The Business Man and the Fisherman (repost)

I did a talk yesterday to a group of business people. It was mainly about customer service, but there was some stuff in there about Slow working practices too.

We talked a bit about success and ambition and it made me recall one of my favourite stories, so I thought I would tell it again here:

There was once an American businessman who had finally taken some time off work to go on holiday with his family (after his wife nagged him and nagged him), whilst taking a walk on the beach one day he saw a fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore and noticed that the fisherman has caught quite a number of big fishes that is known to be a delicacy. The American was really impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fishes?”

The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”

“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and you could catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.

The fisherman simply does not agree. “This is enough to feed my whole family,” he says

The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day then?”

The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fishes, then I would go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I will take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I will join my friends in the village for a drink, we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

The businessman does not agree with his way of life and offered a suggestion to the fisherman.

“I am a PhD holder graduated from Harvard University, specialising in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fishes as possible. And when you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fishes. As you go on, you will be able to afford to buy more boats, recruit more fishermen and lead a team of your own. Soon you will be able to set up your own company, your very own production plant for canned food and do direct selling to your distributors. At that time, you will have moved out of this village and to the City, and then expand your operation to around the world, and finally you can set up your HQ to manage all your other branches.”

The fisherman asks, “So, how long would that take?”

The businessman reply, “About 15 to 20 years.

The fisherman continues, “And after that?”

The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, by then you will be rich, your income will be coming in by the millions!”

The fisherman asks, “And after that?”

The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning and catch a few fishes, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”

The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”

Have a good weekend

Matt

Lets Go Dutch

I was reading in John Naish’s excellent book “Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More”, that the Dutch have a totally different attitude to work and on average work 4 hours less than other European countries.

Why?

British (and American) bosses see putting in hours and hours of overtime proves you are a loyal dedicated, and therefore productive employee. Therefore rewarded accordingly.

In the Netherlands, they tend to think that if you can’t get your allotted work done in normal working hours then there must be something wrong, with you or the job, and come in to investigate and help sort it out.

The interesting thing is that, whereas the Dutch attitude has been supported by a wealth of evidence to suggest it as much more productive (and healthier for the employees), the Anglo-American attitude to working hours and traits has a wealth of evidence to suggest it leads to lower productivity over the long term, higher staff turn over and more sick days.

If that is not a good enough reason for bosses to change their ideology and culture I don’t know what is!

Lets all go Dutch (if only it was really that easy…).

Matt

PS, I won’t be here tomorrow, normal service will resume on Tuesday.

Is Slow Anti-Work?

I am just reading “Useful Work Vs Useless Toil” by William Morris (one of the excellent Great Idea’s Series by Penguin) and I was thinking about a question I wanted to talk about for some time, which is “Is Slow anti-work?”. I am going to give a brief answer here and hopefully expand the idea of “Slow Work” and how to do it over the next few posts.

William Morris was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement and argued that all work should be a source of pride and satisfaction, and that everyone should be entitled to beautiful surroundings – no matter what their class (although, sadly, most people only remember him as a type of wall paper!).

He made a distinction between work and toil and thought that what most people call work is in fact “useless toil”. Surprisingly, for a man of such prolific output, he described himself as an Idler!

Because, remember Slow is not about being lazy or slothful, it is about getting the right things done to the right standard and holds quality above quantity.

Sadly, when most people work they are very busy, but rarely productive. They do things to either fill the hours they are at work or do things because “they have always been done that way” with no thought about why they are doing it or if there is a better way for it to be done. We just pile more and more stuff to be done on our desks and plough through it. Rarely having the time to stop and think if it really NEED’s to be done. Our answer to all this extra stuff is to work longer hours or try and introduce time saving devices (such as the Blackberry!) which rarely solve the problem and ofte just make it worse!

And even more sadly, we reward busyness in our Society! It is not about how much you get done, it is about how much you are PERCEIVED to be getting done! You know the old phrase “you want something done give it to a BUSY person”. Nonsense!

Over the next few posts we will look at ho to be more productive, so you can get more done to a better standard in less time and with less stress. Often, by applying Slow ideas in the work place you find you seem to speed up! And then wonder what you used to do all day…

SC

Well, That was fun.

Did you get the joys of listening to me being savaged on the radio show on Saturday night by Stephen Nolan and Charlie Mullins of Pimlico Plumbers?

If not you can listen to the gory details here on BBC iplayer (it should be there until the 15th November, I will try and get a copy to post the audio here, when it expires. UK listeners only I am afraid), it is at 2hr 23minutes-ish.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00fcm29/Stephen_Nolan_08112008/

I have to say I felt somewhat ambushed! I was invited on to discuss workaholism and work/life balance. So, I prepare for a discussion about how people need to and can develop that balance and how the “slow” principles can help you achieve more in less time, reduce your stress levels an attain a bit of balance in your life (especially in these difficult times).

But that is not what happened.

From Stephen’s opening response “I am astonished by this…” and accusing me of being patronising, to Charlie’s consistently self centred (and, to be honest, horribly naïve and ill informed) rhetoric about how the economy is making us all work harder (and if you are not you are obviously a lazy slacker) and seeming refusal to listen to anything I had to say. It was obvious I had just been wheeled out as some whipping boy for them to pick on (for daring to suggest there is something more to life than work and there are people out there who want to balance their lives!)

Anyway, sadly I don’t have time to write a full report on it today, so I will be expanding on my reflection of the show and what I actually wanted to discuss in the blogs throughout this week.

Incidentally I will on BBC Radio Berkshire at 8:45am tomorrow, hopefully they will be a little more open minded and a little less aggressive!

SC

Workaholic?

I will be on Stephen Nolan’s radio show on Radio Five Live on Saturday night (8th November) discussing workaholism and the work life balance.

Listen in if you can, or you will probably be able to listen again, I will post the link when it appears..

SC