I am rather fond of referring to Jeff Skilling - the CEO of Enron (who went disastrously tits up in 2002 - blogs passim).

I am fond of quoting his interview for Harvard:

"Are you smart?"

"No. I'm fucking smart."

Why? Is it the brilliance of the guy - "incandescently brilliant" as he was once described? Is it the arrogance of the guy - in the same way that Ali was arrogant? Or is it the raw agression of the guy?

Let me explain what I mean.

When you sit down with a university professor, you do it on a certain territory. You obey certain rules. Those rules are around academic stuff - intelligence and qualifications - not about how mean your right hook is.

When he asks you if you're smart - you reply in the same terms. When you reply "I'm fucking smart", you're bringing something else into the equation. You're bringing in hardness - as opposed to toughness (blogs passim).

So I had a difficult conversation today with a friend of mine, about bizz-ness. I asked what I thought was a reasonable question - why is it that I have reached these conclusions myself, and asked myself these questions, when I would have expected this to come from you?

The answer was as stark as it was unexpected.

The problem, he tells me, is that I am smart. I am not just smart, I am fucking smart.

In other words, it's not the fact that I am smart that is the problem. It's the venom and the passion I have about being smart. Not only am I smart, I also have an ability to argue my case that most barristers dream that they have.

So, even if I am wrong (which happens on very very rare occasions), my friend can't tell me I'm wrong. Even if I'd listen - which I wouldn't - he knows that I would forensically destroy his argument brick by brick with the insightful intellect of a barrister on steroids. Not because I'm right, but because I'm fucking right.

It's the posture that's the problem. It's the drawing back of the shoulders. The puffing out of the chest. The clenching of the fists. The stare. That stare. That "not only am I right, but I'll take your teeth out if you don't stop telling me I'm wrong". As Martin would say, "yeah, that one". All of those force multipliers I learned all those years ago.

They may well have been appropriate for dealing with Glaswegian hard men, but are less appropriate when dealing with bizz-ness people.

A lesson needs learning here. What worked for me, and kept me alive all those years, is probably no longer the most appropriate strategy. It's all about context, as I said all those blogs ago.

King Xerces, commanding a million men, spoke to King Leonidus - who only had 300 men - at the Battle of Thermopylae. He told Leonidus that he faced annihalation, and that his life and lands would be spared. All he ad to do was kneel.

Leonidus said that the kneeling was a problem. All the thousands of Persians he had slaugtered that morning, this has given some cramp. No, there could be no kneeling right now I'm afraid. Sorry about that.

What I need to learn, is the art of giving up. The art of surrender.

Spoke to Martin at AJP this evening. He went out with a guy the other day who was test riding the new PR3. He liked it so much, he bought 3 of them.

Martin was telling me how it feels and handles like a trials bike. Want the front wheel in the air? No problem - give it some gas. And this is a four-stroke. Tight corner? No problem - short wheelbase zips you round it like a unicycle.

Apparently he was talking to one of the guys at AJP in Portugal about having some complete nutter in the UK who wants to take one of these to Dakar (I'm paraphrasing). The guy considers this and concludes that the fuel tanks would be a problem - there's not enough fuel on board - but everything else would hold firm and get there.

So Martin and I talk about the fuel tanks. Aliminium is better than fibreglass, he tells me, because aliminium will dent and not crack if you drop the bike. Given my previous, I will drop the bike - so better listen to this.

I am up on Thursday to, em "look at" a PR3. I won't take my riding gear. Martin has got plenty of riding gear up there in case I, em, want to "look more closely". This whole front-wheel-in-the-air-piece-of-piss has got me intrigued.

Thank you to my friend for telling me that I smell.

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