Shipping forecasts, gale warnings, and low gravity

In the current climate, to help drive your productivity, profitability and customer service, employers need to remain as competitive as possible.  That means good communications, and having employees who are engaged and motivated, and who will go that extra mile (or in some cases a few more miles than that). The secret, we are told, may lie in one’s leadership style, and the ability to harness the creativity of your staff.

Recent media coverage of six decades since Her Majesty the Queen ascended the throne, have highlighted idiosyncrasies of communications in the 1950s. Just like her forebears, Queen Elizabeth II has taken a great pride in getting out and about among her people, and I take my hat off to her (as a gentleman would) and her leadership style, and in particular her ability as a sprightly octogenarian to “burn the rubber and press the flesh”. Knowing what it is like to both engage with as many members of the Chamber as possible, while simultaneously shuttling between several places of work each week, I know how challenging that can be.

Reverting to Her Majesty, we are told that as the news of her father the King's death spread in February 1952, flags across Britain flew at half-mast, and sports fixtures were abandoned. The BBC cancelled its broadcasts with the exception of news bulletins, the shipping forecast, and gale warnings.

Somewhat overlooked by today’s media, nineteen years later to the day, in February 1971, U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard achieved another ‘first’. He had already inspired the crew of Apollo 14 and his colleagues, with his manual docking of the lunar module and his “moonwalk” (long before Michael Jackson). And he memorably achieved a ‘first’ with a different type of “moonshot”, by becoming the first man to hit a golf ball on the Moon, using a ball and golf club which (worryingly) he had smuggled on board inside his space suit. He hit the ball just before the return flight lifted-off, and as he later recounted the story, in the low gravity environment he drove it “miles and miles and miles".

Which just goes to show there are many ways of going that extra mile.