The Greatest Hits EP
Intro
Due to other commitments, I haven’t had time to write a missive this week. So I thought I’d do what any self-respecting rock’n’roll band would do when the record company contract demands and album but they can’t record one because they are too busy/wasted/lazy/fighting/in rehab/dead. Put out a compilation of my ‘Greatest Hits’!
Although as this is only going to be a few, it’s more of an EP than an album. (We’re talking vinyl here, guys. I could be showing my age or just how cool and on-trend I am.) If you want the album version, you can download an ebook of my blogs that I put together a year or so ago with this link.
I have written a blog every week or two for the past few years, which I post on LinkedIN. You can read all of them on the Decrapify Work website, if you have a few hours to while away!
Here’s a selection from the ebook of some of the more popular ones (according to my LinkedIN stats).
It Was My Fault (Apr 21)
Apparently, it was my fault.
I kept ‘going offside’.
I kept asking awkward questions.
I was a ‘loose cannon’.
I didn’t have ‘enough bottom’.
I committed ‘career limiting acts’ (CLAs).
I didn’t stick to the party line.
I had too much fun.
I spoke to the wrong people.
I was too cynical.
I didn’t speak up enough.
I should know when to hold my tongue.
I should know which side I was on.
My face didn’t fit.
I was too anonymous.
It was my fault.
And to make things worse, I kept delivering results. I kept launching innovative products. People liked working for me. People wanted me on their team. I was the ‘go-to’ guy. I cared about what I did. I cared about the people I worked with.
I was a problem.
You see, all the things that were ‘my fault’ where the reasons I managed to get things done. My entrepreneurial instincts, my collaborative approach, my focus on the outcome and the impact, my curiosity, my openness, my independence of thought, my care for others and desire to do the right thing.
Only it wasn’t my fault.
And I wasn’t the problem.
I was the right plant in the wrong garden.
It was their garden that was at fault.
Drowning In Horseshit (Sep 21)
The problem with future of work is like the one that faced London in the late 1800s.
We are at risk of drowning in horseshit.
The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 is a tale about an article in The Times warning that “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”. The problem subsequently debated at the first urban planning conference in New York in 1898 but without a solution being found.
Neither the article or the conference actually took place but the problem was very real. Large areas around Kings Cross station were taken up with holding yards for the manure and knacker’s yards for disposing of horses, which caused an unimaginable stench. Manure, urine and dead horses on the streets of London attracted flies and caused diseases to spread.
Had we had to continue using horses for transport, it seems likely the system would have collapsed. Fortunately, the solution arrived in the form of the motor car and electric trams, which meant horses were no longer required. The streets became cleaner and the city became healthier.
So what’s that got to do with the future of work?
Offices were on the same path as horse transport. Having ever more people commuting into city centres to work in offices was becoming unsustainable. Transport links were groaning under the weight of traffic, people were getting ill and even dying from the stress, our communities and society as a whole were ailing.
Our equivalent of the motor car is mobile working. When people don’t have to commute into a city centre office every day, much of the stress and sickness disappears. People are healthier, happier, more productive. They get to spend more time with their families and in their local communities, to the benefit of both and to broader society.
What’s more, the air quality improves, congestion eases and the city becomes more energy efficient.
The whole concept of how all that horseshit was handled in a major city is very hard for us to get out heads around today. It is almost unimaginable.
In a decade or so, we’ll look back at how all those people used to travel in to office every day with the same lack of comprehension.
But right now, there’s still a lot of horseshit around.
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Return To The Office Reluctance (Nov 21)
Here’s why people are reluctant to go back to the office.
Their employer says, “You need to come back to the office for collaboration, innovation, relationship building and networking!”
Only they can’t really explain how collaboration happens.
Or where the innovation comes from.
Or how the relationship building is done.
Or how you should build your network.
However, they are totally confident this stuff happens in the office. Even though there’s no process or training. It’s ‘osmosis’. Or magic. Or maybe the Business Fairy.
Only it doesn’t happen in the office, it happens in the liminal spaces. The water cooler, the corridor, the lunch table. The walk to the meeting, the chat after the meeting. The coffee shop, the pub.
These spaces are in and around the office, they’re where you have those informal chats and make ad hoc connections.
Only that’s not where you spend your time, because you have so much work to do you’re tied to your desk, in the actual office. You don’t get to be in these spaces, other than in your own time.
So the employer’s offer looks a bit like this
“We want you to come back to the office so you get to spend time that we don’t allocate to you in informal spaces that we don’t acknowledge so that stuff will happen that we don’t understand, recognise or reward because this is essential to the success of our business.”
And their employees weigh that against the cost, time and effort of going into an office where it’s harder to do the focused work they get rewarded for and, unsurprisingly, they find it rather less than compelling.
“No, you’re alright.”, they reply, “I’ll carry on working from home.”
No More Navy Seals, Please! (May 22)
If I read another ‘Leadership’ book that talks about the Navy Seals, I’m going to throw up.
Or any other elite combat group.
Or a leading sports team.
I get why people write about these. If you’re going to sell your book, it’s got to sound interesting and a bit sexy. These groups have a cachet, name recognition, reputation. All useful things for an author to co-opt.
But they have almost zero relevance to the work experience of most people.
However, they do have a lot in common with each other.
Firstly, they are self-defined elite groups with a high bar to entry, usually some level of individual excellence. Their members are, by definition, exceptional.
Secondly, they have clear and defined goals and an obsessional desire to achieve them at almost any cost.
Thirdly, they are engaged in a life or death struggle. It’s real for the military units, symbolic for the sports teams but psychologically similar.
Fourthly, they are engaged in a finite game. Rules of the game for sports teams, rules of engagement for the military, with clear boundaries and objectives.
Fifthly, they are detached from the everyday existence, the mundane, the parochial. They live in a rarified atmosphere, a bubble of status and privilege.
Does that sound like any work team you’ve been involved with? Or want to be involved with? (And if you answered yes to either of those, you really need to go and have a word with yourself.)
These leadership guys seldom write about the dark side either. The broken relationships, destructive behaviours, unhealthy coping mechanisms, addictions; the abuse, discrimination, and breakdowns. These are the side effects of the personal and collective obsession.
These are unusual people in an abnormal situation behaving in exceptional ways (both positively and negatively).
How relevant are they to the marketing team of a toy manufacturer, the accounts team of a car rental company, or the customer service team of an air conditioning company?
Whilst we are all unique, most of us are not exceptional. We’re not in the top 5%, we’re not extraordinarily gifted.
In fact, by definition, 50% of us are below average.
Work is not our obsession. We want to enjoy other aspects of life like family, hobbies, community. We want a blend.
Whilst we might like to imagine ourselves as Navy Seals or footballers for Liverpool FC, we’re really not willing to make the sacrifices, to narrow our life experience to be like them.
A more useful reference is how they do things at Timpsons or Cook!. Those are places we can aspire to match, places where ‘ordinary’ people do ordinary things, but better than many others. Tell us stories about how they lead, how they create high quality workplaces, how they enrich people’s lives, because that’s relevant.
We’re going to learn a lot more from them than we are from trained killers or overpaid sports stars.
In fact, we’d learn more from looking at Wernham Hogg*.
(*Dunder Mufflin Paper Company, for our N. American readers)
The latest episode of the Work Punks podcast is now out, featuring our guest Rebecca Cullum, who earned her stripes in leadership development in the frantic IT and mobile phone sectors.
Now operating independently, Rebecca supports leaders and their teams in establishing the culture, behaviours and mindsets that are required for 2024 and beyond.
You can watch it here on our YouTube channel, or listen to the podcast here or through your favourite podcast platform.
The Work Punks are me, Ben Simpson of Organisational Vitality and Paul Jansen of Trustworks.
Mandated Days (May 22)
A lot of companies are deciding that hybrid working means mandated days in the office. What could possibly go wrong?
It says to employees:
We will tell you what’s important in your life, we will set your priorities.
We don’t trust you to organise yourself and co-ordinate with you colleagues
We are going to revert to the adult-child relationship we had before COVID
We still have power over you
We are grudgingly accepting this new way of working but we still think it’s wrong
We’d really like to go back to how it was
We don’t really appreciate all the effort you put in to keep things going during the pandemic
What employees feel is:
I’m not trusted
They’re not really interested in me and my priorities in life
They don’t think I’m capable of organising myself and balancing the needs of my job with everything else in my life
They think I don’t care about my work, that I’m lazy and feckless
They are still in the dark ages, they still value presenteeism and brown-nosing rather than output
They don’t appreciate all the effort I put in during the pandemic if this is my reward
They said the relationship had changed, that they had changed, but now the fuss is over they are showing they’re just the same.
I’ve been betrayed
This may not be explicit. It may not even be conscious but this is the dialogue that is going on.
It’s why, when properly consulted, no group of employees have come up with it as a solution.
What makes it worse is that the company’s reasons for this policy will be framed as being for the benefit of the employees and the company. It will be presented as an act of generosity. These espoused reasons are at odds with the subliminal messages it sends, which causes further dissonance and discomfort.
Mandated days will push down engagement, lower commitment, weaken culture, make employees feel less valued and ultimately drive them to look elsewhere.
That’s why companies (including the likes of Apple) will abandon it.
If hybrid doesn’t mean fully flexible, it’s going fail.
Outro
If you’ve enjoyed these, you can download the ‘album’ here (it’s a pdf file).
Or you can read the whole archive on my Decrapify Work blog, including the ones I’ve written since July 2020 (the end of the period the ebook covers).
To get these hot off the press, follow me on LinkedIN and remember to go to my profile page and ‘ring the bell’.
As ever, I’d love you hear your opinions, thoughts, comments etc, or just have a chat and see if I can help. Drop me an Email, DM me on LinkedIN or book a call.
Have a great week!