You Don’t Have To Be Mad To Work Here

Reflections

Some days I look at the world of work and wonder how on earth anything gets done and how anyone survives it.

It seems broken from top to bottom.

Looking for a job? You have to wade through job sites and match your skills to impossibly detailed and precise job specifications and then type in all the information that’s already in your cv, which you also have to attach. And you have to do this for each role you apply for, and you need to apply for loads because you have to get past the screening software that is applying some rules that you don’t know so you could get randomly excluded because one of your qualifications was a grade too low, or you have too many qualifications, or your dog is the wrong breed and you put the jam on before the cream when you have a scone.

Once you’re through that barrier, you will then have to do a video interview to a blank screen that starts displaying questions (sometimes with a time limit for each response), so you babble away without any feedback, as if you’re having an argument with your own reflection. If that’s not harrowing enough, your responses will be scored by an AI and you won’t have any idea whether you were good or bad.

Then there will probably be some online psychometric tests (often not much more than new-age phrenology) and possibly several rounds of interviews on Zoom with random people from HR. Assuming you’ve ticked all the boxes, you might actually get to be interviewed by the person you’ll be working for, maybe even some of the people you’ll be working with. Possibly some managers in the organisation who you will have nothing to do with, as well. You might even get to have some of these in person. Probably at your own cost.

And then you’ll get down to the last 2 or 3. Another round of interviews and then …

tumbleweed. You’ll phone your contact in HR to find out what’s happening and they’ll tell you that the decision will be made in a few days. So then you’ll call again a few days later and get pretty much the same answer. After a few calls, you’ll find you always go through to voicemail. You email them instead and get no answer. Eventually, you realise you’re being ghosted.

Or if you’re really lucky, you might get an email telling you that you didn’t get the role. And you’ll find out from someone who you know who works there that they appointed the internal candidate who was nailed on for the job all along. Or that there’s been a hiring freeze. Or that the recruitment process has taken so long that there’s been a reorganisation and that department doesn’t exist anymore.

Or you might get the job. I mean, someone must get the job, right? Someone must get all the way through this assault course, otherwise what’s the point of it all?

Actually, what is the point of it all? Well, it keeps HR busy and stops managers being bothered too much with all the messy hiring stuff. But does it actually lead to better quality hires than just doing a lucky dip from the pile of applications? That would at least be quick and a lot cheaper. Maybe if you then ran a stringent probation process that would weed out the ones that were really not right, you’d get a decent enough workforce.

Anyway, AI is already ‘improving’ this and making it possible for you to go through the whole process without any human contact or mediation from the prospective employer at all! But that’s OK because you can use AI to do pretty much everything on your end too. That way you won’t suffer the trauma of justifying yourself to an empty screen or the moral injury of being ghosted because your AI will be dealing with all that.

All of this could happen before you’ve even been admitted to the madhouse. Jeez, this could be a long newsletter …

Will It Go Round In Circles?

This is, of course, a microcosm of what happens in large organisations. Byzantine processes that make it feel like you are walking through treacle and also subject to the whims of the gods; that purport to be providing efficiency and consistency whilst seemingly doing the opposite. Capricious, confusing and chaotic. All presented with a veneer of rationality, logic and order.

All around you are contradictions and cognitive disconnects. The very things you are encouraged to do - create, innovate, be vulnerable, bring your whole self to work - are the very things that get you into trouble. Who gave you permission to do that? Why aren't you following the process? You’re being too emotional! Don’t bring your private life into work.

Be like this! No, not like that. Make an omelette but don’t break any eggs.

It feels like you’ve gone through the looking glass, it seems utterly mad but everyone is pretending it completely normal. So you go along with it, you buy into the illusion. It’s not a case of ‘The King’s New Clothes’, it’s new clothes for everyone - including you. The delusion is strong.

So why do we fall for this? Why don’t we realise it’s all bullshit?

Because to acknowledge the insanity is too much to cope with. To go against the flow is too hard, too dangerous, too risky. In this fairy tale, when the child says the king is naked, they get smacked and sent to bed early. Or even sent away to live with a wicked Aunt.

What are the rational responses to this world?

One is to see it all as a game and not take it seriously. I could never do that and I envied those who did, as they seemed to thrive.

Another is to use irony to point out the gap between the illusion and reality. This is certainly a coping mechanism but you are likely to be labelled as a cynic and seen as a negative influence. And remember, it’s the fool who points to the truth in King Lear and gets hanged for his troubles. The fate of the ironist is often not a happy one.

Some people just disengage, they dial down their emotions and just go through the motions. Perhaps they numb themselves with drink, drugs, food or sex (or all of them!), or they live for the weekend and holidays (and Glastonbury!). The problem is that this makes you smaller and makes your life drab and colourless. Most people can’t turn the dials back up when they are not at work, so the joy is drained from all of their life.

Another, of course, is to succumb to the illusion, to buy the bullshit and try to conform. Some manage to do this but for many of us there comes a point where we just can’t hold the contradictions anymore, we can’t close the gap between the illusion and the reality.

This is a point of awakening. It’s often not a pleasant experience. You feel unmoored, cut adrift from the certainties that you felt were holding you in place. You are plunged into the fog of change, full of doubts and surrounded by ambiguity. You are in an existential crisis.

This is something Dr. Richard Claydon is exploring in his series of posts telling a story about Mya, a middle manager who has realised it’s all bullshit. Richard is going to share some ideas about what works, how to stay in the system and cope with the madness. I recommend that you follow the unfolding of this tale.

But for some, it’s too late. The injury that they have suffered is too great, the wounds too deep. They have to leave and find another path.

That was my experience, even though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I kept applying for roles back in CorporateLand (which wasn’t as broken a process as it is now) but my subconscious had already recognised the dangers and was protecting me by sabotaging my efforts.

How have you survived this madness? How have you managed to live through this illusion? I’d love to know - tell me in the comments or drop me an email.

In A Broken Dream

I used a mix of the rational responses to cope with the madness, apart from treating it as a big game. (This is something those who have been through the British public school system seem to have been trained to do. Perhaps it develops a capacity for sociopathy in them, which is a very useful thing to have in order to thrive in a modern organisation.)

A group of us would retire to the pub to lick our wounds and wallow in our cynicism. It made us feel better for a bit, until we went back into the fray, at least. I bought some of the bullshit, I tried to ‘live the values’ and do what I thought we right for the business, I tried to follow the processes (or at least make it look like I was following the processes). I disengaged from some things but I couldn’t just dial it in all the time, that was against my own values, motivations and standards. (Although I did let those slip a bit over time, I realised as I reflected on it afterwards).

But, ultimately, it broke me. I became both stuck and aimlessly drifting. How ironic that all the contradictions and paradoxes that broke me led to another paradox, eh?

I’ve been trying to figure out how to this happened to me ever since, and trying to come up with ideas to help people avoid being broken in the first place.

I know I was not equipped to deal with it, I didn’t have the tools to make sense of what was happening or to deal with my emotions. Most of the time I didn’t even have words to express it, just a growing feeling of unease and discomfort. So developing the understanding and language to be able to sense make is important, as is building the self-awareness to be able to engage with and regulate your emotions.

Some of this is dealing with the systems you find yourself in, building a view of the world that you can share with others. But some of this is deeply personal, going deep within and exploring your beliefs, your values and your emotions. Another paradox, inner and outer, public and personal. Or rather, a dichotomy.

At times, it seems impossible, which is why many people who are in distress and stuck in a ‘misery machine’ (as Antionette Weibel has termed organisations) just don’t want to go there. So they stay and stew until the organisations decides for them and chucks them on the scrapheap. Which hardly seems the optimal choice.

I’m still working on a Corporate Survival Guide but it’s not a self-help book, or a 10-step process or a set of answers. It’s a bunch of thoughts and ideas and suggestions and things to think about. Because only you can figure out the best way forward and you’ll probably get it wrong at least once (if you’re lucky).

If any of this resonates with you and you’d like to talk about your experiences, get in touch. We really need to talk about this stuff.

It Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Some people are able to remain ‘corporate adjacent’. They may be able to tolerate the madness if they can create some distance between it and themselves. This may be working on contracts for short-term engagements, consulting to companies or providing services that leverage your expertise and skills.

Others may first go away and reinvent themselves, perhaps train in something else, and then set up a business that has corporate clients.

But some will even find that difficult, so deep are their wounds from corporate life.

They just can’t get past the fact that we’re just a consumable input for organisations now. That really shouldn’t be acceptable but somehow it is.

We can look at mending the processes, we can seek to limit the harms that are done to people, we can bring in rights to disconnect, 4-day weeks, hybrid working and the rest. There’s a lot that we can do to make the workplace better, less harmful, less exploitative and extractive. But until we put the people at the heart of things then we will remain peripheral, expendable, consumable.

That’s why the recruitment process is so appalling, because people don’t really matter. That’s why every process in an organisation is so terrible, because the needs of the human come last.

It’s mad, isn’t it?