[2016] TO RETIREMENT
[2016] TO RETIREMENT
9138 Personal P & L
Coming to the end of your life, you sometimes wonder whether it is all been worthwhile. I have never had a particular problem. I've always known it has been worthwhile. My personal Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet is -- I believe -- positive.
However, there have been many negatives in my life. I was a bad father, and probably a bad husband as well, since my career always took precedence over my family. This was partly because - at the level of career I always aspired to - you simply had to do what was expected of you by your employer. At the same time, though, it was probably what Pat wanted -- she was always complained about my taking advantage of the family, but I suspect that she delighted in keeping me at arm's-length from the family. It was her possession, as it was for many women, and she was happy to use any excuse to keep me out of it. My sin was that I was that I did not fight effectively enough to be a good parent
Equally, in my career, I have made many enemies and several of these have set out to destroy me; and nearly succeeded. Accordingly, my career failures have been dramatic, and though these have always been occasioned by an enemy – almost always a weak boss -- who has exacted some form of revenge on me, in this respect I was probably an innocent victim. They saw me as a threat, but in reality I never intended that to be the case. Having said that, I never held back and -- due to my competence against their incompetence -- I probably was a major threat. Whatever the reason I have been destroyed a number of times.
Related to this, I have always had difficulty finding close friends. I suspect a psychiatrist would say this was due to my relationship with my father. My mother wanted to vicariously make me succeed, because she saw my father as something of a failure. She was wrong in this, since he had a very successful life, and given the opportunity had many friends. In marrying Pat, in the image of mother, I allowed myself to be manipulated into a situation whereby Pat had the friends and I didn't. In recent years I think this has been quite deliberate.
Against all of these failures I would put just a few successes. Thus, in between by various failures, I have had very successful careers. I have made massive contributions to the organisations I worked for. I rescued Condor pipe tobacco and made several million pounds more profit for Gallahers. At BTR I started to put together the turnaround for a division that was in deep trouble. At IBM I made the UK Biomedical Group the most successful in the world, and in the process developed new medical techniques which probably saved several thousand lives.
In terms of saving lives however, my main contribution came in Ethiopia. In the last great famine my intervention may well have saved several tens of thousands of lives. Equally, my intervention in the renewed Civil War may have saved even more -- perhaps hundreds of thousands.
Then, through the Futures Observatory, I was able to contribute to the agenda for the new century; most obviously in terms of the Women's Century. Overall, then, my personal failures probably are forgivable. I certainly hope so. There are thousands of people alive today who would not be alive if it hadn't been for me. I would like that to be my epitaph.
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