Apocalypse Now?

Twist and Shout

It seems that the discussion around ‘Quiet Quitting’ is not going away, which I think is more a reflection of the desire for the business media to find something to talk about and the ongoing search by ‘leaders’ to find something to blame for the decline in business performance.

It’s not a new phenomenon, people have been turning up, doing their hours and then going home for ever. It used to just be called ‘doing your job’. Lots of people do their job, diligently and professionally but within firm boundaries, so that they can pursue their real passion in their own time. I know lots of people who do Amateur Dramatics, play in bands, make art and other creative pursuits who have exactly this approach to life.

So what is the tension here? It is the mismatch between the expectations of employers and what employees feel is fair effort for the rewards they get. Put simply, employers want more than they are willing to pay for and the employees are declining that offer.

The market response here should be that employers improve the offer they are making to the market, either by increasing the rewards or reducing the demands, to a position that matches what employees are willing to provide in return (Economics 101 - this is literally the first thing you learn). However, some employers don’t want to do this and are even affronted that they should be asked to do so. Instead, they seek to coerce employees to accept their shitty offer through threats and blaming.

A prime example of this is the Aviva West Coast train company in the UK, who is currently failing to run an adequate service between Manchester and London, as they are obliged to under their franchise contract. In order to save money, they have poached train drivers from other companies instead of training their own and then got the drivers to work on their ‘rest days’ so they didn’t need to employ so many. They had built this ‘goodwill’ into their business model.

Drivers have decided that they no longer wish to work on their ‘rest days’ (not unreasonably, they want to have some rest and relaxation), which has exposed the fact that Aviva do not have enough drivers to run their services under normal working. Hence, the timetable has been slashed and the company is in deep trouble.

Have Aviva admitted it was a mistake on their part to rely on the normalisation of ‘extraordinary working’ (i.e. overtime working on rest days) and to not address their staffing levels? No, they have blamed the drivers for, er, doing what they are contracted to do. The last Transport Secretary joined in by accusing the drivers (and their union) of ‘illegally working-to-rule’, a non-sequitur of epic stupidity.

They haven’t use the phrase ‘Quiet Quitting’ because that seems only to apply to office workers but it is exactly the same principle, and similarly they are screaming impotently at people who are doing exactly what they were  asked to do but no more.

It seems that this collision with reality will prove fatal to Aviva West Coast and they will be relived of their franchise.

I expect to see many more companies have equally painful collisions with reality. And, unfortunately, I expect we’re going to hear a lot more impotent screaming.

The Good Life

There’s a broader context to this as well. Whilst I was working on a presentation for a workshop recently, I reflected how the world of work had changed since I entered it some 40 years ago. I don’t mean how it’s physically changed but how what having a job means to a person.

Back then, your employer looked after you more, albeit in a paternalistic way. When I joined BT, people still spoke about it being ‘a job for life’. Companies developed people, managed their career paths, invested in their staff.

Work was more social because if you wanted to interact with someone, you had to go and speak to them. There was time to talk and build relationships. Companies provided resources for social activities, from small grants to impressive ‘country club’ style sports and social establishments. They encouraged social interaction and non-work interests.

You also had a lot more latitude in your work. Processes were loosely-defined and measurements were fairly light (everything was done on paper, so you had to be sure it was worth doing before you put the effort in). There was more trust and, whilst there was supervision, it was explicit. There wasn’t the types of covert surveillance we see today.

At the heart of it was a social contract. A good job enabled you to lead a good life. To have a place to live, raise a family, have a car and enjoy holidays and leisure time. You could also look forward to a comfortable retirement. This was available even in semi-skilled and administrative roles.

This has begun to erode before, but soon after I joined the workforce it accelerated. The deceit that is ‘shareholder primacy’ was taken up by governments and organisations alike and they began salami-slicing their commitments to you, the employee. Whilst the benefits were being reduced, the demands were being ramped up and technology was harnessed to squeeze more and more effort out of you in the name of ‘efficiency’. Roles were stripped of their meaning and pleasure, homogenised so that people could easily be replaced like cogs in the machine (a phrase I never heard in my early career).

Over this period, organisations began using psychological techniques to persuade employees that they should be grateful for the opportunity they were being given and devote more and more of themselves to the goals of the organisation, make work the dominant force in their lives.

At the same time, the middle classes were being squeezed by government policies and economic management. Privatisation and marketisation pushed social goods out of the reach of many. Education, housing, childcare, health and leisure all became luxuries or unattainable wants.

Through concerted efforts by the rich and powerful, an illusion was created that this was not only the only way it could be but that it was the right way for things to be.

And then COVID happened, and people got a chance to reflect. And the spell was broken. They saw things the way they really are. They saw the social contract no longer existed and looked at what was now being offered, in the round. They saw the poverty of what was on offer and they made changes accordingly.

I don’t like the terms ‘Quiet Quitting’ but it does point to one of the phenomenon that have arisen from the re-appraisal. It’s simply people equalising what they put in with what they get out. It’s a rational response, a market correction, if you like.

The real problem for the managers and politicians that led people down this path is that the illusion has been destroyed forever. People have woken up to reality and they aren’t going back to sleep.

(See also “The Great Resignation”.)

In The Navy

I also don’t like “Quiet Quitting” because it doesn’t go far enough. It’s a passive act, a response to the environment rather than an action to change the environment. It’s a first step, a necessary one to protect yourself and reclaim your energy and agency but then you need to use them to have a positive impact on your environment.

That’s what Decrapify Work is all about. Using your agency to positively affect what is in your circle of control and your circle of influence. It starts within you and then moves out, through your crew and then sending ripples further across the organisation. Like all effective change, it’s an inside-out process.

You could see “Quiet Quitting” as the beginning of your inner rebellion, that moment when you decide that you are not going to put up with this any longer and you draw some firm boundaries around work. Feels good, right? You’ve challenged the unwritten rules about always being available and responding to the boss’s emails at all hours and established your own rules (ideally supported by your crew, who have done the same). So now, what other rules can you break and replace with better ones? What other changes can you bring about?

This is what we call “being a Pirate in the Navy”. It’s something I’m going to be exploring and describing more in the next few months. It’s what I did in the second half of my career in BT, although I didn’t realise it at the time. It’s a more subtle and nuanced way of operating, as opposed to the bold, blood-and-thunder approach of pirating in the entrepreneurial space. That doesn’t work in an organisation because firstly, it alienates people and secondly, you are likely to meet the fate of many pirates and be hung (metaphorically, I hasten to add).

It’s about accepting there is risk attached to what you are doing but only taking on what’s necessary. It’s also about using the strengths and the weaponry of the organisation against itself.

If you think you are, or have been, a ‘Pirate in the Navy’ then get in touch by email fo DM, I’d love to hear about your experience. I might even be able to give you a few tips.

Rock Bottom

OK, so today the UK government decided to blow-up the economy by running a massive experiment in neoliberal economic theory (I use the word ‘theory’ loosely, it’s more of a belief system really). They’ve not just admitted the social contract is dead and buried, they are dancing on the grave and telling us all what a triumph this is and how it is freeing us to embrace a brave new future.

It feels like ever since I did my economics degree and realised ‘free market’ economics was nonsense but right-wing parties were going to apply it anyway, we’ve been slowly heading towards this day. Now it’s arrived, I’m oscillating between despair and fury.

It’s not just that I disagree with the ideology behind it (which I do most vehemently), it’s that it lacks logic and internal coherence. It’s already been proven not to work and that’s because it cannot succeed on it’s own terms, let alone by any objective criteria. The response of the financial markets suggest that they agree with my view. It’s doomed to failure and will do enormous damage to my country and my fellow citizens.

That seems to parallel a lot of what is going on in the world of work right now. Magical thinking, the dogged adherence to beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary, the application of ideology that has already been shown to fail, the attempt to satisfy the elite in the hope that this will feed down to better outcomes for the rest. Guaranteed to fail. I expect some big names to go down in the next couple of years.

I hope we are reaching a real turning point. I wish we didn’t have to descend so far to reach it and I’m fearful for how long it will take to rise up again. But then I remind myself, the human spirit is a powerful thing and a glimmer of hope returns.

Stay safe

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