Old dog, fewer tricks

The older I get the more I realize how difficult I must be to live with. I think only people who have the patience of saints, who understand and can accept the debilitating efforts of compartmentalization,  and who are  open to constant change, have a fighting chance of putting up with me.

Little Angels

Over the last few weeks I’ve taken the little ones to church with me. There have been a number of things that have been both wrong and astonishing. Just after I got back from Boston for some reason I was feeling remarkably cavalier, and I happily volunteered to take both twins to the 6.30PM mass on the Saturday evening. Given that I’d never attempted to take Capucine anywhere where she is required to be quiet for longer than 30 seconds, the decision to take them both to mass for the first time now seems like jet-lag fuelled folly… It was cold so we took the car. Maybe I forgot to mention that the church is just opposite the entrance of the stud farm. Driving the 500 metres to the entrance of the stud farm, parking up, and then crossing the road to go to church seemed like overkill even at the time. Thankfully we avoided the disapproving stares of the rest of the congregation because we were late. We did not however escape the funny looks at the end of the service as we all piled back into the car and then proceeded to indicate to turn left and then drive back into our “driveway” whilst everyone else turned right to go into town. The use of the car would have been the epitome of laziness if it weren’t for the fact that it was -2C and that Gaston and Capucine were in their slippers and pajamas. During the service itself they were also relatively well behaved – the one thing that trumps jet-lag fuelled folly is copious supplies of biscuits and not one, but two, colourful books (to avoid squabbling you understand). All very impressive, and a complement concerning the behavior of the twins from one old lady at the end even made me feel confident that I could even try taking Capucine to the serious big church in the centre of town the week after. So a week later we trundled off again, just the two of us this time, but late again. As we drove the 10 minutes to get there Capucine was her normal self, chattering away. We discussed the impending event and she readily accepted the need to be quiet and she even raised her finger to her mouth and made lots of little “ssssh” noises to show that she had understood. I was absolutely gobsmacked that not only had she understood, but that she then proceeded to say not a single word for an hour. Not a squeak. For anyone who has had the pleasure of spending even five minutes in Capucine’s presence, you will realize the enormity of what actually happened. I can’t help but think that there was some sort of Divine (and not even Biscuit flavoured) Intervention going on. At any rate I saw a new side to Capucine which was infinitely more enjoyable that the constant stream of “no’s” that she’s getting very good at. A little set of angels indeed; there’s hope for us all it seems!

The start of an American adventure

I’ve been back from Boston for 10 days or so now. I have to say it was an enjoyable trip. I felt quite perky as I arrived stateside. Aside from the fact that I was starting a new role which has the potential to be very exciting, I was conscious of the fact that although I have worked for American companies for over 10 years I’ve never really worked in the US. As I travelled I knew that this was going to be the first trip of many, so I couldn’t help but view it as being different from the normal once per year crossing of the Atlantic. I’ve always imagined that I’d like working in America, so now I’m going to see if that is actually the case or not. Furthermore I also don’t know Boston very well, and I’m sure this role will also have me out to California which is the spiritual home of one significant part of EMC’s business that I will need to work with. The other thing which I like about travelling to the US is the time difference. Boston is 6 hours ahead so it means that when I leave France around 4PM, I arrive at 5PM local time and even after staying up a bit for an early dinner, I always wake up at the crack of dawn the next day. I love this because it’s one of the rare occasions that I can combine what feels like a lie-in with a nice long morning run and session in the gym (the non-obese Americans are fitness mad so there’s always somewhere to do some training). Aside from the positive meetings at work, as the week went on I was reminded of many of the things I had discovered about the US on previous trips – the ridiculously sized portions of food, savory food that tastes unnecessarily sweet, disposable paper toilet seats that only seem to exist in the US, the wonderfully US centric view of the world and lack of any international news on the seemingly endless list of TV channels, and the fact that VPN connections and the internet seem to work much faster than when I’m that much further away from the EMC mother ship in Europe. At any rate, as I started my trip home to Europe at the end of the week, I was already looking forward to coming back. That said next time I’m going to stay downtown rather than in the faceless suburb that is Framingham!

Accepting the unspoken word

There have been two separate thoughts, one long held and one more recent, that have been floating around in the back of my mind. It was however an event last week that led me to connect them. 

When I used to play a lot of football I remember being struck by something my old coach and friend “Sir” Dave Stapylton said to me. He said that you can tell a lot about who a man is, and how he lives life, by watching the way he plays football. The more I watched people I knew play, the more this seemed to ring true. I’ve never forgotten that. In fact at work I still sometimes use this as one of two “mental levelers” to help me better understand situations I am not comfortable with – I often try and imagine how a game of football would pan out if I could get all of my work colleagues out onto a 5-a-side pitch for 90 minutes, (the other is to try and imagine what a particular person was like when they were at high school – the age at which we start to become adults with all our foibles and insecurities).

The more recent thought that struck me was another passage from Po Bronson’s book that I mentioned in an earlier posting. He said that, “When I was in New Orleans, one young man who was not yet a parent, but considering it, said “I’ve noticed that people who don’t have kids never quite see themselves as a success, and people who do have kids never see themselves as failures.” It seemed dead true to me, but why? Are kids an “achievement” that makes you feel like a success? Not quite. I stared at his quote for six months before I could see the cause and effect: having kids will teach you to be accepting. Not to be submissive, but to be patient. Tolerant of minor delays. You don’t measure yourself on the conventional success/failure spectrum. Many parents talk about how it’s made them better people, and this is one of those ways – it forces the mind to be a little more flexible.”

The event that brought these two ideas together for me was last week when I gave a present to a friend. This friend is someone who I really like a lot, and the present was not for any special occasion other than the fact that an opportunity presented itself and I thought he might like the gift. He is a rather brusque individual who has a tendency to be somewhat irascible especially when tired. He leaves no-one indifferent; indeed his own daughter said to me that people either love him or they hate him. I obviously fall into the former category. When you give a gift you naturally assume the person will say thank you, even if it is a pair of unwanted socks at Christmas. My friend doesn't tend to and obviously didn't say thank you on this occasion. However I am increasingly able to beat back the natural instinct to expect a verbal thanks and I can now focus more on my friend’s behavior immediately after the giving of any gift… On this occasion I gave him the gift around the middle of the day, he then basically changed his plans for the rest of the afternoon to help me out with my horse. We spent a good few hours together and on reflection it was clearly infinitely more meaningful and enjoyable than a speedily spluttered two word “thank you” (indeed in French it would have even only been a single word – a solitary “merci”!).

So as much as life’s “conventional spectrum” would dictate that I should get my “thank you” and that this would confirm that I had been successful in opting to give him a present, this individual has reminded me of the power and the importance of the unspoken word and my need to be more accepting of different ways of doing things. What he did and his behavior immediately after I gave him the gift, rather than anything he said, reconfirmed for me what he’s all about and why I like him as a person. Whilst I’m not going to stop teaching the kids to say please and thank you, this particular incident served to remind me of the power of what’s not said but done in a world where there are many erudite air bags in all walks of life. I must remember to teach that lesson to the kids although maybe I’ll wait until they are out of nappies.

Mirror mirror on the wall

Sandie is doing really well at work in the civil service. Actually living onsite where she works also means that I get to meet her team albeit in an informal capacity. It’s interesting to share ideas and hear about her experiences. I was always surprised when I compared my “Accenture education” in terms of how to lead teams, with the way the civil service have pushed her from individual contributor to manager of a team of 20 people with no formal or extended preparation. Thankfully she’s really enjoying it and they enjoy her natural management style. One of the other things that strikes me about work in the public sector (and in companies in the private sector that don’t place as much as an emphasis on people development as Accenture do (or did at the time)), and which is a painful lesson I had to go through personally, is that people rarely make a distinction between the person and the work that person produces. For me it was tremendously powerful to make this distinction. It actually changed the whole way in which I was able to measure and discuss peoples’ performance on an ongoing basis without every six monthly evaluation meeting becoming like a pitch battle and personal attack. Accenture measured people based on three key criteria – value creator, business operator and people developer. I have to say that I do miss that simplicity and the rigorous management of people’s development.

Hello Brooke!

One of the best things about long haul flights – I can finally discover some of the random music that has made its way onto my iPod over the course of the last few years. This week’s trip to Boston allowed me to (re)-discover Brooke Fraser and her album Flags. Brilliant. It’s amazing the things that happen when you take a bit of time to live life…

Georges Seurat in Cauterets

Rather than being at La Grande Jatte on a Sunday afternoon, I’ve actually been in Cauterets all week for the annual ski trip with the in-laws. Overall it’s been a good week and they’ve all been pleased with the copious amount of snow that has fallen. I’ve managed to get out for a few runs, I’ll head off to ride my horse tomorrow, I’ve managed to have a few pints of Guinness, learn some Spanish, get up to date with all my emails before work starts in earnest next week, and to do some reading. One of the other things I’ve done quite a bit of is, rather unsurprisingly, looking after the three kids (even if the presence of their three slighter older cousins has made this task a bit easier than it might otherwise have been). You’ll never hear me say that being a full time mother is easy, although I do have to say that I have found that so long as I address each child related task as an isolated activity, rather than seeing them as a never ending sequence of tasks, then I have found it relatively manageable and many of these interactions are actually good fun when the kids do what I say (does that make me sound like a control freak?). Basically I see the waking up of the kids as different from getting their breakfast ready, which is again different from getting them dressed for the ski slopes, which is then different to getting them shipped up into the ski-lift etc. As I was breaking down my day into this series of regular activities, I then stumbled across the following passage in the book that I am currently reading by Po Bronson. The passage talks about why motherhood and the stories of mothers are difficult to tell… I found it very interesting and thought provoking.

 “Why is it so hard to tell a mother’s story? I put this question out to many mothers, and a few answers came back again and again: 1) a culture that celebrates careers more than parenting doesn’t pick up on the subtlety inherent to a mother’s story. The subtle triumphs of a baby finally going to sleep, or a child learning a new letter, get drowned out by the noise of a big career advancement. 2). Mothers’ lives are very fractured. They don’t have one single project that makes for a simple strong storyline. They’re involved in their children’s lives, in their community, in their schools, in their extended families. Mary Ann compared it to the painter Georges Seurat’s famous pointillist work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. “It’s laid down one dot at a time. Rarely does anyone else recognize the meaning of that one dot.” In other words, a mother’s life makes a great painting, but not a very linear story. 3). Parenting is so personal; there’s a religious righteousness when parents talk about their philosophies. Talking about it out loud usually offends someone. 4). A good mother doesn’t own her accomplishments. Her children do. And since children can thrive and fail independent of good parenting, it’s hard to tease out what a mother’s contribution really is. You can’t give all the credit to the mom."

I’m not sure if all of this makes the act of parenting easier or harder. Maybe easier for me because I’m someone who likes to see the big picture, and the idea of each dirty nappy changed being one more (brown) dot on the canvas feels like although each activity is isolated, they will all add up to an overall result which is hopefully three happy, respectable and sensible young kids…