How to eat an elephant...

I am very fortunate to be managed in my employment by a good, compassionate man with a great head for numbers and a pragmatic approach to all he does.

He’s not a blip member and we’re not connected via social media (at least I hope we’re not), so this isn’t a pre-meditated eulogy from Mr R Slicker. He has an innate ability to remain calm under pressure and I can’t recall him ever showing outward signs of having been fazed by any of the challenges faced by us in the business, even now in these (stops to pick hackneyed phrase) unprecedented times.

One of the pearls of wisdom he has dropped on me over the years is “we need to eat the elephant”. Taken at face value, you could be forgiven for tucking a napkin into your shirt and glancing around whilst clutching a knife and fork, however, in case you hadn’t heard it before, it’s about taking a huge task or problem (the boss would say “opportunity”), which would be insurmountable if taken as a whole, and breaking it down into manageable chunks.

If you are a UK resident: congratulations! You are currently chowing down on your first hunk of metaphorical pachyderm and you probably didn’t even realise it! Hope it tastes good, because there’s more to come….

The UK government were clearly aware that we would need longer than 3 weeks in lockdown measures, but imagine how long 6 weeks (minimum) would have felt if they had led out with that? Yikes!

Break it down and whilst the outcome remains the same, it becomes more manageable in our minds. Three weeks becomes one week at a time, becomes one day at a time, becomes a couple of hours at a time and before you know it, you’re out the other side!

I appreciate that to many this may seem trite, but whilst this is a tongue-in-cheek take on the subject, I think the fact remains that breaking down one big unwieldy thing into smaller, easier to handle things is not a bad habit to get into at present.

Let’s pat ourselves on the back! We’re doing well, we’ve made it this far, so pick up that knife and fork and we’ll eat our way through the rest of it! 

Stay healthy.