The Wind in the Willows
“So they finished their supper in great joy and contentment, and presently retired to rest between clean sheets, safe in Toad’s ancestral home, won back by matchless valour, consummate strategy, and a proper handling of sticks.” Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, 1908.
Christmas is always my time for catching up on wider reading. This year I chanced upon a copy of The Wind in the Willows when I was clearing out an old bookcase, and re-read this beautiful children’s story. Those of you who know this story will remember that Toad’s grand home is invaded by the stoats and weasels while he is in prison for stealing a motor car. (A very rare commodity of course in 1908!) However, with the help of his good friends the rat, the mole, and the badger they recapture Toad’s ancestral home during a daring raid using underground tunnels to take the stoats and weasels by surprise while they are partying!
What struck me in this story was the animals’ reflection on why they considered themselves successful. In my blog of 30 January last year I talked about the ingredients of success in All Blacks rugby and Lakeland hill farming, in particular how to get the very best of results in whatever endeavor we undertake. Kenneth Grahame’s pithy summary is much more urbane and simple than many business texts on this topic: in one phrase he sums up the three elements you need to achieve success. These are character, strategy and tools.
Kenneth Grahame’s phrase needs a little translation to bring it into the 21st century. Valour is not a word we hear used often. It means great courage in the face of danger, especially in battle. If we are faced with ‘risk’, ‘challenge’, and ‘goals’, then success in business – whether commercial, social or ethical – could be seen as a battle which requires a leader to show courage through the choices they may need to exercise facing the unknown.
The second corner of this triangle – in which all three elements form a necessary whole – is strategy: but consummate strategy at that. ‘Consummate’ as an adjective means showing great skill and flair; as a verb it means to complete a transaction. So in the sense meant by Grahame strategy indicates not simply a plan or policy, but its successful execution and implementation. So often we can be weighed down by the words, spending too much time on arguments about what we should do, leaving too little time to put our words into action.
But consummate is not just about completion for completions sake: it is the innovation and novelty that emerges as a result of the initial and ongoing thinking and conversations. This should focus around the following question: ‘What are the actions that will take us to a new place that makes us more effective than we have been in the past, or more aligned with the vision and goals we are seeking to achieve?’ As always, flair will rarely come through the genius of one person working alone; it is much more likely to come from the ‘receptive context’: that is, the genius that arises from the myriad of conversations when the right people get together in the right space at the right time, often across organisations.
And finally we come to that lovely phrase ‘a proper handling of sticks’. In other words, we win the ‘battle’ not just because we have bigger or better sticks, but because we know at any one moment how best to use them. Thus training is the key to productivity, something we are lamentably poor in this Country – on all the available data – at offering to our staff. Training is often the first budget to be cut in an era of austerity, yet opportunities to learn, test and share are key to a consummate strategy.
We all need a little more Wind in the Willows.
Nick Day, Exeter, 10 January 2018