Yesterday Once More
I said shortly after the pandemic began that ‘The Shift’ had happened. After people had experienced working from home and realised they didn’t have to be tethered to the office, I was certain the genie could not be put back in the bottle.
Some have embraced this, enthusiastically adopting ‘hybrid working’ in some form and continuing to experiment and allow it to evolve. Others have been dragged kicking and screaming to a point of acceptance. CEO Jamie Dimon had been an outspoken advocate of a full return to the office but has conceded to the inevitable, announcing that 60% of their employees will have a hybrid schedule. No doubt the low numbers that complied with the ‘Return to Office’ mandate and the reality of retaining and recruiting staff have forced his hand but he has shown that he is smarter than he is stubborn.
And yet others … not so much. David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, has stuck to his guns but this is increasingly looking like a workplace version of the Maginot Line. Meanwhile, ‘Minister for Efficiency’ in the UK government, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has lived up to his moniker as ‘Honourable Member for the 18th century’ with a typically out-dated and out-of-touch call for all civil servants to ‘Return to the Office’. His reason, “to ensure we are making efficient use of the central London estate”, further demonstrates that an Eton education can make you sound posh but it can’t make you more intelligent. It is not only stupid but also impossible, as the policy of the Civil Service for the past decade has been to promote home working so they can reduce the office estate and its associated costs. If all the Civil Servants turned up at the office on the same day, half of them would have to stand up.
It’s pretty clear that the vested interests with large investments in office property portfolios (which happen to include proprietors of British newspapers) are applying pressure in every way they can to drive people back and so restore their revenue streams to pre-pandemic levels. It’s odd that the very people who advocate ‘free market’ economics are so strident in their objections to the operation of, er, the free market.
It’s also pretty clear that many of those at the top of organisations want to return to the office and have little understanding of the desires of their employees, who mostly do not (at least, not on a 5-day-a-week basis). The ‘leadership’ has become even more detached from the rest of the organisation during the pandemic, living, as they do, such a rarified existence they have almost nothing in common with those they lead. It is only a matter of time before they detach completely and float off into the upper atmosphere.
But ‘The Shift’ has happened and these are simply the death-throes of a model that is on the way out.
The King Of Wishful Thinking
I’ve also said before that the only reasons I can see, in the absence of any credible business arguments, for the desire of the ‘C-suite’ to return to the office are power and ego. I was intrigued, therefore, when I listened to Will Storr talking about his book ‘The Status Game’ on Bruce Daisley’s ‘Eat Sleep Work Repeat’ podcast.
Will believes that status is a fundamental need for humans and that we are all continually engaged in a status game of some sort. In study after study it is found that our wellbeing depends on the degree that we feel respected by other people. One study found that the attainment of status or its loss was ‘the strongest predictor of long-term positive and negative feelings’ in subjects.
The office is all about status, from the conspicuous demonstrations such as the size and appointment of your workspace (the apex being the ‘corner office’) through to the subtle cues like being served first with your coffee in the meeting. It’s the perfect platform to parade your status, to reassure yourself of your position (and to be firmly reminded of it by those above you).
The pandemic has taken much of this away, levelling everyone down to a window in zoom, and those with high status have felt its loss and so, felt diminished. Nowhere is this felt more strongly than at the very top. At least those in the middle have the compensation that they have been levelled up to their ‘superiors’ to offset their own levelling down to their reports.
So, of course, the guys at the top are desperate to get back to the place where their status is obvious and regularly reinforced and to get back to having pissing competitions with their peers.
It seems, then, that there are in fact three reasons behind this - Status, Power and Ego. The closely entwined strands that make up the crown that sits at the top of the greasy pole of corporate hierarchy. The closer you think you are the crown, the more this unholy trinity drive you.
Sad, isn’t it?
Fool If You Think It’s Over
I do ponder at times whether the move to hybrid working has decrapified work, whether it’s taken some of the heat out of my mission. I think it has clearly improved the quality of life for many and has removed some of the irritants of the work experience. However, it really has just ameliorated the toxicity, it hasn’t actually addressed the systemic issues that are causing the downward trend in the work experience.
Evidence of this is in a couple of recent pieces of research. Firstly, Gartner found that the top reason people were leaving their roles as part of ‘The Great Resignation’ was bad culture. It was way out in front of the other reasons and hybrid working hasn’t done much to change culture (other than to allow people to distance themselves from it somewhat). It COULD do a lot to change culture but it seems that the latitude that was extended to employees in terms of autonomy and trust is now being clawed back by management who are keen to re-assert control (and so justify their existence, perhaps?).
Secondly, a study of those who have resigned and taken new positions found that half of them were not really any more enamoured of their new employer than their last one. Not so much out of the frying pan into the fire as into another frying pan - but at a higher salary. (Still, 4 out 5 don’t regret their move, even so). It seems likely that this high turnover of employees will continue and increasingly impact organisations with poor cultures, so perhaps that will eventually have a cleansing effect as they either change or die out.
But the fundamental drivers of the ‘Crapfication of Work’ remain in place and still need to be addressed. Furthermore, work remains a negative experiences for many and whilst a hybrid schedule may move it to ‘neutral’ for some, the goal has to be to make work a positive experience for everyone, something that is adds to quality of life rather than diminishes it.
The Flood
It is going to be hard to make the systemic changes to Decrapify Work but it is a lot easier and absolutely achievable to stop making things worse.
So are you guilty of ‘Accidental Crapification’? Are you unwittingly or unthinkingly allowing work to deteriorate though your actions or inactions?
The ‘Forces of Crapification’ are:
Putting profits before people
Valuing efficiency over effectiveness
An obsession with process and measurement
The spread of mobile phones and the ‘always on’ culture
Tech replacing human interaction
Increasing work loads, hours and stress
Are you simply allowing these forces to act without taking action to mitigate them? Are your actions actually reinforcing them because you are unaware of them?
For example, have you failed to agree boundaries with your employees and coworkers, allowing the expectation to be formed that they must always be ‘on call’? Have you emailed people outside working hours, allowing an expectation to arise that messages must be answered immediately? Have you sent a message rather than having a conversation because ‘it's easier (for you)’? Do you focus on the numbers at the expense of the individuals because that’s the pressure you’re under? Are you creating ‘make-work’ such as unnecessary reporting and approval processes rather than trusting people to do their job?
All of these are understandable and easy to succumb to, but they are actually allowing the ‘Forces to Crapification’ to impact the workplace and the people in it. You are compliant in the damage that you do.
If you don’t build the barrier, you enable the flood. If you allow buildings on the flood plain, you make the flood worse. You might not mean to drown anyone one but …
Think how you can guard against committing ‘Accidental Crapification’. Not making things worse is the first step to making them better.
Thank you for a great Not-Newsletter - asking powerful questions as always Colin.
It can be so tempting to want to influence improvements to an organisation's culture by climbing the greasy pole towards the crown where we think we might make most difference. The risk of such climbing is that we can become infected/toxified with hubris (the excessive need for status, power and ego) and become part of the problem.
Leaders always need to surround themselves with a team with cognitive diversity and people prepared to say, "no - that's a bad idea!"