Back in the older days most royalties kept a fool ( Joker, Court Jester ) around at court, that had a more serious purpose than most people are aware of today.
For most people the fool was just an entertainer, in some cases he also looked funny and were just not taken seriously for obvious reasons.
If he did anything or wrote a song, it was supposed to be entertaining for everyone around him, something to laugh about or make fun off.
Over time most royalties realized that if they had any interest of hearing the truth from anyone, they had to look for it in odd places.
The most trusted people around the royalties made sure that only what they wanted the royalties to know was forwarded in a proper manner, and never just told freely from anyone directly to them.
If you would like to have the royalties ear, you would probably have to go trough some dedicated persons, and not even then would you meet them.
Your message would probably be transferred from one person to another, and probably be altered in such away that you yourself would not recognize your own message once it reaches it destination.
It is like when you whisper a story in one persons ear and you wait until someone tells you the same story back after it has gone by a few people.
There is a saying ” Do not believe everything you hear, there are always three sides to a story: yours, theirs and the truth.
The intrigue and fowl play that we know from history has been made in to a row of successful movies and serials.
Back in those days you lost your head or just sent to a convent or abroad ,if lucky.
Now a-days you get a parachute and get promoted somewhere else, if you are not high up enough, you are just shoved out into the cold with some payment at best.
For royalties it was important to try and have a understanding about what was going on around them ,and what people were talking about or whispering about in the alleys.
One way of keeping track of everything was to listen to what the fool was joking about and what lyrics he dared to put into his songs, and read between the lines and to watch peoples reactions.
Today I am not sure that all top decision makers always gets and have the right information when they have to make an important decision.
I am not even sure that even if they ask the right questions, that people around them give them a straight answer back.
Today information, trusted and correct information is more difficult than ever, you also have to be more aware of what sources you are given information from.
These so called Gatekeepers of information are still around, if you take a moment to think about it.
Today more than ever decisions makers need a royal fool to tell them what is going on around them, today a royal fool would probably be called a consultant of some sort.
They can even be a stand up comedian or someone funny and smart like Robin Williams, imagen having Robin at a board meeting in a company, what laugh and hopefully an improvement that would have been.
What is most important is to have someone who can give you a different angle to an issue, that helps you see and understand everything you need to know from a different point of view.
The best consulting fools out there today are the ones not telling you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear to make the right decisions.
They are few, but worth looking for if you ask me.
Best regards
Christopher Bell Blomquist.
Managing Director
Lead Negotiator Consultant
Scotwork Sweden.
