I’m not going to dwell too long on my team-building experience, except to say that most of the bonding took place in the restaurant last night rather than over two days in the classroom.
I call it a "classroom" but it was actually a function room at a golf club. I’m not a big golf fan, as people will know, but there was a point this morning when, staring through the window, I noticed a chap preparing to tee off. Just at that moment, one of my colleagues was gushing to the drink-ravaged assembly: "I see my job as…. as spreading the love around…"
Man, I realised at that precise moment just how fascinating a golf swing can be.
It’s all a terrible dilemma, this sort of caper. I’m actually quite keen on the idea of team-building days, if the time is used wisely. People sometimes mistakenly think I’m not a team player, because I like to just get on with my job once I know what I’m supposed to be doing. But I know all about not sweating the small stuff, and pursuing excellence, and managing everything in one minute, and not worrying about who moved my cheese, and all that. I’ve devoured these lessons, and more — many, many more.
I even believe most of it. I was a card-carrying Tom Peters acolyte for a long time. I’m not as cynical as I must seem to my colleagues. I’m probably just resentful that I don’t rule the world. I’m rarely endowed with genuine responsibility, which pisses me off. The power dealers hear that I’m pissed off, so decide that I can’t be trusted with anything. It becomes a circle of mutual disappointment and exasperation. That seems to be how it works.
I ran a big wine shop in the Fulham Road once. I inherited a young guy called Steve, from Ladbroke Grove. A pretty stroppy character. Always late, not very co-operative. The area manager wanted to sack him, as he was "more trouble than he’s worth". I wasn’t keen to do that as he was married with a baby. We talked about it. I remember reading something that Winston Churchill said, that "the way to deal with a rebel is to give him responsibility". So after a rather fractious discussion with the area manager, we decided to make him a key-holder and sort of assistant manager. He responded brilliantly, and his behaviour changed overnight. It was deeply heartening. I’ve never forgotten it.
It’s a while since someone took that sort of chance with me, but I’ve become sanguine about the whole cycle. I’m realistic. I get paid OK, and to stay sane and satisfied I’ve learnt to shine the light of my ambitions away from work, pointing it instead through the wire fence into my personal life. Plodding marathons, and writing about the experience, is just one great way to start feeling stimulated — and occasionally even fulfilled. Someone asked me the other day about the plan for the book. It’s still there. I open the file 2 or 3 times a week, usually early in the morning, and write another few paragraphs. Perhaps I’ll never reach that particular finishing line, but the race itself is a thrill. Trying to keep the non-work self topped up with creative diversions seems to do the trick.
Let’s talk about running, because I’ve had two excellent jaunts in the last two days. I’ve already mentioned yesterday’s early morning bounce through the sun. It left me buzzing and keen all day.
This evening’s was good too. Later than usual (8:30), but there are advantages with this. It’s cleansing to run through the first fringes of twilight; to feel the wild unwinding of the day; the untightening of the tensions. To run at this time, in the cool of the pre-night, is to set yourself free. It feels like a privilege.
I was out there for a shade under an hour. Sixty minutes is a great length for a brisk, non-stop midweek run. Those 30 or 40 minute outings are sometimes unavoidable, particularly before work, but if the escape can be stretched to an hour, so much the better. The extra 20 minutes are where the detail is hiding. This is where the real work is done. I managed about 5.5 miles, including a couple of stiff upward slopes. I daren’t call them hills in the presence of the teeth-glinting, Sussex masochists.
Track du jour? Corny, but Ron Goodwin’s The Trap — better known as the theme tune of the BBC’s coverage of the London Marathon. It popped up just as I was entering the final half mile, and beginning to feel a little fatigue. It’s a corny tune, and a corny arrangement, but it jangles something inside, and it gave me the little spurt I needed to get home feeling strong and confident again.
It seems we’re getting back in the groove.
