Cubs Swept, Controlling Budgets & Jive Talkin'

Wait ‘til next year!

The Major League Baseball playoffs continue, but without the Chicago Cubs who were swept 3-0 by the Arizona Cardinals (boo-hoo!!). I’ve been following the Cubs all my life, despite having grown up in Chicago’s south suburbs (traditionally the home of Chicago White Sox fans), and I’ve never given credit to the curse of the billy goat. It all goes back to 1945 when William "Billy Goat" Sianis insisted on taking his goat to see the Cubs play the Detroit Tigers at Wrigley Field during the World Series. After fans complained about the animal’s odor, the owner of the Chicago Cubs, Philip Knight Wrigley, had Mr. Sianis and his smelly pet removed from the Friendly Confines. Sianis, very angry at the Cubs’ organization for not letting him remain at the stadium to enjoy the ballgame with his goat, put a curse on the team: the Cubs would never again play in a World Series.

Boo-hoo. Llorar, hacer el sonido de llanto, !buuah!
Billy goat. Macho cabrío

Granted, the Chicago Cubs haven’t played in a World Series since the ejection of that man and his billy goat. But since I don’t believe in hoaxes and curses, I can only keep the faith: Wait ‘til next year!

Business

Controlling a budget and employing harmonics in management are just two of the several business themes I’ve recently discussed on the program.

On paper, controlling a budget appears easy: comparing actual costs, revenues and performance against a set budget. However, as I discovered when I bounced my first check, it’s not as easy as it looks. In the business world, once we understand the figures that make up the budget, we have to monitor them. It’s like having an early warning system in place in case things go wrong. This way, we can identify variances: a negative variance means we’ve spent too much (that’s easy to do!), and a positive variance means we’ve underspent.

On paper. In theory, rather than in practice
To bounce. To give a bad check as payment
To underspend. To spend less than the whole of (a budget, for example)

A positive variance is good, right? Wrong! It shows that something has happened that we didn’t expect. Did we pay for something in cash without recording it on the books? Are we carrying out our marketing policies as previously planned? Have we failed to hire that key team member? All of these could be reasons as to why we have a positive variance.

Books (of account). The original records and books used in recording business transactions.

From here, it’s simply a question of taking some type of corrective action in order to get the budget back in line. And if we make any changes – let everybody involved know!

I particularly enjoyed the segment on harmonics in management. This is all about trying to promote a more productive work environment through the use of “other intelligences”: emotional, spiritual and aesthetic. Business and management tend to assume that we operate in a purely rational world. We don’t. We’re humans and so we aren’t 100% rational. That’s why I’m all for the use of these harmonics in the business world. Incorporating emotional, spiritual and aesthetic elements will give us more of an emotional kick. And companies prosper too, as workers become more trustworthy, productive and loyal.

Just look at what Charles Darwin wrote along these lines:

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made it a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have thus been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”

So how can we “harmonize” the work place? Many experts hold in-company workshops and have people write songs, draw pictures and build sculptures. They’ve found that these activities help us to find parts of ourselves that we haven’t accessed before. Not only does this help to identify unused talent, it provides courage to try something completely new. Harmonics of management helps people bring our minds and our souls to work.

Music

A couple of number one songs that I’ve recently looked at were “Jive Talkin’” and “Bennie and the Jets.”

Jive Talkin’

It’s just your drive talkin’…I mean, it’s your “jive” talking. The Bee Gees can thank Barry Gibb’s wife, Linda, for their US number one song during the week of August 9, 1975. She was referring to the “chunka-chunka” noise their car made as it went over the Sunny Isle Bridge in southern Florida. One night, on the way back from a recording session, she said, “Hey, listen to that noise. It’s the same every evening. It’s our drive talking.” Barry looked over at her, smiled, and knew he was on the way to a big hit.

So, what does “jive” mean, anyway? It’s a slang term which, apart from referring to terminology used by jazz musicians, also means “smooth talk.” Someone will use jive when they’re deceptive or insincere. As the Bee Gees say in their song:

It’s just your jive talkin’
You’re telling me lies, yeah
Jive talkin’
You wear a disguise
Jive talkin’
So misunderstood, yeah
Jive talkin’
You really no good

Disguise. Disfraz.

Bennie and the Jets

“What am I going to do on my next American tour? Play the Apollo for a week, open with ‘Bennie and the Jets’, and then say, ‘Thanks, you can all go home now.’”

The Apollo Theater in New York City is one of the most famous clubs for popular music in the United States and certainly the most famous club associated almost exclusively with African-American performers.

This was how Elton John expressed his concern that he only had one R&B song to play in front of an Apollo audience who would expect at lot more than that. Back in 1974, before this song reached the number one position in the US during the week of April 13, an African American radio station in Detroit, Michigan was giving heavy airplay to song. In response, the record company MCA decided to release “Bennie and the Jets” instead of releasing the UK hit “Candle in the Wind.” The response to their decision was mind-boggling. The song debuted on the Hot 100 at number 69, becoming Elton John’s second number one single eight weeks later.

R&B. Rhythm and blues
Airplay. The broadcasting of an audio or audiovisual recording on the air over radio or television
Mind-boggling. Alucinante.

That’s all for now. Keep listening and keep learning!

Published by: Drew Crosby