You Ain't Nothin But A Hound Dog

The handsome though hare-brained pooch pictured is of course mine, Dolly, captured by the camera in one of her rare contemplative moments. Once a tender little puppy you could hold with one hand, now after fourteen months’ rapid growth, we have 45kg of prime force-of-destruction German Shepherd. It wasn’t my idea to have a dog, I’m much more of a cat person. No, it was a family decision, forced through on majority vote, assurances given that I wouldn’t be the only one walking it, getting up at the crack of dawn to release it to do its business, to rummage in the cold garage and feed it. Empty promises.

Still Dolly and I have bonded despite it all. Sure we have had our adventures – I will never forget being summoned to collect her from Dunfermline police station, a full 13 miles away, to collect her after she had gone for a walk on her own. She remains the one of the only two members of the family to have been detained in police custody. Maybe she thought they would recruit her. I have also learned to cope with her exuberance, like when she tears headlong into a cluster of frail pensioners on the railway path, one of whom may have made encouraging sounds to her, unaware they would all be scattered like ninepins to the grass borders. I think I must have handed out more business cards on dry-cleaning dog related matters than actual business, but there it is. It would all make for a Disney movie except there’s too much swearing. It’s with a mixture of pride and shame I realise she is the only dog around us who responds to the words ‘For F*ck’s Sake!’ as an actual instruction. What was in the brochure I was sold, man and his trained beast? Try to imagine a One Man and his Dog type shepherd and ultra-obedient sheepdog competition, with a surprise entry by Rod Hull and Emu.

Anyway. Infuriatingly, she displays some higher forms of intelligence when it suits. She knows when I am bluffing. She knows when I am pretending to call her over to play so I can put her away and go out. She especially knows when I am under pressure to do this. She sits and looks at me and charmingly tilts her head to signal her bafflement; Did You Really Think I’d Fall For That?

What is it in me that gives it away? Something in my voice, my body language, the desperate expression on my face? Dogs have a radar for tension. They just know when it’s not for real.

I once had a boss with a most curious public-speaking persona. Firstly, no matter the interventions of yours truly or any number of performance coaches, he would always address any crowd of more than 20 like it was 2,000. He didn’t often address gatherings of 2,000 and that meant there were many groups of 21 or more who were left wondering why he was yelling at them from a miked-up podium as if they were at the far end of a stadium. The other tell was that his voice would raise a full two octaves when he reached a keynote part of his speech, usually when mentioning anything to do with innovation, collaboration, or, most tellingly of all, customer. A full mezzo soprano if it was all three at once. The team at the sound desk would know they would face eager questions at the break. Was there a problem with the microphones, the mixing desk, his underpants? I have my own hypothesis.

Holiday reading for me included two music autobiographies from the remaindered bins of HMV. Both contained unexpected insights that are key here. The first from John Lydon/Rotten of Sex Pistols fame, the second from Mr Mark E Smith of The Fall. Both seminal figures in the punk rock/post punk scene, the mention of which gives away the age and concerns of your author but bear with me. The insights? The erstwhile Johnny Rotten readily admits he was under no illusions from the get-go about the severe limitations of his singing voice, but he had such faith and conviction in the words he had crafted to vocalise that he made it his business to find whatever it took to get them across. On songs he was particularly proud of, his diction, pace and performance were absolutely dictated by the sincerity of the lyric content and his need to get it over. Conversely, on those songs he thought were more mere filler, he would employ all manner of vocal histrionics and mannerisms to disguise the paucity of ideas in verse and chorus. The first time this observer has ever come across such an admission. Lydon writes of it like it’s an involuntary action, his subconscious fighting against himself because he knows deep inside it’s not good enough. Think about it.

And Mark E Smith. For those reading who have never heard of The Fall, all you need to know is that they were there at the birth of punk rock, and are still as vital, challenging and unlistenable as they were then. But still going, with a new sound and following every five or so years. Not on the nostalgia circuit, not drug or management casualties either. (We will leave out alcohol for the moment to suit my case). Punk rock, Mr Smith correctly surmises, was all about rebellion and rejection of society norms. Some groups were very good at the start at posturing the rebellion bit. Very few had the wit, guile or intelligence to take it somewhere new after that. Somewhere unexpected, entertaining and unexpected. To do that meant taking risks and showing leadership, not merely reflecting the pubescent angst of your initial audience. And they knew it. Smith has special contempt for those bands and acts that tried to disguise their limitations through ever more strident, and ever more empty, sloganeering. You can buy the book or drop me an email to read the list of his worst culprits, but you’ll never listen to your CD collection in quite the same way if you do. Household names, huge names, and you suddenly realise he has a point.

Business Transformation. The Digital revolution. Customer at The Heart of the Business. Buzz words of the moment. Collaboration, Partnership, Real Value Creation. The next time you find yourself at a conference and the speaker is banging on about any of these, listen hard to see if they can illustrate with any recent and compelling examples of new practice and policy that makes it all real. Are they bringing it to life? Are they asking for help to bring it to life? Do they impress you with the admission that they are putting in the hard yards to develop something risky yet worthwhile? Or is it all bombast and assertion, a bullet pointed list of empty clichés? They put the customer first and the proof is that they go to conferences and say so. Is there more to it than that or are they as preposterously hollow as U2? Woops.

Which brings me back to the enormodrome syndrome. Where the speaker yells as if they are addressing the gathered population of a small country. It’s all about distancing, isn’t it? Distancing yourself from a message you are unsure of. Giving one enormous signal that you are remote, unwilling to engage or exchange because the cupboard is bare and you just want to bluster over this. Don’t ask because I don’t care, I am not in any way, inhabiting this message. That’s why I have a little deck of pre-prepared jokes and anecdotes to distract you. This communication comes one-way only. Bye.

One of the most commonly held fallacies of the digital age is that corporates and businesses can get their message out cheaply. Why pay for expensive advertising when you can Tweet your way to glory for free? One clever post to 20,000 followers and job done. Except what if the 20,000 want to reply, which after all, is the ‘social’ bit of ‘social media’. Are we ready for that, geared up?  What exactly are we signalling with one way feeds, extolling our excitement at how great we are, without knowing it?

And finally, of course, what if the speaker on the podium is you, and it’s your voice going ever higher because you can’t convince yourself either? You are just saying what you think you should be heard to be saying and there’s an involuntary action going on inside. Well you can keep going up higher like my then boss used to do, until your voice reaches a frequency that only dogs can hear.

But you can take it from me, the dog in portrait above for one won’t buy it. She’ll just tilt her head. Charmingly.