If you Google “No Hiding Place” you will find that it was the title of a police drama series in the UK way back in the black-and-white days. I rather think my parents were quite keen on it. They used to talk about it when there was so much less TV to discuss than the hundreds of channels many of us have now and apparently it did try to add realism which had not been seen in police drama previously.
The expression sticks in my mind though. There is simply nothing we can’t find out within a very short time and we don’t have to own Encyclopaedia Britannica to find out anything we need to know.
The other day my wife and I had a concern that one of our cats was behaving oddly, but a quick on-line search established that there wouldn’t be a serious problem when we took her to the vet. Then I had a problem with my Android phone, but soon found the answer and restored it to full function with a few keystrokes (well they would have been keystrokes if it had actual keys). Instant questions get immediate answers.
Back in the days when No Hiding Place was popular on the TV small business owners had no support from Government and the only advisers they generally employed were their accountants who offered mostly a compliance process. There was no on-line resource, and if they wanted to know something they probably had to go to the library and hope their local one had books which were up to date. In other words, small business owners were largely on their own though they might have had some help from the local chamber of commerce members or known people in Round Table etc.. That was networking before it was called networking, but it was still limited just to the people they knew in the town or village. If their businesses failed they could make out they had an alibi that they didn’t know any better.
Now we have no such excuse. We have huge on-line search resources, but beyond that we have our networks on-line. We can find whatever help we need, or we are bound to be connected with someone who knows the person we need to help with our business. There are no more excuses, there is no lack of help, there are no alibis and no hiding place. Failure is much more avoidable. We must take responsibility to be successful because we alone are responsible. Aren’t we lucky?
