Business in Glasgow

I was handing out postcards in the city centre streets promoting  an online survey last week (have you completed it yet?). At 8am  on the hard wet pedestrian precincts of Glasgow city centre it was I who felt sorry for these hundreds of people rushing to work with a brolly in one hand, a phone in the other, Ipod wires in their ears, then being asked if they would like to take part on an online survey! Its the very last thing you can be bothered about at that time on a Monday morning. They had my sympathy.

Sure, don’t get me wrong I was anxious that every single person would take a card and dutifully go online to complete the survey, but of course they all didn’t take a card, and of those who did, well other things got in the way of the act taking place. Some did fill it in (Thank you!), but overall I could not blame them for feeling harassed a nd burdened. I and my team were adding one more on them.

I kept thinking about Jesus looking at the crowds around him, seeing their harrassment,’ like sheep without a shepherd he said’.

So I plead forgiveness if we added to yours last week, it wasn’t our intention. Hopefully too, when we finally analyze our results we might have useful data we can respond to with measures that might ease the pressures that many face in today’s fast paced world. To that end there will be no ‘Engage ‘ meetings over the next two weeks. We are taking an Easter break and hope that you too might get a chance to rest and replenish the drained batteries of your soul.

I look forward to catching up with you in the post Easter season. Happy Easter

I never thought I would feel as disappointed as I did when I got a Conditions of Let for a public event in the city streets and the required obligations amounted to all the letters of the alphabet bar one.

When I began to check out some of the conditons I was disappointed to realise they  stretched from a – y but “z” was missing. Who wants an extra regulation when you have so many you might think? I just felt there was an incompleteness about the conditons of let when we missed out “z”. This was also surprising when you saw the content of some of the obligations. One was for example ‘you note that no military involvement may take place without the prior agreement of Land Environmental Services.’

When you get rules and regulations like that you wonder if there could possibly be anything else that could be missed because they have obviously taken great care to ensure that every eventuality has been covered.

It got me to think along the lines of, what if you had the chance to add one more rule or regulation to life, what would you make?

I know we are living in a day and generation when the rules and regulations can overwhelm and swamp us, but is there one particular one that strikes you as one that you would like to see as part of the way life and society is structured and organised?

Let me give you an somewhat trivial example to get you thinking:

1. When you are pushing a pram or buggy and trying to struggle into a shop through a very heavy glass door, there should be rule that states that ‘the proprietor or manager of the shop must come and open the door for you whether you are male or female’.

What burning issue is there in your mind that gets you exasperated, fills you with frustration, if not anger because the rest of humankind ignores or misses a very important principle that you feel needs to be observed? How would that affect and shape your life if it was a common principle that everyone accepted and lived by?

We will be discussing that and similar matters around the table on Tuesday 23rd March, if you would like to be part of this discussion then please do drop me a line and I will let you know where we meet. We usually start at 5.30pm at the end of a working day, relax with some good food and drink and have a chat until 7pm.

I look foward to seeing you at some point.

If you’d like to take part in our Spirituality and Work Survey, please visit the Survey site.

I was flicking through the Guardian paper the other day and came across a picture which
I found quite moving. It was a picture of a road full of people being held back in an
orderly queue by policemen with three big armoured vehicles. It stretched back as far as the eye could see.

As I read the note attached to the picture I became more and more challenged by what I saw. The picture was of residents of Oukasie in Pretoria, South Africa who were threatening to disrupt the World Cup if their demands for housing, running water, electricity and flushing toilets were not met.

I felt ashamed that here were these people  having to take to the open road to request the basic fundamentals that I take for granted. In fact my family and I rejoiced over this very thing when more than fifty years ago we moved from the inner city out to the brand new housing scheme of Easterhouse.

These thousands of people were threatening to disrupt a football competition that will be watched by billions of people because they do not have the basics of life that I take so much for granted.

I felt moved and challenged by this, so much so that I think the topic for our next table talk when we meet at Engage on Tuesday 16th March at 5.30pm is this – would I be more  annoyed at the interruption of my viewing of the World Cup than thinking that people are living in abject poverty, not so much as 20 miles from where the World Cup will take place?

I look forward to seeing you sometime at Engage, in the meantime I hope your work is prospering and more importantly that your life is flourishing.

I’ve just been listening to Andreas Whittam Smith on BBC iPlayer give a great Lent Talk on the financial markets and the temptation of Christ.

Well worth a listen as a summary of the temptations what people who work with wealth face. It takes about 10 minutes to listen to.

Hope you find this helpful

This event will be an informal talk by Dr David Fraser around the themes of relationships and can they be made easy? Here’s David’s introduction:

David is about to release a book called Relationships made Easy: How to get on with people we need to get on with…and stay friends with everyone else, and he will be talking to us about all that he has learned about relationships and connecting with other people as he has journeyed through life.

David works with organisations of all kinds and he’ll share some great insights into avoiding mistakes with other people and connecting successfully with them instead.