It has been interesting watching the flow of capital at my work the last couple of weeks. No money, you’ll understand, but political capital, and also good will capital.
I think good will capital is underrated by a lot of people. It’s your ability to get someone else to do something, and normally relies on people by and large being happy to help others. I try to be one of those people, always ready to help, even if I don’t really know the person who’s asking me for it. It’s a collective good will thing at work – we all have to make those phonecalls from time to time asking people we’ve never met to do things we’d rather not do ourselves… and to make the system work you have ot sometimes (or often) say yes.
The thing is, that the goodwill capital can easily be used up. that’s not rocket science, and we’ve all had those days when one person too many has asked us to do stuff. But good will capital can also be wasted. Or maybe better described as loss. That is, if you ask someone to do something, but then later disregard that effort, you use your capital, but gain nothing from it. You lose it.
I’ve been feeling pretty grumpy the last couple of weeks, and I’m sure that I’ve been squandering my capital. Time to pull my socks up tomorrow I think.
