Reflective Control

There are ideas that shout. Reflective Control is not one of them. It waits quietly until the day you need it.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

The best school principal is visible at the gate in the morning and invisible during the teachers' period. Presence at the right hour, absence at the right hour — that is the whole craft.

An organisation is only a group of people who have agreed, for now, to pull in roughly the same direction. And when you forget it — you will — the world will remind you. It is a faithful tutor.