Don't Compromise!

Clifford Peat
(read Cliff’s review of Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work)

Cliff finished Grammar school when he was 16: at the age of 21, he qualified with a small firm in the City as a chartered accountant.  After being a partner in another firm in the West End in the 1970s, he moved to Milton Keynes and set up a practice (which was later sold in 2006).  In 1984/85, he was released for a year’s secondment as MD of a medium-sized software company in Bristol during a time of transition in a fast changing market. 

Cliff has studied business and IT/web matters informally for many years and cherry picked from a one year external MSc course on Information Systems Management at de Montfort.

He is currently helping businesses and other organisations in strategic development.

Questions and Answers

What’s the most valuable lesson you have learned, and who do you have to thank for it?
Seneca’s view (more or less) that anger is simply a result of having a dangerously optimistic notion about what the world and other people are like.  Now I laugh at the naivety of feeling angry – or I let rip and try to change the world.

If you could talk to your younger self, what advice would you give them?
You are entitled to time off work to study – don’t try to fit it into an impossible schedule (MSc course)

What is the single thing you still most need to learn?
When dealing with serious stuff – to concentrate and suppress flippant thoughts even if they are funny (to me)

What do you hope your legacy will be?
A big one – oh, you mean what will I leave? The paradox is that you will never know what good effect you have had on people – so try to be intelligent and you will do your bit for evolution.

What is the most surprising thing you’ve ever discovered about yourself?
That I can draw and paint a bit.

What one thing do you think every organisation would most benefit from doing, or doing differently?
Hire an experienced successful business person to give an honest no holds barred view of your key decisions – but then make up your own mind. As Machiavelli advised nearly 600 years ago.

What is your worst habit?
Addiction to the computer card game, Spider Solitaire.