Clear and present danger

It’s there in every workplace

Dog Eat Dog

Is a toxic, cut-throat culture OK if it’s made clear to people what they are getting themselves into?

The case was made in a LinkedIN chat that it IS OK and the example given was Amazon. Everyone knows what the culture is like at Amazon and many people thrive in that culture. Those that find it doesn’t suit them, leave. People self-select and Amazon is successful, so what’s the problem.

It’s a familiar argument, mostly advanced when these cut-throat cultures come into question. These cultures are, in fact, celebrated as an example of dynamic capitalism, red in tooth and claw, what made the <x> great (insert your entity of choice here - Empire, country, USA, western democracies, multi-national corporations) (No I don’t mean the car-crash that used to be called Twitter. If I did I would have put X in there)(Now look what that idiot’s done? Who calls something by a symbol that means 'a variable’? It’s linguistic vandalism!).

They are given euphemistic names like ‘high-pressure’, ‘dynamic’, ‘competitive’, ‘high-octane’, ‘aggressive’, ‘dog-eat-dog’, ‘work hard, play hard’ and, as favoured by the Dufus-in-Chief, ‘hardcore’. What they really are is ruthless, exploitative, cruel and dangerous.

It’s the last of those that I am concerned about. These environments are really dangerous, with the potential to cause severe psychological harm. Some people thrive in them but, equally, some shrivel and die.

Having fore-knowledge doesn’t help because the only way you can find out how you respond to these environments is to put yourself in one. It’s a workplace form of Russian Roulette.

‘Ah, but then you can leave”, comes the reply.

There are two problems here.

Firstly, that’s not a simple choice for everyone. There are lots of reasons why someone may not be able to simply leave. People have made commitments, they have responsibilities to fulfil that may make leaving impossible. It may be extremely damaging to their career to move at that time, or hugely disruptive to their private life, so they decide to stay. To hang on a bit longer, to ‘tough it out’ for a bit.

Secondly, these environments are common is some industries such as legal, banking and management consultancy. If you’ve invested heavily in an education to enter these industries, you will be reluctant to throw it all in and start a different career. The chances are that you’ll find yourself in this type of environment and just decide to put up with it, regardless of the personal toll it takes on you. If you leave your current role, you may well find you’ve jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

And so people keep themselves in the danger zone, continuing their exposure to the harms until the damage becomes unignorable. It may lead to burnout or, even worse, workplace PTSD.

For all the talk of those who succeed, there’s very little consideration of those who get damaged. No-one keeps track of the body count.

Yet it’s not hard to find stories of people who have been burnt by these environments. Who did break down and have to change course. Who did decide they couldn’t tolerate it any longer and took themselves out, with considerable impact on their personal life. It’s not hard to find people who are in recovery, trying to heal themselves and piece themselves back together.

So, no, I don’t think it’s OK.

And the lionisation of these cultures is just execrable. They don’t need celebrating, they need shutting down.

Walk Like A Man

The chat was in response to a post commenting on this article, “The toxic 'cut-throat' culture that drives out workers”.

In his comment on it, Dr Don McCreary notes how well it maps onto the notion of Masculinity Contest Culture (MCC), the four main aspects of which are:

1. Show No Weakness

2. Strength & Stamina

3. Put Work First

4. Dog-Eat-Dog.

Hmmmm. Sound familiar?

It won’t surprise you that this doesn’t have very beneficial impacts upon employees, as companies with high MCC tend to have:

• Poorer psychological safety

• Toxic leadership

• Less support for work-life balance

• Higher levels of bullying

• More sexual and racial/ethnic harassment

• Higher rates of burnout and intentions to leave

• Poorer levels of job satisfaction and dedication to the organisation

• Poorer levels of physical and psychological health

• A greater tendency to think of gender equity in a zero sum manner

What will surprise you even less is that it’s the old white dudes who are the cause of all this. From the BBC article:

‘Age, gender and seniority play their part in determining cut-throat work environments. Taylor says firms with this kind of culture often have leadership that skews towards older white men, those who “understand the rules of the game”. Cut-throat firms can also have a lack of diversity at employee-level. Anthony describes his industry dominated by alpha males. “The attitude is to put everyone in the snake pit and see who climbs out,” he adds. “It’s a very aggressive, macho, male-dominated work environment.”’

So how does this change?

Firstly, by calling it out. Glassdoor provides the means for employees to do this anonymously and comments about a ‘cut-throat’ and ‘toxic’ environment are like kryptonite to job-seekers.

Secondly, by using your agency to make choices. I wrote recently about the partner in a legal firm who was appalled by the lack of response he got when he asked an office full of people who wanted to get to Partner level. It seems they had decided to opt out of engaging in exactly that Masculinity Contest Culture that is necessary to become Partner. See also ‘Quite Quitting’ and ‘Tang Ping’ (lying flat).

And thirdly, by waiting. My mate Geoff Marlow (who is our guest in this month’s Work Punks podcast - see later) likes to refer to Max Plank’s quote that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents, but because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

The clue is that these are old white dudes. They will retire, as a cadre they will die out. If they continue to promote out-of-date and actively harmful cultures and practices (Return To Office, anyone?), their demise will be swifter than they imagine.

Danger Zone

I’ve currently researching the whole area of workplace trauma and PTSD, which is far more common than you might imagine. It’s something I’m going to write more about in the coming months,

What particularly concerns me is that everyone is at risk in their workplace and most of us don’t realise it. We associate conditions like PTSD with a traumatic event that we experience or witness but workplace PTSD (also known as Corporate Traumatic Stress Disorder - CTSD) doesn’t work like that.

It is caused by a series of what alone would be relatively minor traumas but that are traumatic when connected by repetition. They build up until they overwhelm a person’s capacity to cope and disrupt their emotional functioning.

In other words, it’s death by a thousand cuts.

It’s caused by the long-term exposure to a toxic workplace and the triggers for psychological distress, such as

• Bullying & Harassment

• Gaslighting

• Victimisation

• Chronic overwork

• Abusive leadership styles

• Lack of support

• Threat of losing your job

These are just a few from a very long list but ones that are unfortunately common in many workplaces, so much so that they are barely remarked upon.

I’ll be exploring this in a lot more depth, so if you think you’ve experience this type of trauma and PTSD-like response, I’d love to hear your story and your journey to recovery (and maybe I can assist with that). Please get in touch by email or DM, or book a confidential conversation on my Calendly page https://calendly.com/colin-newlyn

Please Mr. Postman

The UK is being rocked at the moment by the Post Office scandal, a miscarriage of justice and example of corporate wrongdoing that is on an epic scale and who’s horrors are still unfolding on a daily basis. It also goes to the heart of how our government, justice system and modern economy operate.

For those of you who are not following the story, a new computer system was rolled in 1999 (yes, that long ago!) out to small Post Offices, which are run as retail businesses by private individuals who are called ‘Sub-Postmasters’.

Developed by Fujitsu for the Post Office (a government agency) it was a massive IT project. Even during the trial, doubts were raised about its accuracy. It now transpires that the software was deeply flawed and produced errors. These errors appeared to show that several Sub-Postmasters had a shortfall in their takings.

Many of them were forced to pay money the system said they owed back to the Post Office. Many others were prosecuted and sent to jail. They were all innocent. To date, we still don’t know how many people were affected, they are coming forward all the time. Not only were lives and livelihoods ruined, some took their own lives.

The current furore has been brought about by a TV dramatisation of the affair, even though a public enquiry is already in train. Suddenly, media and politicians who have ignored the matter to date are all over it like a rash and desperately proclaiming their solidarity with the Sub-Postmasters.

What has already become apparent from the enquiry is a business culture that lacks ethics, avoids responsibility, shuts down criticism, bullies and exploits those without powers and fails in it’s duty of care to it’s employees. A culture where you don’t question authority and just do as you are told (an attitude that will please the authoritarian-minded of our political class) and get rewarded. A culture where targets have to be hit at any cost, whilst the human consequences are ignored and covered-up.

This week we had the unedifying sight of the CEOs of the Post Office and Fujitsu (UK) sitting alongside each other trying to pass the buck back and forth, seemingly struck with same amnesia and lack of curiosity about what happened, both having failed to prepare answers to the most obvious questions and displaying a continued inclination to obfuscate, delay and withhold.

Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee but without the moral courage and ethical underpinning.

Whilst some the aspects of this scandal are to do with the unique status and position of the Post Office in the UK, far too much of it reflects all that is rotten in our organisations and our business culture.

I’d say more about it but I don’t quite know where to begin and if I’d ever end. I find it enraging, upsetting and sickening in equal measure. And it’s far from over yet, I fear worse is yet to emerge.

Shiny Happy People

One of my little phrases that I like to trot out on any occasion is that corporate wellness programmes are like giving people wellies so they can stand in the shit, rather than cleaning up the shit.

I was pleased, therefore, to see this confirmed by a research report from the Oxford Wellbeing Centre. They found that there was no evidence that wellbeing programmes had any significant impact on employee wellbeing. All the other stuff that organisations offer just doesn’t touch the sides.

What they suggest does make a difference is improving the working condition and practices. This means fixing the systemic factors that cause employees psychological distress, such as poor levels of pay, lack of claity about what is expected of them, bullying and harassment, discrimination, unfair preferment and many more on a long list. You might call this ‘decrapifying work’. Who knows, it might even catch on.

Can we stop pretending that organisations are taking their employees welfare seriously just because they provide free fruit and yoga sessions?

People know why work is crap and it’s not because they lack vitamin C and good flexibility.

Listen To The Man

On a brighter note, this month’s episode of the Work Punks vod/pod has Geoff Marlow as our guest. Geoff shares what he’s learnt from his 30-year career of helping organisations be more innovative and agile through to his focus today on helping them create future fit organisations and supporting the people who want to make change happen from within.

Geoff explains how he helps them develop their own muscles for change, rather than relying on the parasitic management consultancy industry. As a reason to be hopeful, he notes that his former colleague Dr. Peter Senge was seen as radical when he wrote about ‘the learning organisation’ 25 years ago but these ideas are now aceepted and part of the mainstream conversation.

He really has a hatful of wisdom and he shares a good deal of it in the conversation. It’s not to be missed.

You can watch the vidoecast here, or grab the podcast from www.workpunks.co.uk, or from your favourite podcast platform.