To talk to most people, just about anything is more natural! "We can't do that, we've gone soft".

Making things complicated

Okay, so I'll have to harden my feet up, but it really doesn't seem too unnatural to run barefoot.  Apart from anything else, humans have been running bare feet for 220,000 years; we've only been running in fancy running shoes for about 50 years.

But of course, running barefoot makes me a nutter.

Enjoy this video and discussion

"What about all the injuries?" Yes I've been thinking about that. When did we start getting injuries from running? Could it be around the same time that we started getting fancy shoes? Man is born to run, but running in fancy running shoes is very different from running in bare feet, and once you’ve picked up bad habits it is difficult to go back. That isn't to say that I could immediately switch to barefoot running, and expect to be injury free.   For example, we've stepped up the performance that we expect; we’re pushing our bodies harder than they were designed to be pushed (Olympic and Commonwealth games records are constantly being broken), and injuries are almost certainly a product of pushing our bodies, rather than of the equipment we use.

What I'm getting at, is that sometimes we overcomplicate things. In the interests of selling a product, someone decided that you had to have running shoes. Everybody jumped on that same bandwagon (after all, they had a big advertising budget, and the barefoot brigade just carried on being barefoot and not shouting about it), and pretty soon, the only way to run was to run in a pair of £100 running shoes.

To take another example: remember that Fisher space pen? A private company spent $1 million (when $1million was a lot of money) developing a pen that could write in space – upside down, in a vacuum, underwater, anywhere! NASA, and the US space program, hailed it as a triumph! Meanwhile the Russian cosmonauts, so I'm told, used a pencil – upside down, in a vacuum, underwater, anywhere?!

The same applies to project management, performance management, and benefits realisation in general.

How should I know?  Why should you listen to me?

I've been working on business cases and return on investment propositions for the last 21 years. I was a salesman for a lot of that time – so I had to do it well, otherwise we couldn't pay the mortgage!

I now work with public service, and I develop business cases on the basis of the social benefits – improvement in quality of life, clinical outcomes, benefits to wider society. With the organisation and their stakeholders, we set out to understand how much quality of life is worth:

• do you go to hospital fewer times? How much would that cost the government or your insurance company?
• Do you take less time off work? How much does that cost one of our stakeholders (let's face it, we aren’t so concerned with how much it is worth to someone who isn't part of our cost equation)?
• Do you contribute your local community, family, country? How much is that worth in something we can take to the bank?

Are you trying to achieve new things, but faced with limited resources? Are you doing something that you know makes sense, makes better use of resources and delivers better outcomes, but you can't put your argument in the terms that make sense to people who hold the purse strings? Do you want to make a difference to the world, but simply can't get the resources to make it happen?

Let me offer a word of advice. You probably didn't recognise the feet at the top of this article (let's face it, it was a photograph of feet). Here’s the whole picture, and that’s me! If you're wondering why don't look too happy, this is the finish line – 26 miles and some after the start line at Kielder in October. Of course, if you like, you can sponsor my next marathon (London marathon, 29 April 2011). But I would most like you to think about what you're trying to achieve, for the good of society, and how you're going to get those resources and investment.

The word of advice? KISS