Yesterday’s post about business being personal got me thinking about another hoary old cliché that pops up all too often.
It’s the idea that ‘nice guys finish second’.
I thought these unpleasant aphorisms died out in the 1980s with red braces and airbrushed posters.
If a nice guy finishes second, it’s not because he’s nice. It’s because he wasn’t trying hard enough. Similarly, you don’t have to be Tony Soprano to be good at business.
Last night I watched Sir Alan Sugar fire Mona on The Apprentice (to you guys in the US he’s our Donald Trump) and marveled at the media persona the BBC have created for him.
He bellows that he’s the “most belligerent boss you’ll ever have” but I’m afraid I’m not convinced. After all, when it comes to the interview round, he brings on his colleagues who’ve worked for him for 20-30 years.
If Sir Alan was really as objectionable as his TV personality, there’d be no-one left in his business.
I can safely say that I’ve never met anyone successful who was genuinely unpleasant, which isn’t to say that there aren’t a few of them out there.
On the whole though, unpleasantness and real success are mutually exclusive.
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- Kevin Jackson
- The glasses are important, since I’m almost totally blind in one eye. This means I have zero depth perception. Instead of making snap judgements, I have to think around a subject and look again to try and gain a sense of perspective. And that’s what I’m doing here - taking a different view of the trends and patterns around us to see if they’re as close as they seem, or further away than we thought. There’s not a discipline within the communications mix that I haven’t spent time in – what connects them though, is my passion for igniting advocacy and word-of-mouth. I’ve also worked on multi-platform campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands, we are all on first-name terms. Ultimately, whether it’s a consumer, business or internal audience, no one is exempt from my belief in engaging experiential communications. Over the last four years ago, I’ve been busy developing relationships across the telecoms, technology, FMCG, retail and energy sectors, to name a few.
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