Stormy Weather

Shelter From The Storm

As Storm Eunice (or EU-nice! as I prefer it) puts Wales and most of England under a red weather warning, it’s worth reflecting on how we are dealing with this historic weather event.

It is the worst storm we’ve had for 30 years and millions of people have been warned to batten down the hatches, stay in doors and avoid all unnecessary journeys. Wales has cancelled all trains for the day, high bridges have been shut, flood warnings have been issued.

If this was 30 years ago, most businesses would have told their staff to ‘do your best to get in’. People would have spent hours struggling through the chaos, some would have got stranded and quite possibly a few would have got injured or even killed. Even worse, children could have got harmed just trying to get to or from school.

Now, people have been told to work from home if they can, which, as we now know, most office workers are able to.

Schools in the hardest hit areas have switched to remote teaching today and kept the kids safe from harm. They’ve done this because they know they can and it’s a relatively easy thing to do.

I’m speculating but I suspect rather MORE work has got done today than would have been done 30 years ago, when people would have spent half the day fighting the weather and it’s side-effects and been thoroughly exhausted by the experience.

I bet the kids have learnt more than they would have done struggling into schools that would be missing teachers, with the staff that managed to get in worried about how the day would turn out, anxiety that would inevitably be transmitted to the kids.

The emergency services, always stretched on days like these, have been spared the need to deal with commuters in trouble.

It’s been a win for everyone hasn’t it? And yet, two years ago we were told it was impossible. Not because the means was lacking but because the imagination and the will was.

Storms can blow through and leave nothing changed (apart from a random redistribution of garden furniture and few less trees) but the storm of COVID has changed things for ever. In some ways, for the better.

Storm Front

The storm’s still blowing. Despite the best efforts of the UK government (and some others), backed by powerful vested interests and the eternally angry wing of society, to pretend it’s all over. Well, it’s not. News is filtering through a new variant of Omicron (and there will be others), most of the world remains largely unvaccinated outside of the developed economies, where infection rates also remain worrying high. COVID is going to be a significant public health issue for the next decade, with knock-on social and economic impacts.

But other storms are on the way (literally and metaphorically). The climate crisis, ecological destruction, exhaustion of natural resources, greater geo-political instability and the threat of war (on the ground and in cyberspace). Major political and economic realignments are under way and we have no idea how they will end up.

In the face of the mounting challenges, we have fewer resources at our disposal. We are collectively and individually exhausted from COVID. We, in the developed world at least, have spent the past decades paring away at all ‘unnecessary’ cost and ‘wasted’ resources. As a result, we have little ‘fat’ and minimal reserves, in our institutions, our societies and our organisations. This has reduced our resilience, increased our rigidity, made us less adaptable. We are less able to ride out the storms than we were.

There’s no chance to go back and rebuild what we had, to put back all the stuff that’s been stripped out and thoughtlessly discarded in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’ and, of course, ‘profitability’. Even if that was desirable.

We need to imagine new solutions, create new ways of seeing the world and of addressing it. This applies as much to work as to anything else.

We can’t put back the humanity that we’ve taken out but we can build something new that has the humanity baked in.

I think that’s what I was trying to do with my article on ‘The Decrapified Workplace’. It’s my first draft, a work-in-progress. What are your thoughts? What’s your ‘Starter for Ten’

Get Together

Surviving the storms is very much a community endeavour. People are evacuated to the Community Centre to sip warm drinks and sleep on camp beds. People come together to make preparations, put up defences, keep an eye on each other. They help each other deal with the aftermath, the clean-up operation, the mutual support and care. There are no ‘sides’ on such occasions, they genuinely are ‘all in it together’.

We saw this when COVID struck, people turned to their communities to help and be helped. From the Street WhatsApp group to going shopping for the vulnerable and the stricken.

Community was something people yearned, it was a natural and visceral reaction. We needed to be connected to each other, to belong, to draw strength from the collective. This reversed a trend of several years of atomisation and disconnection with each other.

Now we’ve rediscovered the power of community and how to connect with it again, it’s something we need to bring back into the workplace. I’ve just posted about this on LinkedIn and I think it’s something we need to explore.

Communities don’t have to be perfect, they can accommodate a wide range of people. They can have conflict in them, disagreement, disfunction even. They are not all sunshine and rainbows, they are not about compliance and conformity, they are messy. But they’re very human and necessary to our wellbeing.

You can create community virtually too. That seems to be very important for the way that the world of work is going.

Riders On The Storm

Pirates were very good at dealing with storms. They always knew where to lay up, the safe harbours and hidden anchorages, often ones that were inaccessible to their enemies and the Navies that pursued them.

Pirates thrived in adversity for a number of reasons:

They used the latest technology, be it boats, weapons, sailing techniques or warfare. They took existing vessels and stripped them down to be fast, agile and well-armed fighting platforms. Anything superfluous was discarded.

They were highly proficient in all the skills needed on a ship, from navigation to marksmanship.

They had revolutionary ways of organising, based on trust, democracy and transparency. They removed all hierarchy and bureaucracy.

They achieved scale through collaboration, coming together to achieve an objective and then dispersing.

They had a strong sense of community, both within the crews and in the pirate brotherhood. They looked out for each other.

They were big on DEI. Anyone could join a pirate crew, regardless of sex, religion, race or class. Every person had a vote and an equal say and they went out of their way to make sure everyone was included.

They were bold, courageous and always looking for the edge, open to change and to learning.

I think there might be a few hints there as to how organisations could get themselves into shape to weather the storms ahead.

Oh, yeah, and they liked to have a good time and drink rum. That’s important too.

(Oh look! It’s Friday and it’s Gin O’Clock so it must be time to end this missive! Have a great, storm-free week everyone.)