Two Years On

Does anyone know how to create line spaces and paragraphs with this new version of blogspot? Sorry I haven’t worked that out yet. It is a month short of two years since I chose retirement, just before my fiftieth birthday. In case anyone else out there is pondering such a move, here is how it has worked for me so far. It is hard to separate out retirement from the other big changes in my life that happened more or less at the same time. My daughter left home, I separated, I lived alone for a time, and now I have a new family. These events changed me a lot. But so did retiring, and I think I can at least try to separate out the different factors. First, I can dispel the lingering fears I had before taking the decision. I have never been bored. I still have as many unfulfilled dreams as ever. And I do not miss the routine of work, or the intelligent company of work colleagues. When people left Shell, this was always their most common gripe, that they miss the intelligence of daily discussion. Well, not me. Why have I not suffered these things? I can only guess that I get enjoyment from my own company, and can take pleasure from some simple things that take time, like walking, reading, even sleeping. I have also had no trouble finding a variety of things to fill my day, many involving good company. I have actually worked, for money. When I tell people this, their most common reaction is that it is good for me. I don’t know about that. So far, I have really enjoyed my work, especially as it has only been for a few days per month. I don’t think I need it as much as people seem to think I do. Somehow there would be other activities to replace it. Perhaps what people are saying when they say it is good for me is that if they were in the same situation they think they would need some work for some reason. I did not really have a plan for retirement. I wrote down a few goals, and actually I have gone some way to achieving many of them. Of course I had hobbies, some ideas, and some dreams. But I think one of the keys to making this work has been to be ready to embrace what life brings along. I have ended up doing some things I never would have guessed, perhaps because my attitudes and preferences have evolved, and perhaps because such things would have never crossed my radar before. I fully expect these pleasant surprises to keep on coming. One nice side effect of these diversions is that I see no risk of completing my dream list anytime soon. There are still as many vague ideas out there as there were two years ago. That leaves a nice sense of being able to look forward to the future. I don’t know if I do things slower than before. My sense is that I am about as efficient as I ever was. True, I can spin out a task, make something last a couple of days when it could be done in one, but that was always the case – work tasks were the same, expanding to fill all the time available to complete them. What is certainly true is that I am usually less tired. I looked around me at choir practice the other night and looked at faces. Almost all looked tired, some very tired indeed. I think that used to be me as well. Now, we all want to make the most of our fleeting existence on the planet, but I am not sure if being really tired is a good goal. Surely, it is harder to appreciate experiences when we are tired? People still think I look older than my years, but I sense not as much as before, and the pitied look offered to a tired soul is something I rarely experience nowadays. Actually, I can hardly imagine how I coped before. I did most of the things I do now, plus many additional hours every week of this other thing called work. It is no wonder I was often tired, and didn’t do things as well or gain as much from experiences. Perhaps the biggest change has been in my mood and my behaviour to others. I can still be brusque, aggressive and thoughtless. But I sense that it happens less often now. Maybe my other transitions in life have contributed, but I think retirement has too. My brain is no longer running at hundred miles per hour and on its unpleasant autopilot. I can listen, reflect, and react better than before, see things from the perspective of another. I have a key piece of evidence, which is that relapses in behaviour tend to happen while I am in Romania working or soon after I get home. I think many factors are at work here. Partly it is the high speed multi-tasking that leads to hasty interactions. Partly it is the office culture of competition and selfishness invading my private space. Whatever it is, I don’t like it. And perhaps what I now observe occasionally is how I used to be most of the time? Might that be you too? It is no wonder so many of us use devices to keep us in balance. Meditation, physical things like massage, breathing exercises can all help. So can religion – I am convinced that while I was working the one hour per week sitting in Church reflecting was an important way to dampen aggression. I still use these devices, even though I suppose I need them less now. But whereas before they maybe took my personality from dangerous to somehow controlled, now I can often find deeper levels of serenity. Essentially, retirement has created more space for close relationships. With everyone, I can now take more time, including reflection time. With my family, this is even more true. But most of all the space created gives time for my relationship with myself (and with God, if you like). This time and space is a true gift. Yet looking at it this way may give a clue as to why retirement does not work for everybody, indeed why we tend to clutter our lives so much. This extra time is only a gift if we are comfortable in those relationships. If we are not comfortable, if there is lack of reconciliation or unresolved tension, the extra time will only shine a harsh light on the problem. True, the time gives opportunity to seek and find reconciliation, but this can be a painful process, especially if we are in denial and not ready to face it. So this may be the best advice I can give, if you are contemplating retirement or some other simplification of your life. Do it, time and space is a gift. But be ready for what that time and space will reveal. If possible, find true reconciliation in your closest relationships before making the change, or at least be ready for some pain. The closest relationship is with yourself. In your cluttered life, you may not even notice the tensions inside yourself and with others – that is even why the clutter is there. It is a shame that such a cathartic process is not something we tend to prepare for. It is only now, two years on, that I start to see how necessary it was for me, and I got through it more by accident than anything else. And who am I to say that I am through it now? So, dare to tidy away the clutter and let in the sunshine. If you wait until you are forced to, that will only get in the way of allowing the sunshine to help you. Just like this last weekend in Northern Europe, the first effect of a dose of sunshine after a long winter might be some painful burning. But, once that is out of the way, sunshine on the skin and the soul has a great and lasting healing effect.

Trying too hard

A nice piece in Intelligent Life (May-June) concludes that sometimes thinking is a bad idea. Ian Leslie suggests that our tendency to choke, or fail at critical times, is because we are trying too hard and lose our spontaneous performance as a result. I agree. The examples quoted are mainly sporting ones. Novak Djokovic in 2011 went through a period when he could not stop winning. And what was noticeable was that he seemed to play his best points under the highest pressure. Under severe pressure, most of us become stiff, cautious, and underperform. Look at almost any golf tournament. Birdies fly in for the first 63 holes, but the winner is the one who makes fewest errors over the last nine. I am no sportsman, but I suffer from this myself. In singing, it is weird that I sing the highest note of any piece consistently badly. I am not alone in this. It hardly matters if the note is really high or not. An F is no problem if the piece has G's and A's, but if the F is the summit, it starts to cause problems. The best way to avoid this is to somehow confuse my brain. Techniques for this include focusing on something other than singing, like walking around. If the top note passes without me actually registering it, I sing it OK. When I used to play bridge, I remember sometimes having the thought that I might win a particular tournament, usually about 80% of the way through if things were going well. This thought was always somehow almost fatal, and my performance declined instantly. The only way to win was never to let winning enter my head. Sports people recognise this phenomenon. One consequence is the rise of psychology in top sports. Professionals have their technical coaches, but if anything nowadays they value their psychological coaches more. These miracle workers are the ones that help their clients fail to notice that they are about to tackle their top F, so the moment passes just like all the other moments in the event with a regular, good, performance. One way to try to understand why this choking happens might come from a model I learned at work. The model is the origin of the famous rumsfeld speech about known unknowns, so ridiculed at the time. I learned it first in a sales context (trying to win clients) but its applications are wide. The model is a classic 4-box, with competence on one axis, and consciousness on the other. In any skill or challenge, we start in the unconsciously incompetent box. We are useless, but we don't really know it. Many of us think we can sing well, but it is not necessarily true. It is state of blissful ignorance, unless you have an exhibitionist streak or a poker habit. The theory goes that to develop, you have to first move into the consciously incompetent box. Only when you know you are flawed in something can you motivate yourself to change things. In sales, you have to make your client feel uncomfortable with their present supplier before you have a chance to convert them. Makes sense. From consciously incompetent, you are ready to learn. You get training, listen to others, work hard, practice. If you have talent and application, you slowly become consciously competent. You know that if you open your mouth wide (and many other things)on high notes, they will sound less forced. Slowly, you train yourself to do it. But this is not the end of the journey. Most skills are multi-dimensional, and the human mind can only focus on two or three of these dimensions at once. In a skill with say twenty facets, we have to master at least nineteen to the extent that usually they are performed without active thinking about it. This is unconscious competence. Nineteen factors are safe, you focus on the twentieth, and the result is good. Even better if twenty are safe. That way the result is so natural that performance can transcend regular boundaries, you can almost take yourself out of yourself and discover hidden facets 21, 22, and 23. Somehow, you can move from the technical to the inspired. Thinking about the choking experience and this model together leads me to my theory about why choking happens. As we approach the finish line, we want to make sure we get there. Somehow, we remember the factors from our training, and focus on some of them to make sure we don't go wrong. As soon as we do this, we move BACK to the conscious competence box, and become mere journeymen again. And we choke. I do it every time I sing a song. Even the very best sportsmen do it to a small extent every time they stand over a match point, a penalty kick or a winning putt. The winners are those who do it less. And Djokovic in 2011 seemed to be an example of defying human nature, and not doing it at all. Now let us extend the logic beyond technical skills like sports or arts. I think it might apply to almost everything that we do. How does a baby learn to walk? The same model applies. How do we prepare for exams? How do we drive cars? Handle a negotiation? The same model applies. Then there are human relationships. How do we become better bosses? Parents and children? Life partners? Lovers? Flirters? And what about our own psyche? How do we understand who we are, our wellness and feeling good inside ourselves? Ourselves and our Gods? Life and death? I had not previously given a lot of thought to the latter categories. But I suspect the model applies even more strongly simply because the necessary skills are so ill-defined. In each case, many (most?) of us blunder through life unconsciously incompetent. We might make it to consciously incompetent, and make some effort to become consciously competent. Even then, uncounscious competence is rare, and vanishes as soon as there is any pressure, when the skill really matters. So the lessons to us as individuals are clear. First, we should look about for the vast areas of our lives where we are unconsciously incompetent, and start on the road around the four boxes. This is all about humility. Then, once we have done our training - hard work, but mentally the easy bit - we must try to avoid choking. This is all about not thinking too hard. How many first dates have we ruined by trying too hard? How many family rows have only festered when we tried too hard to solve them? How many depressions are made worse by thinking too hard about them? Todays prayer. Oh God help us to be humble enough to see our many failings, diligent enough to address them, and serene enough to be at our best under pressure. Amen.

The Reputation Seekers

I think Schumpeter has become one of the best writers in the Economist. Each week he or she takes a sideways look at some issue in business. Often the conclusions are imaginative and thought-provoking. This week the article concerned reputation, and it was generally trashing the industry that has grown up of consultants trying to help corporations manage their reputations. I have plenty of experience of this. I remember well the Shell scandal of inflated reserves. Sadly, this was not the only Shell scandal while I worked for them, but it was a big one. Senior managers right up to the CEO had been forced to admit that, under pressure to produce results, they had created a culture of inflating how much oil we could lay claim to. In the long run, this caused less damage to Shell than the Deepwater Horizon did to BP, but it felt life-threatening to the company at the time. After resignations, the guy appointed as CEO to sort out the mess was Jeroen van der Veer. I remember a quote he made at a big meeting soon afterwards. “Reputation arrives on foot, but departs in a Ferrari”. I agree. Frightened of the potential damage a lost reputation can do, many companies have responded by trying to actively manage their reputation. This has spawned the industry Schumpeter refers to. Luckily for Shell, Jeroen was wiser. Like Schumpeter, he also saw that reputation was a result rather than an input. Of course, it makes sense to consider reputation in actions. The point Jeroen was actually making was that all employees had to consider the reputational impact of all our actions. It is valuable to measure reputation. It is also valuable to have communication messages ready to spin any story as well as it can be spun. But stop there. Don’t start setting reputation as a KPI, or employing armies of consultants. For it won’t work. Actually it may be counter-productive, as staff may subconsciously transfer some of the responsibility for reputation to outsiders. Precisely because it arrives on foot, reputation can only be built slowly and across a whole organisation. It starts with authenticity, the very quality that the consultants invariably lack. Jeroen was a strange guy: he spoke badly, was unashamedly technical and lacked any charisma. The markets found it hard to empathise, and that was mutual. But he was so plainly authentic, he was the perfect choice for Shell at the time. When I see how the BP leadership reacted to Deepwater Horizon, I feel doubly blessed about Shell’s parallel experience. Yet nowadays Jeroen is the exception, and BP the norm. Just look at the sheiks and money men with their ready sound bites in Bahrain last weekend. Or any politician you see, in the UK, USA or anywhere else. Or the religious gurus we come across. Or even John Terry, with his first reaction to his sending off appearing on Tuesday to be a pack of lies. When I see these things, I tend to shrug and think that the Ferrari will arrive for them in the end. Sometimes even Ferrari’s take a long time to arrive, even generations, but authenticity usually wins out in the long run. In the age of the internet there are gradually fewer and fewer places to hide as well. So how can we be authentic ourselves? If we need to be told the answer to that one, we probably have already been swallowed by the reputation sharks. But we can always do better. One clue is to recognise the difference between inputs and outputs. Outputs in the end are what matters, they determine our success and our well-beings. But usually outputs cannot be directly influenced, so they are the wrong place to focus. Good work on inputs leads, in mysterious ways, to better outputs. We see this in everyday situations. In choirs, I am sometimes asked to use my diaphragm, and sometimes asked to blend with other singers. How do I do these things? I cannot feel my diaphragm, let only use it. And how exactly I am supposed to blend? Should I try to put myself into a sort of human coffee grinder? In both cases, these are outputs. My diaphragm will work for me if I stand a certain way, breathe using abdominal muscles, and so on. I will blend if I tone down, listen and look for parts that I can harmonise with. When I am teaching, I have the same problem, and most experienced practitioners do as well. That is why some people make great trainers or teachers. They can work back from outputs to inputs, and express the inputs in a way that pupils can action. But there are more important outputs in life than blending or good breathing. What about love? Happiness? Peace? Even reputation? Receiving? Fear of death? In each case, the answer is simple, yet so difficult to put into practice. Saint Francis captured it perfectly. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen If spirituality can teach us one thing, it is this. To receive most outputs, work on the input that is the converse. And not just for God, because it works! Saint Francis is probably not quoted in many boardrooms. Perhaps that is too much to hope for. Reading Schumpeter and getting rid of some of the snake oil salesmen might be a more attainable goal for now.

Changing the Game

Ben Dirs is one of my favourite writers on the BBC website sports pages, always witty and usually distinctive. This week he wrote a blog about people or moments which changed a sport forever. I’m not sure about his list. Ronnie O’Sullivan in snooker is a choice I don’t agree with (Alex Higgins or Steve Davis, surely?). His other choices are Usain Bolt, Adam Gilchrist, Tiger Woods, Jonah Lomu and Muhammed Ali. I recall his chosen moments for all these except the Ali one (1964 is a bit before my time). As usual, my main take-away is how personal memories are. We all see different significance in events unfolding around us, which is one reason why the world is so complex, and interesting. Anyway, the article was enough to make me think about the same question for myself. All my events occurred since 1970, as it is my list built around my memories. I have to agree with Woods, and I also agree with Ben’s chosen event and its significance. Due to Woods, millions play and watch golf. Due to Woods, nearly all professional golfers behave like sportsmen, with fitness and mental coaching, rather than the amateurs of yore (though we still love throwbacks like Bubba Watson). Due to Woods, the bar of what is possible at golf has risen several notches. And he is of mixed race, which has changed conservative attitudes in golf around the world, including the all-white Augusta club. Once he retires, I hope we remember all this more than we remember his downfall. For Rugby Union, I also like the choice of Lomu, from a world cup match when he steamrollered England scoring four tries. The English must have prepared for the match, but they just had no answer at all. If it is the same match as the one I recall, the first try cam virtually from the kick-off. New Zealand simply passed the ball to Lomu and no one could stop him. Dirs is right that this was the catalyst for Rugby players nowadays more often resembling Lomu for size and strength. A second game changing moment for me in Rugby came in commentary, with Bill Beaumont describing a typically dull 5-nations game in the 1980’s. Someone kicked for touch as usual, and Bill said something like “well played, that is the art in international rugby, get the ball off the pitch whenever possible”. I like to think I wasn’t the only one who heard that remark and wondered why we bothered to watch. Since then, regulators have changed the rules many times, most often for the better. Thanks Bill. It is interesting that soccer does not feature on Dirs’ list. I could go for Cruyff and total football, or Beckenbauer and the invention of the sweeper (since morphed into the holding midfielder). I could go for Wenger: much as Woods has changed the work ethic of golf, Wenger has done the same for premier league football. Do you remember Superstars back in the 1970’s? Sportsmen from all sports competed in various fitness and skill challenges. The footballers always lost. ‘Nuff said. But my football choice in the end goes to Bruce Grobbelaar. Look at old footage of goalkeepers. They leave their line a few yards to meet a cross, or to face a striker one-on-one, but that is all. Grobbelaar was the one who changed that, turning the number one into a true eleventh player. They all do it now, thanks to Bruce. His decision making and shot-stopping was not the best, but he changed his art forever. Gilchrist is a reasonable cricket choice, and I like the example of an innings that won a test match in fourth innings. It surprises me that this is still not commonplace. Teams still hate to chase batting fourth (ironically, Australia more than most). I predict that this will change in the next ten years. For me, the lasting change in cricket started with Kerry Packer. Before him, cricket was like the county championship still is, an elite pastime with little interest for a spectator who wasn’t an insider. Packer blew this apart, and if he were alive, he would be smiling at twenty-20 and the IPL, as well as the fact that test cricket has improved too. In athletics, for negative reasons, I go for the Ben Johnson 100m Olympic win then disqualification. For me, I still cannot watch any athletics without wondering who is cheating. So I never watch athletics. Hansie Cronje gets a passing mention in cricket for the same reason, but the game just about holds on to its credibility for me. Athletics (and cycling road races) sadly do not. Boxing never had it for me. Formula One may not be tainted by cheating, but I still don’t see the point. In tennis, my choices are Billie Jean King as a precursor to Martina Navratilova. They were great players. They changed their sport in their emphasis on work and fitness – and that matters more than elegant skirts, surely, if we want only beauty we should follow fashion not sport? But I also love that they were lesbians and did not hide that fact. As a sheltered teenager, this was a revelation to me, and it really helped to understand that difference exists and is OK. We forget how prejudiced and fearful we all were then. Those two made a contribution beyond their sport to removing one of humanities great injustices. While I adore US football, I can’t think of a stand-out game-changer there. Other Us sports I don’t know well enough. That was a nice exercise, and I recommend it as good thought-provoking fun. I reminds me how much sport has developed in the last forty years, from the days of Eddie Waring and Kent Walton (was he the wrestling guy on ITV?). It also reminds me that some sportspeople have changed not just their sport, but their society as well.

Days that shape Lives

I’m half way through “One Day” by David Nicholls, and enjoying it very much. I loved “University Challenge” too. The author appeals to me because he writes of exactly my generation, he captures the embarrassing and pathetic truth in all our lives, and because I love his jokes.

The book is set on the same day across many years, but the title is also making the point that individual days, even moments, have a profound effect on all our lives. We rarely see them at the time, but there are forks in all of our roads, where we veer left or right. Which way we turn shapes the rest of our life.

This is certainly true of my own life, and probably of everyone’s. Last week I was sitting with an old friend in a bar. This friend is old as in I have known him a long time, but he is also not young. We talked about the day of his medical for Dutch national service. He had a minor heart defect, and at the end of his examination, the army doctor offered him a choice – he could complete the form in a way to excuse my friend his service, or he could allow him to join up with everyone else. My friend chose to by-pass the national service, and that choice, made in an instant, had a huge impact on the rest of his life. If he had known that at the time, he might have been paralysed by indecision.

Today, as an exercise, I tried to write down ten or twenty such shaping moments. I tried to be selective, choosing not momentous occasions, but rather decision points or points that had a lasting effect on me. The momentous occasions are often the outcomes of such points rather than the points themselves.

The exercise was poignant for me. Unsurprisingly, many of the moments I chose were very personal and at times quite intimate, so I won’t share them here. Nonetheless, I recommend the exercise. What I will share some general discoveries.

One weird discovery is about association. For many of the events, I can recall vividly something else going on at the time. I recall one decision I made in 1978, and just at the time the news came on TV that a pope had died (two died in that year, so I can’t quite place the moment). Another moment in 1985 I associate with listening to a particular piece of Rachmaninov on my first Walkman. A more recent decision was made listening to Byrd. A fourth association is of a weekend exactly thirty years ago, a shaping weekend in my life played out to the backdrop of war being declared on Argentina.

Now, what is going on here? True, many pieces of music or world events do have some association in my mind. But it seems extraordinary that so many life-changing times have such clear linkages. It is not as if I knew the long-lasting effect of these moments at the time, at least not consciously. Perhaps something was happening in my subconscious. I cannot explain it, but I find it noteworthy.

A second discovery is the role of other actors. We like to think we have a modicum of control over our lives. We make plans, lists, choices. Yet in many of the items on my list, a critical role was played by someone else. And usually the someone else is, in Hollywood parlance, not a co-star in my movie, but merely a supporting actor or actress, someone who has otherwise played a bit part in my life. A chance remark or a reaction to something I said or did was often what shaped the lasting effect.

This discovery also came as a surprise. Far from striding manfully through my own life, I am blown around by the whims of others. Not just blown a little bit either, blown into a different ocean. True, I am in charge of my own reaction, but I cannot escape the conclusion that at key moments I have placed my destiny squarely in the hands of a dice roll of someone else. This made me wonder who else I have been the one rolling the die for? Whose life have I shaped without realising it? How small we all are!

A final discovery is how little I have considered key decisions. True, it would have been impossible to anticipate that many of the moments on my list would have had such a lasting impact. But for others it was all too obvious. Here was a huge road sign in the middle of the road, offering clear choices with major repercussions. Yet when I think back to those choices, I was very careless in how I made them. Did I write down pros and cons? Did I consult others? Did I take my time? Did I heck! In most cases I shot straight from the hip. I won’t say the choices were wrong, actually in many cases they seemed to turn out fine, but I certainly can’t claim I was using all the tools available to me at the time.

A bit like the associations, perhaps the subconscious has played a role here. Knowing the weight of a decision can be a massive burden, it can make a decision making process very painful and inhibit a decision at all. Perhaps my subconscious knew that, and deliberately set me into spontaneous mode. I wonder. What is also true is that maturity has lent more consideration to my key decisions, that I am not as impulsive as I used to be.

So I emerge from the exercise rather humbled. My key decisions have often been made using a flimsy process or delegated to random other people. My subconscious can spot a key moment of truth a mile off, so much so that it provides an association to mark the spot, but my conscious self cannot reward this. I have been blown around through my life like a feather in the wind.

As well as humbling, I find this discovery valuable. I already knew that as a parent I could claim little credit (or blame) for how my children blossomed, understanding the far more important roles taken by the children themselves and by fate. If I thought about it, I also knew my life outcomes were driven far less by my own choices but by accidents of birth (a white male child born in a middle class home at a time of unparalleled peace and prosperity, blessed with a high IQ – wow, what could be a luckier draw than that?). Now I come to realise that, even when given a limited opportunity to shape my own fate, my hand on the wheel is far from steady.

Peer Pleasure

Last week I read an article in the Guardian weekly about a successful experiment at a home for people with mental problems. They had brought in other people with mental problems, those at different recovery stages, to help with caring. I couldn’t help but laugh. After all these years, the lunatics really had taken over the asylum.

Then I read more and thought more deeply. Of course, I concluded, this made so much sense. The root causes of people with disturbed minds are often psychological, things starting out with lack of self-esteem or other requirements for empathy. Despite all their training, it is very hard for care professionals to fully relate to such patients and to get through to them. Other people emerging from similar issues might have more ability to see into the heads of the sick, and explain coping strategies that might help, things that may have worked for them, things that could give hope. Hope may be all that is missing, hope given by someone credible yet not superior, someone who cannot be a threat or any sort of humiliation.

Isn’t that lovely? I wish them every success with the experiment, and hope that more spring from it. Of course care professionals do not lose their role, but it modifies. They have to work in the background, finding the right peer partners, gently suggesting approaches to those partners, being ready with follow up treatment such as a change in medication, and overseeing to ensure no harm comes from the process.

But the care professionals may not be comfortable with this. These different skills may not come easily to them. They may even feel a bit threatened by their subtle change in power and role.

I believe this is a microcosm of a very common opportunity. Sorry to keep bleating on about it, but in my part of Shell we tried something similar (though I’m not sure Shell leaders would be all that pleased about being compared with mental patients). In the Applied Leadership programme, we replaced training courses about leadership with discussion groups of leaders. Under the eye of a moderator, participants shared their issues and their solutions, building confidence and a menu of tried and trusted strategies. For many it worked well. For some it opened their brains for the first time to improving their leadership, something ego and fear and prevented before. Hearing that peers had similar problems was the catalyst to being able to share their own problems. Barriers were broken down, not for everyone, but for a larger group than would have secured value from classical training.

In essence, I believe this to be identical to the mental patient story. And it started me wondering what other examples might be out there, and what other fields might be improved with this approach.

Training teachers has changed a lot in the last fifty years. Classroom type sessions have been partly replaced by experienced based training, spending time in front of real live kids and finding ways to cope then to connect then to thrive. I remember when I was at school, there were some teachers who were no doubt very clever and technically well-trained, but who had no ability whatsoever to connect with their pupils. Some did not master control, others couldn’t find the right atmosphere or language, others simply could not see the problems from the point of view of the kids. I know this has improved, but I suspect that it go further. I am gratified to see that teachers are offered two or three days per term for training, but I wonder how much of that time is spent receiving technical training. My guess is that more often a dimple discussion with other teachers at the school would yield more dividends, if properly moderated. And the simplest and most cost effective way for any teacher to improve might be to invite a peer into his or her classroom a few times to observe, and to give the same favour back later. Does this happen? I have my doubts. What stops it? Well, ego and fear are two things – who would not initially be a little bit frightened letting a colleague into their empire? And I also suspect professional trainers by block this, subconsciously or not. The trade unions might not help much either.

Generally, any field where human communication is an important part of the skillset could benefit from a peer-based approach. One good bi-product of the much-maligned health service reforms might be the increased possibility for GP’s to give peer coaching to each other, though the same blockers are likely to persist as in teaching.

Another example is conducting and choir directing. True, technical skills are important, but, once again, my guess is that the best way to develop above a certain level is to observe and be observed by peers and to start an improvement dialogue as a result. Ego is especially big in this field, so don’t be surprised that in my experience few actually do this.

Gaining the benefits of peer coaching is one of the things enabled by the internet. Blogs and open query sites are perfect for peer coaching. People can share what works for them, or post issues holding them back, without much stigma. Virtual connections are fast, plentiful and relatively unchallenging. Many of us have got into the habit of surfing the web when we have a new problem to solve. We could probably do it more than we could, and apply the approach to things we think we have already mastered as well.

Two more example areas might be parenting or caring for the elderly. In both these cases, these are less often professions than skills people need to acquire as they go without training. A bit like line management really. I love to observe other parents and try to be open to their criticism of my own approach – within a couple is the easiest place to start of course. And I would love more clues for how to care for my ailing mother. So, I should start with the internet on that one.

I notice my daughter is a lot better and many of these life skills than I am. Building relationships is another one, my generation had no clue how to do that at all yet many kids these days avoid the pitfalls with grace. I expect peer coaching has a lot to do with it. Facebook and MSN may be derided by some of my generation, but my belief is that they are enabling a positive revolution in many empathy-based skills. Which only bodes well for a bright future. Perhaps in the future there will be many fewer people needing help mentally – and the treatment for those that still do will be more effective do to peer coaching.

My Seven Wonders

I grow to love Intelligent Life, the Economist magazine published every two months. It is rather like the review section of a Sunday newspaper, but with the sharp attitude and writing style from the parent publication. Some features, like the wine review, just leave me cold, since they describe a world outside of my comprehension (how can a wine bottle of 400 dollars be good value?). It is also hard to make credible listing which are global and relevant: if six exhibitions are listed, then the chance that I might happen be in one of the cities might be 10%.

One regular feature is called Seven Wonders, in which some polyglot is asked to describe a special view, city, hotel, building, beach, journey and work of art. Often, I have not even heard of most of the nominations, and that can grate, inspiring not awe but a sort of jealousy. But each time I have read the feature I have been tempted to try it for my myself. So, this week I did. I have no expectation that it will inspire awe, and hope it will not inspire jealousy either. My hope is to inspire you to try the exercise for yourself, as I found it fun and pleasantly nostalgic.

For a view, there are many candidates in Scandinavia, and some cityscape views as well, for example the Staten Island ferry view in New York, but my choice is the Swiss alps from a plane. Business travel has many negatives, and frequent flying is certainly one of them, but I still love looking out of the window on a clear day, reflecting on the miracle of flight. I also love maps and fancy myself as a good navigator, so the puzzle of identifying locations beneath me is endlessly fascinating. Flying over any city I know is thus a joy, but, for its sheer splendour, mountain ranges are special. It is almost worth the cost and hassle of a day trip from Amsterdam to Milan and back for the beauty that are the alpine views from the window. One of the blessings of our generations.

I love cities, and love being what I now learn is called a flaneur, a sort of random wanderer in a city. Walking and public transport are my favourite ways to be a flaneur. Choosing any city over any other is difficult. London, Paris, New York, Barcelona, Lisboa, where to start? I suppose somewhere compact, where it is easy to walk, somewhere with a distinctive history and present, and where buildings and especially people have stylish diversity. So I go for Sevilla. It is stiflingly hot in summer, but otherwise the city is a jewel, its people proud, demonstrative, stylish and often out of doors. Boston or Cambridge might qualify as well.

I found hotel the hardest category, I think mainly because hotels for me mainly evoke the most sterile part of sterile business trips, judged only by the absence of the negative. As long as the room temperature is OK, the bed soft and without bugs, the hot water hot, the breakfast edible and the check-out efficient, I’m happy to move on. True, I’ve been to some beautiful locations (Holmenkollen in Oslo and the Danube front hotels of Budapest), historical places (the castle hotels near Stockholm or the Hunting Tower near Perth in Scotland), and quaint establishments, and I’ve had wonderful experiences in hotels as well, but something about the category does not work for me. So my choice is a sort of anti-choice. Formule One is a great business model, and revolutionised its category, so my choice is any Formule One. You can plan your journey, you know exactly what you will get, and your wallet will hardly be troubled. I’m old enough now to value a private toilet, but if Formule One hadn’t started the trend, imitators with private toilets would not have arrived.

For buildings, I am no expert in architecture, but I do love wandering into Churches. For me the delight of Rome is just to randomly walk, stopping at every Church I pass. But how to choose between them all, single one out? Then I also love many modern buildings, those that combine functionalism and simplicity with grace and uniqueness. I am not one to denigrate the town hall in The Hague. My choice is a museum, the Vasa in Stockholm. The building is the boat, reconstructed from a salvage operation fifty years ago, the same boat the sank half an hour into its maiden voyage four hundred years earlier. The boat itself is magnificent, and its museum combines that splendour with history, science and intrigue.

A beach for me is for walking. So it needs solitude, dramatic colours and dramatic sea, the chance to paddle and sand that is flat and hard enough to walk on, an alternative cliff top route for the return journey, and a vista facing either way. It also helps if the climate is seasonal but mainly sunny. So I choose Falesia beach in the Algarve, between val de Lobo and Albufeira. Just like Sevilla, avoid July and August, this time because of people as well as temperature. Otherwise the orange cliffs and exciting sea offer all the aids to reflection that one could ever want. Portstewart in Northern Ireland has all the same positive characteristics – but unfortunately it is usually raining.

Journey is a lovely category. One day I would love to walk to Santiago de Compostelo, but I haven’t had that pleasure yet. The South Downs way from Eastbourne is a wonderful journey and surprisingly accessible, dotted with good pubs. I could also choose something abstract like Holy Week. But I choose a rail journey, as I love travelling by rail almost as much as walking. The route from Oslo to Bergen is stately. At the top of the mountains it is possible to detour onto a funicular and boat trip on a peaceful fjord. But the best feature of the journey is its ability to offer three seasons in a single day, for example in September. Near Oslo you find Autumn colours and flavours, but it the mountains it is already bleak winter. Then in the maritime air towards Bergen you can capture the last of summer. Spring is a bit harder generally in Scandinavia, as it is always late and fleeting. Bergen is a wonderful destination if you are lucky enough to choose one of the sixty or so days in the year when it does not rain. A tourist tip for Norway is to go inland. The Hurtigruten up the coast is famous and has its charms, but the views cannot compare.

Last comes a work of art, and my appreciation is greatest for music. I could go for a Victoria or Monteverdi anthem, last year I sang a piece from the same era by Vivanco which was unforgettable in its drama, but in the end I choose Bach. This prolific composer could not write bad music, nor could he write music that stands still. Some Bach can be so somnolent as to be monotonous, but not the Magnificat. Twelve short movements, each with its own distinctive character, perfectly formed. Amazingly, Bach wrote much of his music for his local Church choir, and was constantly harangued to keep his music short. His remit for the Magnificat was not to go over thirty minutes, and this may explain why the very last movement rather runs out of steam. But in show business the maxim is always to leave the audience wanting more, and that certainly applies here.

So, that was fun, and I commend the exercise. One overall reflection is that most of my memory concerns less the object and more the human experience I associate with it. Don’t you find that when you look at your old photos the only ones you linger over are the ones of people? Well, I found the same with this. I suppose that is good, or we might all choose the same places.

The other reflection is how blessed I am compared with my parents, to live in an age where the world has become so much smaller and more accessible. Yet still almost all my choices are from the developed world and even from Europe. I guess my 22-year-old daughter would already be able to offer a more eclectic selection, and just think of the range of experience she might have when she reaches fifty one, or when her own kids reach fifty one.