Statements of the perfectly bleeding obvious

And why they get ignored

Same Old Song

“ Oh, FFS! Really? They had to do a research study to prove that?” I said to myself again.

Actually, I say this pretty much every week. Sometimes several times.

I’m going to talk about a couple of examples this week. I’m not having a go at the people who do the research or write the academic papers, I’m all for evidence and data. We’ve had bin-full of operating on bias and opinion and, let’s be honest, it’s not gone well.

When I started Decrapify Work and began writing about work, I did so with some trepidation. I had a bunch of opinions based on my own experience, and plenty of bias and prejudice thrown in, and I thought I was probably wrong because they weren’t really the things that the were talked about in the mainstream. I felt compelled to put them out there to see if they resonated with anyone but I fully expected to get shot down in flames.

What I found was startling. A lot of my opinions and observations not only resonated but were validated by research. (Some weren’t, I should point out! And, as the great John Maynard Keynes said, “When the facts change, I change my opinion”.)

Of course, there’s probably some confirmation bias here. I notice those studies that support by views and ignore those that don’t, perhaps. Except, as per my opening comments, there’s a regular flow of studies that support my views. In fact, there’s bucket loads of evidence that treating people well, removing hierarchy, distributing power, building trust and a bunch of other things that are still the exception rather than the rule are massively positive for organisational performance and human thriving.

The problem is not that we don’t know how to Decrapify Work. We do, there are shedloads of well-designed, data-backed, proven actions we can take. The problem is that the majority of organisations aren’t doing them. In fact, often they are doing the opposite.

And that is bloody infuriating.

You’re The Best Thing

First up, then is this Fortune article about a survey by Great Place To Work®, who analyzed more than 6.2 million survey responses representing the experiences of 18 million workers around the world to find the 25 companies on this year’s Fortune World’s Best Workplaces list. These are companies where 90% of employees report having a great workplace, against just over 50% elsewhere.

In the article there are several ‘statements of the perfectly bleeding obvious’. Here’s a couple from the CEO of Great Place To Work®

“It doesn’t matter what country or continent you call home, what matters is the trust companies build with their employees. High-trust workplaces listen to all their people, innovate, adapt, measure, and repeat.”

“When businesses create a great place to work and live for all, it is measurably better for the world.”

Oh. My. God. Trust is key. Who Knew?

The article goes on to report that ‘The 25 winning companies had a larger percentage of workers reporting fair pay (75%), healthy work-life balance support (84%), and a voice in decisions that affected their lives (81%), compared to the typical global workplace.’

Pay your people what they feel they are worth, encourage them to live a balanced life and listen to what they say. It’s not exactly rocket science, is it?

The article goes on to say what “great” looks like (hold on to your hats, this will BLOW YOUR MIND!!)

1. Involve employees in decisions that affect them.

2. Ensure every employee has a fair, engaged manager.

3. Encourage every employee to find a healthy work-life balance.

4. Connect every employee to meaningful work.

Simples, right?

But evidently not because so many organisations aren’t doing it, are they? Although, to be fair, quite a lot of them are talking about it and they’ve even got some meaningless slogans written on their walls to prove it…

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Next up is a Ted Talk I stumbled across by Christine Porath entitled “Why being respectful to your coworkers is good for business”.

In this, Christine makes the earth shattering revelation that (are you ready for this?)

Incivility is REALLY DAMAGING!!

Seems like getting a full-on bollocking from your boss in the middle of the office is not character-building after all. Someone should tell Lord Dacre, pronto!! (that link comes with a parental advisory, btw)

What’s more, it’s not just damaging for you but for all the people who observe it!

Who’d have thought having people being total arseholes, raging like demented toddlers denied their favourite toy or charging around like overweight body builders on double steroids would be a bit of a mood killer?

I mean, really? We have to be told this?

Well, yes, it seems we do, if what many people report about the workplace is to be believed.

And here’s the point. For every time I go “Oh, REALLY????!!!”, I have to acknowledge that some people, and particularly those at the top of organisations, seem to be unaware of ‘the perfectly bleeding obvious’.

Christine goes a bit deeper into the issue of why people resort to incivility, which starts to give us some clues as to why this mass of evidence of what works is being ignored.

She concludes there are two reasons. The first is stress. Well, we all know we can be arseholes when we are stressed and, as I’ve observed before, stress levels are increasing all the time. For middle managers, it’s at stratospheric levels as they are expected to do more with less, more quickly, with more reporting. A hard job is being made impossible. It’s regrettable but understandable that behaviour deteriorates.

However, the second reason is a stark commentary on what’s wrong with organisations. People believe that they need to behave like an arseholes (I paraphrase) to be seen as a leader! This is fuelled by the belief, and popular trope, that good guys don’t win. If you want to progress, you’ve got to be a dick, just like all the people you see above you in the pyramid.

(Which, by the by, brings us to another conclusion, that incivility breeds incivility.)

This is a false perception. Christine refers to a study they did in a company that showed that civility actually made people appear twice as much more like leaders. It seems that it gave an important and powerful combination of being warm and competent, whilst also friendly and smart, that coworkers really appreciated.

In some environments, it seems, good guys do win.

Anti-Hero

The fault here is mine. I am exasperated that I keep reading ‘statements of the perfectly bleeding obvious” and, in a rational, humane and enlightened world, they would be completely superfluous.

Clearly, that’s not the world we’re in.

What I really should be exasperated about is that no-one’s taking any notice of all this work, this body of evidence and practice.

I’m not really exasperated about that. I’m bloody furious!

But the question to grapple with here is why? Why is none of this stuff moving the dial? Why is it not causing change? Why is it being ignored? (OK, that’s four questions but they are related).

I don’t think there’s a single, simple answer here but there are a number of contributory factors.

Christine Porath’s talk highlighted two.

The work environment today is so pressured and intense that people don’t have the time to think and reflect, they just have time to react. That means that even when they are aware what they are doing isn’t working, they just don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to change. Stress does not really lead to high mental performance. What it does lead to is burnout and breakdown. These are often precursors to change, at the individual and organisational level.

There are also a set of beliefs about business, work and how to success that drive mindsets and behaviours to an extraordinary degree. When you believe you need to be uncaring, ruthless, aggressive and selfish to get on, then you are not going to listen to advice to the contrary. If everyone around you seems to believe the same, you are not going to go against the crowd.

Both of these can be considered to be systemic. The system demands increasing ‘productivity and efficiency’ and its default way to do this is to increase workloads (I wrote last week about increasing the speed of the machine to breaking point). The system also tolerates or explicitly rewards psychopathic behaviours - that is, it rewards the slave drivers, and rewards those who use the lash the most - and so those behaviours are both normalised and seen as necessary to succeed.

It’s also about power and status. The people who have risen to the top of our organisations are going to protect their power and status at all costs. If the evidence tells them they would benefit from giving it away (which it does), they are going to ignore it because it threatens their sense of self. The hierarchy they preside over gives them their high status and so they will dismiss advice to dismantle that hierarchy, even where evidence and logic align, because they enjoy the status and the benefits it brings (this effect is increasingly ‘baked in’ because the benefits of status have grown enormously in recent decades).

Simply put, although the sorts of changes I advocate would benefit the organisation, they do not benefit the individuals who are the position to influence them. So they ignore or dismiss the evidence, they double-down on the existing orthodoxies and engage in ever more elaborate justifications to explain away the evident failure and the worsening state of their organisations and the work experience.

I could also add that the Big Consultancies are either not advocating these changes or watering them down to such a degree that they are little more than ‘change theatre’, the empty words daubed on the reception walls as evidence of ‘transformation”.

So, if the people at the top are not listening or wilfully ignoring them are all these ‘statements of the perfectly bleeding obvious’ all in vain?

No, I don’t think they are.

Firstly, there are some organisations that are listening, paying attention and applying the learnings. They are still the minority but they are growing and their success is attracting attention. There are also more bodies that advocate for change, such as B-Corp, WolrdBlu, Conscious Capitalism and many others.

Secondly, they are informing the people who will be leaders of the future, who will take these ideas and bring them to bear when they have the power.

Thirdly, the ‘old guard’ are dying out and their beliefs and attitudes are going with them.

Fourthly, the weight of the evidence is growing and will become overwhelming. Evidence not only of the benefits of human-centric, decentralised, sustainable ways of working and organising but also of the failure of the status quo.

Fifthly, the shock of COVID and the move to hybrid working that it has provoked has led to a re-evaluation and stimulated a desire for change and a rebalancing of our priorities at the individual, organisational and societal level.

Sixthly, I do believe we are going to see some collapses occur, a failing of the status quo (a bit of creative destruction, perhaps?). At such times, people look around for alternatives, for what’s ready at hand. This work has created the tools that can be picked up, as we’ve already seen with the shift to hybrid.

It’s annoying that those of us who argue for more progressive, human-focused approaches have to spend so much time finding the justification, the proof, to support our ‘statements of the perfectly bleeding obvious’.

It’s annoying that we have to answer the challenge “Where’s the proof for that?”, when existing practices are not subjected to the same scrutiny. (An obvious example of this asymmetry is the whole “Return to office’ debate where arguments that it was good for ‘culture, innovation and collaboration’ could be made with absolutely no supporting evidence or justification).

It’s annoying that what we see as ‘common sense’ is rarely applied, even when there are plentiful examples that it delivers exactly what those who ignore it say they want.

But the work that produces all these article that exasperate me are very necessary. These are the hard yards and they are being won.

So, even if I roll my eyes when I read the reports on the work, I commend it.

Because it’s the hard yards that lead to victory. Inch by inch.