I just received a significant piece of correspondence from the bank I have been with for 40 years.
It was important, great, huge even, but it captures in a nutshell how far we have come from the bank where you knew your manager and there was a genuine relationship, to the one that exists today, which is nothing but a connection to an entity that just processes transactions.
My significant letter starts with..
“Dear Customer(s)..
Even though it was written to me this generic piece of auto generated crap didn’t use my name and tried to cover itself with an “s” in plural just in case the generic BS correspondence was intended for more than one person.
As well as the humbo jumbo in the middle section which did include a “thank you for your business” message there was some technical stuff with no effort at providing an actual relevant contact person if I had a query about any of it.
And then it signed off .., with a
“Your sincerely“
that’s another joke, this was auto generated.
and then the “person” who sent it.
“The Manager“ , no name, and no actual signature (does this possibly make this correspondence invalid?).
The only contact details on the letter was a phone number in Dublin – I can imagine how far I would get if I called the number and asked to speak to the person who sent me the letter.
I’m fairly sure I would get a “your call is being recorded“.
Oh, I forgot to mention what was included in the humbo jumbo, a pure classic..
“Should you require any further details or other AIB products please do not hesitate to contact your Relationship Manager at your local branch”
Hey AIB and everyone on this automation, bot, AI, less people drive, let’s stop pretending… this is not a relationship and no advertising campaign can rescue this empty BS.
Getting simple things like important correspondence right, even in an automated world might just make a difference.
We were having the usual conversation except the only sticking point was that they wanted a full day session with their group and I was trying to discourage this.
I find that if you stay at training too long then people get tired and what they learn in the morning they end up forgetting in the afternoon. It’s best if they get a chance to slowly digest, process and try it out for themselves.
I normally suggest half day sessions, when everyone stays fresh and then allowing a week in between so that everyone can practice and then come back to progress further.
“It must be on the one day because we have the hotel booked” she said.
It was only then that the penny dropped and I understood why she wanted it on the same day.
This threw me as I hadn’t been faced with this in a long time and I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it.
Ok, lets do it ..
As it turned out there was a mix up with the hotel booking on their end and the training was cancelled (after all that !!) and while I was disappointed a big part of me was delighted!
I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect and disruption of it.
Travelling and delivering training sessions in person was part and parcel of the last 10 years (pre Covid), but the truth of it is that I have been doing this from the comfort of my little home office (converted bedroom) for the last 16 months and it works really well.
It’s convenient for me and participants, I’ve tweaked my delivery for online and it works really well, it’s cost effective and it also means they get a fresh “Greg” who isn’t after driving for a few hours and all that goes with it.
The big conversation that I was having with myself was “how inconvenient and pointless” that travelling/in person/ hotel experience would be compared to the very convenient way that I have replaced it with, and with no negative impact on the learning experience.
However, I do love the face to face in person training and as a social creature I love the energy you get back from a “live” group and the special learning dynamic that can happen. This will always have it’s place but only when necessary.
I know my simple example of this in person training session will be replicated very soon with so many of those things we have all been doing in the course of our work while working from home.
People have had to take on board new work habits which are now deeply embedded and there are parts about these that are very convenient as well as being cost and life effective and they won’t want to give them up too easily.
We can all talk about hybrid but this could be a very slow and long road back to the office and we need to be really careful to preserve what is working because it is possible to get the job done and ….
Music has played a special role in my life, ever since a Spanish student that was staying with us one summer in 1977 and he had brought his tape recorder and a selection of his favourite albums.
I spent weeks, night after night listening to bands like ELO, Supertramp and the wonderful Lou Reed and I was hooked.
The first proper album I bought for myself was The Boomtown Rats debut album, while I was staying with my aunt and uncle for a few days in Dungarvan when I was 13.
My first concert was Thin Lizzy at the City Hall in Cork when I was just 14, quickly followed by Eric Clapton and then Rory Gallagher.
As well as being an avid collector I ended up doing some work with local bands for a short while and even though I never managed to fulfil my dream of working in a record company, I did mange to fulfil another one, which was owning my own record stores in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Dublin. They were called BlackTrack.
I still buy music the whole time, but I do think you can miss a trick and never listen to some gems, so at the beginning of this lockdown 2021, I decided to brighten my year and expand my collection by asking the wonderful, Declan Murphy, songwriter and guitarist with one of my favourite bands, THE 4 OF US to pick out his favourite 12 albums, one for each month of the year.
He shared his list with me on the Win Happy podcast as well as having a big chat about his love of music, the joy of collecting music, the band and his fascinating story.
The conversation ended up being a huge one that stretched over three parts and he totally cheated by managing to squeeze in 16 classic albums. Even though I have a big collection, I was surprised that I just had two of his 16 – in the meantime I’ve managed to get hold of the other 14 and am loving each and every single one of them.
He was very gracious and didn’t include any of the THE 4 OF US albums, he could have as they are all brilliant.
So, the ISAG (Independent Scientific Advocacy Group) last December were advocating for an approach (mostly known as Zero Covid), that they said would have us out of lockdown and enjoying some return to freedom on St. Patrick’s Day.
They were talking about a similar approach to how New Zealand had dealt with Covid, whereby we could potentially be enjoying a mask free life in our country, meeting friends, eating in restaurants, drinking in pubs, celebrating our special national day and most importantly getting “Back to Normal”.
I myself was a big advocate for the approach they were taking, as I believed it made total sense and was the only way for us to get out of our grave situation with minimum loss of life, health, jobs, damage to the economy and mental health.
I went as far as blogging about it, tweeting about it and even giving their team some pro-bono strategic guidance about their communications – we even did some design work to help simplify their messaging. I am not involved now, but I do support what they are doing.
Note: I was quiet surprised at the abuse I took in some quarters for supporting that approach and was even targeted by the “brilliant” Gript crew (…very strange). The “we are all in this together” horse bolted in April 2020 and still hasn’t come back!
On one hand we can now throw our eyes up to heaven and say the ISAG crew were talking rubbish and isn’t where we are right now proof that they were totally wrong
OR ..we can now look back and say they were spot on all along, and if only we had done what they said then, we would be in a pub with a creamy pint of Murphy’s toasting our national day and the end to the hardship we have all endured at varying levels.
So…were they right or were they wrong?
Let’s take a look..
What they were advocating for was:
An aggressive suppression of the virus by going into a sharp, decisive lockdown
Quarantining all visitors to the country for two weeks to ensure those entering were not introducing even more Covid and possible new variants
Some cooperation with Northern Ireland (who were in a worse mess at the time) about people moving between jurisdictions
An effective contact tracing regime to focus in on any cases that happen
A sensible opening up of the country on a county by county basis
While all of this initial effort seemed very extreme, a sacrifice by the population for two months or so could have us in a much better, enjoyable place for 2021 while we all waited for vaccines.
Initially many of the usual suspects argued that this “Zero Covid” crew were a bit nuts and what was being suggested just wasn’t possible here – as I said I took a small amount of that abuse for my small part in advocating for the approach.
When we look at what has happened since then until this St. Patrick’s Day (our supposed “freedom” day):
We came out of the October/November lockdown when there were still too many cases in the community (we stupidly allowed schools to stay open despite outbreaks)
We never controlled international travel or the border with the North
Christmas shopping and entertaining kicked in
The UK variant came to Ireland with all of the thousands of people returning home for Christmas and….
BOOM !!!
We had an explosion of Covid with an incredible amount of cases and the inevitable deaths that followed.
Suddenly that aggressive and inevitable lockdown was needed and there was no issue with the general public, we knew it was necessary and with that more and more people were seeing the sense that the ISAG crew were advocating for, except instead of a “hill” of Covid cases in the community that we needed to suppress it was suddenly a colossal “mountain”.
OK, we could still do what the ISAG were suggesting, but the scale of the problem meant the St. Patrick’s Day target was now unrealistic, but instead a few weeks later if we did the right thing.
What did we actually do?
We took the tough lockdown on the chin, including home schooling (sensible and necessary) – the only exception is that the lockdown period needed to be longer (how long will it be?)
And…a token effort to restrict “unnecessary” travel (as we know there are still thousands travelling each week unnecessarily)
And….despite the talk about hotel quarantining we still haven’t managed to put an arrangement in place
And….schools will return and the community spread will kick off again
And….we are stumbling through a vaccination programme (my 85 year old mum will receive her 2nd vaccination next Saturday , my 47 year old brother in New Jersey received his two weeks ago!)
The most significant problem since December is that the flights kept coming with all sorts of visitors from everywhere including new Covid variants from Brazil and other places.
A simple question may be asked: how bloody stupid are we in this country?
Basically, we can’t go beyond 5kms in Ireland, but you can go to Lanzarote!
As far back as last summer Ireland has been “so good” at putting restrictions on it’s citizens, but for some stupid reasons that I will never fathom we have to leave the back door open, which leaves us on this St. Patrick’s Day, not free but looking into a fog of uncertainty with no plan, a shambles of a vaccination rollout and staring down the barrel of a 2021 and even more hardship and economic devastation.
As well as the high number of deaths and sickness since December, the other very serious problem now is that people have lost patience and lost faith and compounded by extremely poor communications a very depressed country is ready to explode.
So, a big salute to the dedicated ISAG crew who persisted with their very simple, spot on approach that could have had us raising our glasses together in our favourite watering holes.
You were right, all along and for whatever political reasons those in power did not do the “5%” that would have us out of this mess.
I’m sure we have all been away on holidays in a special place and you pass an auctioneers window and gaze at the houses for sale and think “what if“?
While it’s a nice dream, quickly after 60 seconds you rationalise and the dream is gone.
For me that place would definitely be Siena in Italy, and while I have had this idea for a while I can think quickly for a bunch of very logical and rational reasons why it just couldn’t work …maybe when I retire (isn’t that the easy way of dodging the thought? )
If Covid has taught us anything, it is that you can get your work done from anywhere, hasn’t it? Of course, there are other reasons why I can’t and it doesn’t take me long to list them in my head.
Ciara O’Toole, our very special friend and her husband gazed at that window in Lake Como and decided “lets do it“!!
She was just married, without a word of Italian, a house in Dublin with a big mortgage and a great career as a marketer…crazy idea Ciara!
What I love about her is her adventurous spirit, that ability to “go for it” without a strong safety net and hey, let’s see what happens!
In Ciara’s case lots happened, including a few nasty bumps and wonderful experiences but it has been and continues to be a great adventure!
Did I tell you she learnt how to fly a sea plane and wrote a book about the experience?
If you get a chance at all you might read her book “Going Solo on Lake Como” and maybe tune into the episode of the Win Happy podcast with this intelligent, funny, adventurer, marketeer, entrepreneur, author and pilot who tells her incredible story that is full of many twists and turns!
Let’s celebrate those who say “Let’s do it”, and maybe think about that being you next time you look at that window.
Maybe it was something that I specifically said in my email about a bad nights sleep or maybe there was just a hint in the some of my other content, that I was under a little bit of a cloud yesterday?
Whatever it was, like all good friends he sensed that my mood wasn’t quite what it should be.
Within minutes my phone rang and it was him.
We chatted about work, about football about Covid and about families and of course he did ask me why I was a bit off colour and not sleeping. He did get it out of me that this was getting close to Dad’s anniversary, and at this time three years ago we were watching him gradually fade away, day after day and the sad memories were weighing heavily on me.
As always, a problem shared is a problem halved and we also got the chance to talk about how he was feeling – his dad sadly passed towards the end of last year.
I am so grateful to my friend for taking time out of his busy day to reach out – it took away the cloud.
So today, and all days, pay close attention to those you love and your colleagues to what they are saying and how they are saying it, and if you can make the time, reach out.
He must have been there all along, doing exactly the same thing as me, day in day out for months, but it took the leaves to fall from the trees and the evenings to get shorter for me to notice him.
Late in the afternoon, just like me he switches on the light in the upstairs bedroom or “lockdown office” and I spotted him for the first time.
He is working from his house, upstairs in one of the bedrooms in the housing estate opposite me.
When we walk the dogs in the morning and in the evening you can see all of the neighbouring “offices” , the many people at work early in the morning and late in the evening at their new workplaces in bedrooms and on kitchen tables.
It’s as if many of the city centre offices have moved out to the houses in the suburbs with the exception that we can’t take a breather and walk around the corner to the coffee shop or head to the canteen for a cuppa with a work colleague. Instead we just walk down the stairs, put the kettle on, say hello to the dog (if you have a dog!) and come back to the desk.
I don’t miss the commuting time and I certainly don’t miss the costs associated with that, but I do think there is a quiet grind to this extended period of working from home that is probably chipping away at us, in ways that we don’t even realise.
For all of the time saved commuting and the brutal efficiency of meeting the team and clients on Zoom, for some reason I don’t seem to be more productive and when Friday comes I am fairly wiped out.
I read with interest the new proposal by government about remote working which has just been published, ‘Making Remote Work’, Ireland’s National Remote Work Strategy. The Strategy’s stated objective is to ensure that remote working is a permanent feature in the Irish workplace in a way that maximises economic, social and environmental benefits.
Somehow the word “remote” is quite a negative one and it’s literal meaning might resonate with too many of us at the moment.
I know that I don’t want to return to the way it was before, but I’m not sure what exactly I will evolve to.
I don’t know my work neighbour in the window across the way, but maybe some day I will wave and we just might have a coffee at the wall!
As we start into a second full working week of the new year amidst a severe lockdown and an even more severe pandemic with outrageous Covid case numbers it looks like we need to remain on the Zoom for a while longer!
While we barely knew anything about this incredibly powerful communication tool this time last year and most likely had never used it, it’s amazing how quickly it has become a way of life.
Before this year I hated any visual meetings online, and part of that was the clunky software (I’m amazed how Skype never became more intuitive) and the unreliable performance.
I’m not sure if it was lucky timing, but when Covid sent us home in March it seemed to be Zoom or Microsoft Teams in pole position, and very quickly Zoom took a lead and became the standard, the easy one to use and before we knew it, the one most of us were using.
Even now, when I get an invite to a meeting or a webinar I find myself groaning when it is something other than Zoom, because now in this impatient age of ours we want to go click click click and we are in, 100% at ease and knowing what we are doing.
And since March, Zoom have been clever and we have seen better security and new features – I am now using it for meetings, and in Fuzion we have used it for events, training, webinars and workshops, complete with breakout rooms (another great feature), Q&A sessions and polls.
For training purposes alone it has been transformational – we quickly adapted and with a few little tricks of the trade (and humour) you can have a really engaging session with all participants.
I have also been using it for recording my podcasts and as long as the broadband is ok, it has been fantastic!
Making it work for you
Deirdre, the founder of Fuzion wrote a really excellent blog post early on last year about online meeting etiquette, and it gives some great tips about how you present yourself online and since then I wanted to add a few more tips as we get into even more of the subtleties.
Your Name
When you join the online meeting make sure that your name is right (proper spelling, use capital first letter for first name and surname- even if you are using someone else’s account you can rename yourself on entry) and maybe even consider adding your company name.
If it is a meeting with people from a number of different organisations or departments then make it easy for the others.
Who is in the Spotlight?
When the numbers of participants are high during a meeting then “spotlight” the speaker/speakers as it makes it much easier to see who the speakers are and it makes the session more interesting – even when they are screen sharing you can see just them as they present, instead of everyone.
This is a great feature in Zoom.
Meeting Room message!
As part of the improved Zoom security measures most people will end up in a “meeting room” before being left into the session – there is a facility in your settings to customise the message people will see while waiting in your room. Why not customise and add a little humour!
Where are you on the screen?
My own team just throw their eyes up to heaven (or wherever they like to go!) when I start to ask them where I am on their screen, as part of a silly game we play to break the lockdown monotony. On a serious note I do believe that where you are on the screen can be important.
If you are on the top row (having followed all of the other tips about looking good etc) you are probably better off than being on the bottom row when it comes to being noticed and gaining attention.
The first on the Zoom call occupy that space, and as long as you don’t turn off your video during the session for some reason you will stay in pole position!
For all of the tips and tricks that we have spoken about, and for all of the Zoom learning that we should have on board at this stage I am still amazed how many presenters are still not set up properly and we end up looking up their nose for the duration of their presentation.
..make sure that’s not you!
If you do land on the Zoom make sure you make a great impression!
Friday evening, after doing our grocery shopping we decided we would get a quick drink in our local before settling down for the night at home.
This beautiful little pub, the Inniscarra Bar is just outside Ballincollig – it’s your traditional “old mans” pub where there are a bunch of regulars and a few like us who pop in for one every now and then.
We were determined to pop in as the place had just opened that Monday after a cruel six months of “lockdown” to enjoy a drink, to say hello to the lovely owner Kay and to soak up some of the much missed atmosphere.
All of the Covid signs were up, Kay and her fellow barmaid had their masks on and were busy cleaning the tables every few minutes and making sure that everyone was maintaining a safe distance. The old codgers who were normally perched at the bar on their favourite chairs weren’t for obvious reasons which was sad – there would have been even more opportunities to distance if that was possible, but there you go.
All of the usual faces were there and it was lovely to hear the banter, which pretty much was telling jokes about Covid and who looked funny wearing their mask, to make light of this shite situation and to “pretend” it was somehow a normal night, at least for a while.
We sat near Michael, a lovely, kind, welcoming regular, well known for his jokes who we were told was 88 the previous week – I told him we could now call him “two fat ladies” but he didn’t get it. He obviously never played bingo!
Michael was perched near the fire as always, and after he got a few jokes out of his system he started to tell us how lonely he had been since the lockdown. He lives alone.
With tears in his eyes he told us how he dreaded 6pm each night as that was the time that he would make his way to the pub – the nights were long and lonely and he was fed up of playing chess on the computer.
Someone needs to tell Michael that tonight will be his last night with friends for a while again..
Covid has been cruel, but if we are to shut down and inflict all types of hardship on so many people, we better make it a good shutdown, short and sharp with no cherry picking of different groups of society and no stupid messing around with borders.
We must get to Zero Covid and we absolutely can because what we are living through now just isn’t living.
I had one of those rare, precious things in these very strange COVID19 times – an appointment at the hairdressers!
We are good friends with one of the owners so Dee made an appointment for me and being honest I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it.
I was sitting in the waiting area observing all of the safety procedure signage as the team looked after their clients, all carefully spread out in the salon and all with their face visors or masks on.
Since March, we were all forced to jump off our frantic never ending cycle of life and while we have been busy and have continued to work hard it’s been quite different.
There’s been no face to face meetings, there’s been no travelling and there’s been no wearing of blazers and constant work shirt ironing.
As we all know, simple things like haircuts have been impossible, so at this stage my hair has been longer and bigger (I’m a curly head!!) than it’s been since I was in secondary school. It’s been a bit of a joke with everyone how big it is and I must admit that there is something about it that’s been enjoyable as the circumstances have forced me to go back in time.
While this time has been so unusual, complete with so much worry, sadness and uncertainty it has forced a very different way of living on us and as the restrictions are lifting gradually step by step it starts to close a door on the enforced life and prise open a door to some return to normal, whatever that looks like.
In ways I feel many of the changes were great changes and it would be so good to hold onto the better parts as we move forward.
In my head my impending haircut was taking on some ridiculous and much bigger significance – it was closing the door to that strange time.
After a few moments they were ready for me and as part of their very careful process I had to put on a mask – this is the first time I’ve done this and I couldn’t believe how awful it felt having this covering over my face and nose. I totally get why it’s necessary in these close quarters where everyone must be extremely careful as we emerge from lockdown, but it really felt stifling. They were saying how awful the masks were for sustained periods while working – god love our medical professionals!
“So, what will we do with your hair?” was the question by Kelly.
In my head I just wanted to leave and postpone the haircut so I explained to her that there was something about the long hair that I had enjoyed.
After a chat with Darren they reckoned long was actually quite good, so a little “tidy up” was the order of the day and the big mop of hair will love on for another while at least.
I’m not quite ready to return to normal, at least not until I’ve figured out what I want that to look like.
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