>Clear enough. I have read and do plan to keep reading this thread - it IS a wake-up to think that these skills we have all been honing are no longer of value in the world, and this trade / calling we have chosen and love might be evaporating. What clearly will not stop that evolution is the protestations that we have worked so hard to get to this point and we deserve a market for our offerings. Has anybody read "Who Moved My Cheese?"

I haven't, sorry. I assume it's a management or self-help book? I've worked far too hard all my life avoiding both types of books to start on them now. When I was a national department manager at the reinsurance company, I was plagued with more 'management concepts du jour' than I ever wanted to know about.

I remember being subjected to "I Packed My Own Chute". This woman was terribly afraid of flying (or parachuting, I can never remember which), so she got an instructor and eventually jumped out of plane. When this film was over, our HR gnome asked "wasn't that inspiring?" Now, I know that not everyone will agree with me, but I told her that I thought it was about the stupidest thing I'd ever seen.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that there are fears we must overcome if we are to operate productively from day to day - even to excel. Jumping out of a plane is not one of them. Risking one's life to prove a point is (IMHO) stupid. I wonder if they'd have shown me this film if her chute hadn't opened and she'd died. The 'overcome your fears' concept would still have been valid, but somehow, I doubt we'd have seen a single cel.

Somehow or another this was supposed to inspire us to great insurance company management feats.

I've often thought there could be money to be made in creating a sort of Management 'Ann Landers' in the newspaper. Kind of like the radio psychologists. "I don't know you, and you don't kow me, but trust me. If you'll just write or call in and talk to me for 10 seconds, I will figure you out completely enough to tell you how to live your life."

Hmmm... I think I'm starting to ramble.

Long live Scott Adams.

Alan