At a meeting this morning, someone used an acronym which I don’t think I’d heard before: ‘HiPPO’ – the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. But I know exactly what it means – I once lost a client because I disagreed with the HiPPO in the room. I was right (naturally), but it didn’t matter, the HiPPO prevailed, everybody else fell into line, and the next phase of my involvement in the project never materialised.

It’s kind of like that ancient Chinese engineer who suggested the Great Wall of China wasn’t being built the best way. The engineer was right (naturally), they adopted his idea, but they lopped off his head anyway for daring to go up against the Emperor. This kind of macho, rutting stag culture annoys the hell out of me, but when it’s there, it’s there and you have to deal with it.

Of course, the Green Jujitsu approach would have been to persuade the HiPPO that he had realised that there was a much better way of approaching the problem, rather than me, an outsider, dismantling his logic. But you can’t win ’em all.

Photo © Jon Connell used under creative commons licence