What you can influence

The Post Office notes that fewer letters are being delivered than in the past. Whilst the figure stood at 21.5 billion letters in December 2005, it had fallen to 20.7 billion by December 2009. This is despite all the advertising mail and bills that spill out of letterboxes every day. The reason: people now communicate more online. This saves time and, sometimes, paper too.

The funny thing is: the group CEO has (according to the Federal Network Agency) set out to halt the trend. He wants to „leave no stone unturned“ within the group to stop the decline. In my view, that’s about as promising as trying to stand against the ebb and flow of the tides. Trends come and go. You can go with the flow. Influencing them is unlikely to be possible – at least when it comes to major international trends, even for a large corporation like Deutsche Post.

For myself, I hope that I can distinguish more and more clearly between what I’m actually dealing with: things I can actively influence, and waves and trends that lie beyond my sphere of influence. And that I either take action, or ride the waves with ease.

The manufacturers of alcoholic drinks seem to be a fair bit smarter in this respect. They have clearly realised that they cannot stop the trend towards ‘homing’ (hanging around at home on the computer instead of going out). So they are clearly trying to offset the resulting drop in sales by developing drinks for specific target groups – for example, alcoholic drinks that particularly appeal to young girls. Who then drink too much. And end up feeling ill as a result. In 2009, there were 28,000 hospital admissions due to binge drinking (boys and girls). Of course, the young people themselves bear some responsibility. But the drinks industry seems, at the very least, to be willing to accept such incidents. The main thing is that sales figures are right.