Andy's Blog

Baby bear goes downstairs, sits in his small chair at the table. He looks into his small bowl. It is empty. 'Who's been eating my porridge?' he squeaks. 

Daddy Bear arrives at the big table and sits in his big chair. He looks into his big bowl and it is also empty. 'Who's been eating my porridge?!?' he roars.

We’ve coined the term ‘mood hoover’ to describe someone who’s stuck in a rut of negativity. I’m not talking about depression. I’m talking about people whose default way of thinking is ‘can’t do’. You know the sort... lots of tutting and rolling of eyes. You ask them how they are and you get ‘not too bad, considering.’ Or, ‘I’ll be all right at 5 o’clock.’  Oh, and mood hoovers are characterised by plenty of heavy sighing.  I describe their outlook as ‘every silver lining has a cloud!’

Let me be clear. They are not horrible people. Far from it...

TCD is ‘Time Constraint Disorder’... the inability to meet deadlines. Invented by Michael Foley as a joke.

But then he found out that a professor at DePaul University wants procrastination recognised as a clinical disorder. Check out some of the disorders that have already made it into the tome that is ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’...

I was working in one of the local authorities. It is a vast place of green corridors, security doors and secret passages before you eventually end up in the council chamber. This is a sombre-looking place where lots of sombre-looking people get together to make sombre decisions. A portrait of her Majesty bears down on proceedings. For some reason she has a Mona Lisa non-smile and I always think, come on Liz, cheer up, we need our head of state to be a 2%er!

I recently got into a conversation about a lady named Julie. It turns out there were two Julies in the same office so the person asked me which one I was talking about. ‘Smiling Julie’, I answered. And they knew instantly which one I meant.

You have to be of a certain age to remember ‘Jim’ll Fix It’, a slightly creepy programme where an ageing DJ in a white shellsuit had loads of kids sitting on his knee, while puffing on a fat Havanna cigar. And Jim specialised in making their dreams come true. Mmmm. Not sure that’s going to work in the modern era?

Anyway, the point was that Jim would organise for things to happen. He’d read out a letter and, hey presto, some child’s ambition would happen. Sometimes it was big stuff that only Jim could organise, like a ride in an F1 car, or to take part in a West End show. Or to have Showaddywaddy playing in your school assembly. Fair doos. That’s proper telly. And Jim always fixed it for you and you and you-oo-oooo.

Cast your mind back to the olden days (ie, 5 years ago). If ‘change’ was a dog it would have been a Labrador, all friendly and comfortable and licky. Sure, it had teeth but it wouldn’t dream of sinking them into you! You could throw ‘change’ a ball and it’d come back and drop it at your feet in a beautifully predictable and well-trained way.

If you want your business to be like all the others, set yourself some SMART objectives. I doubt there will be anyone who hasn’t had this hammered into them. Specific, Measurable, Achievable (yawn), Realistic, (head lolling in near slumber) and Time-bound (snore).

Acronyms I can live with. But some of the new workplace phrases do grate a little. I’m not going to turn this into a rant because that’s not what this blog is all about. But, here’s one I overheard recently. I was setting up to do a talk at a conference and, as usual, there was a spaghetti bush of wires so I asked a guy if he knew how to connect my laptop. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s not my home competency,’ and went to grab himself a coffee.

No folks, not Buzz Lightyear. Buzz Aldrin, world famous for being the...ahem... 2^nd man on the moon! Poor Buzz. Never got over it you see. Some of the following may be urban myth, but please bear with it anyway.

(I received this today, an irreverent view from Joey, aged 14)

God created the world. Crikey! He’s achieved some good stuff. And we look up to him (in all senses of the phrase, the great dude that he is, sitting loftily in the clouds).  He seems to be a decent role model what with all those commandments and stuff. I mean, ‘thou shall not steal’, etc all makes good community sense...

If you’ve ever come on an ‘Art of Being Brilliant’ workshop (or read our fantastic book of the same name) you’ll be familiar with the term ‘mood hoovers’. A mood hoover is someone who’s stuck in a typically British doom and gloom mentality. The news is always bad, the weather’s always grim, all teenagers are hoodies, work’s rubbish...you get my drift!  They’re stuck in moan mode. And we call them mood hoovers because they’re expert at sucking all the positivity and joy out of the people around them. It only takes 30 seconds...and they’ve made us feel as depressed as they are!

Let me introduce you to a guy who’s the opposite of a mood hoover. We call them, 2%ers...