"Respect Your Traditions"

This week, on Tuesday night, we did something that we've done every year on the same night for as long as I can remember.

We made and ate pancakes, it being Shrove Tuesday, or, as we say in our part of the UK, Pancake Day.

Now we didn't do it because of any religious belief, or because we wanted to use up all our eggs and flour before the start of Christian Lent. In fact, if pushed, I'd have to admit that there was no logical, practical, or sensible reason why we did it. There was only one reason.

Tradition.

By one of those odd coincidences, I also happened this week to be discussing tradition with a friend who is a financial accountant and a Scot.

He was fairly distraught that this week the bank that he was once so proud of, the Royal Bank of Scotland, had announced the highest-ever losses of a British company, a staggering £24 billion loss.

My friend recalled the days back in Scotland when that self-same bank stood for what he called "traditional banking values" of thrift, caution, reliability, modesty, and customer closeness. Now, he said, they stood for the opposite: recklessness, risk, unreliability, high-living, and customer alienation.

I don't know if there is any etymological connection between the word "trade" and the word "tradition". But I think there should be.

For, when we do business with anyone, we want to believe that the values they say they espouse are really the values they stand for.

Alvin Toffler once said that "an organisation's belief system is as important as, if not more important than, any of its other systems, including its accounting systems". And he was right.

The banks around the world that discarded their traditions of thrift and caution in pursuit of risk and greed may well rue what they've lost. As should we all.

I hope we'll continue to celebrate Shrove Tuesday for as long as I live. Not because it has any return on investment (perish the thought!) but because it's fun to do and re-connects us with the good things from our past that we carry with us into the present and future.

As Melanie Pike said about those banks that discarded their legacy, "The trick for lasting success: be cautious. Be a little old-fashioned. Be modest and stay close to your customer. And above all, respect your traditions."

PS At ManageTrainLearn, we like to think that we adhere to some good old-fashioned traditions. Like putting you, the customer, first. Like great products that really do change the way you live and work. Like value for money. And, if we fail to come up to the mark, then we also adhere to that other old-fashioned tradition of putting it right at no cost to you. We think those are traditions worth celebrating.