Peter Bromhead: Pool of knowledge

Illustration / Peter Bromhead

When an overseas business guru buttonholed me recently, confidently promising he could make my "boat go faster", he clearly was unaware that I've been rudderless for some time.

Not only rudderless, but also drifting slowly backwards on an ebb tide — with my fellow slaves in the media industry.

He enthusiastically suggested I needed access to "a command and control centre". Once I possessed this core essential, I would increase my dormant efficiency and rapidly stimulate revenue growth.

All I have to do is attend an online lecture and I will receive a copy of his "Command and Control Centre" software, valued at $495, for free.

His offer concluded by promising "more clients, more money, more fun", but failed to explain what he hoped to gain by offering me this bait-covered hook.

Being drawn to the possibility of "more fun", I casually mentioned to the caregiver of the evangelist's generous offer to to give me my own command and control centre.

This produced a puzzled look. "But you've already got one," she retorted.

"Have I?" I responded, adding, "err ... where?" The reply was succinct. "Me. I'm your command and control centre." "Ah! Of course, I forgot," I meekly replied, deciding not to pursue the matter further. As the caregiver runs most of my business empire and household, there appears to be little point in introducing another control centre.

Falling back on my naval education, I could have suggested that warships usually have a secondary command centre aft, in case the for'ard bridge gets knocked out, but decided comparisons between a warship's architecture and who wears the pants in my life were subtleties too complex to introduce into a dinner conversation.

Of course, the real reason I'm interested in the offer is the morbid fascination I have with seeing how many ways a business evangelist can hijack elementary commercial procedures and convert basic commonsense into long-winded guru babble.

One such practitioner sent me an email recently, wanting to sharpen up my business methods by suggesting he could create a number of "blue-sky scenarios for systemizing a logistical matrix approach".

Presumably, he was simply trying to promote a method that systematically accomplished something.

In the meantime, I will gracefully retreat to my idea of a command and control centre, which is a small room I've converted into a wine cellar where, hopefully, common sense reigns — except when it comes to how many times I refill my glass.