Quite short and well worth reading because of the underlying point - 'Get the wrong people and lessons will never be learned. The bus will go over the cliff.’
IN WHAT seems like another life and another world, I spent a year working outside the office of legendary hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin. One weekend he offered to take a few of us golfing at a prestigious course in Illinois. On the limo journey, he gave each of us a copy of Jim Collins’s newly published Good to Great book on business.
‘It’s all about the people, Ian. Get the right folks on board the bus and the bus will drive itself. Get the wrong people and lessons will never be learned. The bus will go over the cliff.’
I never finished the book: it became a bit of a dry read, and like many business books was rather evangelising. Still, the point Ken made stuck with me.
A quarter of a century on, and a year after I returned to the UK, Ken’s words returned. Rishi Sunak had taken over, and the northern part of HS2 was being cancelled. During the announcement I heard a Treasury official mumble a fraudulent apology: ‘Lessons have been learned’.
Billions upon billions blown by Britain’s incompetent rulers
IN WHAT seems like another life and another world, I spent a year working outside the office of legendary hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin. One weekend he offered to take a few of us golfing at a prestigious course in Illinois. On the limo journey, he gave each of us a copy of Jim Collins’s newly published Good to Great book on business.
‘It’s all about the people, Ian. Get the right folks on board the bus and the bus will drive itself. Get the wrong people and lessons will never be learned. The bus will go over the cliff.’
I never finished the book: it became a bit of a dry read, and like many business books was rather evangelising. Still, the point Ken made stuck with me.
A quarter of a century on, and a year after I returned to the UK, Ken’s words returned. Rishi Sunak had taken over, and the northern part of HS2 was being cancelled. During the announcement I heard a Treasury official mumble a fraudulent apology: ‘Lessons have been learned’.
5 comments:
Do you remember the Bob Monkhouse joke?
"I'd like to die like my old dad, peacefully in his sleep, not screaming like his passengers."
dearieme - yes I do remember it, Starmer's passengers are becoming agitated.
Running a company seems easy by comparison. You just don't appoint useless people to be bus drivers. In terms of UK governance, reckless incompetent and sometimes clinically insane people have selected themselves to be potential bus drivers with absolutely no training, and then we select from that short-list.
The worst of it is that even if the bus goes over the cliff, they'll say it hasn't. And then the conductor will come round, asking for your fare.
Another assertion that amuses and irritates me equally is 'we take this subject extremely seriously'. Which means that hitherto they haven't.
Sam - ha ha, yes they will say the bus hasn't gone over the cliff - fares please.
Tammly - and they don't intend to take it seriously if public attention shifts elsewhere.
Post a Comment