Author: Stephen Drain

Hi everyone, I am a Partner in PwC in Auckland New Zealand. I lead PwC Forensics Services and support PwC Partner Leadership Development. My particular area of focus in leadership is Authenticity.

A top up for happiness

If life has any meaning, it’s probably happiness.

Mum turned 85 recently and from a possible 39 direct descendants (which for the record includes one husband, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and spouses thereof) we had 26 for lunch in Christchurch. She’s a similar age to the Queen with her birthday in the same month, and we couldn’t help but notice she was sporting a real royal haircut too!

13043350_10153578064888683_7547908930913175859_nWe had lunch, some gifts were given and words were said and it was back to Mum and Dad’s for a slide show put together by Dad. There’s a lot to capture in 85 years and Dad did a great job of a selection from Mum’s 80th, their 60th wedding anniversary and a top up from the last few years. We laughed and marvelled at the haircuts and the fashion, and of places been.

A great top up of happiness.

13226773_10153613046988683_2596308080632854044_nMy son Thomas graduated with his Master of Science last week. The hard work for him seems to me to be long ago and it would be easy to be cynical about the graduation event – a lot of pomp and ceremony just to pick up a certificate. Like Mum’s 85th it brought family together. Great happiness and I’m pretty proud of my big boy too. Data Scientist extraordinaire.

You don’t have to accept my proposition about life’s meaning, but you sure can find some happiness in the simplicity of family, in whatever form that takes for you.

Stephen

Grandma’s insight

“Lovely to see you come, and lovely to see you go“. So said Grandma in about 1974 after nine of us were about to depart after three weeks or so in her flat and bach. Such harsh words I thought. Surely she was sad to see us go? After all she was quite old I thought and you never know, this could be the last time (turned out she had another 16 years!).

Of course as a boy I didn’t appreciate the stress that a large group of visitors in Grandma’s flat in Sandringham and at her bach in Stanmore Bay might have caused. They were just great holidays. A long road trip from the South Island, beaches, swimming, hot days, sun burn, Waiwera hot pools and barbeques.

I had dear friends stay in the weekend (so in case they’re reading I’m not about to do a Grandma). W12657243_10206633536649957_1152946458479811167_oe cycled, dined, did some gardening and watched movies.

A colleague commented to me the other day that when you’re an extrovert it’s not always straightforward to explain to those close to you that you need downtime. Which I have found to be true.

I’m an extrovert and part of me needs recharging with time alone. More so as I’ve got older (which might be another post).

Thanks to Grandma for the wise leadership insight all those years ago.

Stephen

p.s. this is her in 1979 with my mother. I can imagine she’s smiling from being reminded about this story.

Golden Years

David Bowie was the first music star I came to appreciate, at about aged 12. A few years later a friend once asked me if he could look through the Cassettes in my car for music to play. There was about a dozen. “They’re all Bowie!” he declared. Not a problem. I’m still listening decades later.

Two days ago I bought Bowie’s album Blackstar on its release on iTunes. Watching the tracks BlackStar and Lazarus was haunting in a way I struggled to define.

Listening again in the car this evening on hearing of his death, I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was listening to his funeral songs.

I’m in shock in a way I haven’t been about the death of a musician or other public figure.

For me it’s a personal story of music threaded through almost my whole life. John I’m only Dancing in the early seventies, 1984 at the time I read the Orwell book of the same title, Station to Station which builds and builds and was one of the longest tracks I had at the time,  Heroes blasting in the car so loud you couldn’t think; China Girl  with its New Zealand video and Let’s Dance into the Eighties. Changes forever. There’s so much of his music I’m passionate about, it’s hard to know where to start – these are just off the top of my head, as is the title of this blog, so that’s what it’s titled.

I was there at Western Springs in the largest concert ever held in New Zealand. I’m pretty sure I’ve got all his music. For me none can compare. And he was a funny man. When interviewed on the Holmes show one evening by Susan Wood he was asked how he managed in public without being hassled.  ‘I put on a hat and buy a Greek newspaper, no one bothers me then’ was his reply.

Like the chameleon he was, leading to his death the expectation of which we knew nothing of, he had us all wondering about the music. Even my mother declared yesterday ‘Lazarus, has he run out of ideas?’ (I’ve no idea where she came to learn of Bowie’s new album or even have a passing interest but such is his power). He’s gone now and it’s sad. But we have no rights to not be shocked. A private man who lived his life away from the glare of publicity right to the end. A man without peer. As tragic as it is, he must have wanted Blackstar to speak to us after he was gone. And it does.

Thank you.  I have to borrow his title and say that these have truly been Golden Years of music for me.

Stephen

 

 

Trumbo

Dalton Trumbo was a Hollywood screenwriter who refused to answer questions before a congressional committee “investigating” un-American activities. Along with 10 other writers he was put on a blacklist and, like thousands of others, treated as a traitor, a communist and un-American.

Before seeing the movie I hadn’t heard of Trumbo, but I know a bit about the anti-communist hysteria that existed in many countries during the Cold War.

Misguided people who marginalise and build fear against minorities have existed over many millennia.

It’s a great story told as a movie, and there’s important reminders in it for leaders, especially now.

Stephen