Bodie picked up the phone.  Made an overly expressive facial gesture that signified horror as a BBC elecutioned newsreader style voice offered little clue where the latest terrorist activity was due to take place.  Zoom in on the 1970′s style cassette recorder.  An evil cackle.  Dramatic pause and cut to a grainy film of a speedboat chugging through a stagnated undeveloped London Docklands.

Yes, this is the Clarity Blog.  You are in the right place.  This was channel one (or 121) on sky and the programme was “The Professionals”… remember?  Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw?

I reckon the programme was late 70′s or early 80′s so we’re talking 30 years or more since it graced our screens on a mainstream channel.

It’s funny how you watch things after the passage of such time and suddenly you realise something.  The programme you thought you remembered is completely different to the reality.

Looking at a short passage and you noted how all the accents were very pronounced and very much of the Queen’s English and out of the BBC newsreader old school.  The acting was over egged.  Movements too extreme and unnatural.  Expressions, actors lines… all left much to be desired.

Then there was the quality of the editing.  The special effects.  Explosions that wouldn’t convince even the most naive and car stunts that looked mild and safe compared to the modern games generation of today.

And perhaps finally, the one thing that stood out more than the rest for me.  How much London had changed.

Scenes taken from areas that couldn’t be recognised, but then the dawning realisation that it was London Docklands.  Dereliction and stagnation.  Nothing close to the skyscraping shining metropolis that it is today.  Phone boxes, cars, high street signs.

So what’s the point of this ramble?  The professionals?  Am I really telling you to go away and take a lesson from a 70′s/80′s british TV show?

Of course not.  But let’s take the topic and shift the angle.  Imagine being back then.  The makers and actors of that programme.  It would have been normal wouldn’t it?  That was the way it was done and it fit for the time.  And it’s only years on that the exageration is now markedly pronounced.  Suddenly fast forward 30 years.  Contrast the two.  People, cities, behaviours, trends and styles have all radically changed.

So take the way you look at your business.  Look at your customers.  Are you 30 years ahead, or are you 30 years behind?  Are you of your time or ahead of it?  Are you lagging behind like an ancient channel one rerun?  Have practices and processes embraced the future, or are you stuck doing it the way it’s always been done?

And how do you know?  Who do you ask?  Who tells you how it is brutally and honestly?

You see the point is this.

Change happens.  The views and expectations of customers and clients shape daily.  Technology moves forward at breakneck speed.  New ways of doing business form constantly.  Marketing, systems, communication, managing people, utilising assets.  All have radically shifted since Bodie and Doyle graced our screens on mainstream telly.

Unless you harness change, proactively use it for the benefit of your business, customers and staff… you’re being left behind.  And just to clarify…. if someone refers to your business as being “a bit Bodie”…. that’s not a compliment… anymore!