Moreover, Quinton opened my eyes to experimentation with seemingly ridiculous ideas that might have a grain of truth on further analysis. ‘Never let the fear of being the laughing stock deter you from breaking new ground’, he used to say. Sometimes, when we reached deadlock on a philosophical point, he would throw his hands in the air and say that truth had many different faces, and compromise was the answer. One of his favourite quotes was: ‘Occasionally, the Catholic Church has to go to the Moulin Rouge.’
So, it is exciting to see institutions like Harvard have come to the same view about the advantages of active learning that I, probably using a different phrase, came to all those years ago. Furthermore, in this day and age of smart gadgets and the internet, a learner is much more empowered to seek knowledge and truth for himself and herself – from infancy onwards.
I wonder what the course content of universities and business schools will be like in 600 years time. Maybe students will teach and professors will learn!
And the Oscar of all time goes to . . .
I now have to add Daniel Day-Lewis to my short list for his amazing portrayal of Abraham Lincoln using the skills of a prairie lawyer to push through the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution abolishing slavery, just before his assassination in April 1865.
I love conversations around likes and dislikes because we are all different and that is what makes the world go around. Favourites of mine are pet hates of yours and vice versa. One of the reasons a democracy works is that we vote for different parties and leaders. What’s more, we occasionally change our minds. The person we had no time for yesterday suddenly becomes a bosom buddy tomorrow.
So the other day when the topic at a business dinner for which I was the guest speaker turned to the arts and choice of best actor ever male or female, I was hooked. Of course, Meryl Streep was suggested for a variety of roles and the versatility of moving from being the star of Mama Mia to The Iron Lady. Helen Mirren for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II was also nominated. Among male actors Marlon Brando as The Godfather and for his magic performance in the movie On The Waterfront in 1954 got the nod. We all agreed he was the James Dean who could act.
Probably the person around whom the majority converged in their opinion was Al Pacino and particularly for playing the blind, retired army officer in Scent of a Woman in 1993. Who will forget Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade as he whisked a young woman around the dance floor or drove a Ferrari around the city streets with little or no attention to instructions? He really did come across as blind in the film but that is what good acting is all about – convincing the audience you are the part you play.
I guess I showed my age because the Oscar of all Oscars for me goes to a young lady who mesmerised me for 3 hours and 44 minutes in the most famous picture of all time – Gone with the Wind – about the American Civil War and its aftermath in the South. The name of the actress is Vivien Leigh and she played the wilful and sometimes downright mischievous Scarlett O’ Hara opposite Clark Gable’s hedonistic but likeable character of Rhett Butler. She was only given the part a month before shooting began at the beginning of 1939 and, being the daughter of a British officer in the Indian Cavalry, she had a few weeks in which to perfect the accent of a southern belle.
She won the Oscar as leading lady but Clark Gable failed to do so as leading man. The most famous line in the movie came at the end when he walked out on her into the mist: ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ In real terms, Gone with the Wind is the highest grossing film in the history of cinema beating Titanic and all others. Sadly, three of the four leading members of the cast died in their 50s: Leigh herself after a long bout of ill-health including tuberculosis and bipolar disorder; Gable and Leslie Howard who was cast as Ashley Wilkes, the great, unrequited love of Scarlett, in the film. Only Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie married to Ashley, survives in her mid 90s.
As a final twist, Leigh was married for 20 years to the man that many people in Britain would vote as the greatest actor of all time: Sir Laurence Olivier. During the making of Gone with the Wind, she missed Olivier every day as he was the real love of her life. Like Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, their marriage was dramatic too. The curtain came down on it in 1960 and seven years later she died.
Animal spirits
I hope this chapter proves now and forever that the future, and particularly markets for shares and commodities, cannot be reduced to a mathematical model. Intuition is the key.
I’ve only just realised what a genius John Maynard Keynes really was. I was watching an interview of Alan Greenspan, ex-chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, on Bloomberg. He was asked what his forecast for the US economy over the next six months might be. He replied that he was beginning to believe Keynes’ words on animal spirits and that you had to use behavioural science to say anything about the US economy.
So I looked up the words of Keynes on the internet as he is considered the greatest British economist of the last century. This is what he said in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, generally regarded as his masterpiece and published in 1936.
‘Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as a result of animal spirits – of a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.
Thus if the animal spirits are dimmed and the spontaneous optimism falters, leaving us to depend on nothing but a mathematical expectation, enterprise will fade and die.’
Elsewhere he said: ‘Individual initiative will only be adequate when reasonable calculation is supplemented and supported by animal spirits, so that the thought of ultimate loss which often overtakes pioneers, as experience undoubtedly tells us and them, is put aside as a healthy man puts aside the expectation of death.’
There are two very different groups to whom I would like to read out these quotes. The first is the government here and, in particular, our President as well as the two ministers most closely associated with the development of our economy – Trevor Manuel and Ebrahim Patel. My questions to them would be: ‘Are you taking the advice of Keynes and doing everything to kindle the animal spirits of our present and future entrepreneurs? Is the raising of the next generation of South African industrialists foremost in your mind? What are you doing to create an environment in which these animal spirits are not dimmed by regulation but are allowed to roam free?’
The second group is across the ocean in America. The foxy methodology is increasingly being used by organisations there wishing to have an intense conversation about adapting their strategy to the extraordinary times we live in. One of the questions I am asked over and over again by institutions like MIT is what kind of mathematical model underpins the way we link the flags to the scenarios so that one can assign accurate probabilities to them. The answer is that we have none and prefer to use instinct and feel. Our probabilities are subjective and therefore open to debate.
I can now buttress our side of the argument by mentioning not only that the future only happens once, which makes it impossible to quantify the odds precisely on a particular scenario. I can now, in addition, invoke Keynes and his point that most innovative action derives from animal spirits and spontaneous urges rather than rational analysis.
I can end my address to both groups with the quip that foxes are animals with huge spirits. The best way to handle the future is to behave like one!
The lesson of Trafalgar
Nothing beats knowledge of the game when it comes to the selection of leaders in any field. Charisma without knowledge and a sense of morality can be very dangerous. Lord Nelson had all three.
The