This time last year I reported that I was heading up to Rugby to run The Crick, the oldest cross country race in the world apparently. It was more of a struggle than I had expected. 10 miles across stiles, boggy fields, railway embankments and uphill and into the wind the whole way! I set myself a target time of 1hr 20mins to get round but, as with my various attempts to beat the then world record for the 800 metres set by Georgette Lenoir in the 1922 Paris Olympics, I failed. But as Clive Woodward says, “Better never stops......” and so I am going to give it another go on Sunday.
Talking about dodgy catch phrases, whilst I may be challenged if asked to dissect a balance sheet, I do have a keen eye for corporate mission statements. You see some clangers in Asia, but rarely have I been so surprised than by the one on a slightly gnarled poster in the reassuringly shabby reception room of Godrej Consumer Product’s office on my visit to India last week. We had driven to the north end of the Mumbai into a kind of green belt and down a drive which led to the Godrej Group’s site, a large plot which seemed more like a plantation than the headquarters of one of India’s leading corporations. Nevertheless, despite the almost rural setting, the motto “ Having a goat is a state of happiness” seemed a little out of place especially for a company whose primary business is in household and personal care products. On closer inspection it may have been that the word was actually goal, but by then I was in stitches. It was almost as amusing as the moment a little earlier when my “huge, Global, long only” client fell down a water drainage ditch as he got out of the car on arriving at Godrej distracted by a signboard that proclaimed there had been no accidents on site since 10th January 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment