Bright spots
Let’s Go Round Again
Some weeks I just don’t know what to write about. (You might think this is one of those. I couldn’t possibly comment).
I’ve been writing this for nearly two years now and posting about work and how to decrapify it for over three years and sometimes it feels that everything has been said and not much has changed.
Work is still crap for the majority of people. I mentioned Gallup’s 2022 survey last week and engagement is still depressingly low. Despite gazillions of dollars being thrown at it and more initiatives than there were Boris Johnson lies over the two decades it’s been measured, it stubbornly refuses to budge. Misery, it seems, is baked into how we organise ourselves in workplaces.
Silver bullets are still sought on an increasingly desperate scale by ‘leaders’ who are detached from what actually happens in their organisations and who show no real interest in making that connection. Wave upon wave of ‘transformation programmes’ are rolled out over dispirited, disgruntled and disrespected workforces with no discernible benefits, other than to the consultants and the ‘opinion formers’ who pimp the latest shortcut to success. Like rocks on the shore, employees just wait for the tide to recede so they can get a breather before the next soaking inevitably arrives.
Work is still killing people. Not dangerous, dirty work like coal-mining or steel-making but supposedly safe, clean work in offices. Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote ‘Dying for a Paycheck’ nearly 5 years ago, detailing how damaging work is to people AND to companies’ P&Ls, making the moral AND the business case for change. Since then? Crickets.
Profits are still being put before people, even though it’s been shown time and time again that looking after people produces superior profits! As for the planet, we’re still opening coal mines and oil wells, for f*cks sake.
It’s heartbreaking, right? And yet it’s also magnificently absurd. The contortions that people get themselves into trying to justify behaviours and approaches that are evidently wrong because that’s what they’ve always done, what they are comfortable with and what works for them (and they don’t care about anyone else but they aren’t supposed to say that bit out loud). You have to laugh at some of the pronouncements made by the ‘big swinging dicks’ of finance and the ‘tech bros’, who are desperately trying to hold back the passage of time to protect their own over-inflated egos.
Most of the time I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Sometimes I feel like giving up. What’s the point, no-one’s listening?
But … then I come across some great examples of how organisations can be people-focused and really successful. How they can enrich the lives of their employees and everyone else in their ecosystem. A reminder that it doesn’t have to be this way, a different future is possible.
And I remember all the people I’ve come across who were hurt and unnecessarily damaged by the way we’ve done work in the past, by all the crap and the abuse.
Then I give myself a bit of a talking to, pull up my big boy pants and go again.
Because we still need to Decrapify Work and we ARE winning. Slowly but surely. We just need to keep going…
The Right Thing
Well, I didn’t mean that to be a therapy session but I feel better for it!
And here’s a bit of proof that progress is being made. Citigroup announced that they are giving all their staff the permission to work from anywhere during the last two weeks of the year.
Unlike most of the dinosaurs in the finance industry (step forward Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon), Citi has embraced hybrid working. CEO Jane Fraser (I wonder what could possibly mark her out from the others??) said that the watchword for them when deciding on a hybrid working model was “Reality.”
She went on to say that they asked themselves why they wanted people to gather in the office (what a revolutionary thing to consider, eh?) and built the policy around that. She also called the culture that requires junior bankers to be in the office late at night as “a bit 1980’s”.
It’s a smart move because a lot of people will be taking holiday and probably working from home anyway. It’s possible they’ll actually get more work done that they would in the office (there’s always someone partying there, right?) and they get to spend quality time with family or friends or just getting some R&R. They’ll come back refreshed and feeling positive about the company. That’s a win-win.
(Before we get too cynical about it, they did something similar in August).
It really shouldn’t be that remarkable because it’s just a sensible response to a change in the business environment.* Sadly, it is, but hopefully that will change soon (maybe when one or two other leaders are encouraged to spend more time with their grandchildren).
*A variant of this comment got picked up by LinkedIN for one of their LinkedIn News posts. H/t to Francis Seale for sharing the original article.
Wherever I Lay My Hat
Another bright spot on the horizon is the continuing impact of the democratisation of ‘work from anywhere’ that was caused by the pandemic.
When I started writing about all this back in 2019, most people had no perception of working other than in an office - even though they might not have actually been there half the time. It was the only mental model they had - the office, your own desk, the daily commute, the separation from home life, the constant balancing and compromise (especially for women and carers).
Now that has all changed. Everyone knows work can be done differently because they switched to Work From Home in a week or two. So they also know that what they were told was ‘essential’ turned out not to be. In fact, in some cases what was ‘essential’ has proved to have been a hinderance.
People know there are options, they are ready to question assumptions and ‘essential’ truths as presented by their employers, they are ready to stand up for their needs and their priorities.
I encourage people to make change happen from where they are, to break rules, challenge conventions and even mutiny to improve their workplace experience. We see people are already doing this individually; switching jobs, dialling back on their discretionary effort, ignoring ‘return to office’ mandates and so on. The time is ripe for activism, imagine what could be achieved if there was more collective activity?
The way these actions have been characterised show an adversarial mindset by employers and a struggle for ‘power over’. ‘The Great Resignation’, ‘Quiet Quitting’, the repeated attempts to mandate a ‘Return to Office’ and the latest attempts to weaponise the coming recession (‘We’ll force the buggers back to the office’). They see that the pandemic has given employees more power and they are trying to claw it back, to tip the playing field back in their favour.
It sad and depressing to watch but I think it’s ultimately futile. Employees have realised they have more power and agency than they thought and they are not going to concede it. It would be much more fruitful for employers to look at how they can have ‘power with’ their employees, and with everyone else in their broader ecosystem. It’s a massive opportunity, not a threat.
Get Up, Stand Up
If you want to Decrapify Work by making change happen, you’ll need to lead others. This may fill you with dread and sea of doubts. Or you may be OK with the idea but not know how to go about it. How do you find out how to lead?
There’s some good news and some bad news on that. The bad news is that you probably won’t get any Leadership Development until you are in your 50s, which is way to late. The good news is that the training is mostly bollocks and doesn’t really work, so you’re not missing out on anything useful.
If you want to do something, you’re going to have to do it yourself. Never forget, no-one’s coming to save you.
But I might be able to help.
I’m going to be offering my two-penn’orth on how to lead in the New Year. It’s based on my personal experience and observations (mostly of how NOT to do it) and not on any complicated models or arcane management theories. It’s less of a course, more of a set of dialogues that will help you figure out what your way of leading is. Or start to figure it out, because it’s a life-long process.
And there will be pirates, of course.
If you think you’d be interested, drop me a DM or email and I’ll keep you posted on developments. Otherwise, watch out for some announcements in the New Year.