After the Second World War, Europe was devastated, populated with hungry, homeless children who had been orphaned by the battles. They were put in large camps where they were given food and care. Yet they didn’t sleep well at night; they were nervous, fearful and fidgety.
The caregivers were baffled until a psychologist taught them to offer each child a piece of bread every night, not to eat, but to hold in bed. The outcome was astonishing.
The children slept through the night because they realised they wouldn’t go hungry the next day. Clutching the bread gave them a sense of protection (they were safe), importance (somebody cared about them) and happiness (there will be more bread tomorrow).
I came across this story a while ago. It impacted me at the time, but became even more vivid after a recent visit to Auschwitz.
Travelling there in the dark, damp heaviness of wintertime attacked even more of the senses as we sought to comprehend the horror of what was wreaked upon humanity there.
In among the harrowing reality were stories of incredible bravery and compassion too, of individuals and groups who stood for what was right and could provide hope and a future opportunity one person at a time.
Alongside human bravery comes ingenuity too. Also in the Second World War, Allied bomber command had a problem. Aircraft were flying missions over Germany and being shot down in ever greater numbers.
The top brass decided that the planes needed additional protection in the most vulnerable area (it would be impossible to cover the entire aircraft, as it would be too heavy to take off). But where to place the armour? The good news is that they had plenty of data from aircraft that had returned to base.
That data showed a clear pattern: there were lots of bullet holes in the wings and fuselage but not so many on the cockpit and tail. The answer seemed obvious: put armour on the wings and fuselage.
Thankfully a brilliant mathematician called Abraham Wald challenged the thinking. He realised that high command was looking only at the “visible” data. It was studying the bullet holes in the aircraft that had successfully returned but had not seen the holes in the ones that had not returned, since they had crashed.
And that is why they’d drawn precisely the wrong conclusion. The holes in the returning aircraft showed where planes could take fire and still get home safely. They survived because they had not been hit in the cockpit and the tail.
Abraham Wald pointed to the fact that by looking at the good side that is on display, the really fatal areas of risk could be missed. The caregivers handing out bread understood the real needs of the children that, unmet, would most likely have damaged the children forever, and met those needs with daily bread.
Both the caregivers and Wald saw the real and largely unseen needs, and met them through the insights and skill they possessed.
We too show our good sides, but our integrity depends much more on us not hiding those flaws or weakness that could bring us down.
For our clients, being ‘good on all sides’ means that they can trust that our advice is truly the best they can get from the whole of the market. It is not about subtly shoe-horning them into investment solutions that ‘happen’ to be owned by the same business that is giving the advice (and has product sales incentives or targets to encourage that habit), and which has no risky holes lurking beneath the waterline or emerging long after you have gone.
One of the joys of this profession, when done without the holes, is that just like those caregivers providing the protection, importance and future happiness, the joy and impact of meeting a client’s real lifetime needs is immeasurable
Like bread, money is one thing most of us have in common. It doesn’t belong only to a particular region or nation. It’s available in all different forms.
Bread in the UK may be scones; in South America, tortillas; in New York, bagels; and in Ethiopia, injera. But what good daily bread does is nourish people, everywhere, every time. So too does good financial planning.
Long may the words of the greatest of prayers pervade what we all do every day, and how we do it – give us this day our Daily Bread.
