​I was watching a famous film star, Will Smith, being interviewed by Graham Norton on a TV chat show this week. Will Smith was describing how many people came to watch a street scene being filmed, especially in America. One of his fellow interviewees, Helen Mirren, who was on the same film set commented that Will Smith was in fact very generous and spent a lot of time in between takes talking and joking with this impromptu audience.
 
He explained that he liked to help light up peoples’ lives if he could. He didn’t have to do this and there are many famous people who seem to shun contact with “ordinary” folk. However he seemed to want to give something back. Now of course, as a very popular celebrity, it would be easy for him to make a fan’s week by passing the time of day with him or her.
 
But as I thought about this a bit more I began to realise that there is perhaps a more general lesson for us all in our professional working lives. In any day to day dealing with colleagues or clients making an extra effort to communicate, to do something however small to help, beyond what we strictly have to or need to do can be really appreciated.
 
Making a colleague’s day in this way or a client’s is more than just good behaviour. It improves working relationships with our fellow workers who will often reciprocate in kind. It also deepens our connection with clients and makes them more appreciative of our efforts – and likely to remain as clients and give us more work as a result.
 
Staying with the theme of show business the actress Anna Kendrick said of a famous fellow actor: The consummate gentleman on the planet today is George Clooney, who never fails to go the extra mile for people. Every person matters to George.
 
So one of my New Year’s resolutions, along with the usual ones about getting fitter etc., will be to go the extra mile and albeit in a small but hopefully effective way light up some lives a bit more.

At this time of the year we are all very good at wishing everybody the compliments of the season as I am doing now in wishing all those who are kind enough to read my posts a happy Christmas and great New Year.
 
However I suggest that especially in the UK we should be consciously better at greeting one another throughout the year and not just during the festive season. In France in offices everybody makes a point of saying hallo in the morning or rather “bonjour” and shaking hands with fellow office workers. They may even do so again during the day. In America everybody is very open and welcomes you to a new working day.
 
In England we tend to crawl into the office after a difficult commute and may greet our fellow workers with a muttered slightly self conscious hallo to which they, may, mumble something incoherent in return. I am exaggerating to prove the point but this is a distinct characteristic we understated British have.
 
And this does not go down well. I recall a professor at the Harvard Business School saying how important it was for bosses to acknowledge subordinates. If a boss walks past a fellow worker in the corridor and does not say hallo or at least acknowledge their existence in some way then his or her colleague will think “Oh dear, why was my boss ignoring me? What have I done wrong? Am I going to get fired?” and even “I had better brush up my CV and think about moving on.”
 
In fact mostly the boss isn’t thinking anything denigrating about the employee at all. He or she is most likely just worrying about their next customer meeting.
 
But it doesn’t matter. The impression is what is important and taking a few seconds to acknowledge someone or even maybe talk to them will go down much better and perhaps in the long term prevent losing a valued colleague. 
 
The same principle applies to colleagues greeting each other. Here's a simple example of how to engage with a colleague taken from of all places A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh:
 
 “And how are you?" said Winnie-the-Pooh.
Eeyore shook his head from side to side.
"Not very how," he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time."
"Dear, dear," said Pooh, "I'm sorry about that. Let's have a look at you.”
 
With clients or customers a warm and pleasant greeting when they first arrive is essential. At one law firm I was a partner in we lost a potential new client because they were (wrongly) sent by a temporary receptionist to another office down the road, and then got sent back again.
 
So let one of your new year’s resolutions be to improve the way you greet subordinates and colleagues on a daily basis throughout the year.

I have a confession to make. I am spending the weekend at a Champneys spa. Not so long ago spas were the strict preserve of girls. There was a great advert for lager a couple of years ago showing a man in a spa tunnelling out for some more beer. Not so any more. They now cater for men, with gyms and Sky Sport on the television.
 
The thing is that spas represent an opportunity for women and men to take time out and recover some balance and equilibrium away from busy work and home lives. I have spent a few weeks negotiating a complex contract with long and demanding hours and some difficult issues to resolve and am really appreciating some healthy country air and exercise.
 
Even a short break from a busy task can be helpful. The Harvard Business Review contains this advice:
 
  When you work on a task continuously, it’s easy to lose focus and get lost in the weeds. In contrast, following a brief intermission, picking up where you left off forces you to take a few seconds to think globally about what you’re ultimately trying to achieve. It’s a practice that encourages us to stay mindful of our objectives…
 
See also this article on the value of a lunch break which states:
 
Experts recommend taking some downtime to mentally recharge, whether it involves eating lunch, taking a walk, or reading a book. "Exhaustion and fatigue levels really do decrease" when people take some time, says Charlotte Fritz, an assistant professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Portland State University. Fritz's research has included studies on job stress and the benefits of workday breaks.
 
Here is a view from across the Atlantic and the hardworking people of the United States:
 
Americans are notorious busy bees. A 2010 survey indicated that the average American accrues 18 vacation days and uses only 16. The average French worker takes more than twice the vacation time. To some, this statistic encapsulates the difference between American and European workers. We're productive. They're lazy.  In fact, it might say the opposite. Europeans understand that breaks improve workplace efficiency. We mistakenly believe that more hours will always increase output, while ignoring the clear evidence: The secret to being an effective worker is not working too hard.
 
So I will share my secret with you and unashamedly recommend a spa weekend break to recharge your batters and perhaps gain a better perspective.

​I threw away some old briefcases in a loft clear out today and noticed that though worn they had survived quite well. They reminded me of a course I went on long ago about achieving quality based around lessons learned from the manufacturing process for a “quality briefcase” and how and why it differed from an inferior product.
 
In goods quality is tangible – the product looks good, feels solid and lasts. In services quality is more intangible but just as critical. I flew on Virgin Atlantic to Hong Kong in November. Arriving at the airport there was the usual queue for economy check in and bag drop. I have never incidentally understood how a bag drop after checking in diligently on line takes longer than just turning up and checking in.
 
Be that as it may Virgin as soon as they had capacity at the premium economy and upper class check in desks simply moved queuing economy passengers over to them. They did the same on the return in Hong Kong. If an upper class passenger turns up they stop checking economy passengers until they again have capacity. So everybody is happy.
 
It is these small things that make for quality in professional services as well. Aristotle said: "Quality is not an act. It is a habit." Lean practices from the manufacturing industry which encourage and promote service improvement are gradually becoming more relevant and important in conscious effort by the professions to address quality.
 
And it is the simple things that matter. Dealing with matters in a timely fashion is a critical measure of quality. I spoke to a lawyer earlier this week who had spent time in a commercial role. They said one of the most frustrating thinks about the legal profession when seen from the outside was its inability to recognise the importance of other people’s deadlines.
 
Quality is also about continuous improvement. In Hong Kong we visited a friend who is a senior medical practitioner. He talked about how they found the compulsory continuous professional development process for doctors to be irrelevant because all the lectures were about rare conditions they never saw in practice. So he and a few colleagues as an alternative set up a small group to exchange ideas about more common concerns which has turned into a big success and been expanded to include some overseas participants.
 
We may look to some variation of the Six Sigma process to develop better quality in the professions, but this is not a new concept. John Ruskin a leading art critic in the Victorian era summed all of this up quite neatly. He said “Quality is never an accident. It is the result of intelligent effort.”
 

Talking to someone this week I came across what I decided was both an intriguing and in some ways disturbing concept summed up as “It is better to be strong and wrong than weak and right”.
 
In other words as a professional adviser it is preferable to have a firm view and to hold to it rather than to be correct but weak in expressing or communicating an opinion even though it is the correct one. We have probably all experienced, perhaps early on in our career, being in a meeting, with very senior colleagues and decision makers all in a hurry to reach a decision, and known what the answer is but not been able to make the meeting listen.
 
This is quite a natural state of affairs. Bill Clinton said:
“When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have somebody that's strong and wrong than somebody who's weak and right.”
 
But being wrong can be catastrophic. When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 at the head of a huge army he was warned by General Rapp about the extremities of the oncoming winter in Russia. "The natives say we shall have a severe winter," Napoleon retorted scornfully, " Bah! You and your natives! We shall see how fine it is." The rest as they say is history.
 
I read somewhere that Winston Churchill had a special team whose job was to bring him bad news every day, just in case nobody dared to tell him something he might not want to hear.
 
In 1999 a team of Lockheed Martin engineers used the English system of measurement, while the rest of the team used the metric system for a Mars orbiter. The use of two different measurement systems prevented the spacecraft's navigation coordinates from being transferred from a spacecraft team in Denver to a lab in California. The orbiter was then lost in space, and NASA was out $125 million. Somebody must have noticed this discrepancy but if so their voice was not heard.
 
Maybe the lessons here are that firstly it’s really important to speak up and persist in doing so even if yours is the only objecting voice and secondly if you are a decision maker always to find ways to listen. Sometimes it is the small maybe junior voice at the back of the room which stops being strong and wrong being an unmitigated and costly disaster.