The Salty Coffee: Beware Falling at the Final Fence

The Leopard – 1963 Visconti

'Complacency is the last hurdle standing between any team and its potential greatness.’
Pat Riley, President, the Miami Heat

When I went to university in 1983 I was more confident academically than socially.

An adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’ had been a recent hit on telly, and I assumed everyone would carry teddy bears and wear boaters, blazers and brightly coloured scarves. I was concerned that I’d struggle with conversation and convention; with etiquette and deportment. 

On arrival at Pembroke College, Oxford I was allocated a wood-panelled room with a coat of arms on it. And in my first few weeks I had to navigate a complex world of quads and scouts; gowns and grace; butteries and battels tickets. Fortunately I also encountered a group of talented eccentrics who became lifelong friends.

Soon into my first term I was invited, along with a number of other students, to Lunch with The Master. As I’d barely been to a restaurant before, I recognised that this would be something of a challenge. 

It was certainly a rather proper affair. The table was precisely laid, the dress was traditionally formal and the conversation was entirely sober. Staff hovered around the guests policing our every move.

I resolved to tackle this intimidating occasion by carefully copying my neighbours. 

And so, with eyes darting to left and right, I picked up my cutlery in the correct order and held it with the right grip. I added appropriate condiments and drank with suitable moderation. In fact I did everything everyone else was doing, just a half-beat behind. I nodded and smiled. I was courteous and cordial. And as my confidence grew, I even served up a few conversational gambits. 

I reached the conclusion of the meal without putting a foot wrong. As the coffee was served, I sighed with satisfaction.

But the lunch was not quite over.

In those days I was still adding sugar to my coffee, and so I spooned a little into my cup from the silver caddy just in front of me. 

Ugh. This brew tasted unpleasant – quite unlike the Nescafe I drank at home. Nonetheless I persevered. Perhaps it was just a better class of bean.

As we exited the luncheon, my friend Caz tapped me on the shoulder.

‘Did I just see you put a spoon of salt into your coffee?’

Ah yes, that explained it. I’d mistaken the salt for the sugar. An elementary error. The shame and embarrassment. I’d fallen at the final fence. 

What was I to learn from the incident of the salty coffee?

Well, firstly that we shouldn’t be intimidated by unfamiliar social situations. Every environment can be handled with a sensitivity to form and a willingness to engage. 

But perhaps more importantly, I was taught that confidence can usher in complacency; that we are most at risk of failure as we approach the final fence. 

'It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency.'
Simone de Beauvoir, Philosopher, Writer

I’ve witnessed this phenomenon a good deal in business. The slackening off at the conclusion of a process, the assumption that the pitch is in the bag - that the deal is more or less done.  But the race isn’t over until you cross the finish line.

'Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.'
Andy Grove, CEO Intel

I have since read that some people nowadays like to put a little salt in their coffee. It’s healthier and less bitter apparently. Perhaps, yet again, I was a pioneer…

'Sometimes we wish for the better,
When we have it good as it gets.
Sometimes the grass isn't greener,
As soon as we find out, we forget.
Sometimes a fool doesn't know he's a fool.
Sometimes a dog, he don't know he's a dog.
Sometimes I do stupid things to you
When I really don't mean it at all.’
Babyface, ‘Sorry for the Stupid Things’ (K Edmonds / D Simmons)

No. 384

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND 5

‘Words Without Thoughts Never To Heaven Go’

Bernardo: ‘Who’s there?’
Francisco: ‘Nay, answer me: stand and unfold yourself.’
Hamlet, I i.

Some have argued that the opening lines of Hamlet are entirely appropriate: this night-time exchange between two guards on the walls of the castle at Elsinore immediately establishes a sense of doubt about identity, a theme that sustains us through the play.

In a bold break with tradition, the director of the Hamlet currently being staged at The Barbican in London chose instead to start her production with the famous ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy. Too bold for some, and it was announced last week that the experiment would be discontinued.

Should one side with the purists and demand respect for genius and tradition? Or should one applaud brave endeavour, even when it doesn’t succeed?

I found that, the longer I was in business, the more I had to guard against instinctive conservatism. ‘We’ve tried that before. It didn’t work.’ Age and experience can at once enhance one’s judgement and diminish one’s appetite for change.

I saw the Barbican Hamlet in preview. Benedict Cumberbatch has a strong, charismatic take on the troubled Prince; the sets are magnificent; and the production has many good ideas.

When you revisit great works, different scenes leap out at you. This time I was struck by the passage in which Hamlet’s uncle, the villainous Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet’s father and married his widow, tries to pray for forgiveness. At length Claudius concedes that, since he is still in possession of ‘my crown, mine own ambition and my queen,’ he cannot hope for absolution. His prayers are empty without genuine remorse.

‘My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.’
Hamlet III, iii

Creative businesses are sadly cursed by hollow words and empty promises. We all too publicly worship at the altar of creativity without properly demonstrating our faith in day-to-day behaviour. Talk is cheap. And our belief is sorely tested when the god Mammon steps into the meeting room. Perhaps we should, like Claudius, appreciate that ‘words without thoughts never to heaven go.’

Scepticism Is Healthy for Business Too

Trouble in Paradise is a sophisticated screwball comedy from 1932, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. A romance between two upmarket con artists is tested when one of them falls for a society heiress, their next intended victim.

The film is fast paced, knowing and wry. And so beautifully written. The society heiress, Madame Colet, rejects a suitor’s advances thus:

‘You see, Francois, marriage is a beautiful mistake which two people make together. But with you, Francois, it would be a mistake.’

It’s reassuring to discover that scepticism about advertising and business was alive and well in the ‘30s. Madame Colet has inherited a perfume business and her brand is advertised thus:

‘Remember, it doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter how you look. It’s how you smell.’

In another scene Giron, the Chairman of the Board of Colet et Cie, confronts our hero Gaston, now acting as Madame Colet’s advisor:
Giron:  ‘Speaking for the Board of Directors as well as for myself, if you insist in times like these in cutting the fees of the Board of Directors, then we resign.’
Gaston:  ‘Speaking for Madame Colet as well as for myself, resign.’
Giron:  'Very well…We’ll think it over...’

I understand that in this month’s Alphabet announcement there was a nod to the HBO comedy Silicon Valley (The Guardian, 11 Aug 2015). There’s a great tradition of comic writing about commercial culture. The Office reflected business life as it is, not as we would want it to be. Nathan Barley shone a light on Shoreditch lunacy, with extraordinary prescience and what now looks like understatement. And the recently departed comic genius, David Nobbs, gave us Reggie Perrin, the middle management mid-life crisis that is sadly all too familiar.

Scepticism is healthy. It calls business to account. It shows that the public is alert to our shortcomings.
Better to be mocked than to be ignored.

Can Commerce Integrate Art and Science?

The Festival of the Opening of the Vintage at Macon by JMW Turner shows ordinary folk dancing in a beautiful bucolic scene. A few years ago research was published indicating that Turner’s depiction of the sun in this painting was based on the latest scientific thinking of his day. (The Guardian, 13 November 2011)

It transpires that Turner, whilst studying art at the Royal Academy, also attended science debates at the Royal Society, which was housed in the same building. And in particular it is suggested that Turner attended the lectures of the astronomer William Herschel, who had been examining the surface of the sun.

As an artist Turner was comfortable with, and actively interested in, science. The scientist Michael Faraday was a good friend and he knew mathematicians, palaeontologists and chemists. Science inspired him. His commitment to observe nature first hand is captured in the myth that he lashed himself to a mast during a storm, just so that he could understand the conditions; an experience that supposedly prompted my favourite Turner painting, Snow Storm - Steam Boat Off A Harbour’s Mouth. 

I regret to say that, when I grew up, art and science were taught as polar opposites. We imagined that scientists had different shaped brains and we rarely socialised with them. This dualism extended even to our TV viewing: the scientists watched The Body in Question; we arts scholars watched Brideshead Revisited (the show that launched a thousand fops)…

It’s compelling to note that many of today’s more interesting movies, dance and theatre productions concern themselves with science. The Theory of Everything had us trying to keep up with Stephen Hawking; the great Wayne McGregor creates dance inspired by neuroscience; Nick Payne’s recent Royal Court hit, Constellations, looked at a human relationship in the context of quantum multiverse theory.

Though I’ve barely a scientific sinew in my body, I believe that the future of marketing and communications will occur at the intersection between art and science. It’s logical. It's inspiring.

No. 44