The Greatest!

Ali's verbal sparring sessions with BBC interviewer Michael Parkinson are still fondly remembered

Ali meetsThe Beatles before his world title showdown with Liston

My greatest sporting hero is Muhammad Ali and today we celebrate Ali’s 65th birthday.

It seems only a ‘blink of the eye ago’ when my Dad would wake me up in the early hours of the morning in the early 1960’s to listen with Dad on a crackly radio reception to BBC Radio commentary of early fights live from America of Cassius Clay - as he was then – against the likes of Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson.

The picture montage on the BBC Website at this link – click here – show the great man at his awesome best

Wonderful memories of two great men Muhammad Ali and of course my late beloved Dad.

10 Great 'Ali' Quotes:

‘Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wild Life.’

‘It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.’

‘I'm the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren't no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn't know about them.’

‘Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong.’

‘I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.’

‘If you even dream of beating me you'd better wake up and apologize.’

‘To be able to give away riches is mandatory if you wish to possess them. This is the only way that you will be truly rich.’

‘The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.’

‘We have one life; it soon will be past; what we do for God is all that will last.’

And finally …what else but …

‘When you are as great as I am it is hard to be humble.’

Skype TV Next?

I am not a technology expert.

In fact I am pretty useless understanding technical aspects of the modern technology. I just love using the stuff.

We use SKYPE regularly and have free internet phone calls with friends in America, Spain, Canada and of course back home here in Britain. These are a mixture of business and personal calls. We can have up to four people on line all over the world for conference calls and it is all free through SKYPE. Yes I said FREE!

Please don’t ask me to explain how it works - I don't know - just take my word for it. If you need to be convinced just download the software free at this site(click here) and try it yourself.

Anyway... moving on ...

It seems now that SKYPE are getting into Television and although this report (click here) on the BBC News website says that it probably won’t catch on I am not so sure.

I think we should watch that space ... my money is on SKYPE making a success of it.

Who knows I may be able to watch telly on my PC while I am working!! .. Yes I know I should get out more.

Fair or Unfair? - That is the question

Lord Brown - £63 million quid richer.

There have been a number of interesting discussions on Tom Peters Blog about many massive pay offs there have been recently in the business word for Chief Executives of failing or failed companies. Many pay offs come after disastrous company performance and this causes mixed feelings from observers about the merits of paying someone for … lets face it ‘screwing up.’

I was therefore interest to read this Daily Mail story last week (click here) about Lord Brown, Chief Executive of BP who was paid off last week with the paltry amount of £63million. I guess that will just about enable Lord Brown not to worry too much about where his next meal is to come form. I understand Lord Brown has spent his whole career at BP and I am pretty sure from what I have read that he did a great job earlier in his career. The fact remains that under his leadership the ‘wheels have come off’ and BP share price and profits have tumbled.

Two questions to Simplicity readers:

1 Is it fair CEO's get pay-offs when company results are poor?

2 Do you think this amount (£63 million) is reasonable or not?

'Google' trust their staff.

Professor Gary Hamel

I'm unashamedly carrying on the theme of a previous Simplicity post about how - as managers - we must learn to TRUST our front line staff.

I was reminded of a talk I heard from Professor Gary Hamel in November 2005.

Professor Hamel is a superb speaker and he told us - among other things – about some of the policies of Google as a ‘new kid on the block’ company in the world of modern business.

Apparently Google allows all staff 20% of their week to do whatever they want to do. That is one day a week for those folks who work a five day week.

Google take the view it is likely staff will do something interesting and that in turn will bring benefit to the company.

And who in their right mind would argue that Google have got it wrong in the last five years?