The Power of Soft by Hilary Gallo

Author:Hilary Gallo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-fiction, Business
ISBN: 9781783521418
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2016-01-15T12:51:58+00:00

The danger is that on the taxi driver axis we tend to get stuck in a panic where the only answer seems to be more speed or more time. Efficiency can become everything. This is, however, a delusional answer. Life also has a creative, relational and connective axis that operates largely serendipitously. If, like William, we stop for a moment and move along the poetic, relational axis, the answers become clearer and our stresses tend to fall away.

There is also a stark warning here for all of us busy taxi drivers of the consequences for us of the excesses of doing. I once got into conversation with a man on a train en route to Madrid. Bob, it turned out, was an old-time engineer of trucks. I’d say mechanic but this wouldn’t do justice to Bob’s clear philosophical calling as a wizard of all things mechanical. His phone kept ringing with enquiries from haulage depots all over Europe who had problems with a truck that no one else could solve. Bob’s answer often seemed to be a simple tweak to a certain part of the engine. In his opinion, the problem with trucks today is that we have made them too powerful and too complex. The problem apparently lay with hills. We used to accept that a truck slowed down to climb a hill. It took time. But because nowadays we are focused on driver hours it no longer makes sense to allow time to climb hills. The truck needs to be more powerful to make the best use of the driver’s time.

What is interesting is what this increase in power has created. In the first place it has led to engines that drivers can no longer fix themselves. Bob’s drivers used to be paid a lot more and were more self-reliant. In the days before mobile phones, satnav and tracking, a driver doing a delivery to Southern Europe was away for a week, largely on his own. If a problem emerged, he had to sort it out. Drivers knew how to deal with challenges that inevitably faced them. When they phoned in, you knew there was a real problem. Today, Bob explained, drivers are less self-reliant, more dependent on technology and as a result are paid less and enjoy the job less. The focus on efficiency has disempowered them and effectively moved them away from the relational axis. This is a salutary lesson in a shifting efficient world. We might cling to our position as a truck driver but if the context around us is shifting to efficiency, if we do not change and find broader relational skills, we will suffer the same fate. If all we care about is efficiency, we will end up diminishing and dismissing our greatest human assets.

There is also a danger here in a concentration of power. In negotiations, relationship tends to be the counter to raw power. Whenever power is high, less emphasis tends to be put on the relationship. The two again work together.

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