"It is
impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for
their presentation is provided or available." Thomas Mann, 1896
Letter from the
President
June 1st, 2001
John
Hathaway-Bates
President
& Executive Director
Fifty years ago my class room teacher, Miss Money, at Saint Mary & Saint John's Anglican School in Oxford, explained to me that to be successful, one needed to study hard and work hard, always be well dressed (for you never know when the King's car might break down and he would be knocking on your door to ask for assistance) and never to forget that if God had been kind enough to give you the opportunity to help shape the world, then it was only respectful to try to leave it a better place than you found it.
Miss Money was to retire the same year as I moved on to Southfield Grammar School for boys, which meant that she had lived long enough to impart her very Victorian attitudes from her childhood in the late 1800's into young men who would see the next Millennium. I remember very well the second part of her speech to us after Assembly every morning also. She always threw it out as an aside as she went back to the blackboard to begin the day's business. It went something like this; "It also helps of course, if you have a lot of luck, a lot of friends and a lot of connections in the right places!"
Today I have the almost unheard of opportunity in life to spend most of my time in discussion with senior decision makers in business and government every day, so it helps that I still remember both Miss Money's advice and her cynicism.
The reason for that preamble is that we are living today in a world where Change (with a capital C) is actually what life has become. Back in 1949, when I could go into the store and pick up everything on my Mother's list and merely say "Charge it, please", (and our bread was delivered to our door by a horse drawn van), I do not think Miss Money could have even envisioned electronic commerce as it is today. Yet I still believe that her advice applies just as well now as it ever has.
Now we do business between Continents with the click of a mouse and the Internet has become the social backbone of a generation. Back in 1949, even in Oxford, which has always been one of the most cosmopolitan cities on Earth and a center of research and development, business depended upon Customer Service. Back then however, Customer Service was almost always between two people who communicated directly and privately with each other. In the electronic world we live in today most communication is designed for mass consumption, being accessed not just by lots of people at the same time, but by people who come from many cultures and environments, and whom you will probably never meet except on-line.
In Miss Money's day the Customer, although treated with respect of course, had few alternatives, and most supply lines were represented to the end customer by someone who was not only their neighbor, but probably belonged to the same Church or Temple and whose children attended the same school as did their own.
Against my advice the World changed, so The Business Forum is planning to help our members and friends with forums for the near future that deal with this very concept of moving masses of information and managing relationships electronically, to multiple users, with just as many understandings of what Customer Service should be as there are individual pebbles on a beach.
I
personally think you could only gain if you were to heed Miss Money's advice
and either attend, or request information from, these Forums.
Information on the dates, and locations etc. is on our CALENDAR
page. If you cannot attend yourself, pass the invitation on to someone
in your organization who can add to the discussion, for Miss Money also
advised us "helping the team is always the best way of actually helping
yourself!"
President & Executive Director
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