44, 103, 830

I apologise for an element of repetition in this topic, having made some similar comments in ‘94’ in April 2012.

Hits on this site understandably dropped during my ‘sabbatical’ in the first half of this year, but soon picked up again.  It is interesting to see how readers quickly return in response to an update.

I recently advised when the next update would appear and was interested to see how this would affect the flow of site visits.  Two days before the date, I logged on to draft the article and wondered if, for the first time, I would see a score of zero hits.  Incredibly, 44 visits were recorded on that day, even though readers were aware that no new update would be available.  On the day I did publish, on schedule, there were 103 hits.  For the past 30 days, the figure is 830.

As I have said before I take no credit for, nor any pride in, this interest.  It is solely a reflection of the awful state of affairs in EG-IT, a resounding vote of no confidence in its management.  It is now over three years since I was kicked out of Emirates, but my blog remains very popular.  Since it was started, it has been visited 36,309 times, an average of 36 per day. I cannot be the only person who wants to scream “Someone, somewhere, please wake up!”.

One reader astutely said sometime ago “You can wake up somebody who is actually sleeping, but can never wake up somebody that pretends to be sleeping”.  It’s a lovely saying, but not true if one wants to be pedantic.  If you shout loud enough, or gain support from others to shout with you, it must be possible to generate some response.  And there is nothing to fear about the resulting action - pretending to be asleep is a clear sign of weakness.

Many years ago, just after I took my first junior management role, I found myself witnessing a situation at work which was far from ideal.  It did not involve anyone in our team, but I said to myself “someone needs to do something about this”.  I then looked around the room and realised that the someone was me.  Afterwards I reflected that, as a manager, I now had to take on a greater, and wider, level of responsibility.  But I then deduced that while managers clearly have the prime responsibility to act, they do not have a monopoly.  It was true that, at the time, I was the most senior person in the room and therefore the obvious person to intervene, but there were plenty of others who could have done the same thing.  Over 90% of staff in the room at the time were thinking “someone needs to do something about this”.  And they all waited, presumably for me.  Had more senior people been there, what was I supposed to do?  Wait for them to do something?  As soon as I stepped forward, I was overwhelmed with support.  When you are doing the right thing, it is very unusual to find yourself on your own. 

I am sure that we all look back at some situations and wish that we had acted differently.  I do, but I have never regretted actually getting involved.  Certainly I have reflected that my involvement could have been different, or sooner, or perhaps later, but I have never felt that I should have kept out of it.  But I do regret not getting involved with certain situations, leaving me with permanent feelings of either frustration or shame.  It is much easier to do nothing, but very often it is wrong.

Next time you find yourself saying “someone needs to do something”, you can be sure that you will not be alone and it may be worth asking yourself if that person is you.  Despite my friend’s proverb, only a truly comatose or dead person cannot be woken.  Surely no-one could sleep through a reveille from a 103 strong chorus?