He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
"It's good to talk" recalls an era before most people had a mobile telephone. Two couples in their own homes, getting on with their routines at end of day, connect and share through a phone call. The message is clear, by using this cheap and ubiquitous medium conversations can be more frequent, misunderstandings can be cleared up, and general peace and harmony achieved.
How different the same advertisement would be today if it featured my mobile telephone. The 3.5G connection is where I look first, because it tells me whether the device is useable. While I have a connection, I have access to my work memory. It recalls the history of e-mail traffic about an issue and former colleagues who update and change their company or location frequently. It replaces the Filofax. It frees me from the office, to be out and meeting members. Unlike the Filofax, is a stateless device, because that memory is held on "cloud computing" services, generally provided free by social network companies like LinkedIn and Facebook. So I can drop it in the Cam while punting, and have access to all the same information immediately from any computer in any internet cafe. But mostly I am not using it to talk any more.
Yesterday I attended a couple of meetings that reminded me how good it is to talk. At lunchtime, I ate pizza with a young couple who are working for truth and reconciliation in Colombia. They wanted to learn how to maintain innovative communities to challenge the violence funded by narco-terrorism. For these people, not to speak is to act. As Burke has been paraphrased "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing". In case you do not know Colombia, it is in a 40 year civil war, with displaced refugees similar to Iraq. According to this couple, not everyone is directly involved in the violence. Someone will know a lawyer who can "clean up" any problem. The nice family who want to get their child out of military service or resolve a nieghbour's off-colour joke pay a little money, and a hard man deletes a name from a list or arranges for a visit from the boys. We closed with a point from coaching I received myself recently here in Cambridge. They had conducted group interviews with Colombian exiles in the Netherlands and the UK about why they kept on fighting. They told me that these exiles generally described the sufferings of their grandparents and parents as justification. I shared my coach's wisdom: blaming your bad behaviour on your parents leads nowhere. We must show our own children how to act and watch what we say.
Later last night I attended a dinner for the Financial Directors Special Interest Group, organized by Deloitte and Xaar. Many of the participants are responsible for publicly listed companies. For these people, to speak is to act. No insider trading will result from their careful conversations, even sub rosa. But there was a good deal of witty commentry around the fascinating presentation given by Elizabeth Gutteridge on her High Court dealings with Forensic Intellectual Property. Cambridge companies license in and out the key technologies needed to deliver the very latest generation of consumer and industrial products and services around the world. Someone joked that a multinational they dealt with is a great law firm but a lousy technology company, to general applause. The commercial values are huge. One spoke of paying to the penny £5M per year in royalties. Getting it wrong is not a good career move. People asked whether accountants are ever struck off as a result of a High Court judgement, or whether the decision to make prudent accruals against a potential royalty claim could be taken as evidence of guilt in court. Fortunately Elizabeth was able to give them good and clear advice which helped them steer the difficult course they must.
These meetings brought home to me how fairness emerges from talking face to face. How much we take for granted the integrity of our great Finance Directors and legal counsel, yet all our dealings with the global community of technology depend on that good reputation. As Burke did say, seeking conciliation with American rebels "Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it".
We need to get out more and talk.
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