Harvard Business Review to the Rescue

Grumpy’s creative juices have been running slowly in the last few weeks, for reasons which are not entirely clear. I had been thinking about having another dig at the BBC 24 Hour News, which is always an easy target. However last week, the Harvard Business Review came to my rescue.

Those of you familiar with these matters will know that the Harvard Business Review is a pretty heavyweight business and management magazine. No gossip columns here. Serious management academics and practitioners have their ideas and theories printed here. So if I am going to target “HBR” (as we people in the trade say), I had better make sure that my thoughts are solidly based. But I know that you would not expect anything other than complete intellectual rigour from Grumpy.

By way of background, I was recently invited to come back to my old stomping ground at Credit Suisse to help out around the place, as we professional high flyers say. In walking through the building to see what had changed, I saw, to my relief, that the library was still where it had always been. My heart leapt and I carefully and quietly entered the hallowed halls. I was in fear that my new status as an external contractor, might have prejudiced my previous privileges and ability to take out a book or business journal (No copies of the Beano here, but I am working on that).

I need not have feared. I was greeted like a long lost friend and before you could say “Ipswich Town; Ipswich Town FC; it’s the finest football team, the world has ever seen”, a copy of Harvard Business Review was in my hands for the reading.

It was not until lunch that I had the chance to read it, or at least peruse the contents. I was immediately struck by one article, which opened “Have you ever tried to kick a football with your eyes shut?”

This article had my attention. It went on to develop some useful and interesting ideas, but it was the opening that made me look at the openings of other articles. I decided to do a quick scan of other articles.

“Work-Life Balance has become a hot topic in recent years.” Now there’s an unoriginal opening, if ever there was one.

“The Internet has changed the way we work and live.” It is hard not to be overwhelmed by a sense of the obvious, a kind of literary sedative.

“Corporations now operate in a landscape rife with new threats to their reputations.” This is a real candidate for the “Obvious Statement of the Year Competition.”

The problem with Grumpy is (more accurately “One of the problems with Grumpy is …”) is that once turned off, it is very hard to get his interest going again. The reality was that the body of these articles really were as banal as the openings. I could only assume that the writers were more intent on getting their own names into print than in trying to keep the interest of the reader (and, Yes, in order to educate me, you do actually need to interest me as well).

I shall be watching out for banal and sedative openings. I think that this could have further to run. Watch this space.