The Haymarket is a terrific hotel and our first day of The Coach went splendidly, as you can see from the accompanying photos. Not much to report, since I was working all day. I should have sent the butler.
Le Caprice last night was jammed. The octopus was quite wonderful, the squid disappointing, however. (It was my regular tentacle night.) The hotel Fedexed our big suitcase back with only 9 forms to fill out. They are doing photo shoots all over the hotel.
We meet adjoining the indoor pool, and have lunch around it. Tomorrow: Wollesley, suggested by a friend, as a great dining room. I’ve decided not to eat anything with more than four arms. Tonight: I’m treating ten of the first registrants for the program to dinner in the hotel dining room.
(Click on images to enlarge)
The Coach participants practicing (with varying success) the First Coaching
Position:
Lunch around the pool:
The rest of the pool:
Dr. Andrew Bass demonstrating BPC (British Passive Coaching):
Dr. Guido Quelle of Germany demonstrating AAC (Active Aggressive Coaching)
on Ilya Bogorad of Canada:
The final evening Maria came to the Churchill Room with me and met my “friends,” including Sir John Gielgud (Sean) whom you’ll see in an accompanying photo.
Breakfast on board, very civilized, no rush, docked in Southampton. Yesterday I had seen three birds flying aft of us, and I calculated we were 200 miles from land. Maybe they were the harbor pilots.
Cunard takes about an hour to offload the luggage while everyone relaxes. Then we receive priority disembarkation, which is handled like a military operation. We’re actually about the fourth people off the ship, our luggage is sitting in the designated area, and our driver is about 20 yards away, waiting.
He manages to get five bags into the big BMW (one will be Fedexed home from London) and then proceeds to get us to London in 90 minutes, driving, well, like someone I know.
The Haymarket Hotel is very trendy, quite nice, and the conference room is behind the indoor pool, which is lighted and heated and really something, what with fountains of water cascading into it. Should be an interesting program beginning tomorrow!
Tonight we’re off to Le Caprice, where we go every time we’re in London.
I’ve just slept for 9 hours, discounting the time change, which certainly makes a day somewhat briefer! We’re on our last full day at sea. For those of you who want to get a better idea of the experience, go to Cunard.com and click on Queen Mary 2, then on “accommodations,” then on the highest category, “Queens Grill 1.” You can then take a video, hosted tour of the complete duplex and balcony.
There was lobster flambé last night, but that’s nothing you should do to a lobster, so we made a special order for a far tastier grilling. We had a light Bordeaux, a 1999 Cos D’etournel, from Saint Estophe. Maria and I then had a contest to see whether she could lose $200 in the casino faster than I could smoke a cigar (one of my favorites, a Cubano Partegas Numero Quatro) in the Churchill Room. It was about a tie, but she got to meet the denizens of the club.
One of them told us the dance performance was outstanding, so we left just in time to catch the 10:45 show in the theater. The troupe was amazing, easily the best entertainment of the trip.
I’ve had emails from the Haymarket Hotel concierge on meeting the limo at the dock. It takes about two hours to empty the ship, but we have “priority disembarkation,” which I believe means we’re simply thrown over the side. The ship docks at about 7 am, we leave at 8:15 after a civilized breakfast, we retrieve luggage, clear customs (immigration work is done on the ship during the voyage), and off we go. I’m actually going to have to work for a day and a half, and that’s a downer. But Maria reminds me, “What you do isn’t really work.” In other words, I’m a doctor but not the kind who helps people.
Dinner at Todd English last night was mixed. We had a fabulous table, looking at the ocean but also at everyone who arrived and departed. (One couple, unhappy with their table, had some bread, then declared the menu “unsatisfactory” and left in a pronounced huff, the wife in quite an advanced state on the huff-a-meter.) My octopus was again great, but the swordfish was disappointing (I restrained my own huff). All was made better by a 2002 Chateau Pavié Bordeaux, which the sommelier had brought to the table with two other suggestions.
Maria then kept me awake in the theater during a pretty bad hour of an abbreviated “Private Lives,” which should have been truncated to nothing.
I repaired to the Churchill Room, with a spectacular Ashton and a glass of Louis XIII. The room was packed, and I was wise enough to refuse the elaborate steamed water and warming ritual, which would have been, ah, gauche.
The room was the hit of the evening. Everyone dressed to the gills, three women and 20 men, Americans, Canadians, British. The usual “racanteur” threatened to once again bore the room, so I turned into Extrovert Alan (which is a new doll from Mattel: pull the string and he talks about himself), and engaged my neighbors.
I made the acquaintance of a gay Canadian couple, retired and relatively young, who tour a third of the time, winter in Mexico, and spend the rest of the time at home. The folks to my right were Texans transplanted to California, a 60-year-old woman who looked 40, and not artificially. (We sat next to a woman in the theater who had to press her cheeks with her fingers in order to smile, and could only look left or right by completely turning her body in the desired direction.) The Canadians were replaced by a quite drunk Englishman named Sean who was a dead ringer for Noel Coward and whose partner told me secured free first class seats on British Air by asserting he was Sir John Gielgud’s brother. Sean insisted on calling me “Jerry,” which was actually the name of the singer in the lounge.
Anyway, several of us got into a trivia contest about Andy Kaufman’s character on Taxi, no less, including his ethnicity, and his girl friend’s name. (I had read the biography about two years ago, and easily won.) I wandered “home” (that quarter-mile) after midnight, recalling Latka Gravis.
This morning, I was up at 6:30 (really 5:30 with the constant time change) and worked out with very little sleep. (The treadmills are in miles per hour after all, mine was just broken the other day.) We skipped breakfast (it’s raining today, no opportunity to sit outside) and headed for an auction of Bob Hope’s possessions in the amphitheater. Arriving late, we bid on a great print he had owned of the original Queen Mary sailing into New York harbor with troops returning home in 1945. We won the item, and are having it shipped. (Ship’s auctions are great bargains if you know what you want, because it is a captive audience and a very limited one, perhaps 20 serious bidders in a room of 400, no reserves on the material, and the ducks just swimming in a barrel. Hope’s engraved watch, thanking him for wartime efforts, went for only $4,000.)
After lunch I caught up on my writing, saw that Tom Brady was injured (oh, boy) for the Patriots, and we’re now getting ready for another reception with the Commodore on what is the final formal evening onboard.
Photos to follow. I virtually never have a cigar two days in a row, but I may just make an exception tonight! Perhaps I’ll pretend to be Oscar Wilde: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Note: For years I’ve been the most widely read columnist in ManagementConsultingNews.com. When I turned in this column, from the high seas no less, the editor told me that he doesn’t allow people in the news to be used in columns, even when non-partisan, as this one. He said I could skip this month or write a new one. (I have been doing him a favor, of course, writing for free all this time.) I told him there was another option, and that was that I’d simply end the column. You’ll find below a non-partisan lesson for consultants from watching Ms. Palin. I hardly think that intelligent consultants would find this inappropriate, and I see no need to “protect them” from contemporary examples. So such articles will now go on the blog, where I happen to know the editor quite well.
Why Sarah Palin Holds Lessons for Consultants
I don’t care what your politics are—I’m an independent and don’t know for whom I’ll vote yet in November—the Republican vice presidential candidate has a great deal to offer to consultants as a role model.
Whoa, you’re awfully confident!
The most important aspect of her presence is that she exudes confidence. She was on the greatest stage of her life with a minimum of preparation (or even notification) time, and she conducted herself as though she had been doing this weekly, for years. (At times, her TelePrompTer failed to provide the top two lines of a passage, and she simply extemporized them to lead into her point.)
Picture the consultant in the formidable office, in front of the dominant personality, without much opportunity to prepare. I’ve seen meetings and read follow-ups from too many consultants who profusely thank the prospect as though they had been granted an audience with a medieval emperor, bowing and scraping and happy to have escaped, instead of eager to go back.
Ms. Palin wasn’t intimidated. Failure on her part (and some people would claim she’d failed no matter how well she did, as though if she walked on water they’d merely point out that she can’t swim) would be severe for others, yet she didn’t succumb to what could have been crushing pressure.
Why? Well, she has terrific language skills. She has a close and loving family and a clearly wonderful support system. She has a track record of success in lesser venues which she could extend to this grander one. And she didn’t let the inevitable microscopic scrutiny of her life and family put her on the defensive.
Can you create that?
How do you do all that?
Moreover, she has a diverse life. She has interests and hobbies. She shares some interests with her husband, but not others. She has elected to raise a family. She decided to be a maverick—a contrarian—in her political positions.
She’s very threatening because, in a time when some claim that a woman can’t have it all, she is making a mighty fine argument that you can.
She eliminates excuses and just gets things done.
I would suggest to you, again, irrespective of politics, that consultants could do a lot worse than develop and adopt these traits. You can’t be intimidated, can’t be a sycophant, can’t be obsequious; you need a diverse life and multifaceted support system; must develop superb communications skills, and the ability to extemporize; extend prior successes to current and future environments; and not be afraid to fail.
The prospect is not your superior. Your failure to engage in a relationship will not endanger the fate of the civilized world. Your time is a valuable as the buyer’s. You are not “taking,” you are giving. You are involved in a collaborative act, not an adversarial one. No one can make you fail except you. It doesn’t matter what the inevitable critics say, all that matters is that you tried your best.
And so….
Could you have performed as well as she under those conditions? If not, you need to arrive at a point where you could. Is that unreasonable? Ms. Palin is from a small town, with a lot of demands on her time. She’s “everyperson.”
Top consultants have been in pressurized environments with powerful people and critical audiences. That’s when they perform best, when the chips are on the table and the deadlines draw near. Adrenaline flows and a sense of urgency prevails.
Don’t simply watch the performance of people in the spotlight and assume they are better than you, or better supported, or more carefully prepared. Put yourself in their shoes. Could you perform? Could you pull it together?
Most of the Hollywood stars I’ve heard speak are functionally inarticulate, in that they are accustomed to scripts and directors and simply reshooting errors. They are completely unaccustomed to performing “live.” You and I perform “live” all the time, just like the politicians. That’s not going to change, so we might as well get good at it.
Oh, yeah. Ms. Palin has an 85% approval rating among her constituents. Do you?
Where in the world is Alan Weiss? You may need a nautical mile converter to find out or just listen to this podcast and hear Alan reporting for sea. And finally find out what is the one speaking gig even Alan would love to get.
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Dover sole last night, quite good. We then ventured to the Queen’s Royal Court, and Jerri Sager, a veteran Broadway and West End chanteuse, belted out the traditional show-stoppers in a somewhat overwrought manner, but with a wonderful voice, backed by a seven piece house orchestra. It was an enjoyable hour in a fabulous theater. (A few Americans stood in ovation, but the mostly-British audience applauded politely while seated, which is SO much better than acting as if you’ve just seen Olivier in his prime every time someone holds a microphone.)
And all that was after meeting the Commodore and ship’s officers for hors d’oeuvres and drinks in the Queen’s Ballroom (with a couple of hundred other guests). There is a photo here or coming of me in a tux with a bow tie, very rare, and I was just too uncomfortable to visit the Churchill Lounge for a late cigar.
We’re slightly more than halfway across the Atlantic, air temperature is 68° and ocean temperature 73°. It is exceedingly warm for this time of year, and the entire crew is telling us it doesn’t get this good even in mid-summer.
While the other classes have fixed seatings (or merely a cafeteria, which must be 300 yards long, midship), we have our own table, so no matter what time we choose to dine, it is available in the Queen’s Grill. (Are you starting to see a pattern to these names?) When we don’t show up (we tend to have lunch on our deck and sometimes dinner in a special room) the staff seems upset. This morning I had kippered herring, which is actually one of my favorite breakfast dishes.
Here is a story that is the result of odd happenstance and my own pluck and dumb luck. It is absolutely true, and occurred just this morning.
Maria and I attended Catholic Mass. It’s held every morning, but today is Sunday so we attended today. It takes place in a beautiful amphitheater called The Planetarium, and about 200 people were present. Mass was celebrated by a Holy Cross priest from Melbourne, Florida, in his late 60s, and he was assisted by a retired priest who happened to be making the voyage, who looked to be about 80.
Two readers volunteered from the audience, one Australian and one American, and they did a far better job than the regular readers in our own parish. The service was beautifully done with quite a thoughtful homily.
We took an alternative exit to avoid the crowds leaving, and found ourselves in a gallery of huge photos of past Queen Mary celebrity travelers—Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor, Gary Grant, Bob Hope (whose daughter in currently on the ship lecturing), Douglas Fairbanks, Ginger Rogers, and so on. That circumlocution, and the time we took admiring the work and an age of real star power, brought us to the next deck at a certain time and place where I rang for the elevator.
Timing is everything. The car arrived and opened, and the Florida priest was on it, returning to his room, having packed his gear while we were stargazing. We told him how much we had enjoyed the service. Then, although an introvert, the collegiate, multiple-award-winning journalist sprang forth:
Me: Tell me, Father, how is it you get an assignment like this?
Him: Actually, I applied for it.
Me: To whom do you apply? (I’m figuring the archbishop of maritime affairs, or somebody like that.)
Him: To my speakers bureau.
Maria and I are silent for two seconds, then simultaneously dissolve in laughter.
Him, good-naturedly: Is that funny?
Me: Father, I’m a professional speaker, I’m on my way to London to speak, I’m in the Speakers Hall of Fame, and this is one gig I would love to have!
The elevator stops at the priest’s deck, he turns in the doorway and holds the doors open. As he allows them to close, he smiles at me and points to his neck.
Him: Son, you’ll need the collar, first.
We are, this afternoon, passing about 35 nautical miles north of the Titanic. No, you can’t make this up. They actually proudly announce it. (Last night on the closed circuit TV they showed “The Titanic,” not the great original, but that awful, more recent piece of jetsam that was woefully miscast and directed with the finesse of an ax murderer. But I digress.) I’m wondering if they’ll screen The Wreck of the Hesperus tonight.
Last evening, already in my tux, I wandered out to the balcony to watch the sun set. (It’s very simple here: It rises over the bow, sets over the stern, and travels during the day down the starboard side of the ship.) The aft deck and pool were empty, but suddenly a half-dozen people emerged from nowhere to rush to the port railing, and the people two balconies over appeared with binoculars.
The field glasses were unnecessary. In a moment of great good luck for me, the liner Aurora passed by headed west, a scant two hundred yards away, like a great ghost ship. All white, looking more like a cruise ship than a liner, and perhaps even more like a beluga whale, I watched her pass at the equivalent of 50 knots (each ship doing 25 in opposite directions.) In ten minutes she disappeared into the horizon. A great meeting in the middle of the ocean.
Dinner at Todd English was up to expectations: grilled octopus and squid, followed by perfectly cooked tenderloin, accompanied by a very smooth ’98 Saint Julien Meritage.
We then wandered back into the 1930s, visiting the ball rooms, art galleries, and public areas, where everyone wore formal attire. There was nothing grandiloquent—the ship, after all, is not Italian or French—just stately British, upper crust atmosphere, the kind that once prevailed during the Raj.
You cannot walk more than 25 yards on the QM2 without finding a lounge, bar, pub, or saloon, depending on the deck and class of service. I have never, ever, seen so much liquor in a confined space, not even within an equivalent square footage in Boston.
This morning I began my workout with my treadmill clearly underperforming. Since nothing is broken on this ship for more that two minutes, I couldn’t figure out why I had to juice up my usual numbers. Some of you, no doubt, have guessed: The readings are in kilometers. (Yes, I know the British use miles, but there you have it.) Doing a five-eighths conversion in my head was more work than the treadmill.
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