Author: alistair50

What I wish I’d known when I was 13

Experience is something young people can’t have. It’s impossible to teach, learn from a book, or borrow from another person. Experience – good or bad – is what we discover during life’s journey. And, if there’s an advantage from being older, you’ve a lot of experience.

My mind started thinking about that after I came across a photo of me when I was 13. It was a semi-official picture taken at school, probably to have a photo of me in my file. I know exactly when the photo was taken because there’s a poppy in my lapel, which was the custom around the time of Remembrance Day each November.[1]

I look young, and untroubled by issues that concern adults. However, I began to wonder what my 13-year-old self would like to have known but didn’t. Were there things it would have been good for me to understand at age 13?

I’d like to have known that one day I’d have a girlfriend

I’m starting here because girls are exactly what this 13-year-old boy was bothered about. Girls were no longer a nuisance. In fact, they had become rather interesting.

But, at 13, and with only a brother, girls were a mystery to me. How could you know if a girl liked you, and what should you say to her? If only everyone was fitted with a light and when two were attracted to each other their lights would go on. But we hadn’t been fitted with lights, and the mystery remained for a few more years.

By my later teens, though, I had a wide circle of friends, and my breakthrough realisation was that getting close to a girl was less about attraction, and more about being interested in each other, about really getting to know someone, enjoying being together, sharing ideas and plans. Then, one Sunday evening, I found myself walking up a road in Edinburgh chatting to a girl who was more interesting than anyone else. Decades later, now with children and grandchildren, Alison is still more interesting than anyone else.

The 13-year-old me would have been so much more at peace if only I’d known that would happen.

I’d like to have had a career goal

Some know the work they want to do from an early age. Perhaps their ambition is to be a ballerina, an international footballer, win a Formula One championship, do research that wins a Nobel Peace Prize, invent world-changing technology, write block-buster novels. They’re good thoughts, but most will disappear when faced with massive challenges. Some, however, will dedicate themselves to a particular career path, and get there. They’ll be great doctors, top scientists, own a profitable business, or become a member of Parliament.

But I had no idea what I would do for a career. When I was eight or nine I thought I’d like to be a bus driver, or become an Automobile Association patrolman who rode around on an old style yellow motorcycle with sidecar looking for members whose cars needed rescue.[2] But these were just a child’s idle dreams, not serious career goals.

At 13 I had no idea what work I might do. However, when I was 15, my school ran a careers evening with spokespeople describing their work. One was a police officer, and he highlighted all the different specialities that existed within policing. The wide range of options appealed to me, so later I read up about police service. Then I found a problem. In those days the minimum height for men to enter the police force was 5’8”, and in my area even higher at 5’10”. I didn’t think I’d reach either of those heights, so abandoned that plan.[3] When I was 16 I began to think about leaving school,[4] but had no idea still about a career.

I’ve mixed feelings now about that lack of a sense of direction. A career goal would have motivated me about my school work, and reassured me about where my life was headed. Yet, without a particular goal, I was open to any possibility, and that may have been helpful. In the end I began in journalism, became a church minister, then led a large international mission agency, and finished by being President of a seminary in the USA. I changed my work (not just my employer) several times, something that is now considered normal. I was ahead of my time.

So, though I wish I’d had a career goal, the lack of one did me no harm. I was flexible, and accepted change when it presented itself.

It would have helped if I’d had confidence in my own abilities

When I was 13 I was moderately good at rugby. I could tackle, catch and pass the ball, and kick it well too. I was also good at cricket, not so much as a batter but as a bowler and fielder. Somehow I could flip my wrist to make the ball break sharply left, completely confusing batters as the ball zipped past and hit their wickets. And, because I had fast reactions and virtually never dropped a catch, I relished every chance to be a slip fielder.

But sport was simply enjoyable. It was a pastime, not a passion nor a career goal. What was supposed to matter to me aged 13 was my academic work. But, in that area, I had every reason to be modest with my expectations. My teachers were equally modest in their expectations of me. When I was 13 the set curriculum I had to study covered a wide range of subjects, including physics, chemistry, biology and Latin. When I was 14 I was allowed to narrow my schedule. I dropped all the sciences and Latin with the approval and relief of my teachers. After another year I was due to take national exams. My teachers wouldn’t present me for the German exam since I was bound to fail. And fail was exactly all I achieved in three subjects, French, Maths, and Arithmetic. My only successes were in English and history, and I passed those at a higher level the following year.

But, with that track record, I had no confidence in my abilities. I never imagined I could be admitted to university, and no-one ever suggested I should try. In fact a career advisor advised me to start work in a department store sweeping the floors, and perhaps I could work my way up to being a store manager. I swept that idea aside, but he was not the only one with low expectations of me in those early to mid teen years.

For a while that was discouraging and unhelpful. Yet, looking back, it may have triggered a desire to prove them all wrong. Which was probably the best response.

I wish I’d understood that not all people are good

I grew up in a loving family unit with two parents and a brother. Nearby were aunts, uncles, and cousins we saw regularly. Our town was relatively crime free, big enough to have shops for everyday needs but small enough that traffic jams were unknown. I walked or cycled to school, came home for lunch, and, when daylight allowed, spent evenings playing football or cricket with friends. During summer holidays from school I’d play golf in the morning and cricket in the afternoon, and when I wanted a change I’d play cricket in the morning and golf in the afternoon. I had a very privileged early life.

The only downside is that it was also a very protected life. When I was 13 almost all I knew of the ills of the world was that I should never go off with a stranger, that a girl in my class had died from a serious illness, and a boy had fallen from his bike in front of a lorry and been killed. But I didn’t know of anyone dying of cancer, anyone getting divorced, anyone without food, anyone committing a major crime. My parents would watch the news on TV, but, as far as I was concerned, bad things happened far away. I had a sheltered existence.

That resulted in an unhelpful innocence, a naivety that everyone is kind and good and no harm can befall you. Of course we must not make children fearful or untrusting. But – as with many things – I wish there had been an age-appropriate way of making me aware that bad things happen in this world.

From my later teens and into my twenties I was a journalist with a national newspaper. That gave me a rude awakening to tragedies and evils. I attended car, rail and plane disasters where mangled bodies were pulled from wreckage. I sat through murder trials, such as the killing of a 15-year-old girl by beating and strangling.[5] It shocked me that one person should so violently and deliberately end another person’s life. There were cases of gang warfare, often drug related. Some politicians were considered corrupt, others attention-seeking. I attended court sessions and local government meetings which were supremely tedious. Some of my colleagues were deep in debt, unfaithful in their marriages, addicted to alcohol, or dying of lung cancer. Of course there were also ‘good news’ stories, but I was used to them from my upbringing. It was the ‘bad news’ that jolted me into a broader understanding of the world.

It would have helped me, certainly by the time I was 13, to have learned something about the harsher sides of life.

I could have known more of how poor most of the world is

My Aunt Milla – whose working life was mostly as a community nurse – rarely spent much on her housing. During two periods she lived in run-down tenements. The first had no toilet facilities inside the building. None at all. Instead there was a small hut out the back which contained a simple toilet. No wash-hand basin, and sometimes no toilet roll, only torn sheets of newspaper which were guaranteed to leave their mark. Day or night, perhaps in pouring rain, the ‘need to go’ was an unpleasant adventure into the outdoors to use the ‘privy’. Milla moved upmarket with her later tenement living. There still was no toilet in the flat, but there was one on the ‘half-landing’ (so named because it was up some steps from the level of flats just below and down some steps from the level of flats above). Since there were two flats on each level, the toilet might be shared by four households. Perhaps queues were avoided only by exploring for ‘vacancies’ at toilets on other half-landings.

These were poor facilities – unhygienic and inconvenient – but were common in many towns and cities, and not just in the UK. We often stayed with my aunt, and therefore used the outhouse or half-landing toilets many times. At home we had indoor plumbing, but I knew many lived with facilities like my aunt, so never thought of her situation as poor or bad. When I was 13, I had no idea at all that most of the world lived in very much worse circumstances.

Almost 30 years later I visited remote desert areas of Pakistan, sleeping overnight in tribal villages. Toilet facilities? The far side of the sand dunes. In a mountainside village in Nepal, there was an outhouse for toilet use, but it was no more than a small enclosure around an open hole with charcoal six feet below to (unsuccessfully) deaden the stench. In a remote Congo village I thought that children were wearing dirty and torn t-shirts as play clothes, then realised those t-shirts were their only clothes. There I also met a mother with seriously malnourished children, hoping for help from medical missionaries. I saw many small houses with damaged roofs. I was told: “There’s no longer anyone skilled in repairing roofs. When people don’t have money to buy food, no-one pays to have their roof repaired.”

I could multiply these stories, but won’t. The hard truth is that a large part of the world’s population live in poverty. I never knew that when I was 13. As children grow up, and gradually decide on lifestyle and career priorities, shouldn’t those priorities take account of world need? In affluent countries, we shelter children from harsh realities. That’s understandable, but should they not know billions are less well off, and their needs may matter more than our comfort?

I wish I’d known what I needed to do for God to become real in my life

God was never absent from my life (nor is he from anyone’s), but when I was 13 I didn’t relate much to God other than with some prayers. My mother told me several times that she made a special commitment to God when she was 13. That commitment coloured everything she did, and a lot of her time went on supporting church activities and helping neighbours. So, when I became 13, I imagined something might happen in my life to make me a Christian like her. Nothing did, and as the next few years passed I wondered if it ever would.

What I’d failed to realise is that I had a responsibility to reach out to God. I was waiting for God to invade me while, in a sense, he was waiting to be invited. That did all change when I was 18, and I’ve written about that before (https://occasionallywise.com/2021/02/20/serious-business/).

It wasn’t that I was ignorant about the Christian message. I just needed to respond to it. Thankfully I was only five years beyond 13 in doing so. But, if I’d known sooner, my life would have changed much earlier.

–

Writing this blog post about what I wished I’d known when I was 13 has kept generating more thoughts than I’ve recorded here. Perhaps I’ll set them down another time. And one day I may also write things I’m glad I did know when I was 13. That seems just as important a subject.

I’d encourage you to think what you wish you’d known when you were younger, and what you’re glad you did know. You might be surprised about your conclusions.

[1] Fighting in World War I ceased at the 11th hour of the 11th month in 1918, commemorated annually throughout Commonwealth countries ever since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day

[2] There’s a good photo of an AA motorcycle and sidecar here: https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/our-heritage-vehicles

[3] Actually I did reach 5’8” but my interests by then lay elsewhere.

[4] In Scotland, the school leaving age was raised to 14 in 1901, and though from the 1940s there were plans to make the minimum age 15 that was never made law. The minimum age was set at 16 in 1973.

[5] The case set a new legal precedent because the accused was identified by having left unique bite marks on his victim’s body. See https://www.dentaltown.com/magazine/article/7528/the-biggar-murder-some-personal-recollections

Christmas shreddings

It was mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve, and I was alone in the large office building where I was General Director. Every staff member had left already, but I’d stayed late to clear my in-tray before the holiday break. And now I was on my knees.

I’d realised some documents had to be shredded. That was straightforward. We had a large capacity shredder which I’d used many times. I switched it on, and dropped a few sheets into the slot. The shredder immediately cut out. I tried again, and again it stopped. I noticed a small light had illuminated – apparently the bag which caught the shreddings was full. Really? That shouldn’t happen, but someone had wanted a quick exit and cleared off without replacing the shredder bag.

But all I had to do was switch the full bag with an empty bag. Easy. Well, easy if you know where the replacement bags are kept. Which I didn’t. I searched every cupboard within any sensible distance from the shredder. No bags. I moved my search further out, and finally, 20 minutes after starting, I found a roll of large black bags. I pulled one from the roll, opened up the shredder, dragged out the vastly over-filled bag, attached the new one, inserted my documents and they were instantly annihilated. All was well.

All was not well because it’s impossible to slide clear an overfull bag of shreddings without spilling some of its contents. Tiny slivers of paper were scattered across the office carpet. If I left them there the cleaners would be unjustly blamed for not doing their job. So a new search began, this time for a vacuum cleaner or brush to sweep up the shreddings. I knew the cupboard where such things were kept, pulled on the door, but those cleaners guarded their equipment carefully. The cupboard was locked. Though I had many keys to the building, no-one had thought I’d ever need one for the brooms and brushes cupboard. Back I went to the shredder. Mary Poppins had not passed through and made all the shreddings disappear. The paper shards were still all over the carpet.

So I got down on my knees, and, with no way to sweep those pieces of paper into a pile, began the laborious, wearying job of picking them up one by one. That took at least 15 minutes. At some point I heard myself say, ‘On Christmas Eve, what other CEO is on his knees picking up pieces of shredded paper?’ Not many. Probably not any.

But that task brought home an important lesson:

Never think yourself too important to do the humblest of tasks

As I’ve thought about Christmas, I realised that down through the years the Christmas season has taught me many simple lessons like that one.

An early childhood memory was that my Dad went to work for half of Christmas Day. His occupation was on the administration side of the Post Office, and with mail being moved around and house deliveries made even on that day, someone had to be at the main office making sure everything went smoothly. That person was my Dad.

To wholly understand why he and many others in Scotland worked on Christmas Day you need some background details:

  • Until the Reformation happened in Scotland – in 1560 – Christmas was a recognised religious feast day of the Roman Catholic Church. But when Presbyterianism became dominant, gradually most Catholic festivals disappeared. That included Christmas, and an Act was passed in the Scottish Parliament in 1640 making any observance of Christmas illegal.
  • The mid-winter celebrations became transferred to New Year’s Eve – known in Scotland as Hogmanay. That change caused no problem for the religious authorities because Hogmanay was a secular event.
  • So, right into the second half of the 20th century Christmas Day was another working day in Scotland. Hence my father went to his office.

Of course, over many years the traditions from down south in England had crept north, and once television had spread and religious fervour diminished, Scots were also celebrating Christmas with trees, lights, presents and parties. Nevertheless, it was only in 1958 that Christmas Day was designated a public holiday in Scotland. (Did that diminish the celebrations of Hogmanay? Absolutely not! Canny Scots just chose to revel at Christmas and New Year, and often to do so with more enthusiasm than wisdom.)

However, remembering that my Dad went off to work on Christmas morning, there is another lesson:

Many people – especially in emergency or caring professions – have to work on Christmas Day, and for that we should be grateful.

Like most small children, my brother Alan and I were always up early on Christmas Day, running through to the room where we’d hung stockings by the fireplace, to see what presents we’d got. There was never much in those long socks – an apple, an orange and perhaps a bar of chocolate and tiny toy car. But we were fortunate because there was more for us. We gazed in awe at the nicely wrapped larger presents laid on the floor.

I never wasted a moment, ripping open the Christmas paper to find the toys or games or clothes inside those boxes. The clothes never excited me, but the games and toys did, and I’d have them all out and be playing with them in very little time.

But my brother Alan had a different temperament, and took great care about opening his presents. He’d examine each parcel, undo the paper neatly, be excited about the contents, and then extract the toy and play with it. All before moving on to his next gift.

His meticulous process meant I was finished and done with my presents when Alan had only just started. I had to watch while he moved through his gifts one at a time. Some years I complained to my Mum that Alan clearly had more presents than I did. She assured me he didn’t. He just enjoyed each one fully before moving to the next.

So, another lesson:

There’s a lot to be said for what is now called ‘delayed (or deferred) gratification’, because many things are better by not being rushed.[1]

I grew up in a home where green vegetables were not a major part of the diet. My Dad grew peas, cabbages and cauliflowers along with root crops and fruit. But we didn’t eat ‘greens’ in any quantity. My Aunt Milla – a nurse who should have maximised health benefits – would put a tiny spoonful of peas alongside meat and potatoes ‘for decoration’.

But, on Christmas Day, we were always given a generous portion of what we called ‘Brussel sprouts’, though the first word probably should be pluralised because of the vegetables’ origin. What are Brussel sprouts? Let me tell you:

  • The Brussels sprout is a member of the Gemmifera cultivar group of cabbages (Brassica oleracea), grown for its edible buds. The leaf vegetables are typically 1.5–4.0 cm (0.6–1.6 in) in diameter and resemble miniature cabbages. The Brussels sprout has long been popular in Brussels, Belgium, from which it gained its name.[2]

I did not enjoy eating those edible buds of a cabbage. I simply didn’t like their taste. Some people don’t like broccoli[3], and I didn’t like Brussel sprouts.

But what was put on my plate had to be eaten. The usual warning was: ‘If you don’t eat your sprouts, you won’t get any dessert’. And since dessert was Christmas pudding, perhaps with cream, the blackmail to swallow those sprouts worked.

I must add that age has improved my taste. My willingness to eat Brussel sprouts gradually moved into the positive column. They are actually very good. But, in my early years, I ate them only because I had to.

So there is another lesson here:

We all have to do things we don’t like or want – that’s life.

Christmas has one form of annoying and unnecessary delayed gratification. It concerns the toy or appliance that won’t work without batteries, but no-one thought to buy them. When I was about seven I got one of those presents – a toy that was exactly what I wanted – but no batteries came with it and there were none in the house. My frustration was expressed loudly. So loudly my Dad set off on foot to find any shop open, but the few doing business didn’t sell batteries. I suffered (but not in silence) for about 24 hours, by which time batteries had been bought.

These days batteries are often packaged with the product, which helps avoid a Christmas crisis. But it’s not good to assume they’ll be included. Nor is it good to buy gloves that fit your hands but not the hands of the person receiving the gift. Or wrong-sized boots. Or a sweater with a dazzling design the recipient will hate. Or a tool they don’t need or want. Or music they’ll never play. Or a ‘Cooking for Beginners’ book for someone who already considers him or herself an expert. Or a dog for someone who likes cats. I even know a case where a few well-off individuals bought a CEO who was retiring a brand new SUV to replace the car he’d driven for years. The gift was amazingly generous, except the retiree whispered to me, ‘The problem is I really, really like my old car. I didn’t want a new car.’

The lesson, then, is this:

When buying presents, do your research and plan ahead.

When we lived in America we adjusted to the custom of eating turkey at Thanksgiving. In the UK turkey is the traditional meal at Christmas. Sometimes we’d travel back to the UK to spend Christmas with family, so we overate with US turkey in late November and overate with UK turkey in late December. Just as well we like turkey.

Many years before, when we lived in north east Scotland, our good friends Malcolm and Tina decided that they would buy us a turkey every Christmas. The only problem was that they never said explicitly that they’d give us a turkey every Christmas. Initially we thought they’d gift us a turkey once or twice, and then move on to give turkeys to other friends. But their turkey-at-Christmas kindness didn’t stop. A few days before each Christmas they’d call round with a turkey.

Then the year came when they didn’t. Not on December 20, or 21, or 22, or 23. By then we’d realised no turkey would be arriving. Alison, happily, had put some turkey in our freezer, so we wouldn’t fail to have our traditional meal. The 24th – Christmas Eve – dawned and Alison and I spent a hectic day preparing food, organising presents, putting final decorations in place, and, as pastor of a large church, I had events to prepare for and attend. In the evening I joined a group singing carols in a local hospital, hurried home and then went out again to lead and preach at our Watchnight Service which started at 11.15 pm and continued into a celebration of Christ’s birth at midnight. Around 12.30 am I headed home. Thankfully the children were all in bed and asleep. Alison was busy preparing various parts of our Christmas Day meal. I hadn’t had a moment to wrap presents, so I settled down to that task. Given my significant lack of expertise, gift wrapping was not a quick process. I finished around 3.00 am. Alison was still occupied in the kitchen, and I had a few more things to do before I could go to bed. At 3.30 am we heard a van arrive in our driveway, our doorbell rang, and it was our friend Malcolm with our turkey. Apparently we were his final delivery and he’d made us last because, as he said: ‘I knew you wouldn’t be in your beds yet!’ No, we weren’t. But it was 3.30 on Christmas morning!! More than a little on the late side to be delivering a turkey for that day’s meal. But we were very grateful, not just for the turkey but for friends like Malcolm and Tina.

So, this time two lessons:

Be generous and kind to all this Christmas.

But, if you can, don’t deliver turkeys at 3.30 in the morning.

________

This message is posted on Christmas Eve, and comes with my sincere hope that you are able to enjoy a happy Christmas, appreciating the wonderful truth that God sent his Son into this world. And, if possible, I long that you will have good food and friendship to enjoy.

This particular year (2022) the news is filled with stories of severely cold weather across much of the USA and Canada, and of power cuts imposed on the people of Ukraine resulting in much suffering from the cold and shortages throughout this winter. Many others in our world also struggle, so please keep them in your thoughts and prayers, and, if you can, provide support for those in such great need. May 2023 bring many good days for which you can be thankful.

[1] In the UK there is a magazine called Delayed Gratification, which covers news which is moving out of the headlines. Its slogan is ‘last to breaking news’. https://www.slow-journalism.com/

[2] From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_sprout

[3] Including some US Presidents: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2013/07/13/presidential-broccoli-debate

‘Is my family odd?’ Yes, but that’s normal

My wife, Alison, was planting bulbs around a family grave in my home town. I wandered off, reading the words on headstones. One made me stop and stare. I had never seen a grave stone inscribed like this one.

Three things made it different from all others. Two of the three were truly remarkable.

First, though the headstone was not unusually large, there were more family names on that stone than I would have thought possible. Several generations were being memorialised.

Second, very strangely, the last name listed was someone not yet dead. The person who’d had all the family names inscribed on the headstone had added his own. His name and date of birth were there after which there was simply a space, presumably to be filled eventually with the date of his death.

Third, and most peculiar of all, was the inscription right at the foot. I had never seen anything like it on any grave stone anywhere, so I took a photograph.

The wording may not be readable, so here it is:

All of the above names and characters evoke a lifetime of memories / mostly really good – a few not quite so good / and some amazingly bizarre and in any normal life, unbelievable!

Gravestones usually have tender words, kind sentiments praising the life of the deceased. This inscription wasn’t unkind; just the most honest I’ve ever seen.

The truth is that all of us – or, at least, most of  us – belong to odd families. When Alison studied health science, including the sociology of health, her lecturer said most people wonder why they’re the only one to struggle with health issues, while the truth is that everyone has health problems. And, likewise, we wonder why our family is so odd compared to others, but actually almost every family has its share of mad, bad, sad and some glad individuals.

It might be the eccentric and extrovert uncle who embarrasses everyone at weddings with his off-key singing or crazy dancing, so dreadful the rest of the family pretend he’s not related to them. Or a brother who’s recently re-joined the family after several years of being accommodated by the government because he dealt in drugs. Or the sister who has been married and divorced so many times that everyone is terrified they’ll use the wrong name for her latest partner. Or the father who abused his daughters. No-one who knows what happened ever mentions his name. Or the niece who has been weak and ill almost all her life. Or the cousin who has changed jobs repeatedly and been spectacularly unsuccessful every time. Or another brother and his wife who lost their only child, killed by a drunk driver. And sometimes, one or more who have found happiness in relationships, success in career, and comfort and hope in their beliefs.

I can’t think of any family who has the whole package I’ve just described. But I also can’t think of any family without a substantial mix of stresses and struggles. Is it the norm to have a happy extended family with everyone friends and no serious problems? Absolutely not.

One of the most memorable speeches of Queen Elizabeth, who died in 2022, was given 30 years earlier when she described 1992 as an annus horribilis, literally a ‘horrible year’. What especially made it so horrible were family troubles:

  • February: The estrangement between (then) Prince Charles and Princess Diana became all too evident when she was photographed seated alone in front of the Taj Mahal.
  • March: Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson announced they were separating.
  • April: Princess Anne and Mark Phillips were divorced. They were already separated, and news had recently broken that he had fathered a child a few years earlier with a New Zealand woman.
  • June: the ‘tell-all’ book Diana: Her True Story, written by Andrew Morton, was published. It revealed Diana’s deep unhappiness, including an attempted suicide.
  • August: Photographs appeared in the press of Sarah Ferguson in an intimate relationship with her Texan financial advisor.
  • November: Windsor Castle, the beloved retreat of the Queen just outside London, went up in flames. A spotlight in Queen Victoria’s chapel had ignited a curtain, and the fire then spread to the roof and other locations. It destroyed 115 rooms, including nine state rooms. (The castle was restored at a cost of £36.5 million, a cost equal to almost £90 million in 2022.)

Only the last of these was not a problem of relationships within the royal family. The year was truly an annus horribilis for the Queen, sadly not her only one. There is no family without its troubles.

If worries and woes are the norm, what are wise ways to respond and cope? There are probably many, but here I’ll suggest four.

Let’s be honest. I like the inscription on the grave stone because of its honesty. Not everyone in the family had been good, and some were bizarre to the point of being unbelievable. I’ve sat through funeral services where the deceased person is made to sound like the greatest of all saints, except everyone knew he wasn’t. Someone might well have turned to his neighbour and asked, ‘Whose funeral was that, because the preacher certainly wasn’t describing Joe?’ Our family troubles shouldn’t be turned into headline news, but neither should we pretend everything and everyone is wonderful. A reasonable honesty about life and relationships is good.

Let’s be comforted. If it’s news to you that having odd, difficult or bad people in your family is normal, it may reassure you that, after all, your family isn’t unique. Over the years Alison and I have received Christmas newsletters which mention only great achievements for someone’s children and other near relations. We have looked at each other, and smiled as we said ‘our family is not like that’ and ‘we don’t believe that’s the whole story for their family either’. Sometimes the harder truths have emerged later, perhaps that someone’s marriage has broken up, or a family member has dropped out of university without any plan for what’s next. There is no place for rejoicing over anyone else’s troubles, but there is reassurance in knowing your family is not the only one with misfits and miscreants.

Let’s be caring. I was being humorous earlier about having an uncle so embarrassingly crazy the rest of the family pretend they’re not related to him. That’s not exactly true, but it’s also not exactly untrue. Sometimes families shun relatives who are weird, or super-needy, or old, or behaved badly, or who are simply unlikeable. Can that ever be right? I don’t believe it is. Yes, family members can be difficult or demanding, but they are family members and that relationship creates an obligation to care. The New Testament is very straight about family responsibility: ‘Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.’ (1 Timothy 5:8)

My Aunt Milla was a nurse, her career spent mainly in challenging places with very disadvantaged people. She was hard to shock. For the last few years of her professional life, however, she was a hospital almoner (a social-service worker in a large hospital). Her work included liaising with families whose elderly mother had completed treatment, and was now fit to be discharged except she could no longer live alone. Would the patient’s family take in their mother? Most times the answer was a very firm ‘No!’ That did shock my aunt. Their children were grown up and long gone from home, so the house had spare bedrooms, but people would not look after their mother. They enjoyed their freedom, and caring for mother would restrict that. The only thing they were willing to do was put mother into a care home.

Family members are often not easy, but please let’s care for them.

Let’s be gracious. The word gracious comes from ‘grace’ which means undeserved favour. In the Bible parable, grace is what the father showed to his prodigal son, the one who took his inheritance early, then squandered it and nearly starved before coming to his senses and returning home. His father could have shunned him, but instead flung his arms around the boy and welcomed him back into the family.[1]

Our relatives know when they’re being shunned, or judged, or looked down on, or hated. I won’t pretend it’s easy to be kind to those who have hurt us in terrible ways. But – as far as possible – our goal should be forgiveness and restoration.

Some years ago, during long car journeys, I’d listen to the songs of Chuck Girard. One stood out particularly. Here’s the chorus: Don’t shoot the wounded. They need us more than ever. They need our love no matter what it is they’ve done. Sometimes we just condemn them, and don’t take time to hear their story. Don’t shoot the wounded. Someday you might be one. At one time Chuck Girard struggled with alcoholism. His song may reflect the need he once felt to be taken back into family and fellowship. What’s more, as Girard points out at the end of the chorus, one day we might be one of the wounded, and then long desperately for restoration.

Let me finish with this. Over the years I’ve often been tempted to label a colleague or a church member as a ‘problem person’, someone with a special ability to annoy me or make my life difficult. Then, one day, I realised something obvious: that if someone was a ‘problem person’ for me, I was surely a ‘problem person’ for someone else. That person would find things I said or did annoying, or my decisions difficult to accept.

The hard truth is that none of us are perfect. All of us need forgiveness and acceptance, not just from God but probably from our families too. The writer of the gravestone inscription didn’t think all his family had been good, and some were amazingly bizarre. He was a little odd himself, with the strange summary of his family and having his own name on the gravestone while still alive. But oddness is normal, and recognising and accepting that will make for happier families.

[1] The story can be found in the New Testament, Luke chapter 15. I wrote about the prodigal a few blog posts ago – see https://occasionallywise.com/2022/11/02/change/

Monkey Business

Probably less than five times in my life I’ve read something that stunned me, which made me realise I’d uncovered an insight into a problem I’d wrestled with for years. One of those five times was with the delightfully titled book The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey.[1]

I believe there are now 18 books in the One Minute Manager series. I read the original, The One Minute Manager, soon after it first appeared in 1982. I was thrilled by its simplicity, insight, and practicality. So were many others. It has sold over 15 million copies, been translated into 47 languages, and described by Time magazine as one of the 25 Most Influential Business Management Books.

The One Minute Manager books typically involve dialogue between a storyteller and a perhaps fictitious leader that everyone called the ‘One Minute Manager’ because he got great results from his people with apparently little time and effort on his part. The books are littered with smart sayings or questions, such as this one early on in The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey: ‘Why is that some managers are typically running out of time while their staffs are typically running out of work?’ When I read that, it landed with a thud in my thinking. Yes, why is that true? It made me read on.

The book begins with a description of the storyteller’s frustration that even when he worked extra hours every weekday and all weekend, he could never get on top of all his work. It seemed he was doing more but accomplishing less. Getting desperate, he attended a time management seminar, which made him more efficient, but that increased efficiency merely made room for more work. His staff always seemed to need something from him before they could move on further with their work.

When the storyteller met with the One Minute Manager and poured out his troubles, he was soon made aware that he was the problem. Or, more specifically, his problem was MONKEYS! These are not monkeys who live in a jungle or zoo. Rather, the One Minute Manager’s definition of a ‘monkey’ was ‘The Next Move’. To explain what that means, the One Minute Manager gave the example of walking down a hall, and being stopped by one of his staff who wanted his input on a problem. He likes solving problems, but that discussion lasted for half an hour. Now the One Minute Manager is late for a meeting, so promises to think about his colleague’s problem and get back to him later. So, what happened there? Until the hall meeting, the monkey (next move) was on his staff member’s back. During the discussion the monkey was on both backs. By the time they parted, the monkey had moved from the subordinate’s back to the manager’s back. No longer was the next move the subordinate’s problem, it was his boss’s problem.

The One Minute Manager points out that two things can be assumed: 1) the matter being considered was part of the staff member’s job; 2) the staff member could and should have offered solutions to the problem. Thus, what the manager allowed during the hall conversation was for him to do two things his subordinate was expected to do: 1) accept responsibility for the problem; 2) promise to bring forward a progress report, in his case to his subordinate. In other words, they had switched roles: the manager took on the worker’s role, and the worker took on the supervisor’s role. Unsurprisingly, the worker now follows up on his boss to see if he’s made progress, and thus pressurises him to do more on what was actually his job.

The example of role-reversal triggered several examples from the storyteller of how he had acquired ‘monkeys’ from his staff – tasks he’d taken off their shoulders and put on his own. Some were straightforward, such as Maria who enlisted her boss’s help because he had a better understanding of certain problems. Maybe he did, but he was now doing her work. He also described ricochet monkeys, for example criticisms from staff about Maria’s work and style because these things caused problems for them. They complained to the storyteller who promised to follow up and report back to them.

Then there was Ben, who was very creative, always generating new ideas, but poor at turning them into finished products. So Ben would submit proposal after proposal, many of which had potential, which he, the boss, would then try to do the work of turning them into viable projects.

These – and many more – should have been handled by the staff themselves. But in each case the storyteller manager had allowed the monkey to climb onto his back. The biggest part of his work overload were those monkeys. Because he was doing large parts of his staff’s work as well as his own, he’d begun to steal time from his personal life: exercise, hobbies, family, church, etc.

Eventually he had run out of time completely, yet monkeys kept coming his way. All he could do was delay, promising he’d eventually get to every task. He was procrastinating; his staff were waiting. Which meant no-one was progressing the monkeys.

What surprised the storyteller was what the One Minute Manager said next – that he had once had the same problem of overwork, except much worse. But then – out of desperation – he attended a time-management seminar. And there, thankfully, he learned about monkey management.

The seminar leader was Bill Oncken, and he told a remarkable story that paralleled the One Minute Manager’s situation near exactly. And what follows is the story that astounded me.

Oncken described working long hours but never keeping up. Early one Saturday morning he got ready again to head for his office, telling his disappointed wife and children that he was sacrificing himself for their sakes. The office was gloriously quiet, no-one else there, and he poured into his work. Finally he paused. His office window looked across to the neighbouring golf course, and there he saw his staff getting ready to start their round. Oncken said: ‘They were teeing up, and I was teed off!’ He looked down at all the work on his desk, and gasped. These papers were not his work; it was their work he was about to do. With a jolt as if struck by lightning, it hit him: ‘They’re not working for me; I’m working for them!’ And with four of his staff producing work but passing it up to him, he’d never get caught up. The more he did, the more they would give him to do. He wasn’t behind with his work.  He was behind with their work.

Oncken finished his story by relating how, after realising whose work he was doing, he fled from his office, drove home and spent the rest of the weekend with his family. That Saturday night he slept so deeply that twice during the night his wife thought he was dead.

By now, you’ll have grasped the core theme of The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey. I’ll stop summarising now, though I’ve given you only the highlights of just over one quarter of the book. I encourage you to get a copy and read it all.[2] It’s full of thoughtful insights and much wise guidance.

This blog post is the follow-up to my previous one on delegation. (See https://occasionallywise.com/?s=delegation) So, in what remains, I’ll add further comments on that subject, including some arising from points raised above.

Bosses must resist the temptation to go back to doing the fun work    The best managers are often people who’ve worked their way up through the ranks. They understand the issues at ground level, the place where the company’s work interacts with the concerns and wants of its customers. When they did that work, they performed well, so they were promoted and began overseeing the next generation of ground level workers. That is exactly as it should be, but it often leads to two problems.

  1. The leaders loved the down-in-the-trenches challenges of aligning products or services with customers’ needs and problems. It was tough but stimulating, and when it all went well generated a wonderful sense of achievement. Then they moved up the company hierarchy, and they lost that satisfaction. They’re sent reports of successes, but reports don’t generate gratification like they felt when they handled those contracts themselves. Therefore, managers face a massive temptation to dive back into the detail work their staff member should be handling. Such leaders tell themselves they’re just lending a hand, but their motives are suspect, and hijacking their subordinates’ jobs keeps them from their own work and deprives their staff of the experience and satisfaction which rightly belongs to them.
  2. The leaders I’m describing won their promotion to management by being good – really good – at their work. Perhaps they were the best sales person, or highest achieving accountant, or best machinist on the factory floor. Now, as managers, they see the workmanship of their staff and think, ‘I know the best approach’ or ‘I could do this so much better myself’ and, next thing, they’ve taken over the work. Again the result is that they’re neglecting their management-level work, and robbing staff members of the experience that comes only from trial and error learning moments.

It’s very hard for leaders to concentrate only on their own work, but they must.

There’s a real danger that a leader becomes a rescuer    The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey book defines a rescuer as ‘someone who was doing for others what they could do for themselves’. That has all the dangers I’ve just mentioned above, but also delivers a negative psychological verdict on their staff member’s work. When I rescued my two-year-old daughter who was out of her depth in a swimming pool, I did that because otherwise she’d have drowned. I had to save her because she couldn’t have saved herself. That’s exactly right. But what’s not right is taking over work someone is capable of doing. As the storyteller in the book says, when we do that we send the message to them they are ‘not okay’, that they’re so unable to handle a problem you have to take care of it for them.

They may not yet be as capable as their boss, but they’ll never have equal ability if the boss does their work.

 What if the staff member can’t handle the task you set?    In the last blog post I said delegation can happen only when someone is available and suitable. Here the issue is about suitability – a subordinate having the skills and experience necessary to do a job. If they don’t, and you still delegate to them, several questions are raised:

  1. Why are you delegating the job to someone who can’t do it?  If the task is outside someone’s skill set, they don’t fail. You do. Requiring them to do what you knew they couldn’t do is bad management. You have one less job in your in-tray, but the botched work of an inexperienced colleague will make everything worse. The badly done job won’t please you, or your boss, or your client. In fact, the client may move their work elsewhere, and you may soon be working elsewhere too.
  2. Why didn’t you know what your staff member was capable of doing?  Let me be charitable that you didn’t intentionally cause your colleague to fail. I’ve seen that done in order to have a reason to fire that person. It was not only wrong but also cruel. But, let’s assume you simply didn’t know the person’s capabilities. Well, you should have. If there’s a good reason why you can’t know their skills – such as when someone has only just joined the company – then either don’t delegate to them yet, or delegate only light tasks and gradually make them more substantial as you discover what they can do.
  3. What if they are capable but simply didn’t do the task or turned in sloppy work?  A case like that needs care. What if there’s some crisis at home for that employee? Or they’ve just been diagnosed with a serious medical condition? Or this poor piece of work is a complete exception, and everything else they’ve done has been very good? We need to think about Issues like these before we react. But let’s assume you have every reason to believe your staff member didn’t care, or gave scant attention to the task, or pretends they didn’t understand what they were supposed to do. I’ve known employees like that, guilty of culpable ignorance or culpable inability. Given the position they held, they should have known what to do and be able to do it. So, when work is either not done or done badly, that’s not a time to pretend it doesn’t matter, nor should we avoid confrontation by taking the job back and doing it ourself. One of the other One Minute Manager books makes it clear that if it takes two people to do what should be done by one, then someone is unnecessary. With your incompetent employee, you may wish to give another chance; you may be required to issue an official warning; you may be allowed and deem it necessary to bring their employment to an end. Whatever is appropriate, do it. Avoiding the issue is the worst of outcomes.

So, to finish, three last quick statements about delegation:

Anyone who tells you that delegation is simple doesn’t know much about delegation.

Done well, delegation puts the right work in front of the right people, which is good for job satisfaction and excellent workmanship.

Never feel guilty at giving work away, but you are guilty if you take work away from the person who should be doing it. That’s not good for you, nor productive for your business.

I wish you well in delegating wisely and often.

[1] Blanchard K, Oncken Wm, Burrows H (1990), The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, London: Harper Collins Publishers.

[2] At the time of writing, it’s available in paperback for £6.99 in the UK, and used from $4.39 in the USA where the paperback version no longer appears to be for sale.

Delegation

Every department head, manager, director, or CEO experiences workload pressures. Sometimes my wife, Alison, would arrive at the office with a sandwich to keep me going while I worked late. The uninvited advice on workload various people gave me was: delegate more. They made it sound so easy.

Those advice-givers were well-meaning, and delegation is certainly good management practice. But those who said ‘delegate more’ had little knowledge of my work situation, were almost never leaders themselves, and spoke as if delegation is a simple and effortless way to offload work. In fact, delegation is neither simple nor effortless.

In what follows I’ll describe obstacles to delegation, but also suggest ways in which it can be done effectively.

First, you can delegate only to people who are available and suitable. I’ll explain why I use these two terms one at a time.

The availability issue is at its most obvious if we picture someone running a one-person business. That boss can’t delegate because there’s no-one to give the work to! They could out-source some tasks, which is often a good idea but only when the work can be done equally well by someone outside the business. Most work, though, requires in-house knowledge, and that can’t be delegated to non-existent colleagues.

And even when there are colleagues we can’t assume anyone is available. Let’s imagine Josh started his business alone, but now employs six others because the there’s plenty work. Josh’s phone rings constantly, electronic orders pour in, the despatch team keeps shipping out products. It’s all good; the business is flourishing. But it’s not all good. Josh is exhausted, and, like him, his team often work late to meet demand. Then someone, seeing how tired Josh is, whispers in his ear: ‘You should delegate more’. Really? Who can he give his work to? There is no-one in his six-person team who’s employed full-time but has only a part-time workload. Josh would love to delegate, but there is simply no-one available who has spare capacity. (Should Josh hire more staff? Ideally that’s exactly what he should do, but for many small businesses payroll costs are their most expensive overhead, and employing even one more person would eradicate his profit and jeopardise the company’s viability.)

Suitability is the other essential for delegation. Let’s imagine that Jerry – who has a small construction company – also has six employees. Jerry’s team do excellent work, so previous customers generate new clients by word of mouth recommendations. Every new client, though, means a site visit followed by preparing and sending a cost estimate, and, when the estimate is accepted, every job involves background work such as securing building approvals, scheduling the work, ordering materials, and hiring specialist equipment. And of course records must be kept, which must be made ready for tax payments and audit. Jerry handles all that. Why doesn’t he delegate some of it to one of his six colleagues? They’re fine workers, but they’re builders and none has the skills necessary for preparing estimates, accounting for finances on spreadsheets, or any of the other background work Jerry does. They’re highly skilled at what they do, but not at all skilled at what he does. Even if one or more was available, they wouldn’t be suitable. And, no matter the size of business, the suitability issue is always relevant for delegation.

These two problems – availability and suitability – are real. I know of the demoralisation that followed when a boss dumped his work onto a colleague who was already over-worked. Within six months the overloaded employee was an ex-employee of that company. And I know of the consequences when work was given to someone untrained and therefore unable to handle the task. They didn’t resign, but the work was done poorly. The employee was blamed for doing a bad job, but the blame really belonged with the unfair and unwise delegator.

One – almost amusing – final comment on the availability and suitability matter. I’ve read accounts from management gurus who’ve discovered real competence and authority at the top of a company – except not right at the top. The Personal Assistant (Executive Assistant) to the Chief Executive managed her boss’s calendar, decided which meetings he’d attend, controlled staff access to him, selected the business papers he would read, wrote his speeches, and drafted important documents for the Board. The management gurus remarked that you wondered who was really running the company. Almost always the boss was male, and the assistant female, but she had the greater knowledge and expertise. Management culture is changing – albeit slowly – and hopefully such competent assistants will increasingly become the CEOs.

Second, delegation without supervision or accountability is particularly dangerous. One department leader told me: ‘I’ve given out tasks to my staff, and I don’t want to know anything more about the things they’re now handling’. Gently I informed him that was not an acceptable approach to delegation. Why not? After all, isn’t delegation about letting go of work to others? It is, but what you can’t delegate is your responsibility for what’s done. You’re responsible to ensure the project goes in the right direction. You’re responsible for the standard of work being satisfactory. And you’re responsible that the deadline is met, for the conclusions reached, and so on. Hence my department head – not the staff working under him – was accountable for all these things, and a completely hands-off approach was an invitation to chaos. Delegation of work is good, but delegation has limits.

Third, here are four further guidelines for good practice with delegation.

Clear expectations    No-one should be given a task without clarity on key points like these:

  1. What exactly do you want done?
  2. When is the work due?
  3. Do I show you this work when complete, or do you want to see drafts at earlier stages?
  4. What is the budget for this?
  5. What extra resources or support will be available to me?
  6. Are there special factors, such as keeping this work confidential?

And even:

7. What work would you like me to stop doing in order to take on this new task?

As a boss, I learned to be clear on all these things, and especially numbers 3 and 7. With 3, I discovered that staff liked to surprise me by submitting what they considered a finished product. Sometimes they virtually said, ‘Don’t ask me to change anything now!’ To prevent that I found I had to be crystal clear from the beginning that I wanted to know the direction their work was going long before they finished. With number 7, I realised that at the outset I had to discuss with my staff member what work they could set aside in order to do the new thing. Perhaps there were no existing tasks the employee could completely postpone, in which case there were only three options: a) get another person to take on the employee’s existing work; b) scale back the timetable for the new work; c) delegate to someone else whose existing work could wait.

Sensible and sensitive supervision    I’ve touched on supervision earlier, so here my emphasis is on the words ‘sensible and sensitive’. Sensible supervision means constructive support as they do the work. What it’s not is doing the work for your colleague. If you have to do the thinking, the research, the calculations (or similar tasks) then you’ve not delegated to the right person (or you, the boss, don’t understand delegation). Sensitive supervision is knowing when to check on progress and how to comment on progress. It’s finding the right stages or time intervals for updates – never repeatedly looking over your colleague’s shoulder, and never being too busy to give them time.

Having a reserve plan    If the delegated work is ‘mission critical’ – a task the company must have done – then the boss needs a plan in case the person handling the work falls sick or leaves. Since this is essential work, it can’t be abandoned, so either it can be passed to another staff member or the boss must take it on. In an emergency, either of those options requires a clear idea of what’s already done and what’s still to be done. The wise boss already knows that, and the perfect boss has kept a record. If the person who was handling the work has taken seriously ill or left the company, that record may be the only guide to what’s still to be done by whoever picks up the project.

Your delegation is someone else’s preparation    I got two reactions from colleagues when I delegated work to them. Some disliked it, either because they felt busy enough already or because they didn’t welcome unfamiliar work. Other colleagues jumped at the chance, even if their workload increased. They enjoyed the challenge and the new work would broaden their experience. After all, their hopes of a more senior position might depend on the importance and extent of their previous work. A foolish and weak leader is threatened by preparing those under him for leadership. Perhaps they’ll perform better than their boss. A wise and strong leader actively mentors colleagues, develops their careers, and trusts them with responsibility. That’s good for both the employee and for the company.

I’ll leave this post on delegation at this point. But I’ll return to the subject in the next post when I’ll describe the odd but not uncommon phenomenon of delegation in reverse.