The Hundredth Man

In which I will demonstrate that almost anything can become a blog post.

"The Hundredth Man" is the title of a murder mystery novel by Jack Kerley I recently finished reading. It's not Chaucer, but it's good enough that I immediately moved onto the sequel.

The title refers to a joke made by the hero's partner:

"A guy is walking his mutt named Fido down the street when he spots a man on his hands and knees under a streetlight.
"The dog walker asks the man if he's lost something. Man says, 'Yeah, my contact lens popped out.' So the dog walker ties Fido to a phone pole and gets down on his hands and knees to help. They search up and down, back and forth, beneath that light. Fifteen minutes later the dog walker says, 'Buddy, I can't find it anywhere. Are you sure it popped out here?' The man says 'No, I lost it in the park.' 'The park? the dog walker yells. 'Then why the hell are we looking in the street?'
"The man points to the streetlamp and says, 'The light's better here'"

So, if 99 out of 100 people look in the light where it's easy to search, relying on futile hope, the hero is the hundredth man, the one who gropes about in the dark.

No prizes for guessing who's more likely to find it.

We're all guilty at some time in out professional lives of choosing a course of action because it's easy or comfortable, even if we know deep-down that it's not going to work. The modern work environment shields us from the consequences of this - we can show we were doing SOMETHING, so failure is excused.

A good consultant will tell you to your face if you're being daft, if you're wasting your time with something that won't work, and politely steer you back to what you should have done in the first place. We will help you concentrate on what will make a big difference to your business, and delegate - or ignore - what won't.

The best will even teach you to tell the difference!