Book Review by Les Rees

June 30, 2009 in Book | No comments

Book Review If you are concerned with how society is changing then you should read this book. It contains some interesting insights into how society via government is being moulded, whether intentionally or not.

Bay lists some of the problem he sees with the way governments are governing and global challenges such as the current global recession. You may or may not agree with what he has written, however, it will make you think. Bay also provides solutions to the problems that he highlights.

This is a book that you may need to read twice to get the full benefit. I know I will be reading this again in twelve months time. I found this to be an interesting and worthwhile read.

Les Rees, Principle of Les Rees Ltd. Les is a Chartered Accountant specialising in S.M.E’s and start-ups, he has had nearly 20 years experience in assisting business owners to improve both their bottom line and lifestyle. His website is www.lesrees.co.nz
Book Review

If you are concerned with how society is changing then you should read this book. It contains some interesting insights into how society via government is being moulded, whether intentionally or not.

Bay lists some of the problem he sees with the way governments are governing and global challenges such as the current global recession. You may or may not agree with what he has written, however, it will make you think.

Bay also provides solutions to the problems that he highlights.
This is a book that you may need to read twice to get the full benefit. I know I will be reading this again in twelve months time.

I found this to be an interesting and worthwhile read.

Les Rees, Principle of Les Rees Ltd. Les is a Chartered Accountant specialising in S.M.E’s and start-ups, he has had nearly 20 years experience in assisting business owners to improve both their bottom line and lifestyle.

The Circle of Life!

June 24, 2009 in Book | No comments

Be Do Have Diagram (Original Alistair Lobo version)

Be Do Have Diagram (Original Alistair Lobo version)

As I explain in my introduction, this Be Do Have model is such an intuitive, natural concept that it helped me shape my life, even though I only formally learned about it in the past year.

Since publishing the book, however, I have realised that both this diagram and my supporting description are inadequate. Both make the elements appear sequential, with each step forming a precedent that determines the quality of the next. This is only partly true, because, as I have since realised, they are actually a behaviour continuum where each has an ongoing effect on the others. Therefore the concept can and should be more realistically portrayed as follows:

Be Do Have Diagram (Revised Bay Jordan Version)

Be Do Have Diagram (Revised Bay Jordan Version)

The distinction is important because it reinforces the progressive nature of life and helps illustrate why the outcomes we are currently experiencing are undermining our individual and collective sense of self-worth, and thus why we need to change. It is effectively a wider interpretation of Helen Douglas’ observation, “Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action.” If we want a more stable, secure world, we have to go back to the highest concepts of who we are, in order to reverse the current outcomes that are moving us in the opposite direction and endangering the human race and the whole planet.

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A Lesson from Fleas and Fish

June 15, 2009 in Book, General | No comments

clearing-the-barIn their book “The Gorillas Want Bananas” Debbie Jenkins and Joe Gregory describe the once popular phenomenon of flea circuses and how, by putting a lid on the box so that they crashed into it whenever they jumped, fleas could be trained not to jump so high, until eventually they could be kept in the box with no lid at all. I had heard this before and forgotten it, but it also reminded me of a similar story about a glass sheet being put in a fish tank, preventing fish from using the whole tank. Eventually, when the glass is removed, the fish have become so used to the restricted space they make no attempt to swim beyond where the glass was.

As I reflected on both these examples of conditioned thinking, I realised that in “A Feeling of Worth” I am actually challenging the extent to which we, humankind, have allowed ourselves to be conditioned in the same way. To what extent is “tall poppy” syndrome – the tendency for the majority to try to cut down anybody who rises above the rest – inhibiting our ability to progress as a society?

Of course I don’t have any definitive answers, but I do sense that this is a major factor in modern western society, and that, in the name of equality, there is a tendency to lower standards to meet the average. My argument is not with the principle of equality, but simply that this should be equality of opportunity, and that once given the opportunity people should be judged on the use they make of that opportunity.

For example, compulsory universal education is a desirable standard and a principle to which we all happily subscribe. Modern technology even makes it easier to remove the inequities caused by varying standards of teaching (even if it does not eliminate them completely.) Effective use of these capabilities would minimise the historic ‘lottery’ associated with education that created the situation whereby the quality of education depends on social standing and residential location. Yet, even then, results will vary because abilities differ.

Unfortunately, educational effort seems to be focused more on equalising results than equalising opportunity. Consequently, while it is a worthy goal to make university education more accessible to all, this appears to be being achieved by promoting a general lowering of standards that:

  • Reduces the spread in results, and ensures that more students achieve the highest grades in their qualifying examinations.
  • Promotes university selection policies that are distorted by social considerations rather than pure academic achievements.
  • Reduces the calibre of the student intake which, inevitably, has to reduce the standard of the ultimate degree, and hence the graduate capability.
  • Proliferates a number of graduate qualifications that are not consistent with the standards normally associated with university degrees.

Some might argue that, precisely because abilities do vary, this ultimately is simply an alternative method of creating “a more level playing field” where more people have greater opportunities than they might otherwise have had. The problem is that it inhibits the capabilities of the more able, and thus, for the wider community, reduces the overall potential. In a world where we need to make better use of resources this is waste, and as such is unconscionable.

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Wow! Things sure are moving fast!

May 28, 2009 in Book | No comments

reform-blog1It’s a bit of a cliché to talk about the rapid pace of change, but we have certainly seen it lately. When I wrote “A Feeling of Worth” there was nothing (at least in my experience) to suggest there would be a crisis over MP’s expenses. Yet in the past few weeks we have seen an investigation into MP’s expense claims result in daily exposés that, amongst other things, have:

  • Forced a significant number to recognise that they have killed the goose that laid the golden egg and so stand down at the next election.
  • Resulted in many others being investigated by their own – suddenly scrupulous – party, with the threat that they might no longer be considered “worthy.”
  • Raised a very real possibility that a number will face criminal charges for excesses that actually amounted to fraud or embezzlement.

Yet, by far the biggest consequence is the sudden clamour for major political reform. There are government ministers now suddenly advocating proportional representation, something they never considered before there was a possibility that they might lose the next election. And David Cameron is suddenly calling for “sweeping reform” with power “redistributed from the political elite to the man and woman in the street.”

These comments should be enough to raise the alarm bells for any thinking person. How on earth do we get from what – apart from the obvious fraudulent cases of a minority of MPs – is simply a massive (and unethical) abuse of an incredibly weak, inadequately controlled, expense/allowance system, to wholesale constitutional reform and changing the whole way of governing? News reports today are talking about the ‘mob-rule’ mentality that is being galvanised, and there is no doubt that the electorate is entitled to feel disillusioned, but mob rule does not provide a good basis for balance or hence for constructive, effective change.

While it is massively encouraging to have some of the ideas in my book so suddenly and publicly endorsed, I am concerned about the motives for such radical changes, and even more by the haste with which they have been aired. Unless they have been on a hidden agenda for a long time and now is suddenly seen as an ideal time to test them out, they cannot have been properly thought through. And a hastily conceived solution and/or a rushed implementation of a solution may well create a worse problem than the one being remedied.

So, let’s just fix the MPs expense system and then have some proper debate about structural change, rather than have this sort of partisan point-scoring which is something the book condemns anyway.

Buy A Feeling Of Worth

May 22, 2009 in Book | No comments

You can buy my new book A Feeling Of Worth here:

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