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Ten Greatest Quick Tips for Building the Dream • 125

be much more valuable to the business than the ability of your people to give you a

problem that, if they had been unable to contact you, they might very well have

been able to solve themselves.

In a meeting yesterday a senior manager in a telecommunications firm told me

how one day he had spent the whole of a three-hour train journey on the phone. He

switched it off to attend the meeting he was going to and when he came out there

were 17 voice mail messages. There is something very wrong there and

the mobile phone is hiding the symptoms of an organisational and delega- If you cannot

tion problem that could cost him or his business dear. It could cost the imagine life

business dear if he makes a mistake by being too thinly spread; and I hope without a

he is making lots of money so that his widow will be comfortable when he mobile phone,

has his heart attack. try it for a week.

If you cannot imagine life without a mobile phone, try it for a week. You may have

You may have to switch it on again the next week, but you will have to switch it on

discovered the virtue of being out of touch for some periods of time. again the next

week, but you

will have

Idea 81 - Don't become obsessed with saving tax discovered the
virtue of being

Remember that if you give the Government 40% of your profits, then you out of touch for

have kept 60%. You can waste a lot of time saving tax, and if you cut some periods

corners and get a full investigation started you can wave goodbye to an of time.

immense amount of your and your accountant's time and your money.

Some years ago I worked in the Edinburgh office of a business whose head

office was in London. One of my colleagues had organised a payment of bonus,

quite legally, that reduced the tax burden by spreading the payments over two tax

years. Then the administrators blew it and paid the whole lot at once. The phone

lines between Edinburgh became hot and the language ripe, as he tried to sort it out.

He made good progress but had not 100% restored the planned position. I swear he

took the next two days arguing and fighting for his rights. We calculated that the last