Loyal readers will remember that last September I embarked on the Doctoral Business Administration part time degree course offered through the University of Winchester. Incidentally, if you harbour an interest in a challenging but rewarding program of study like this, then I believe there will be a new cohort starting this September. Check out their website for more details or get in touch with me and I'll be happy to talk about my experience thus far.
The DBA program starts with a set of 6 taught modules - one a term for the first 2 years. Each of the modules follows the same pattern with 2 taught "weekends" and then time to produce an assignment. Yesterday and today saw the 2015 cohort at the Business School for the first weekend of the 3rd module - "Maximising Engagement and Impact".
Under the expert and enthusiastic leadership of Dr Martina Hutton we have spent two full days exploring questions of scholarship, identifying the "conversations" that we want to be a part of, our identity as researchers, ideas around what our contribution will be through our DBA thesis. As usual the days have been a mix of content to get us thinking, practical exercises, and discussion amongst the group. As the modules progress the cohort gets to know each other ever better and the richness of questioning, challenging and support of each other increases. Considering the comparatively short time it is since we started this journey it really is amazing to see just how far we have all progressed in our thinking about what our area of research will be. It is a privilege to be a part of the research journey that my fellow cohort members are taking and I am very excited to see what they come up with in the coming months and years - indeed I think one of my challenges will be keeping the focus on my own research and not getting distracted and intrigued by some of the things the others are looking at.
The assignment for this module is to write a short paper ( up to 3000 words) on a topic of our choice ( the most obvious being to choose something aligned with our research interest) and then to create a presentation that allows us to share the findings with any audience that we choose. The final element is then a short reflection on that process and our success at disseminating our findings through both the paper and presentation.
As part of today's module we had some writing exercises including spending a short amount of time to come up with a possible title and abstract for our paper. An interesting exercise in that it forces you to conceive what it is that you may end up writing. Pretty much a given that, as we engage with the process of research and thinking about the topic, what we come up with will differ from what we imagined today but it was a powerful technique for helping to at least crystallise some initial lines of enquiry.
Here's what I came up with...
Computer says "yes" but what happens next? Understanding the impact on employee engagement when HR Analytics are used to determine employee compensation.
Abstract
Have you ever felt if only the decision had been based on data rather than taken by failible human beings you'd have got the pay rise you deserved? What if we had the ability to take those decisions at an organisational level removing scope for bias and prejudice? The increasing ability to harvest employee data and application of HR Analytics offers the promise of just such a nirvana but does it work in practice? Every action has a reaction, and this paper will explore both the art of the possible and some of the potential consequences of taking a data driven approach to compensation decisions. Models of Employee Engagement are used to provide a framework for the discussion, looking at both the short and longer term impacts on staff and managers. The paper concludes with an initial exploration of how the mere act of taking an Analytic based approach can lead to changed behaviour as employees seek to maximise their chances of a favourable personal outcome.
I'm really looking forward to working on the paper over the coming months ( due date is in September). Any comments you have on the topic or indeed suggestions of areas I could look into as part of the assignment will be gratefully received.
Saturday, 14 May 2016
Thursday, 31 March 2016
What I've been reading - January
As part of studying for the DBA I'm reading more books at the moment and thought I'd have a go at writing up a short summary each month on what I've consumed.
Let's start with January's haul...and hopefully in the months to come I will catch up a bit...
Two books this month on stories.
In "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" Joseph Campbell explores the world of mythology and introduces us to the "Monomyth". In essence all the varied stories from different cultures and traditions reduce down to a similar core. Our hero of the tale ventures forth from their normal life into a supernatural world where they encounter challenges that they must overcome before the triumphant return bearing "the ultimate boon". Different supporting cast appear or not and variances such as whether the return is assisted or is an escape are there but at the core we have the same basic structure to the story. I found it very interesting to encounter so many mythologies that I had not come across before along with some familiar tales. I was familiar with Jonah's exploits with the whale but previously unaware that the Eskimo's have a tale of the Raven that enters the belly of a whale. Not always an easy read (phrases like "and other concupiscent incubi of the rout of Pan" seeing me reaching for my Chambers app) but an enjoyable one.
"Morphology of the Folktale" by V Propp provides an astonishingly detailed framework for categorising pretty much ever significant aspect of a story and encoding it in a specific notation. To take but one example the notation and analysis distinguish between the various ways that the hero of the tale "acquires the use of a magical agent" - was it directly transferred to them, or maybe it was pointed out to them, or fell into their hands by chance, or appeared of its own accord, or was consumed by them, or made for them, or sold to them, or seized by them, or (if it is an animal) places itself at their disposal. These different possibilities all have their own encoding building up to a notation for the whole tale. Here is one example showing how each step of the myth is encoded and builds up to a single "phrase" for the whole tale so you get the idea...
An impressive piece of work but of the two books I'd recommend Campbell's book as the more engaging.
"Obliquity: why our goals are best achieved indirectly" by John Kay offered a complete contrast. The essence of the book is that the best way of achieving what we want may not be to directly aim for it. Think for example of a business that wants to increase revenue and profits. It could focus on measuring and reporting those figures or it could identify something else that would drive the desired outcome. I recently read about a company that had decided to focus its energies on being a great employer and creating an environment and culture that put employees first. The argument being that great, happy employees provide good service to your customers. Great customer service retains existing business and attracts new clients as well. Result... increased revenue and profits.
The final one for this month is "The Shift: The Future of Work is already here" by Lynda Gratton. I'd heard Lynda talk on this topic a couple of years ago at a London Business School event so it was good to take some time to read the book to build on what I had heard already. In the book she lays out a range of possible scenarios for the future world of work and how we may be operating. Done through a series of scenarios detailing the lives of fictitious workers of the future various possibilities are brought to life. She argues that we will see shifts in work increasingly play out. One of the most significant I thought was her suggestion that we will need to achieve serial mastery. General skills, knowing a little about lots of things won't count for as much as detailed mastery. Given the rate of change and also the length of time people will be working however they will also need to be able to shift into other areas over time developing mastery in one area and then another.
Let's start with January's haul...and hopefully in the months to come I will catch up a bit...
Two books this month on stories.
In "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" Joseph Campbell explores the world of mythology and introduces us to the "Monomyth". In essence all the varied stories from different cultures and traditions reduce down to a similar core. Our hero of the tale ventures forth from their normal life into a supernatural world where they encounter challenges that they must overcome before the triumphant return bearing "the ultimate boon". Different supporting cast appear or not and variances such as whether the return is assisted or is an escape are there but at the core we have the same basic structure to the story. I found it very interesting to encounter so many mythologies that I had not come across before along with some familiar tales. I was familiar with Jonah's exploits with the whale but previously unaware that the Eskimo's have a tale of the Raven that enters the belly of a whale. Not always an easy read (phrases like "and other concupiscent incubi of the rout of Pan" seeing me reaching for my Chambers app) but an enjoyable one.
"Morphology of the Folktale" by V Propp provides an astonishingly detailed framework for categorising pretty much ever significant aspect of a story and encoding it in a specific notation. To take but one example the notation and analysis distinguish between the various ways that the hero of the tale "acquires the use of a magical agent" - was it directly transferred to them, or maybe it was pointed out to them, or fell into their hands by chance, or appeared of its own accord, or was consumed by them, or made for them, or sold to them, or seized by them, or (if it is an animal) places itself at their disposal. These different possibilities all have their own encoding building up to a notation for the whole tale. Here is one example showing how each step of the myth is encoded and builds up to a single "phrase" for the whole tale so you get the idea...
An impressive piece of work but of the two books I'd recommend Campbell's book as the more engaging.
"Obliquity: why our goals are best achieved indirectly" by John Kay offered a complete contrast. The essence of the book is that the best way of achieving what we want may not be to directly aim for it. Think for example of a business that wants to increase revenue and profits. It could focus on measuring and reporting those figures or it could identify something else that would drive the desired outcome. I recently read about a company that had decided to focus its energies on being a great employer and creating an environment and culture that put employees first. The argument being that great, happy employees provide good service to your customers. Great customer service retains existing business and attracts new clients as well. Result... increased revenue and profits.
The final one for this month is "The Shift: The Future of Work is already here" by Lynda Gratton. I'd heard Lynda talk on this topic a couple of years ago at a London Business School event so it was good to take some time to read the book to build on what I had heard already. In the book she lays out a range of possible scenarios for the future world of work and how we may be operating. Done through a series of scenarios detailing the lives of fictitious workers of the future various possibilities are brought to life. She argues that we will see shifts in work increasingly play out. One of the most significant I thought was her suggestion that we will need to achieve serial mastery. General skills, knowing a little about lots of things won't count for as much as detailed mastery. Given the rate of change and also the length of time people will be working however they will also need to be able to shift into other areas over time developing mastery in one area and then another.
Sunday, 7 February 2016
Becoming a student again
Back in September I signed up to be part of the first cohort to study for the newly launched Doctoral Business Administration degree at the University of Winchester. It's a part time degree program that should take me somewhere between 4 and 7 years to complete. The first 2 years consist of 6 taught modules ( 1 per term) that are designed to build skills and insights that will then equip us to complete our thesis. We are a small but diverse group of people drawn from of a wide range of job roles and experiences which makes for some great discussions when we are together.
With the assignment for the first module - a critical ( that's critical as in looking at decisions made and reasons for them and not to be confused with criticising ) review of my professional development and a future development plan - submitted it seemed like a good time to look back at what has happened so far.
Since completing my MBA back in the mid 90s I've always harboured the thought that it would be good to do some further study and have looked at various programs from other universities. A couple of things that drew me to this one were the structure of the program, convenience of the location, and my existing contact with some of the faculty. It was still a major decision to make as the time and money required are significant but one that felt right.
A term in and I have no regrets, yes finding the time to fit it in alongside everything else I do is, and will remain, very tough but it's great to be a student again. All learning changes you and I've certainly noticed already that the extensive reading I'm now doing is filtering into my discussions with people both at work and beyond. I've also had the joy of renewing my Bodleian card and returning to some of Oxford's libraries and indeed venturing in to some that I had not visited before - Mathematicians not having much call to visit the Social Sciences Library.
Having online access to journals is terrific but there is still something very satisfying about summoning old copies from the stacks and joining the hushed studious environment of one of the reading rooms to work your way through them.
The first module was always going to be the one where I started to get a feel for what was required so in numbers here is how it panned out...
I read 16 books on a range of topics including Critical Reflection and many aspects of learning and development
in addition I've skimmed or read parts of a further 6 books and consumed around 50 academic journal articles. When it came to writing the 5,000 (+/- 10%) word assignment one of my biggest challenges was letting go of some interesting ideas I'd read about, taken notes on and wanted to include but didn't fit inside the word count ( Reber's work on Implicit learning and Tacit Knowledge being just one example).
For the next module I need to pin down what my area of research will be for the next few years as I pursue the DBA. More details to come as I work that out...
With the assignment for the first module - a critical ( that's critical as in looking at decisions made and reasons for them and not to be confused with criticising ) review of my professional development and a future development plan - submitted it seemed like a good time to look back at what has happened so far.
Since completing my MBA back in the mid 90s I've always harboured the thought that it would be good to do some further study and have looked at various programs from other universities. A couple of things that drew me to this one were the structure of the program, convenience of the location, and my existing contact with some of the faculty. It was still a major decision to make as the time and money required are significant but one that felt right.
A term in and I have no regrets, yes finding the time to fit it in alongside everything else I do is, and will remain, very tough but it's great to be a student again. All learning changes you and I've certainly noticed already that the extensive reading I'm now doing is filtering into my discussions with people both at work and beyond. I've also had the joy of renewing my Bodleian card and returning to some of Oxford's libraries and indeed venturing in to some that I had not visited before - Mathematicians not having much call to visit the Social Sciences Library.
Having online access to journals is terrific but there is still something very satisfying about summoning old copies from the stacks and joining the hushed studious environment of one of the reading rooms to work your way through them.
The first module was always going to be the one where I started to get a feel for what was required so in numbers here is how it panned out...
I read 16 books on a range of topics including Critical Reflection and many aspects of learning and development
in addition I've skimmed or read parts of a further 6 books and consumed around 50 academic journal articles. When it came to writing the 5,000 (+/- 10%) word assignment one of my biggest challenges was letting go of some interesting ideas I'd read about, taken notes on and wanted to include but didn't fit inside the word count ( Reber's work on Implicit learning and Tacit Knowledge being just one example).
For the next module I need to pin down what my area of research will be for the next few years as I pursue the DBA. More details to come as I work that out...
Friday, 27 November 2015
"Inequality - social evil or acceptable cost of free market capitalism?"
"Inequality – social evil or acceptable cost of free market capitalism?" was the title of a talk given recently at the University of Winchester Business School by the Director of The Equality Trust.
Their website states "UK income inequality is among the highest in the developed world and evidence shows that this is bad for almost everyone. The Equality Trust works to improve the quality of life in the UK by reducing economic inequality." so the talk clearly comes from a particular point of view.
It was really interesting to hear what he had to say and some of the conclusions arising from research in this area. The presentation gave us some data without much definition and context but subsequently I have spent some time exploring their website which I would commend to you as a source of summaries of findings and they provide plenty of links to research on the topic. This page included an interesting contrast between income inequality and wealth inequality. I knew from the talk that the UK was one of the most unequal countries on their list for income ( as measured by the Gini coefficient). What surprised me in the data was how low we come in the ranking for wealth inequality. Not only that but the most unequal country for wealth was the country that was shown in the talk as least unequal for income which was an interesting contrast. I'll not spoil the surprise as to who it is... Would be interesting to dig into this a bit more and understand what the boundaries are between "wealth" and "income" in this context. Does, for example, the category of "income" include any returns that I receive from my "welath" - eg dividend payments if I had shares.
The other surprise to me from the talk was that the UK Gini coefficient actually declined a bit between 2010 and 2011. With some bumps up and down in the intervening years we are tracking at the same level as it was in 1990, all be it that this was sharply up over the preceding 2 decades. That's not to say it isn't a problem but my impression had been that we were in an era of rising inequality.
We saw how Income inequality and a general index of health and social problems seem to correlate - I did notice though that the data here for income inequality was actually not the same as the Gini coeficient data on the previous ranking chart so unsure exactly what this was measuring. Need to dig into this a bit more to understand where this data is from - "The Spirit Level" now on the list of books I need to read someday.
Our speaker made a good point about use of language and how that influences our view. Articles in business press for example will tend to refer to the high earners and their pay packages under heading of "talent management". Discussions of lower earners will tend to be around "workforce costs" or "resource planning". Communicating a message of unequal valuing of the people perhaps. The use of language to "guide" your audience is of course pervasive and often reflecting of the narrative that the writer is aligning with. Looking at articles on CEO pay in the press there is usually some comment around the ratio of their pay to the median or lowest paid in the company. Read about the income of a sportsman, and this language simply doesn't seem to be there. To take just one example, I'm not sure I've ever seen a ranking of footballers' salaries that looked at how that compares as a multiple of the income for the lowest paid employee/worker at the club.
Discussion of inequality is often accompanied by a linked discussion of CEO pay and indeed this did come up during this talk. What would happen I wondered if you looked at top FTSE 100 CEO salaries, which of itself has of course limited the view to leaders of public companies rather than privately held enterprises, and mixed in earnings from some other potentially high income groups.
To the extent that the reported incomes are actually reflective of reality ( sources noted at the end) here is what I found with a few minutes of web searching.
Top 3 FTSE 100 CEO earners
1 - £42.978m
2 - £19.51m
3 - £16.176m
Taking a look at top paid UK people on the "World's highest-paid Athletes" list that fall in this range we have
1 - £32.11m
2 - £25.93m
3 - £23.27m
4 - £17.88m
Adding in report of top paid actor
1 - £17m
So while a lot of the heat and fury seems to be directed at the public company CEO pay, by the time we have worked our way down to third place we have already picked up 4 sportsmen and an actor. Our population of top earners is now only 37.5% CEO, and I'm sure there are other categories, such as the entire music industry, that I could have looked at to find other people that would come into this bracket.
I'm not saying here that there isn't an issue, what I'm wondering is why it is that the focus is so disproportionately on the minority of the top earners who happen to be FTSE 100 CEOs and the comparison of their salary as multiples of what others earn. If the aim is to address inequality then why focus on this group? I wonder perhaps if it is something to do with what skills we value as society? Is it that we see a footballer/actor/singer/.... performing their art and we appreciate a skill in what they do but somehow we fail to recognise the skills and abilities of the CEO?
So, a really thought provoking evening and one which, as you will have noticed and perhaps unsurprisingly, leaves me with more questions than answers.
Sources of my data
Huffington Post FTSE 100 Top Earners - http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/17/ftse-100-ceo-pay-top-ten-ceo-earners-2015_n_7997598.html
Forbes world's Highest paid athlete - http://www.forbes.com/athletes/ converting USD to UKP at current exchange rates on 27th Nov 2015 using Google.co.uk search box.
Highest paid actor - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11783705/Daniel-Craig-only-Brit-in-Forbes-list-of-highest-paid-actors-2015-with-27m.html
Saturday, 6 June 2015
What makes a problem difficult?
It's not every day that mathematics makes the main news programs but that is what happened yesterday. A GCSE ( UK exams taken by 16 year olds) maths exam question made it to the news as being very hard and having stumped many. ( A quick search for "Hannah's sweets" in your search engine of choice should show just how much coverage it got …)
Here is the main question…
There are n sweets in a bag. Six of the sweets are orange. The rest of the sweets are yellow.
Hannah takes a sweet from the bag. She eats the sweet.
Hannah then takes at random another sweet from the bag. She eats the sweet.
The probability that Hannah eats two orange sweets is 1/3.
Show that n2-n-90=0
..and my solution
Show that n2-n-90=0
..and my solution
Start by considering the first sweet she takes out. The probability that it is orange is
(number of orange sweets)/( total number of sweets) which is 6/n
Now consider the second sweet she draws from the bag and the chance that this one is also orange. Again this is ( number of orange sweets)/( total number of sweets) but we need to remember that we removed 1 sweet already and it was orange so we have 5/(n-1)
To get the probability of the two events both happening we need to multiply the individual probabilities so we have the chance of drawing out 2 sweets and them both being orange is (6/n) x (5/(n-1)) and that multiplies out to (6x5)/(n(n-1) = 30/(n2-n)
In the question however we are told that he probability is 1/3rd so we get
1/3 = 30/(n2-n)
We know we can multiply both sides of an equation by the same thing so multiply by 3 and then by (n2-n) to get
n2-n = 90
Subtract 90 from both sides and we have n2-n-90=0 so that's the first part done.
The second part of the question asked how many sweets there were in the bag.
To work this out we ideally need to know that (x+a)(x-b) multiplies out to x2 +(a-b)x -ab
So what we are looking for are 2 numbers which multiply together to give -90 and add together to give -1. Considering this for a moment leads us to -10 and 9 so we now know that
n2-n-90 = (n-10)(n+9) = 0
There are hence 2 possible solutions , either n=10 or n=-9
Here we need to intersect our maths with the real world and realise that as we have a bag with actual sweets in it n has to be positive so there must be 10 sweets in the bag.
Always good practice to check your answer so if the are 10 probability of drawing 2 orange sweets is 6/10 x 5/9 = 30/90 = 1/3 so that looks good.
So back to my subject line "what makes a question difficult". To solve the mystery of Hannah's sugar rush we needed 4 pieces of mathematical knowledge: how to calculate a probability; how to combine probabilities; how to rearranging equations and how to do a simple factorisation of a quadratic equation. If you don't know those then clearly you will have a problem but I suspect many of the people classing this problem as hard would have known those things so what made this question hard?
I've been reflecting on this and I think it's because to solve it you need to head out like an explorer down an uncertain path. We know where we are and we know where we are trying to get to but as we start out we have no clue about the journey. It isn't instantly obvious what the formula we are asked to derive comes from, this only becomes clear once we make a start and see where it takes us.
Sunday, 22 March 2015
Wadham Mathematics equinoctial subject reunion
This Saturday I joined fellow Wadham mathematicians from across the decades for a reunion in Oxford (these photos were posted by Wadham after the event). After lunch in college we walked to the new Andrew Wiles Building for a guided tour.
It's an impressive (and indeed award winning) building on a much bigger scale than the previous Institute and with lecture theatres big enough to hold the first year lectures so todays students are denied the regular site of dinosaurs that we enjoyed on our way to our lectures hosted in a the Natural History Museum. As we passed through the common room we noticed an intriguing puzzle on one of the screens….. something to muse on.
Settling into one of the lecture rooms we were treated to a delightful series of short talks from some of the Wadam Mathematics fellows. First up we were introduced to "kiiking" which turns out to involve a large swing that you stand up on and aim to build up the required momentum to manage complete revolutions. There are 2 records associated with this: the largest number of complete revolutions in 1 minute (video of record - recommend skip forward to just over 8 mins into the video); the greatest height of the swing (video of record). Having introduced us to the sport Sam Howison then took us on a whistle stop tour of a mathematical model that suggests what the limits of these records will be. More details - here
Next up Andrew Hodges ( most recently famed as the author of the book Alan Turing: The Enigma which inspired the film "The Imitation Game") spoke about "twistor" geometry. Discovered back around 1970 by Roger Penrose these ideas were seen as what Andrew called "an Oxford eccentricity". Work continued and 30 years later they came to be seen as fundamental in some areas of particle physics. More details at www.twistordiagrams.org.uk
Nick Woodhouse spoke briefly about the Clay Mathematics Institute ( of which he is the President) and their PROMYS Maths Masterclass program before handing over to Alex Ritter for the last talk of the afternoon. Alex treated us to a 30 minute tour of tilings. More content from Roger Penrose but this time his work on non-periodic tiling - fascinating stuff. Full details in the notes from a masterclass that Alex ran here
With our last lecture of the day complete it was time for a drink and to say goodbye.
It turned out that the 21st was also the day for the opening of the Weston Library so we took the chance for a quick look in there - impressive transformation.
In an action packed day for Oxford it was also the start of the Oxford Literary Festival (maybe the date for the opening of the library across the street wasn't a complete coincidence) so we rounded off our day with a talk in the Sheldonian by Tony Hawks on his new book.
It's an impressive (and indeed award winning) building on a much bigger scale than the previous Institute and with lecture theatres big enough to hold the first year lectures so todays students are denied the regular site of dinosaurs that we enjoyed on our way to our lectures hosted in a the Natural History Museum. As we passed through the common room we noticed an intriguing puzzle on one of the screens….. something to muse on.
Settling into one of the lecture rooms we were treated to a delightful series of short talks from some of the Wadam Mathematics fellows. First up we were introduced to "kiiking" which turns out to involve a large swing that you stand up on and aim to build up the required momentum to manage complete revolutions. There are 2 records associated with this: the largest number of complete revolutions in 1 minute (video of record - recommend skip forward to just over 8 mins into the video); the greatest height of the swing (video of record). Having introduced us to the sport Sam Howison then took us on a whistle stop tour of a mathematical model that suggests what the limits of these records will be. More details - here
Next up Andrew Hodges ( most recently famed as the author of the book Alan Turing: The Enigma which inspired the film "The Imitation Game") spoke about "twistor" geometry. Discovered back around 1970 by Roger Penrose these ideas were seen as what Andrew called "an Oxford eccentricity". Work continued and 30 years later they came to be seen as fundamental in some areas of particle physics. More details at www.twistordiagrams.org.uk
Nick Woodhouse spoke briefly about the Clay Mathematics Institute ( of which he is the President) and their PROMYS Maths Masterclass program before handing over to Alex Ritter for the last talk of the afternoon. Alex treated us to a 30 minute tour of tilings. More content from Roger Penrose but this time his work on non-periodic tiling - fascinating stuff. Full details in the notes from a masterclass that Alex ran here
With our last lecture of the day complete it was time for a drink and to say goodbye.
It turned out that the 21st was also the day for the opening of the Weston Library so we took the chance for a quick look in there - impressive transformation.
In an action packed day for Oxford it was also the start of the Oxford Literary Festival (maybe the date for the opening of the library across the street wasn't a complete coincidence) so we rounded off our day with a talk in the Sheldonian by Tony Hawks on his new book.
Monday, 22 December 2014
Corruption of the Magi
I realise that the celebration of Christmas is becoming increasingly secular with declining levels of Biblical Literacy. If you want to check out your knowledge of bible versus popular misconceptions try this short quiz from the Bible Society.
I know that the news focuses on the stories of crazed shopping, fighting over bargains, vast amounts of money being spent and not so much on the good work that is done at this time of year to address issues such as loneliness and homelessness.
Even so, I was a little surprised by the extent to which the "Season's Greetings" that I received in an email from an Accountancy Firm was so at odds with my view of what this time is all about.
Here's what they sent me ( if it looks a bit odd it's because I've blanked out the name of the firm in question )…
In the narrative to which I cleave, the Magi came to worship a new born king. With them they brought extravagant gifts, giving freely. The message being transmitted here however seems to me to be the complete antithesis. Rather than giving costly gifts we have them written off to expenses and tax deductions. Rather than coming to offer themselves we instead have a self satisfying "in it for what I can get back" attitude. A, probably unwitting, extra emphasis coming from the fact that it is the gift of Myrrh, with its symbolism of the suffering and self sacrificial death that Jesus would face, that has been replaced by the self centred attitude of one of the company directors. "Wise"? I beg to differ.
I know that the news focuses on the stories of crazed shopping, fighting over bargains, vast amounts of money being spent and not so much on the good work that is done at this time of year to address issues such as loneliness and homelessness.
Even so, I was a little surprised by the extent to which the "Season's Greetings" that I received in an email from an Accountancy Firm was so at odds with my view of what this time is all about.
Here's what they sent me ( if it looks a bit odd it's because I've blanked out the name of the firm in question )…
In the narrative to which I cleave, the Magi came to worship a new born king. With them they brought extravagant gifts, giving freely. The message being transmitted here however seems to me to be the complete antithesis. Rather than giving costly gifts we have them written off to expenses and tax deductions. Rather than coming to offer themselves we instead have a self satisfying "in it for what I can get back" attitude. A, probably unwitting, extra emphasis coming from the fact that it is the gift of Myrrh, with its symbolism of the suffering and self sacrificial death that Jesus would face, that has been replaced by the self centred attitude of one of the company directors. "Wise"? I beg to differ.
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