In from the sun …

…. long distance commuting, grumpy old man, perfection and cheese.


Good grief! It is forecast that 1½ million of us Brits will be commuting to the UK from sunnier climes within the next ten years. I know several people who travel for a couple of hours each way to get to work at the moment and I think they are barking! But commuting from abroad? Well, perhaps it’s not that daft. Come to think about it I do know someone who lives in Spain but works in the UK for four days a week. And that is the key, increasingly it isn’t necessary to work 9 ‘til 5, Monday to Friday. The Internet and mobile communications have meant that going to the office is more of a habit than a necessity for many people.

In fact, to balance out the effect of all this long distance commuting, most of the rest of us will have to work from home to offset their carbon consumption. I am sure that most employers still suspect that those working from home don’t pull their weight. I’m not at all sure that is true, but even if it is, just think of the savings that could be made by not needing anywhere near so much office space. Investment tip – don’t buy offices to rent out!

As a self-confessed nit-picking perfectionist and grumpy old man, I am constantly frustrated by the inefficiencies and incompetence of many organisations. Of course, there are many excellent businesses around, but I’m sure that even they could find opportunities to do just that bit better. After Manchester United won the treble in 1999, a reporter asked manager Sir Alex Ferguson what he thought of the team. The reply was, “We need to improve”.

Today, along with Trevor Gay (Simplicity is the Key), I will be running a business development workshop entitled ‘Towards the Perfect Business’. I know that none of us is ever going to achieve perfection, but unless we have that single minded determination exhibited by Sir Alex, we will become less competitive over time.

I have just re-read ‘Who Moved My Cheese’ by Spencer Johnson. It tells the story of two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two mice size ‘little people’ Hem and Haw. The live in a cheese maze and live well of the cheese in their ‘cheese station’. One day the cheese runs out so Sniff sniffs out the whereabouts of a possible new supply and Scurry leads the chase of the two mice to find the new cheese. Hem and Haw don’t want to believe that the cheese has gone for good so stay put. Time goes by but they still cling to the belief that ‘somebody will do something’ to return things to the comfortable way they were.

Eventually it dawns on Haw that the cheese will not be returning so he sets off into the maze to find new cheese. There are many blind alleys and dead ends and haw is frightened to go on. He is tempted to turn back to the familiar but cheeseless place he has left behind. But he continues forward, encouraging himself with a vision of a bountiful supply of new cheese. Eventually he finds it along with the mice, Sniff and Scurry.

Of course, cheese is a metaphor for a good income, food on the table, a better way of life, greater personal fulfilment and so on. Have you noticed that so many say that ‘they’ should do something where ‘they’ is the government, the council, in fact anyone but themselves. The many migrant workers who have arrived and still arrive in this country were brave enough to travel to an unknown and probably frightening new place in search of new cheese. Some of us would do well to follow their example rather than hope that someone restores our old supply of cheese.


David Wike