Back in the far-distant 1980s, a friend and I, fresh-faced and fresh out of film school, produced a feature-length video. When we set about securing distribution, the principal High Street multiples at the time, W.H. Smith and Virgin, both classified our project as ‘Self Improvement,’ and said that we would therefore have to wait until September before they could give us any shelf-space. As one official explained. “People come back from the beach, tanned and toned, and set themselves new tasks and itineraries to try and sustain the summer upgrade into the Autumn/Winter.”
The ‘improvements’ that our video promised, for a princely £12.99, included the ability to read the future. And while our 'Introduction to Palmistry' washed it’s face, over time, it came nowhere close to the future that either we, or our Star Palmist, had predicted for it.
Now, as we step boldly into September 2024 together, I will share, free of charge, a far more expensive, and exponentially more effective, method of divination…
Back in the even more remote days of the 1890’s, the legendary Scots-born Industrialist, Andrew Carnegie, attended a party for influential businessmen in his adopted Pittsburgh. At the time, Carnegie was funding his own Hall of Fame in New York, and would later knock John D Rockefeller (yet another celebrity-edifice builder) off the top spot as America’s Richest Man (a very popular unreality-prog at the turn of that century). Also at the party was Frederick Taylor, the acknowledged ‘father of scientific management’ (and fifty-percent of the wining doubles team at the first US Open tennis). Between swigs of Old Fashioned, Carnegie served Taylor a slice. If the forty-something former-mechanic could tell him ‘something about management worth hearing,’ he would give Taylor ten thousand dollars (circa $3,500,000 in today’s money). Taylor’s return to serve allegedly went:
“Mr Carnegie, I would advise you to make a list of the ten most important things you can do. And then, start doing number one.”*
Carnegie’s cheque was in the post before the hangover kicked in.
And, as the days continue to shorten, 130 years later, I cannot personally think of a single September ‘self-improvement’ better calculated to predict, proscribe, and shape the
future.
Alternatively, please send £12.99 plus p & p to…
DT
29-8-24
*Thanks to Richard Rumelt’s timeless classic: ‘Good Strategy, Bad Strategy’
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