#198: Confront the Facts (with help from A.E. Housman)
Dear Friends
After last week’s letter, I received several emails sharing memories of other grandfathers who’d served in WW2 and other conflicts. Each email reflected on the pain that lived on decades past the war.
William Bird alerted me that All Quiet on the Western Front had, in 2022, been released as a film by Netflix (Alex Ross’s reflections on the film and book are worth reading).
Watching it reminded me of David Diop’s At Night All Blood is Black (which I wrote about here). Both tell of the unrelenting horror that is war, and both refuse to accept the myth that a war can be contained between dates and in a region.
Sadly, we need not look to 1918 to know that truth. This week, The New Yorker published The Children Who Lost Their Limbs in Gaza. Reading it will break your heart. Wars and their pain diminish us all.
/strategy
A few weeks ago, a client of mine confronted a situation that most of us have encountered. He had presented analysis that showed his business they weren’t doing as well as they thought they were. When we met, he was facing the predictable backlash.
In encouraging him to stay the course, I returned to – of all places – A.E. Housman’s 1892 introductory lecture as professor of Latin at University College, London.
In it, Housman says, “knowledge, and especially disagreeable knowledge, cannot by any art be totally excluded even from those who do not seek it. Wisdom, said Aeschylus long ago, comes to men whether they will or no. The house of delusions is cheap to build, but draughty to live in, and ready at any instant to fall; and it is surely truer prudence to move our furniture betimes into the open air than to stay indoors until our tenement tumbles about our ears. It is and it must in the long run be better for a man to see things as they are than to be ignorant of them; just as there is less fear of stumbling or of striking against corners in the daylight than in the dark”.
Master strategist Jim Collins’s formulation is simpler, he says that great companies confront the brutal facts.
Still, I love the subtlety of Housman’s insight, that wisdom comes whether you will, or you won’t, and cautions that ‘the house of delusions is cheap to build, but draughty to live in’. It implies that when you’re the person delivering the bad news, you can be assured that sooner or later, all those opposing you will need to deal with it. You can confidently say “it is and must be better for us to see things as they are”.
(Housman’s lecture is a fascinating discussion of why we learn what we do, contrasting the arguments of those who defend the sciences and those who defend ‘human letters’. It is not an easy read but it is an enriching one).
//self
In Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World, Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall’s advise that twice a year, we should spend a week in love with our work.
They suggest creating two columns – loved it and loathed it.
When you actively look forward to something, when you’re in flow whilst doing it, add it to loved.
When you procrastinate, when you do it half-heartedly, when it leaves you tired, add it to loathed. This quick exercise is a great way to identify where and how you work best.
In recent months my client work has extended their exercise in two ways.
First, I’ve found that when clients do the exercise, they focus on the constituent elements of work – strategy, sales, operation, this type of meeting versus that type etc. That is important, but work is more than that. It is who you work with. It’s the stuff around work – your offices, the travel, the lunches and dinners, the pressure, the successes, the learning.
For example, I love writing this newsletter, but a few weeks ago my external keyboard failed. I use a Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic keyboard and mouse. The week that I had to use my laptop, the Dell’s trackpad infuriated me to a point that was very uncoach-zen. It’s a small but vital part of my work experience. I love my keyboard. It makes work more enjoyable (if anyone can recommend a great chair, please let me know). What are your examples? List them and share them with those around you, they’re part of what makes you love work, you need to reinforce them.
Second, if you’re leading a growing team or business, it is a great way to identify new roles and people to add to the mix. Ask your team to do ‘love and loathes’. Identify all the ‘loathes’ and find someone who loves to do those things. You get a double whammy; your existing people are more engaged and energised and your new person gets a job designed for what makes them their best. Boom!
///soul
Thursday was South Africa’s Human Rights Day. It commemorates the 21 March 1960 when sixty-nine people were killed and at least 180 injured by police opening fire on a peaceful protest in Sharpeville.
We spent the day on a neighbourhood beach surrounded by generations from South Africa’s full diversity. Accents, languages, skin tones formed a kaleidoscope of freedom. Perhaps it seems a frivolous way to spend such an important day and yet surely that is what freedom is, hands reaching out to steady a toddler’s wobble, a chair donated to the granny whose family forgot, smiles at strangers, sunblock handed to the increasingly pink tourist, the freedom to be with each other.
Lifting our gaze from that beach, we know that iconic artist, William Kentridge, is one of the 2024 Booker Prize Foundation judges, Sethembile Msezane’s astonishing 2015 “Rhodes Must Fall”photograph is being shown in South London Gallery’s Acts of Resistance, ceramicist Michael Chandler recreated The Garden of Eden in 1,800 tiles for CULT GAIA’s flagship Miami store, the Almas Art Foundation just launched a monograph and documentary, Ancestral Wisdom: Ubunzululwazi Lwabaphantsi, centred on Andile Dyalvane’s work, Cape Town’s Southern Guild Gallery opened in Los Angeles, and pianist Abdullah Ibrahim has just started a global tour at age 90. All over the world, the fire of South Africa’s freedom continues to give hope.
Amidst all this excellence, I loved Hanna Mohammed’s tribute to Olympians Caster Semenya and Jesse Owen.
I hope that you enjoy the last week of March.
Karl
PS: I am unable to take on new clients until July. If you want to work with me in the second half of the year, please let me know.