OPINION / 12
MENTOR MAZE ? Terry O’Regan on the benefits of having a trusted business advisor
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ecoming self-employed, a desire to have control over an enterprise is high on the agenda, coupled with an ability to take your own decisions rather than implement the decisions of others. But to be successfully self-employed, an openness to take advice is useful, coupled with the mental sharpness to separate ‘the wheat from the chaff’ when seeking out that advice. There are many variations of a well-worn anecdote about someone who is lost in the countryside. He asks a local for directions and after a series of confusing instructions finds himself confounded with the local’s concluding advice, “If I wanted to get there, I wouldn’t have started from here!” It’s reputed to have originated around 1924 with an Englishman, lost in the west of Ireland, who sought advice on how to get to Letterfrack from an Irishman cutting turf. It’s a welltravelled yarn that has been transposed into other cultures, undoubtedly because of the wisdom buried in the fable, not least about advisors and advice. If you enjoy a varied career you will wear many hats, and along the road you will be a seeker, a giver, a taker of advice and sometimes an ignorer of advice. You will meet many advisors, some seeking you out directly or indirectly, but to
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get the best advice you may have to make the move and pay directly or indirectly. Since retiring, I have added another hat to my own rack, working with landscape contractors in an advisory role. It set me thinking about the evolution of such a service and the range of diverse scenarios in which the service is delivered. Some come with specific titles nowadays, such as business mentors, coaches, consultants, gurus, trainers or even angels! Many of these business training concepts originated in the USA in the 1960’s, making their way across the Atlantic over subsequent decades. In 1970’s Ireland, few such exotic creatures existed, except for a few early bird business consultants nesting in the Irish Management Institute in Sandyford, Dublin. I remember little of the IMI course I attended, courtesy of Goulding Horticulture (of the Fitzwilton Group and the launching pad for many self-employed landscape contractors). I do, however, remember one consultant suggesting a memory training trick involving a visualisation of a horse race, with your list of business priorities sequentially riding the horses. It sounded like a good idea, but I soon found myself with the Grand National in my head every day! When I became self-employed in 1975, such sophisticated
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticultureconnected.ie / Summer 2021
