Subconscious as Decision Computer (1 highlight)
“I cannot explain this scientifically, but I was entirely convinced that, through the years, in my brain as in a computer, I had stored details of the problems them- selves, the decisions reached and the results obtained; everything was neatly filed away there for future use. Then, later, when a new problem arose, I would think it over and, if the answer was not immediately apparent, I would let it go for a while, and it was as if it went the rounds of the brain cells looking for guidance that could be retrieved, for by next morning, when I examined the problem again, more often than not the solution came up right away. That judgement seemed to be come to almost unconsciously, and my conviction is that during the time I was not consciously considering the problem, my sub- conscious had been turning it over and relating it to my memory ; it had been held up to the light of the experi- ences I had had in past years, and the way through the difficulties became obvious. I am pretty sure other older men have had this same evidence of the brain's sub- conscious work. This makes it all very easy, you may say. But, of course, it doesn't happen easily. That bank of experience from which I was able to draw in the later years was not easily funded. —”
Cross-Fertilize Cash Flows Across Seasons (1 highlight)
“in 1965 for a dramatic take-off. What Raitz had dis- covered and Captain Teddy Langton had further developed was that, if you made a business of it and organised everything well in advance, if you chartered aircraft, booking thousands of seats, and reserved blocks of bedrooms, if not entire hotels, and if you put clever advertisements in the way of people who had never thought of going abroad, you could sell them a fortnight on the Mediterranean, including aircraft, all meals and hotel, for less than the cost of the scheduled air-fare to that particular spot. With the spending power of the new technological age working people, wouldn't millions go for that? Gordon based his faith on the expansion that would come from the great mysteries of the British climate and that enormously increasing spending power of the ordinary people. In cost terms, they could have a holiday in the Mediterranean sun in a comparatively high quality hotel for less than they would be asked to pay to sit and watch the rain from a Blackpool boarding-house. Moreover, since a deposit was payable on every booking, the cash would begin to flow in the winter and the spring, just when newspapers were habitually getting in little money, and by the time we had to pay for the hotels the newspaper income would be rising again to meet the demands. We had an added advantage in being able to com- municate through our newspapers and magazines to millions of prospective clients ; in other words we could make our sales of inclusive holiday tours in the advertise- ment columns of our own newspapers, and that very likely at a time—at the beginning of the year—when these columns were not carrying their full load. This would be cross-fertilization between one area and another of the Organisation's activities, which was good economic sense.”
Other highlights (18)
“Why did I want to do it? Because all my life I have been worried when I have remained for a long time in a routine and settled way of daily habits. I was always afraid of standing still, of stagnating. My ambition had always kept well ahead of my accomplishments. The chance of becoming owner of a truly national newspaper in contrast to the purely local dailies which I ran in Canada—and indeed the Scotsman was a paper with an international reputation, an entirely different proposition from anything I owned—had a strong appeal.”
“made of me. The following Wednesday the press was issued with a hand-out announcing the founding of Scottish Television Limited, under the chairmanship of Roy Thomson. We had no studio, no artists, no announ- cers, no producers, no technicians, no musicians and no programmes but we had a contract (signed on 19th June, 1957). I remember that when the letter arrived Jim Coltart was sitting opposite me and I tossed it over to him. He read it. 'What do we do first?' he asked. 'I haven't an idea.' Jim stared at me for a moment. 'Roy, I get a certain impression that you know nothing about running a TV station.' 'That's quite correct.' He looked horrified. 'But you said in the application to the Authority that you were part-owner of two stations in Canada!' 'Well, I am. But I only took a share in them to give Rupert Davies—Senator Rupert Davies—some financial backing when he needed it. I've never had anything to do with the running of them.' Jim Coltart closed his eyes as if to shut out the sight of a cruel world, then broke into a laugh. 'That's fine,' he said. 'So we both begin from scratch.'”
“Even today, when I'd much rather stay at home, I am always ready to make a journey, sometimes abroad, to attend the centenary celebration of a newspaper, or the opening of a hotel, or a travel agents' convention in Majorca, to go on television, and to be very careful of that, to rehearse thoroughly what I am going to say, so that I can put over to the public what we stand for and what we are going to do. In this, I am doing the best I can for the shareholders of my organisation, and saying that isn't being hypocritical. Of course if the shares keep buoyant as the result of my speech or appearance, my family trusts benefit. But the price of those shares matters perhaps even more to the widow with two thousand of them.”
“It was my habit still to offer to buy any newspaper which might come into any discussion, and one of the first 'bites' that came at this time, in fact before the Belfast case was settled, was a suggestion by Sir Christopher Chancellor of Reuters, just before he took over the chair-”
“If I have any advice to pass on, as a successful man, it is this: if one wants to be successful, one must think; one must think until it hurts. One must worry a problem in one's mind until it seems there cannot be another aspect of it that hasn't been considered. Believe me, that is hard work and, from my close observation, I can say that there are few people indeed who are prepared to perform this arduous and tiring work. But let me go further and assure you of this: while, in the early stages, it is hard work and one must accept it as such, later one will find that it is not so difficult, the thinking apparatus has become trained ; it is trained even to do some of the thinking subconsciously as I have shown. The pressure that one had to use on one's poor brain in the early stages no longer is necessary; the hard grind is rarely needed; one's mental computer arrives at decisions instantly or during a period when the brain seems to be resting. It is only the rare and most complex problems that require the hard toil of protracted mental effort.”
“life and career. "On the whole/' Smiles writes, "it is not good that human nature should have the road of life made too easy. Better to be under the necessity of working hard and faring meanly, than to have every- thing done ready to hand and a pillow of down to repose upon. Indeed, to start in life with small means seems so necessary as a stimulus to work, that it may almost be set down as one of the conditions to success in life." '”
“justified. I asked Gordon if he would join me. I recall telling him, 'I don't think I'll be tempting you with money, but what I can offer you is opportunity/ This Gordon saw, fortunately. He must have seen that what we did with our money was to go wide and far, to hunt out opportunities for expansion, to enjoy the real freedom of enterprise. So he joined us, and he very soon brought others, like Geoffrey Parrack and Tim Hedgecock, to help us, and there never was any doubt about our spirit of enterprise.”
“apply to a group of periodicals. When we were keen to take a paper over, our practice was to have a good look at the books, and there was no one better at taking a good look at books than I was, and then estimate how much more circulation we could obtain and how much that would mean in advertising revenue, and then have our boys look at the plant and estimate what we would need to spend, if anything, on modernizing it ; putting all these factors together we arrived at a fair price and stuck to it; if anyone wanted to outbid us, let him.”
“myself, from long experience, reckon invaluable. A man must not only know how to choose his executives, he must know how to delegate authority. Lack of this ability shows not only a lack of trust in the individuals them- selves but a failure to trust and back one's own judge- ment. Many of the business failures I have known about throughout my life have come about through this. A man who cannot delegate to others finds himself without the time or energy to concentrate on essential problems. Nor will he be able to take the kind of decisions that are active,”
“immediate and effective. I had also found that it paid to give an executive that confidence right at the start of his career with me.”
“In almost all businesses, the revenue fluctuates by months and seasons of the year. In most cases costs have a relationship to the sales of that particular time, but many costs are fixed and cannot readily be changed to conform with a monthly change of revenue. Our budgets are all set up on the basis of average monthly costs for the whole year, and then every month is separately budgeted for revenue, so that the fluctuations don't make any one month look better or worse than it really is, and we also show each month what we've got to do during the remainder of that year.”
“Not everyone seemed to understand my love of budgets and balance sheets. They didn't seem to comprehend that, simply by checking figures, I could share in the guidance and excitement of a great number of operations, sometimes at the distance of an ocean or a continent. What I was watching was the flow of cash from one part of the organisation to another, testing it as if it were oil or life-blood, gauging that one area or section was not being starved of it, another part was not being overfed.”
“Thomson: I delegate completely to editors and local managers the authority to determine their own editorial content. In that respect I think I am rather unique.”
“Our theme in diversifying the business was to take into other fields of communication such skills and ex- perience as we had been building up in the running of our newspapers, and later in Thomson Publications. A very”
“The years 1961 to 1971 certainly gave us a very exciting decade. We didn't need to go beyond the bank to get ample credit at 6 per cent and it was upon that, substantially, that the massive expansion of the Organisa- tion was built ; on that and on a team ready to dig in and develop anywhere. In the autumn of 1964 a two-day”
“Meanwhile Gordon was searching for the entirely new pastures that would suit us. Away from the communica- tions business altogether, he set himself to find: (a) a growth industry (b) a business not requiring deep technical know-how (c) an operation with a cash flow that worked on a different cycle from that of newspapers (d) an industry that would employ the skills we had built up, and particularly that let us do what we were best at—selling to consumers in the market- place ; in other words, a market-orientated company.”
“I try to make friends wherever I go and it is my fond belief that I usually succeed. The way I look at it, every- one has an idea and one in a dozen may be a good idea. If you have to talk to a dozen people to get one good idea, even just the glimmering of an idea, that isn't wasteful work. People are continually passing things on to me, because I have given them to believe that I will be interested, I might even pay for it! Sometimes, usually when it is least expected, something comes up that is touched with gold.”
“been carefully considered risks. My idea of luck is that it is an opportunity seized. You go through life looking for opportunities, and because you have managed to seize quite a few of them you will be called lucky by your friends. This opportunity in the wild North Sea was also”
