If you have a sense that there is a continuing theme in my recent articles, you are absolutely correct.

I speak with endless people in a day, from all walks of life, and interestingly, from a vast cross section of industries.

The common theme which runs through many conversations these days is the total lack of civility and respect for other people, and the endless game playing as people strive to give the impression of being more important than they really are.

There is a very thin veneer of politeness on the surface, but with only a small scratch of the surface one unearths a very shallow shell.

We hear people constantly complaining about how busy they are, how tired they are, how over-worked they are, yet these are the same people who take their holidays, their lunch hours, which usually run well over an hour, and are inevitably out the door by 5pm, and unreachable.

So the question is, what is it that they are in fact doing all day long???

Middle Managers are hiding behind secretaries who screen their mail and their calls, and who rarely  are polite about it. Callers are interrogated as to who they are and the reason for the call, and whether or not Mister Self Importance knows them or not, in such a condescending fashion as to ensure the caller never calls again.

There are some statistics being quoted these days that it takes 7, yes 7 calls before someone calls you back.

The perceived prestige of the Manager, at least in his mind, is that he is a Senior Executive, Master of the Universe, and that his precious time is not to be wasted by anyone inferior to him.

This incredibly arrogant game playing is just that. If one looks at some of the most successful entrepreneurs, the joke is, of course, that almost of them answer their own phone. I know numerous individuals who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, some of whom were millionaires by the time they were 18 years old.  Do you actually think they would allow a secretary to screen their calls and ascertain who was important enough to speak with them? They would be horrified at the mere suggestion, one lost call could represent a business deal which would represent millions of dollars. How on earth is a secretary capable of judging the importance of the call??

Do you really think people like Warren Buffet, Donald Trump and others would allow this type of behaviour? Certainly not.

The most striking thing I have learned is that the more successful the man, usually the more accessible.

Steve Jobs of Apple always had an email address at Apple where he could be reached. Ideas for new products always appreciated. How else to drive the development of new innovative technology than to listen to the ideas of your clientele. ………Steve@Apple.Com

He was one of the most creative innovative men in the world, he took simple products and made them so simple that no instructions were required. They were totally instinctive…

When I acquired my new iPhone, using it was obvious, easy and a joy. The applications available in the hundreds of thousands speak for the incredible success of the product.

Yet, daily we are confronted by middle managers, who are employees and not the creators of companies who have such delusions of grandeur that for some obscure reason, they lock themselves away from the world, trying to give the illusion they are the Masters of Industry, all the while they are in fact isolating themselves from reality, and proving to some of us how totally inconsequential they truly are.