hull change their names then both clubs should expect plenty of sympathy but also ridicule from fans of other clubs; British football supporters tend to be contemptuous of this kind of thing as we saw from the vitriol that was poured over Franchise FC (otherwise known as MK Dons). If the name changes were accepted, would this pave the way for further rebranding of football clubs and if so, what sort of names could we look forward to? Probably some could be the mere addition of the club nickname, such as Manchester Red Devils but there’s the potential for such American football style monikers [1]like Reading Roughnecks, Sunderland Storm or Blackpool Rock. I can just hear Charlotte Green reading the classified football results now, “Fleetwood Fisherman 1, Northampton Cobblers 1,” that sort of thing.

Ultimately is it important what colours the team play in, or what the club is called? These surely are inconsequentialities compared with whether the club plays in the Premier League rather than League Two, or whether the club exists at all. But are they? Well actually yes; to repeat my earlier point, owners are mere custodians of a club’s tradition and heritage and because owners are transient they are merely caretakers. Most football clubs in the English leagues have histories dating back more than one hundred years, histories that their supporters take seriously, histories that mean a great deal to a great many people, histories that the temporary owners would do well to consider before they instigate changes that (in the case of Cardiff and Hull) may appear largely cosmetic, but which create marginal benefit while engendering significant hostility.

A football club is not a democracy; the owners are entitled to act as they see fit, but while they may be successful businessmen that does not automatically infer that their every decision will be popular, let alone correct and that in terms of maintaining the history and traditions of a football club, the natural guardians are more likely to be the fans than an owner whose awareness of the club’s very existence may not extend beyond a few months.

The chairmen of Cardiff City and Hull City should remember that football fans who have supported their teams through thick and thin will tolerate a great deal from the players and from management and will remember them affectionately for their successes (and sympathetically for their failures) for years to come, but chairmen who preside over success will likely be remembered not at all; chairmen who preside over financial ruin or bring their club into ridicule are likely to remembered with only the opprobrium their actions deserve.

---

[1] No disrespect to American football teams or their names; it’s a matter of horses for courses and that word tradition again.