Every cloud has a silver lining, even this big black disruptive one

SO THERE I was in Croke Park, to do workshops for Australians and New Zealanders who advise people on investments and pensions.

The type who used to be called wealth managers until parity of poverty broke out and “wealth” became a dirty word.

A major insurance company from Down Under had brought the highest performers of its customers among these financial advisors to Ireland as a Goodonya or Attaboy.

Twenty five years ago, any commercial firm which wanted to be well thought of by those influencing the sale of its services or goods, whether they were insurance or medication, could just cough up the money to bring those influencers anywhere in the world, starting with the most exotic and expensive locations, on the basis that, once they hit the luxury resort in Boca Raton, Bangkok or Bali, they could attend a half-hour lecture and spend the rest of the week drinking free booze, eating free gourmet food, playing free golf, sunbathing, swimming or shopping. It might be called an educational experience, but it was really a ritual dance where both sides pretended that freebies and flattery amounted to personal/professional development rather than the bribery and corruption they really represented.

That doesn’t happen any more. Companies, whether in healthcare or financial services, have to be able to prove to their respective regulators or umbrella bodies that any trip for the purposes of professional development delivers genuine professional development. So the programme part-based in Croke Park last week specified precisely what the participant in each workshop had to gain out of it. This is an approach I hope will inform how people buy training when the economy revives and skills development comes back on the agenda. During the good years, training courses were judged based on idiot “smile sheets” handed out at the end, which sought the opinions of the participants on how entertaining the trainer was, how good or bad the lunch was and whether they thought the loos were clean enough. All of which, while allowing participants a chance at self-expression (“I HATE aubergine bathrooms and the pasta was NOT al dente”) has damn all relevance as a method of assessing how good or bad the training was. Think of it this way. When the planes start flying again, do you want yours to be flown by a pilot whose training was delivered by a charismatic trainer with a state-of-the-art loo and Nigella-type lunches, or do you want it flown by someone who learned real skills and has not ceased, after the training course, to practise and reinforce those skills? Last week’s course required the participants to learn real skills. The circular tables in the vast room allocated to me were laid out randomly, so I could run around with a microphone and questions. Of course, I unfortunately forgot this when dressing that morning. Four hours running on four inch heels means that afterwards, your feet hurt right up to and including your shoulder blades.

The lecturer in the room next to me turned out to be Dr John Gray, the American who wrote Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and who – to judge by the roars of laughter coming from behind the adjoining wall – is one hell of an engaging performer. The only time I got a laugh that came close to the volume of those coming from his area was when I failed to understand an answer coming from my group. I had asked them a simple question: what are people interested in? “Themselves, first and foremost,” one man said decidedly.

“Right,” I said. “What else?”

“They’re interested in money,” another told me. “Luckily. Keeps us in business.”

“Anything else?”

“Six,” said a woman behind me.

“Six what?” I queried.

“SIX,” she said, in that loud voice you use when someone is being exceptionally thick. Or foreign. Or both.

“Fornication,” someone offered helpfully. “S-E-X.”

“Oh,” I said, light dawning. “That thing.”

(I just hope that next door, they thought the presenter in my room was witty, rather than getting her laughs through inability to understand Strine. Which, for those at the back, is shorthand for the Australian version of English.) At coffee break, some resigned discussion addressed the fact that the Icelandic volcano had put them – indeed, put all of us – under house arrest.

THESE professionals were not going to get back to New Zealand and Australia when they’d expected to. They were going to be at least two days and possibly more than two days late, getting back to work, than they had anticipated. It was going to cost them money. Not to stay in Ireland – that was covered by their sponsor and even if the sponsor hadn’t taken responsibility, the airline involved would have had to. But, as financial experts, they all knew the limitations of travel insurance. The phrase “Act of God” floated around like a mantra, and they all seemed pretty clear that any loss of income they experienced as a result of being stuck in Dublin instead of getting their feet under their own desks was not going to be covered by insurance. After all, who knew that a volcano that had minded its own business and said nothing to nobody for two centuries would suddenly get into the business of projectile vomiting? Who knew that it would do for Europe what 9/11 did for the US: erase jet-trails from the sky as if someone had taken a big eraser to it? The day after 9/11 yielded a satellite photograph which tended to be printed beside another shot from the same angle and height. That other shot showed the skies over America the way a satellite usually sees them – cobwebbed and gridded by the thready vapour trails left by thousands of jet aircraft. The post-Twin Towers collapse picture was clear of jet trails, except for one single white line up the east coast: Air Force One, the president’s plane, carrying George W Bush to New York.

If satellites can take pictures through lava ash, we may see similar photographs of Ireland, England and large chunks of continental Europe, empty of jet trails, as a volcano nobody ever heard of affects virtually every family and business, directly or indirectly.

It’s all the things we say about all the other disasters affecting us. It’s not fair. It’s not equitable. It’s screwing up people who did nothing to deserve it.

Yet we are markedly more equable about it than we are about those other disasters. Equable in a curiously passive way, though. Some hotel representative went on radio to say they’d give house room to people stuck in this country., but he sounded less than orgasmic. He sure as hell wasn’t coming up with Volcano Specials. We’d no organisation or website or TV programme to notify “Men are from Mars author John Gray is here for 2 extra days. Any takers?” or “My guest star is stuck in New Jersey – any hip-hop singer stuck here who’d substitute?”

Never mind the smart economy. What we need right now is the fast-response opportunistic economy. Even when we don’t have the challenge/opportunity presented by a volcano with digestive problems.