The Pudding Club

Posting on 12th March 2019, the day the UK Parliament is due, yet again, to have the chance to vote on Mrs May's universally hated Brexit Deal. She and all MPs regardless of whether in Leave or Remain camps, agree it is not the best deal or even the best solution. The vote, assuming it isn't cancelled yet again, will be based largely on saving face, Party & jobs.
----------------------------------------

On 1st September 1981, I had been transferred by my employer Grand Metropolitan Hotels based in London to their Berni Inns Division based in Bristol but working from home in Sussex.

In the next 3 years, the Berni business went through a massive change both in its outward concept/appearance but also within the Board & senior management. My internal audit department of about 10 also found our long-time boss "moved" into pension & in spring 1984 a new boss was announced & presented to us. A few weeks later he was gone and not voluntarily. A few months later we luckily got a new boss who especially for me was to radically change my career.


Martyn, a Mancunian Chartered Accountant, did an excellent job restructuring the department & became for all of us a highly respected leader. The friendship lasted long after we later went our different ways but suddenly he disappeared off the radar, Would still like to once again thank him for his trust in me.


One of the first signs of this trust was him sending me on a week-long "Management" course specifically for our company. I guess we were about 12 employees and a couple of external tutors. It was held at the rather nice small country hotel, "Three Ways House" in the village of Mickleton near Chipping Campden.


My memories of the course were largely about the day we spent playing with Lego. Turned out to be an exercise that stayed with me all my life. Divided into mixed groups of four with one person appointed "Leader", we had an hour in separate rooms to design & manage the process of how we as a group would build a bridge made of Lego that had to span a specified width of river and build this within 5 minutes in front of the other groups.

In essence, chaos broke out & I'm not sure any group shined. One group's effort sums up nicely the lesson we were being taught. When they were required to do their presentation, the three "workers" went on strike & refused to take part with their leader.

What had happened: the appointed Leader, the eldest,  took it as his job to tell everyone else what to do & how they were going to do it. The other male in the group was a young family father with considerable Lego experience but he was totally ignored. The two female workers, also mothers & Lego experienced,  were also told to mind their own business and simply sort the box of bricks into the different sizes and shapes.  

The lesson - if you are charged with a task, determine what resources you have and share out the responsibilities to those with the best talents and this will often mean you give up the leadership for that task to someone else and this may include putting yourself at the bottom of the ladder. A lesson for Mrs May, perhaps?

The module we did on Thursday, the last full day, was entitled "Management of Change" and discussed what has always been the case but was starting to increase it's pace enormously in the 1980s and has increased significantly with every future year. For the evening, a senior company manager had driven up from Bristol, we thought simply to give a pep talk. Before pre-dinner drinks, he read us a hot-off-the-press company press release announcing there was to be an enormous reorganisation within the entire Grand Met division which would affect us all. Dinner was muted! Change something UK Parliament doesn't seem to be able to get to grips with.

With interest & amusement, we saw that the Hotel had weeks before started a Friday "Pudding Club" and could see what would be on offer the next evening. This Club still exists today and has become famous throughout the world! Soon it will be holding it's 34th birthday, probably its first outside the EU! Pudding Club - a good title for the Conservative Party!