I recently drove my car an Audi A4 into a brick bollard and had to get it fixed. The insurance company wanted to know if the bollard was damaged! However they did provide me with a courtesy car, a Peugeot 107. This is a perfectly adequate car....but it is not a patch on the Audi. You feel the bumps on the road more, it doesn't accelerate as well, the automatic gearbox is well more clunky.

So when I finally got my repaired car back I was so pleased to appreciate it and recognise all of its good points that I had in the past rather just accepted and perhaps expected.

It struck me that the same is true with best management practice. There will be lots of things we do well that are not continuously appreciated, but they should be. Mistakes are always etched into our memories but just doing things right, like recognising the achievements of colleagues, and remembering this is excellent practice is just as important. Good practice should not be taken for granted but recognised as such on an ongoing basis.

Last week I saw an interview on the television morning news. A veteran parachutist from America described what it was like to be dropped 21 miles (instead of 2 miles) ahead of the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944. They had to fight their way back to the American troops who had landed on the beaches through retreating enemy forces.

He said that as he left the plane where they jumped in rows of three somebody said:

"Look to the left, look to the right, one of you won't see daylight."

I had a particularly difficult drive to work that day with lots of heavy traffic. But oh boy did that insight into a different and more troubled time put  my commute into perspective.