THE WORDS THAT FORMED ME

CHAPTER 2

Facing Fearful Odds

I cannot remember the classroom in which Horatius first spoke to me, but I remember that he spoke. That may sound like a small distinction, given that most poems were introduced by somebody speaking, usually a teacher who had already read the notes and knew what we were expected to discover. Horatius was different because the opening I retained was not merely about what he said, but about the moment he chose to say it. “Then out spake brave Horatius” placed him inside a gathering where danger had been recognised, fear had presumably been shared, and everybody had reached the point where somebody needed to turn alarm into action.

The boy heard bravery in those words. The older man hears leadership, although perhaps not leadership of the kind that usually comes with a title, a larger office or a strategic plan prepared in sufficiently colourful boxes to suggest movement. Horatius sees that the path into Rome is narrow, understands that a small number of men can hold it, and explains what must happen before the enemy crosses. He does not deny the odds, pretend the threat is smaller than it is or offer a motivational slogan about thinking positively while the Etruscan army advances.

His argument is frighteningly simple. The bridge is the way in, the bridge is narrow, and the bridge must be destroyed before the invaders can use it. A few men can hold the narrow point while the others work behind them, but only if those men accept that their task is dangerous and the people with the axes actually do what is required. Horatius does not need to defeat an army. He needs to stop it for long enough that the army loses its path.

That logic may be the real reason the poem remained with me. The heroic language appealed to the child, but the structure beneath it appealed to the part of me already trying to understand why other people could not see what seemed obvious. The odds were fearful, but the problem was not without shape. Once the shape had been recognised, the impossible task of defeating an army became the difficult but conceivable task of holding a bridge.

I suspect I have spent much of my life looking for the narrow part of the bridge. In business, accounting and advice, the immediate difficulty is rarely the entire invading army, even though that is how it feels to the person watching it approach. The real task is to find the point at which the danger can still be stopped, redirected or denied access. It may be a number, a decision, a conversation, a deadline or the willingness to admit that the plan upon which everything depends is not working.

That sounds straightforward when written afterwards. It is much less straightforward when the person seeking advice has already decided which answer will be acceptable, when the people with the axes are discussing who should have ordered them, or when somebody objects that dismantling the bridge may be unnecessarily negative. There are meetings in which the invading army could be visible from the window and somebody would still suggest waiting for more data. There are others in which the data is available, the conclusion is clear and the greatest obstacle is that the conclusion arrived in the wrong voice.

That last part belongs to the story of dumbing myself down. It was not that I always had the answer, because intelligence does not carry immunity from error and confidence is not a substitute for evidence. It was that I frequently saw connections, consequences or contradictions before I could persuade anybody else that they were worth examining. The difficulty was never simply knowing what I thought; it was deciding how little of the thinking could be shown without losing the room.

The schoolboy learned that being correct and being heard were not the same thing. A thought could be too long, too complicated, too far ahead or too inconvenient for the moment into which it had been released. People did not necessarily resist because they were foolish, although there were occasions when that explanation presented itself with considerable enthusiasm. They might resist because the idea disturbed the order of the room, arrived before they had recognised the problem or required them to reconsider something they had already placed in the comfortable category of settled.

Dumbing it down became less an act of translation than an act of self-reduction. Translation respects both the speaker and the listener by finding the clearest bridge between them. Reduction removes whatever might cause discomfort, including sometimes the very part of the thought that made it valuable. I learned to speak in fewer dimensions, soften the conclusion, wait for somebody else to reach it and then behave as though the journey had surprised me as much as everyone else.

Horatius does not appear to have suffered that problem. He speaks, the logic is understood, and two men step forward to stand beside him.¹ The poem gives him Spurius Lartius on one hand and Titus Herminius on the other, which is an unusually satisfactory response to a request for assistance. He does not have to distribute a follow-up memorandum, schedule another meeting or listen to somebody explain that they support the concept of bridge defence but are unable to commit until the next financial year.

That may be the fantasy hidden inside the poem for me. Horatius sees the danger, speaks plainly, and is heard. More importantly, being heard produces action. Two people do not merely compliment the quality of his presentation; they join him at the narrow point and accept their share of the risk.

The call “Who will stand on either hand and keep the bridge with me?” is not simply a request for accomplices in a glorious death. It is the question every genuine adviser eventually asks, although usually without armour and with fewer references to Rome. I can see the danger, explain the path and stand beside you, but will you stand there too? Will you accept that the dream cannot be defended by advice alone if the person whose dream it is refuses to hold any part of the bridge?

My professional life was built around the belief that advice should arrive before compliance and long before rescue. The traditional accountant often appeared after the event, recorded what had happened and provided a technically sound explanation of why the corpse was dead. I wanted to be earlier than that. I wanted to stand where the path was still narrow enough for logic, courage and a few difficult decisions to change the result.

That desire was not merely about numbers. Behind most small businesses stood something far closer to the ashes of their fathers and the temples of their gods than any owner was likely to admit when discussing gross margins. There was a family history, a need to prove something, a parent whose life had created either an example or a warning, and a private belief that this enterprise might provide freedom, security or dignity. There were children to educate, homes to protect, futures to build and sometimes a determination never again to feel as powerless as the owner had once felt.

The dream was rarely expressed in those terms. It was translated into turnover targets, tax outcomes, staffing plans and the hope that this year might finally provide enough room to breathe. The accountant was expected to discuss the numbers because numbers were considered safe, but the numbers were carrying much more than arithmetic. They were carrying the ashes and temples, even when the client had never thought to call them that.

That is why the question of what is worth defending cannot be answered merely by examining the business. A business may be a vehicle for the dream without being the dream itself. The tragedy comes when the owner sacrifices the family, health, relationships and sense of self that the business was supposedly created to protect. The bridge is defended so fiercely that nobody notices the city behind it has been abandoned.

Horatius understands the distinction. He does not defend the bridge because bridges are sacred. He orders it destroyed because its continued existence would place everything sacred at risk. The bridge is useful only while it serves Rome, and once it becomes the path by which Rome may be destroyed, loyalty to the city requires disloyalty to the structure.

That is a much harder conversation in business than the poem makes it appear. People become attached to structures, products, employees, partners, methods and identities because those things once carried them towards the dream. When circumstances change, they continue defending the crossing long after it has become the route through which debt, exhaustion or irrelevance advances. Suggesting that the bridge should fall can then sound like an attack upon the dream, even when the purpose is to save it.

I have sat with clients who asked for advice and then resisted every conclusion that required them to change. They wanted the invading army removed without disturbing the bridge, reducing their drawings, confronting the unprofitable division or acknowledging that turnover without margin was merely expensive movement. They wanted Horatius to stand alone while they continued discussing whether the axes might damage the timber. Some listened only when the enemy had crossed and the conversation had shifted from strategy to survival.

The anger in that experience was not simply the anger of being ignored. It came from watching people risk the very things they claimed to value while rejecting the steps that might protect them. I could see the dream behind the numbers and sometimes seemed to care more urgently about its survival than the person who had dreamt it. That was neither healthy nor entirely noble, but it was real.

The Dumbing It Down version of me could respond in several ways. I could make the warning gentler until it became harmless, present the same conclusion through enough slides that it appeared to have been reached collectively, or wait until the client said something resembling my earlier advice and then agree with their insight. Each method might improve the chance of being heard, but it carried the cost of pretending that clarity was somehow a social offence. The room remained comfortable while the bridge remained standing.

There were also occasions when I was too forceful, too certain or too impatient with the distance between seeing and accepting. Logic may identify the narrow point, but it cannot compel another person to stand there. I sometimes behaved as though the quality of the argument should remove the need for trust, timing and emotional readiness. When people did not respond, I could retreat into the belief that I had once again been the only person prepared to think.

That belief was convenient because it protected me from asking whether I had truly communicated. Being the smartest person in the room is of limited commercial value if the room leaves without understanding what has been said. Intelligence may find the bridge, but leadership requires other people to see why it matters. Horatius does not merely reach the correct conclusion; he turns his conclusion into a call that others are willing to answer.

There is inspiration in his language, but the inspiration follows the logic rather than replacing it. He reminds the Romans what stands behind them and therefore why the danger must be faced. The ashes of their fathers are the history they have inherited, while the temples of their gods represent the beliefs and institutions through which they understand themselves. Horatius does not invent a purpose for the battle; he names the purpose that already exists.

That was the conversation I most wanted to have with clients. I did not want merely to tell them that expenses were too high, margins too low or cash flow too weak. I wanted to ask what they had entered business to defend and whether their present decisions were still defending it. The dream mattered because without it the numbers became little more than an extended argument about money.

A person might say the business existed to create wealth, but wealth for what? Was it for freedom, family, recognition, security or the right never again to ask permission? Was the owner building something to hand to the next generation or trying to escape something inherited from the previous one? The ashes and temples were always there, even when they arrived at the meeting disguised as a request to reduce tax.

Speaking in the client’s language therefore meant more than avoiding technical terms. It meant understanding what was sacred in their particular Rome. A legally reduced tax liability might protect capital for growth, but it could not repair a business whose owner had forgotten why growth mattered. Compliance could keep the gates from being opened by the authorities, but it could not tell the owner whether the city behind those gates was still worth living in.

Acting like a silent partner also took on a different meaning. Silent did not mean mute, passive or agreeable. It meant standing close enough to the decision to understand the risk while remembering that the business and dream belonged to somebody else. I could ask who would keep the bridge with me, but I could not conscript the owner into defending a life they no longer wanted.

That boundary was one I did not always maintain. The instinct to lead could become the instinct to carry, especially when I believed the answer was clear and the consequences of delay were approaching. I could remain at the narrow point while the client retreated into hope, denial or the search for a more agreeable adviser. The more they withdrew, the more firmly I stood, until the business problem became entangled with my need not to let the advice fail.

Advice does not fail merely because it is not followed. That should be obvious, yet the adviser who cares can experience rejection as though the facts themselves have been insulted. I would sometimes continue explaining long after the explanation had ceased to be the issue. The client had heard the words but had not accepted the price attached to them, and no additional layer of logic could perform that emotional work on their behalf.

Horatius is spared this ambiguity because the danger is visible and immediate. Nobody doubts that an army is coming or that the bridge will carry it into Rome. Modern danger is more polite. It appears first as a missed target, a growing balance, an unprofitable customer or the gradual normalisation of exhaustion, then waits while everybody debates whether the trend is sufficiently established to justify discomfort.

By the time certainty arrives, the path may no longer be narrow. The problem has crossed the bridge, spread through the city and acquired enough complications to employ several specialists. The owner then asks why nobody warned them, forgetting the meetings in which every warning had been translated into a suggestion so gentle that it could be postponed without appearing reckless. That is where dumbing it down ceases to be communication and becomes participation in the avoidance.

The temptation is to conclude that people do not want leadership. More accurately, people often want leadership without the disturbance caused by being led somewhere they had not intended to go. They welcome confirmation, encouragement and the removal of obstacles, but become less enthusiastic when leadership requires them to question the destination. Horatius would have been less popular had he suggested the Romans themselves had built the enemy’s bridge and continued extending it despite repeated advice.

My desire to lead has always existed beside a reluctance to claim leadership. Part of that comes from mistrust of people too eager to announce that others should follow them. Part comes from the country boy who learned that drawing attention to intelligence could be as socially dangerous as failing to possess it. I wanted the idea to lead because the idea was sound, not because I had demanded the right to stand at the front.

That created its own contradiction. I wanted people to recognise the path without being made to feel they had been shown it. I wanted to speak plainly without appearing arrogant, offer direction without becoming controlling and be heard without making the hearing about me. When it worked, the client left with a decision that felt like their own, which was usually the best result. When it failed, I could disappear so completely from the communication that the warning lost the force required to change anything.

Horatius does not disappear from his call. He places himself in the task and asks others to join him. “Who will stand with me?” is different from “Someone should probably consider standing there.” The first accepts responsibility, names the danger and requires a response, while the second allows everyone to admire the principle without leaving their seat.

That may be one of the words that formed me, although it took decades to hear what it was saying. Leadership is not simply seeing earlier or thinking further. It is being willing to place oneself beside the conclusion and accept the consequences of having spoken it. It also means allowing others to choose whether they will stand there, rather than quietly taking their place and resenting them for remaining behind.

The poem keeps returning because it provides the response I spent much of my life hoping for. Horatius speaks, two men hear him, and they step forward. They do not ask him to reduce the intellectual content of the proposal, submit it in another format or soften the implications so nobody feels judged by the approaching army. They understand that the bridge is narrow, the danger is real and the things behind them matter enough to defend.

Real life has given me companions, although not always at the moment or on the bridge I expected. Robyn has stood beside me through professional decisions, financial recoveries, depression and the less heroic consequences of my conviction that one more problem could be carried. Clients have trusted me with businesses that contained their families, fears and hopes, even when the initial request appeared to concern only tax. Colleagues, friends and family have sometimes taken an axe to bridges I was still trying to preserve.

I have also failed to recognise assistance because it did not arrive in the form I had prescribed. The person standing beside me may have questioned whether the battle should be fought at all, which I could mistake for a lack of courage. Someone suggesting rest, withdrawal or a smaller obligation might have been defending the city rather than abandoning the bridge. Leadership becomes dangerous when every disagreement is interpreted as evidence that nobody else understands the threat.

Depression brings this conflict closer. The Black Dog narrows the path until the distance between thought and action can feel like a bridge exposed to an army. The instinctive response is to summon courage, stand firm and prove that the old capacity remains intact. Yet there are times when the better companions are not those who encourage another heroic stand, but those who help dismantle the belief that everything depends upon me remaining there.

The fearful odds of depression are not improved by pretending they are something else. Logic has a role, but it cannot always reason the body into movement or explain emptiness out of existence. What it can do is search for the narrow point at which a small action may still prevent the whole day from being overrun. That action may be writing, exercise, answering a message or telling somebody that the bridge feels less secure than it appears from their side.

The call for somebody to stand on either hand becomes more difficult in those moments. Asking for help exposes the difference between leadership and self-sufficiency, because a person accustomed to being followed may not know how to admit that he needs companions. Horatius asks without apology. He does not weaken his authority by acknowledging that three may hold where one would be overwhelmed.

There is a lesson there, although I am wary of turning Macaulay into a provider of personal development seminars. The poem does not tell me that every problem can be defeated by courage, positive thinking and the correct selection of associates. It tells me that a narrow point may exist, that logic may identify it and that the right companions can change the odds. It also reminds me that those companions must be asked rather than silently tested.

The ashes of my fathers now mean more than inherited duty. They include the stories, limitations, silences and expectations from which I constructed my idea of what a man should defend. Some deserve honour, while others should not be allowed to issue instructions merely because they are old. The temples of my gods include integrity, family, usefulness, independence, thought and the right to speak in a voice that has not been reduced until it causes no disturbance.

The dream behind the client’s business deserves the same examination. Some dreams are inherited, some are borrowed and some become prisons because their owners cannot admit they have changed. Defending a dream may require courage, but so may releasing it. The measure is not how long the owner remains on the bridge, but whether the stand continues to protect the life the dream was meant to serve.

That is where the older Jeff hears the poem differently from the boy. The boy heard that brave men faced death for noble things. The older man hears that leadership begins by identifying what is genuinely noble, locating the narrow point at which it can still be defended and asking others to accept their part. He also hears the warning that no bridge, business, title or identity becomes sacred merely because people have sacrificed themselves upon it.

I remain attracted to the clarity of Horatius. He sees, speaks and acts, while two companions answer and the people behind them begin dismantling the danger. It is an orderly progression that much of life has denied me. I have seen without being heard, spoken without producing action and sometimes acted because waiting for others seemed more dangerous than carrying the task alone.

There is anger in that history, but also responsibility. I cannot condemn every room that failed to hear me without asking what I did to make myself hearable. I cannot criticise clients for refusing leadership while ignoring the occasions on which my impatience made the bridge feel like a test of intelligence rather than an invitation to protect their dream. Nor can I continue reducing my voice and then complain that nobody recognised what had been removed.

Perhaps writing is the place where that contradiction can finally be examined without immediately being resolved. I can allow the logic to remain complete, follow it into the emotional territory it once concealed and speak without first calculating how much of the thought the room will tolerate. The reader is not required to stand at my right hand, but I can at least show them the bridge as I see it. They may recognise their own ashes and temples on the other side.

“Then out spake brave Horatius” keeps returning because it contains the moment I have repeatedly wanted and repeatedly feared. A man sees what must be done, trusts the logic, names what matters and speaks loudly enough that others can choose whether to stand beside him. His courage lies not only in facing fearful odds, but in refusing to make himself smaller than the danger requires.

The poem does not promise that every call will be answered. My life has supplied enough evidence to correct that assumption, and I have sometimes had to stand alone, retreat or discover that the bridge was not worth keeping. Yet the question remains the one I asked clients, family, colleagues and eventually myself: what dream stands behind us, what is coming across the bridge, and who is prepared to defend the narrow point before it is too late? That, more than the prospect of death or glory, may be why Horatius has stayed with me.

Notes

1. “Horatius” is the first of the narrative poems collected in Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay, first published in 1842. It retells the traditional Roman story of Horatius Cocles defending the Sublician Bridge with Spurius Lartius and Titus Herminius while the bridge is destroyed behind them to prevent the forces of Lars Porsena from entering Rome.