Building Bridges

Playing the Corporate Game involves not burning bridges. When it comes to interviews, reviews, and exit discussions, senior people will regularly bemoan the lack of honest, meaningful, feedback. Honest  feedback isn’t the same thing as true feedback. We are all projecting our stuff. So if your feedback is pointed, it is often a reflection on you. That is why people know to hold back. Otherwise they are exposing their bits. Honesty will get held against you in promotions, compensation, and the quality of references you are given. Many references simply confirm the work dates. Many “weaknesses” are “I am a bit of a perfectionist”. So I get why people don’t want to talk about their black lives matter experiences in white majority companies. They don’t want to be the idiot who takes the request at face value. Smart people know that when a boss says, “This is my view, but it’s your decision”. They mean, “Just do what you are told”, but want to lie to themselves that they can delegate. Corporates like delegating responsibility, but not authority. Few people will take responsibility for why we are having the black lives matter conversation. People will be honest when bosses stop playing games.

Kool-Aid

As a wet-behind-the-ears Marketing Actuary, I can remember one of my first workshops standing in front of a room of independent financial advisers to explain the risk and investment products the company I was working for had launched. A few clearly had a bone to pick. Any bone. And I was fresh meat. As a newby, I was attempting to be very polite. It took a senior marketing person to step in and answer back with skilful banter. As a youngster, it is easy to take all “the adults” seriously. Not as the bunch of adultchildren you realise we all are. It’s easy to drink the Kool-Aid and see the company you work for as a cult, rather than part of something bigger. Gradually you will see people move companies, and get treated by companies they bought into the rhetoric of as gangrenous limbs. Gradually, you can learn to detach. Public Speaking (and work in general) can be frightening because you feel like you are being judged. Until you realise that even the Emperor is wearing no clothes. And giggle at the love handles.

Different Questions

It is easy to paint a picture of my story that seems like it all went according to plan. I talk about Engine Building and Financial Freedom in a way that may make it seem like I knew how things would pan out. In reality, my philosophy is a work in progress that keeps requiring repair. On several significant occasions, I have had to reboot. When a door closes, my approach (once I have stopped sulking) is to try and think of something awesome I could do that I couldn't have done otherwise.

I could quite easily have still been working in a Corporate Job but for a different sliding door. I loved being an Investment Analyst. I loved studying the philosophies of the investors I worked with, developing my own, and understanding and addressing clients' concerns. I had awesome colleagues and clients, who because work dominates most of our current lives, were also my close friends. When I was at a green company, my blood bled green. When I was at blue companies, my blood bled blue. Support that verged on the fanaticism I show for the South African Rugby and Cricket teams. Although, I like to think I was able to back that (the work) up with clear-eyed due diligence and evidence.

The heart of my problem is I am not good at "playing the game". I don't detach very easily. I care a lot. I am wired with a level of "righteousness" that values transparency, honesty, and relationships more than sometimes allows me to just get the job done. And I am not always right when I a righteous. I am also installed with a switch, that allows me to get very task-focused and competitive if I put it on. A friend at university once told me I would never get married unless I chose a doormat, because she was so exasperated at my dictatorial nature. Another friend told me that I didn't care about the truth, I just cared about getting my way. I normally started incredibly inclusively and interested in feedback, but as a deadline approached I became a version of myself I didn't like at all.

I am also allergic to hierarchy. Not if I feel inspired, buy-in, and am clear on my role in something bigger. I have an inbuilt Apartheid South African disrespect for authority. Particularly the unearned kind in place because of luck, deceit, politics, or privilege. I can't stomach the ego that often gets attached to Corporate Classism where promotions come with perks and swagger, as people rise to their level of incompetence (and stop there).

Part of why I wanted to stop working for money was frustration. The more positive part was I wanted to see what life would be like if I didn't have to fight so hard against my inner demons. The things that matter to me most are learning and relationships. And yes, I don't like being told what to do or feeling like my fate is not in my own hands. Autonomy and consent are my food and water.

I hope that what I write doesn't come across as a prescribed "How to?" as if I have any idea about the problems you are facing. I write about money more than I would like, mostly because I believe that things would be very different if everybody had an Engine behind them to loosen the control money has over their decisions. I feel incredibly privileged to be in a position to choose different rather than more. Building an Engine isn't an answer. It allows people to ask different questions.

Trying a different angle

More Me

Money is fungible. Replaceable by another identical, mutually exchangeable item. It can be put to work, but won’t have an identity crisis about it. Ask money what it wants to be when it grows up, and the answer is “more me”. Money doesn’t go for job interviews in public companies. It doesn’t go for performance reviews. It is the company that gets assessed. Shares in these companies that are in the free float can be bought and sold. Money can be divided into parts and get various jobs. Money that is retrenched is also called Dividends or Share Buybacks (we don’t need you anymore). No tears required. All said and done, money is far better suited to working purely for the sake of money than people. If you can get breathing space between what you earn and what you spend, you can build a Buffer. A Buffer can grow. A Buffer can become an Engine. An Engine can empower you to make decisions not driven by money. Driven by you.

More Me

Say No

There is a bitter irony in the tying of the means of production to labour, and the responsibility for looking after the worker to the employer. Hand-to-Mouth living binds the person’s survival to their labour. A Minimum Wage restricts the work that can be done to that which can explicitly be monetised sufficiently. If we worked towards a world where everyone had sufficient Capital to ensure survival, then everyone would have the most powerful negotiating skill there is. The ability to walk away. The ability to say the word, “No”. At that point, people will do the work they want to do. If you need a person to do the work, you will have to make the work attractive and remunerative enough to appeal to them. True freedom for workers would be if they were all Capitalists.

Labour

You Too Model

Although pitched as a battle between markets and central planning, there is a delicious irony. Big companies may use markets to determine the size of the pie - whatever customers will pay. They then have to decide how to slice the pie. What is normally used? Central planning. 

Markets are an answer to questions that are too hard to answer, but where you have two parties that are willing to make an exchange. If the seller thinks the thing being sold is worth less than the price, and the buyer thinks the thing being bought is worth more - boom, 'value' is created by things being in the hands of the people who value them most.

This works when you have two parties with similar negotiating power, and similar information. When both parties have the power to say 'No thank you'. It doesn't work when the playing field isn't balanced. Typically employers have way more power. Getting or losing a job means much more to the applicant or employee than the employer. However harsh it sounds, when it comes to business - people are normally replaceable. 

One way to level the playing field is more rules. Workers rights and constraints on business behaviour. This is a 'plan' way to do things. It assumes perfect insight into an ever-changing world. Another way is to empower the workers directly. If someone is in a position to say their Yesses and Nos with conviction.

Dividing the pie is hard. For employees, the 'Cog Value' is used. How much will it cost to get someone with the equivalent skills in the market? For new owners, there is no right answer. It is a messy negotiation to divide an invisible pie. Who is bringing capital? Who is bringing relationships? Who is bringing skills? Who is bringing ideas? These things have to be compared, without the benefit of a market price. If no agreement can be reached, then there will be no pie.

The people in the best position to get a slice of pie are those who don't have to care. Desperation is a stinky spice. This is why many entrepreneurs have solved the Financial Security question before they attempt to do something new. They don't have to be distracted by the much bigger 'Cog Value' they could get by getting a job. They have another source of income which gives them the freedom to play.

U2 solved the difficult question of solving the 'Meritocracy' question by not trying. Just divide it by four. Four band members, four slices. Now let's play.

Merit is deeply intertwined with Privilege. The Capital, Skills, Ideas and Relationships we 'bring to the table' are massively influenced by our luck in the genetic, geographic, and social lotteries we play. Unravelling this is hard. Unravelling history is hard. Who is to blame? Why did this happen? 

Sometimes when things are too hard, you can ask an easier question. Would the world be better if we just followed the U2 model? Financial Security for me, Financial Security for you too. A Universal Basic Income will empower people to say Yes and No. That injection of negotiating power isn't an answer to every question. There is no central committee. There is just a world full of people who see things in different ways, and are released to play.

Let's play.

You Too

You Are Not...

The question 'what are you going to be when you grow up?' was designed for an everyone-knows-their-place world. When things are scarce, you have to be part of the team. Pick a role, and society will look after you. That functions when teams are relatively small and the Lord of the Manor's life is not that dissimilar from the rest of the team. Genghis Khan spent most of his life in a Ger despite building one of the biggest empires the world has seen. A big Ger, sure, but still a Ger. 

As the world abstracts and you get paid a salary for work as a transaction, things fall apart. A salary is a price. A price is a clearing mechanism. It has nothing to do with value, and certainly nothing to do with 'who you are'. The question about what you are going to be, is a completely separate one from 'how are you going to finance being?'. Too often, our identity gets wrapped up in how we are going to make money. Money and identity are not great bedfellows. Money cares too much about what other people are doing. It only cares about how much of something there is, and how much is wanted. It doesn't see you. It can empower you, and lack of it can disempower you. But it is not you.

It may just seem like wordplay. But saying I am angry, or I am happy, or I am a doctor is different from I am feeling angry, I am feeling happy, or I am doctoring. That is how phrased in Russian. You aren't a writer, you are writing. You aren't an investor, you are investing. You aren't an Artist, you are creating. I think that difference matters.

You are not your job.

Ger

Inaction

When asked for a weakness in interviews, people often reply with cloaked strengths. 'I am a bit of a perfectionist' or 'people can find me tough to deal with because I am more interested in succeeding than them'. This is partly because it isn't a level playing field. Interviewers get to play God in a world where the job is normally way more important to the person applying. Interviewers can throw away half the CVs they receive, because it saves time and... you don't want unlucky people.

It is also because in a world that believes in meritocracy, the business has no responsibility to the applicant to help them work on or accommodate genuine weaknesses. Genuine obstacles.

Q: What is your biggest weakness?

A: I tend to be a little too honest.

Q: I think that is a strength.

A: I don't give a fuck what you think.

I have what I consider a genuine weakness when it comes to Righteous Indignation and an allergy to Unconsensual Hierarchy. What makes it genuine is that it does cause regular clashes, or the need to opt out. There is lots of injustice in the world, and if you are constantly exploding or even just getting worked up, effectiveness plummets. Like the fake perfectionist hard ass, it is not something I am willing to get go of. I do need management techniques.

The world is the way it is, and changes from where it is. The two management techniques I am working on are Acceptance and Detachment. Neither of these means not caring. Not caring also works, if you view something as a means to an end. My issue is that if I genuinely don't care, I mentally and emotionally check out. I am an all in, or all out, kind of guy. So I need to care about the means.

Wu Wei is the Chinese concept of Action through Inaction. By getting to understand something *as it is* and accepting it, rather than fighting it, change becomes much more likely. You do care, even though it may appear to the outside world that you are doing nothing about it. Action is delayed while understanding is gathered. Slowly. Gently. Lovingly.

Weaknesses become things to be understood, rather than things to be filtered out.

Calm

Happy 24th Birthday South Africa

I was entering my first, post-university, full-time job just after I turned 24. I was working and studying. It was a very challenging year. The first six months of my job, I had to balance irritating my boss by asking too many questions, with not knowing how to proceed. The big difference between the work world and university, is that the problems you are solving are often new. There isn't a textbook to work your way through. I used to console myself when I was studying something I didn't understand with the fact that I wasn't pushing the boundaries of human thought. Someone had done this before. Lots of people had done this before. I just had to wrestle with the ideas until they sunk in.

Before and after work, I was still in that world. I was doing professional exams which didn't have tutorials or lessons. Just a fat stack of information to work through, and then practice exams at the end. That suited me perfectly. I am a very slow learner. I am not one of those people who are quick on the uptake and full of confidence. I would get to the office early, and put an hour of study in before the day started. Then do another hour in the evening. I topped that up on the weekends. Chip. Chip. Chip. The wall of confusion would fall... I just had to push on. I am very stubborn... pushing on is something I knew how to do. Just do the time.

At work, I was still basically learning where the toilet was. The only thing I knew I was good at, was arranging 'Tea at Ten'. Going around to all the desks to convince people to take a brief break. Tea solves everything. It took time to get into the rhythm of sitting at a desk, working away at problems with the balancing act of 'wrestling with it yourself' vs 'asking for help'. Despite being full of ideas out of university, it was a lesson that the real world and books are very different.

Free South Africa turns 24 today. It is also chipping away at problems. Its leaders are also balancing looking at Best Practice around the world, with wrestling with the problems internally. Balancing problems that have been solved, with problems that are local to the area. Problems that are new. Balancing wanting to appear confident to impress people, with the deep confusion that is unavoidable if you want to understand anything deeply. Where questions are more valuable than answers.

The key is not to panic when problems seem insurmountable. Breathe. Drink tea. Then go back to your desk, and do the work. 

Happy 24th Birthday South Africa!

Previous Messages
Happy 21st (2015), Happy 22nd (2016), Happy 23rd (2017)

Fair Pay (Christie)

Sindile shared an interesting blogpost to which Christie replied. I asked if I could share her comment... 

I have read 'A day in the life of a Camp's Bay maid' before - a few years ago perhaps?

'A Day in the Life of a Camp's Bay Maid'

Obviously it's easy to get angry with the "madam" of the story but I think it's an opportunity to consider the people that we employ to work in our homes and to look after our children - and ask how we dehumanise - not only with finances - but also through working conditions 

There is much to be said about paying a living wage (R6,000- R8,000/ month for full depending on where you look for info) but also some other things to consider: 

• Having a contract which stipulates hours of work, tasks involved, leave, sick leave, etc (there are templates on DoL sites)
• Sit down and discuss the terms with your employee. Ask yourself if the terms are fair. E.g. Paid leave for 22 days, 13th cheque 
• Provide safety equipment (remember you are an employer) e.g. Gloves, clothes in which the person can clean (this is also a whole separate discussion - a uniform that is comfortable may differ from person to person)
• If you can't afford a living wage for full time employment, consider reducing hours of service - this can free the employee to find other work on their free days or hours i.e. Reduced hours for the same pay = higher rate/hour
• Have open discussions and find out about their family and needs - who lives at home with them, who looks after their children etc and try to find ways to support and empower

---

Christie and I also had a chat about 'Surviving' being a parent

Group Decisions

One of the problems with getting real change is we need to get buy-in to both the destination, and the path. In my experience, the more people you add to the mix, the more difficult it is to get agreement. It doesn't matter what job people do, the thing that grates most people's goat is the same. Other people. I am a mix of a stubborn donkey, and a rah-rah team player. I like community, and I like people. I hate hierarchy. I also like the ability to just make decisions on my own. The reality is every time we engage with others, it gets harder to make decisions. We don't know the path in advance. We can guess, but we need to trust each other when things change. We need something that gives us enough faith in each other to let others make decisions for us. Without a foundation of common ground, and trust... there isn't a community. It isn't about being the same. It is about having a real interest in each other's success.

Grates my Goat

Able to Walk Away

I started my (post-university) working career in Risk Product Development. The obvious risk people buy insurance for is dying. If you have dependants, the financial strain of death can send those people's lives into a spiral. The less obvious (but what I came to believe more dangerous) risk, is disability. If you are still alive, but unable to contribute in a financial way... society isn't set up to look after you. And you are still around.

I worked on Disability Products. There are products to cover you if you can't do your Daily Tasks (opening a jar, driving a car, showering, etc.). There are products to cover you if you can't do your own occupation (a lawyer who loses ability to concentrate), and products to cover you if you can't do any occupation (even if you could do your daily tasks).

This made me do the calculations for myself about how much I would need if I could never work again. I was warned of hair dressers whose hair was a mess, home builders whose homes were falling apart, and accountants who hadn't done their own taxes. I didn't want to be an actuary who couldn't work, but had not got cover.

I knew that number. It became a target. Initially I paid a premium to the insurance company I had worked for, but the goal was to have that much myself. Why should I 'wait' to get disabled to be able to focus my efforts on something else? I had accepted the way the world worked, now I wanted to make it work for me so I could do other things.

Normally that target grows. People adjust to their income, and forget how they ever got by before that. I was super keen to be financially independent, so instead, I saved and invested aggressively. 

I didn't let my target grow. Eventually the day came where I met it. I had enough to stop if I wanted to. So I did. Some people are lucky to be in jobs that they love. My guess is a lot of us put up with being treated badly, because we have no other choice. We can't just walk away. I don't think the current work place environment is a level playing field. I don't like the idea of bosses, and I don't like the idea that 'the customer is king'.

I don't see the world beyond work as one where we disengage. Quite the opposite. When what we do becomes a conscious choice, that is when work becomes the art of creating meaning.

Old Colleagues, Old Friends

Decision Making

I am a creature of habit. I like processes and patterns. Things I can understand. When I am part of a team, two things that drive me nuts are a lack of clarity around decision making, and unjustified superiority complexes. Unjustified by who? By me. We don't operate in a functional meritocracy.  I am more than happy to take instructions from someone when: 

1) I am learning from them, 

2) I don't feel like they are simply outsourcing the jobs they don't want to do to me,

3) We like each other, 

4) We share a common purpose

When there are structural reasons why any of these rules don't work, my inner elephant goes on the rampage. I can intellectually try pretend I can carry on doing what needs to be done for other reasons, e.g. money, expectations, patience, accepting that is the way the world works. I know I will fail. Inside me is a raging righteous indignation when I feel like things aren't the way they should be.

Freedom isn't a lack of constraints. Good rules can make the game far more enjoyable. Freedom isn't even free will and the ability to make the decisions. Freedom is a feeling that I am part of something bigger that I believe in. Not just a cog. An integral part of something that matters.

Up in the Air

I have been lucky to have fantastic colleagues. Smart. Interesting. Interested. Caring. Creative. Business was personal. I cared. The teams never stayed the same though. Someone needed to move city. Someone felt they need a role change to stay learning. Partners careers are taken into account. I couldn't ever hold onto a team that I was loving. The teams changed. The same is true of friends and family in a scattered world. It now turns out it is the same in terms of countries. Nothing stays the same. If we are looking for consistency, we need to look deeper. We need to appreciate each moment, because at any point everything can be thrown up into the air.

Up in the Air

People into Jobs

When someone is hired for a job, they join a community. Companies have a reason for existence and each person has a role. The truth is that that 'reason for existence' has to take precedence over any individual for the community to work. This can be brutal if the supporting community behind the scenes doesn't function properly. We can pretend companies are like a family. We can have colleagues that are friends. There comes a point however that companies end up having to make tough decisions. A job needs doing. The person involved is not capable of doing the job. The person wants something different to what is required. The person must go.

Puzzles are built around the big picture, not the individual piece

A friend was telling me about the performance management process someone he knew was involved in. The person being managed was kind, friendly and well-liked. They were just awful at their job. It is nice to think they would know that, and potentially look to move on anyway. I think we are dreaming if we think there is a perfect job for everyone. We typically fit people into jobs rather than build jobs around people. The hard truth is that jobs often mean much more to the individual than to the company. Losing or cutting one person doesn't change the company that much. If it does, that is called 'Key Person' risk and is something most businesses work hard to decrease. If people change or lose their jobs, their worlds change dramatically.

Part of the reason I am a fan of the idea of Community Building and a Universal Basic Income is that it levels the playing field a little in the work space. There is a big difference between working because you want to, and working because you have to. There is a big difference between buying into the 'reason for existence' of what you do, and doing it because you need the pay check. If a boss has to lay down the law and make you do something you don't want to do, because it needs to be done, you should be able to walk away. Most people can't. Most people have to suck it up. This means our happiness becomes overly dependent on the quality of our archy. There is a world beyond archy. There is a world beyond desperation.

I am looking forward to that world.

Stubborn Little Donkey

I have a problem with authority. One of the reasons I stopped working in the traditional sense is that I struggle with the hierarchy of work. I am luckily a very self-motivated person. I can push myself hard. For that reason, my parents seldom had to discipline me. I hate(d) my older brothers telling me what to do. I seldom disappointed teachers for lack of effort, bar perhaps in accounting. That is likely related. School accounting tended to be about learning the rules.

Ironically, I like rules. Games work better with a contract that people agree to abide by. Touch rugby, poker, and many other social games work better when the rules aren’t an argument. What I don’t like is a lack of clarity about the rules. Within known constraints you can be very creative. Fuzzy constraints impede creativity because there is too much umming and ahhing. The wet blanket effect slows things down and kills joy.

In the corporate environment, there is a lot of fuzziness. There is hierarchy but more delegation of responsibility than of trust and decision making. There were lots of occasions when I really didn’t like myself. I can perform under pressure, but I am not a nice person. Not the kind of person I want to be. All the softer, social skills go out the window and I get task focused. It becomes a choice between the task and the person. That in my view is not a necessary choice. There is seldom a reason to rush. There is almost never a reason to put a task above a person.

But the world is not black and white. I could have benefited from less of a desire to control my environment when I ran the 89km Comrades on Sunday. I got angry with about 16km to go. I had the sub-12hour bus hounding me from behind. They took up the whole road. If they caught up, you didn’t become part of the bus. You got swallowed. I was angry with the bus. I was angry because of all the plastic on the road despite the bins. I didn’t feel in control.

I had a buddy with me. One who was far stronger than me. Instead of outsourcing my thinking to him and just doing what I was told, I cut him loose. He wanted to help. I told him to carry on. I just needed to be in my bubble. I just needed to focus. He told me my bubble was too slow. I spoke some French asking him to leave me alone. That cost me the race.

I pulled myself together about 4 km later, but I lost about 10 minutes to my anger. I had been running a steadily slow race, and hadn’t left much of a buffer. I got to the stadium just as the gun went. At the pace I was running, I probably would have finished 2 minutes later.

I slowed down and gathered perspective. The task of finishing was not my goal. This was something much bigger. I had started running to be part of the story of Unogwaja. I had started running to try and deconstruct my identity. How can we define ourselves as ‘not’ the things we haven’t properly tried? I was ‘not’ a runner. I had just run 89km and survived. I jogged into the stadium singing Shosholoza. Savouring the love being poured by the crowd into the runners who had fought their way to the stadium a few minutes too late.

I will be back stronger and more focussed on the things that matter. 

Malawi (Julius)

Malawi is a country that heavily depends on agriculture for its economy. Its major export is tobacco and it generates about 60% of the country's foreign exchange. Tobacco growers toil throughout the season in order to produce a high quality crop yield. However these farmers don't enjoy the rewards of their hard work at the end of each season because of the lower prices that are "imposed" on them by the buyers. They feel marginalised since they're always told exactly how much money they should charge for their own harvest. As a result tobacco growers in Malawi continue to suffer.

Julius Bright Phiri

- a friend of friend (who I know from Westville (South Africa), but now lives in Metchosin (Canada))

Up or Out

Jack Welch popularised the idea of an 'up or out' policy. Where the bottom 10% of performers in an organisation were either managed up, or they left. The idea being that this would constantly keep the group of people who stay on their toes, or improving. Most people are happiest when they are good at their job. If you are in the bottom 10%, you would probably be happier elsewhere if you weren't able to lift your game. 

Jack Welch - Retired CEO of General Electric

At stages, I have bought into this idea completely. The idea of a meritocracy is very appealing. If you are the one doing well. The problem comes when you get to horrible people who are top performers, and great people who aren't that good at their job. There are a lot of people who aren't looking at their work as a constant progression - money, authority, achievement. A big part of why we enjoy our work comes down the community we are in. The culture of the place. The sense of being a part of something. A place to fund other things that are important. By definition, an 'up or out' culture means there is never a stage when everyone is safe. There are always wild animals waiting to nibble on the stragglers. You can't work on something with long term pay offs because you have to spend so much time on short term survival. On marketing the value you are adding.

If you are part of a family, or in a committed relationship... there is no 'up or out'. At some stage you decide to accept that you are in it for the long term. That you will work out whatever problems come along. You buy into the person. Once you buy into the person, the game changes. The escape hatch is put out of commission. That allows you to put ego aside because ego and the broader aims become one and the same.

I am interested in the idea of how we build communities. How we build groups of people where we accept that we are in it for the long term, like we do with family and relationships. I do think there should be boundaries that shouldn't be crossed. Laws. Unconditional love requires constraints. Whether it is about poor performance or antisocial behaviour. Those are the tough problems to which we don't have an answer. Those breaches are the ones that hurt the most. That need creative solutions.

There is a premium to trusting people. How do we build trust?

The Little Things

The problems with only focusing on the big things, is you never get to the little things. They are never important enough. But they niggle and they gnaw. A friend of mine who has been a very successful businessman said his goal with the little things was to never give them more time than they deserved. The best way to do this was to do them straight away, not to put them off. Another friend said she started her day with three little task. Ideally in the first hour of the day she would be able to say she had got something done. If she was being very diligent, she would right them down on a list for those moments when you wonder if you are no further forward than you were a week, month, or year ago.

Another way to handle the 'less important stuff' is to delegate. I have a big problem with delegation. Not that I can't do it, but that I think there is an implicit message in delegation which sometimes causes problems. When you say, 'Can you do this, I don't have time', you are also saying, 'I have a list of priorities and this is not high enough up on the list, can you put it to the top of yours.' Delegation can be a power play. A statement that you are above a task.

It is different if the task is delegated as a learning mechanism. But I think this is often a cop-out. Learning curves are often quite steep and then flatten out. If you are still delegating a task to someone when they are already very capable at it, then you are back to power games. The best leaders I have known are the ones who roll their sleeves up and get stuck in alongside the people they are working with. There are some things that can't be communicated up. 

Make your own tea, for example. Obviously when you are busy, it seems like 'n las (a burden). Making for a few other people when you need to get a few moments away from the desk buys you a few free cups later. Write your own emails. Put your own presentations together. Cook your own dinner from scratch at least occasionally. Dishes. Bed. Rubbish. Dusting. Shopping. Don't ask other people to do tasks you aren't prepared to do yourself at least every now and then.

If you constantly delegate because other things are more important, you can end up losing 'competence at life'. The truth is, if you don't make time for the little things, the big things will swallow you whole.

Never be too big to make tea

Free Bar

Reasonable isn't the same thing as factual. Two people can look at the same facts and reasonably come to different conclusions. In the school debates I did, you were given a topic and told whether you were the opposition or the proposition. If you were good enough, you should be able to win the debate from either side. Reasonably. 

One thing that grates people working in groups is expense management. Covering of 'reasonable' expenses over and above whatever you get paid. 

One way of viewing this is that you should spend as you would for yourself. Don't spend more because 'someone else is paying'. Don't order Dom Perignon and Lobster because you won't be the one paying. Be reasonable. But for some people isn't that reasonable? If you come home each night to silver service meals, your reasonable will be different from someone who makes their meal themselves from minimum wage. Some people may be at a dinner who normally wouldn't eat out if they were paying themselves. They wouldn't be able to justify it.

Another way to think of it is 'Think like an Owner'. That makes my blood boil. I always think of Thomas Nagel's 'What is it like to be a bat?'. We aren't bats. If you aren't an owner, you can't think like an owner. If the owner spends less, they get more profit. 'Think like an Owner' basically says put the businesses interests first. The idea being that if you regularly do that, you are clearly someone worth promoting, and therefore more likely to be the boss one day. I don't buy that. If you want to make someone think like an owner, make them an owner.

A third approach is to act 'Beyond Reproach'. Never spend anything where there could be some doubt. Where you could be questioned. The only way to do this is to strip things back to basics. This is the opposite response to the 'someone else is paying' idea. It is other people's money, so even though you are being reimbursed for expenses, spend as little as possible. Avoid conspicuous consumption. We would love it if public servants did this. There are some politicians who donate their entire salary to charity and cover their own expenses. Clearly those politicians are privileged enough to do that, but it does leave a better feeling than paying for the trough to be refilled.

I don't have the answer for this. I do think when we criticise public servants for corruption, we should think how endemic it is in business and social settings. When people feel part of their compensation is in the perks. The 'free stuff'. When there is an open bar at a party, there are more likely to be lots of half drunk drinks. When there is lots of wealth in a country, there are more people who are obese. 

If there is some sort of real relationship, I think there is more chance of people 'Thinking like Custodians'. For that to happen, there needs to be wider ownership. Not just of the money left over once the party is over, but of the next party, the next meal and the next time you engage with people.