22nd October 2017

In this life you have to be flexible.
   In the Apprentice on Wednesday, the contestants had to design a robot so that it could interract in today's world, and then sell it to interested parties.  As expected, the egotistical youngsters were so focused on themselves and arguing with each other that they missed the main picture.
   On Thursday Theresa May arrived at the EU summit in Brussels, following a press conference with Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker.  She was armed with precise instructions from her Cabinet and focused on one aim: what was best for Britain.  In turn Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker arrived with precise, voted-on, instructions from the council comprising all the other EU countries. In business, politics and in life flexibility is required.  In critical negotiations always give the negotiator carte blanche to make individual decisions.  At such times you cannot be robotic:  you must have the power to duck and dive, bend and move at will, not hampered by pre-instructions. In Brussels neither side had this flexibility. What would Alan Sugar have predicted? Stalemate.