How to Win Friends and Influence People, Corporate Style

So I was seven years old (EDIT:- No I wasn't, I was six. Elementary maths fail), and I wanted to be a car designer. Cool, OK, most kids my age wanted to be footballers, astronauts or pilots, and there were probably a few hopelessly precocious little bastards who wanted to be lawyers or realtors, but at least I had a direction in life.

But how to get started? Well, my Dad was the proud owner at that time of a Ford Cortina. I loved that car, it took me to awesome places like airshows and the seaside. Yes, that was it, before my eighth (EDIT:- Seventh) birthday I'd write to Ford and they'd almost certainly give me a job.

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Doodles and frustrations: A personal screed.

When people take a call at work they might twirl the phone cable, or drum their fingers on the desk, or play with the spring on their desk lamp, or doodle. Doodles can be abstract patterns, random lines or boxes, or sometimes elaborate floral motifs. But my doodling sees me accessing a part of my brain that I have never satisfactorily employed.

Before I fell into the all consuming void that is car sales, I graduated with a degree in car design. It was something I always wanted to do, and I assumed that four years of hard graft at Coventry University would catapult me into a world of design meetings, top-secret conferences and black turtle-neck sweaters. I imagined that, come graduation day, there would be crowds of corporate talent-scouts teeming outside the university gates, waiting to spirit me off to a new life in Stuttgart, Pasadena, Tokyo or Seoul. Instead, all there was outside the gates was rain and charity collectors.

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