Play At Work

Summer: The Season For Treason

August 8, 2017

Summertime. Perfect for plotting. Cats vacation. Mice play. Time, that dangerous thing, for some, opens up a little – and, for some with dangerous minds, they fill it with plans for power grabs, destruction or revenge.

At least, this used to be the way of things.

In political circles, or for those that circle boardrooms, summer is traditionally the time to organise your coup.

But there are so many seasons in a day now; plots to unsettle or unseat don’t wait for The Fall. Still, I imagine the enforced quarantine of the summer vacation provides many with the opportunity to review their situation. To consolidate. To conjecture. To imagine an alternative outcome.

Strange to think of all those eyes – surveying the misted wonder of the Tuscan hills or contemplating the deep blue of the Mediterranean, watching their compatriots queuing for Cornish pasties or over-subscribed rides at theme parks – that reveal nothing of the dark thoughts lodged behind them.

There they are, out in the world, just smiling people with unknown plans.

For some, the music of summer is a song of innocence. A return to something simpler. They won’t be reading ‘The Art of War’ or ‘The Prince’ on the beach. Rather, like Marie-Antoinette in her Petit Hameau, they will play at pastoral games instead, unaware, perhaps, of the hoards scenting blood beyond the boundaries of their own hedonism.

It being the twentieth anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, it’s no wonder the theme of this summer seems to be betrayal. We’re hungry again for the tale. It might even be juicer now. After all, we’re consumed all-year-round by acts of betrayal, from Game of Thrones to House of Cards to the Trump and May administrations.

Whatever shade of the political spectrum we brand ourselves, someone is plotting against us. Promises are broken. Ideas, and ideals, betrayed.

Don’t we all feel a little bit like that girl, woefully young and naive, hopeful and puzzled, being led up an aisle to an unknown destination, ushered on by lies and false promises – by smiling people with unknowable plans?

Betrayal. The very word, so grandiose, conjuring up images of courts and kings. The root is traitor, which takes us to treason – again, a monumental word – but it’s real basis, from the Latin, is something much simpler: a trade; to give something away.

We trade in little acts of betrayal every day. Paper cuts rather than wounds, but still with the power to sting. The shared confidence revealed to another party. The credit taken by another for something we’ve done. The unreturned call, text or email.

The question, for the hoodwinked, the slightly let down or, indeed, the deeply betrayed, is what to do with this new knowledge. When the falsehood, or false friend, is revealed, what do you do?

Firstly, we have to assess the scale of the battle. The malice aforethought. Ignorance, obliviousness, makes for many a skirmish, and many that our opponents are completely unaware of. We have to assess whether it’s a fight worth fighting.

If we think it is, as with most battles in life, we are, ultimately, left with two choices: fight, or flight.

A great deal of dignity can be found in saying nothing, in walking away. This, of course, relies on the option to do this. If this is an option, and you can rise above, forget (if not fully forgive) – get walking.

You might decide to fight fire with fire, playing a tit-for-tat game of careless talk, or virtue-signalling, or credit-stealing. Both time and energy consuming, as well as potentially too subtle, this approach is also particularly hard to follow if the source of your betrayal is an act of being ignored.

Indeed, as Princess Diana found in her court-imposed isolation, wounds cannot heal unattended. They fester. Justice, as dictated by the heart, demands truth and understanding. Silence, in that sense, is a crime in itself, another kind of betrayal.

When all the tit-for-tat was clearly not getting anybody anywhere (or diffusing any anger on either side), Diana did a very un-British thing to do: she called it out.

Some saw, and still see, this as the ultimate act of betrayal – the confessions of one woman’s heart, pushing down the walls of the palace from the inside. In doing so, classical columns were revealed to be as phoney as Marie-Antoinette’s mock pastoral. A fantasy. Nothing but a house of cards.

Personally, I’m a big believer in calling it out, if you can. Shouldn’t the oblivious learn of the consequences of their actions? How will they ever decide to be any different if they never know? Surely it’s only fair to give them the chance – to explain, to justify, to correct.

Justice demands the malicious should also be held to account.

Calling it out is the only way to prevent it from happening again.

The Royal ‘arranged marriage’ Diana suffered will never be allowed to happen again. The public will see to that. That’s a good thing. That’s a good legacy.

Whistleblowers tend to suffer from speaking their truth, whatever the eventual outcomes. But Diana’s is a success story. The truth did set her free. She may have been a little lost, a little unsure as to how to write the script ahead, at the time of her death, but she’d found her strength, had fought the battle of her life and was finding her voice in the aftermath.

We are helpless in the glare of the plotters, observing us from their sun-loungers, pushing us into position with invisible prods. We can’t always know what roles others have in mind for us. Betrayals are inevitable.

But what’s not inevitable, and the inspiration we can take from the Diana story, is that, however hard it might be, however painful, however exposing, treason – whether you fly from it or face it down – is survivable if you don’t betray your principles, or yourself.
Breaking Bad: Who’s Responsible For Reworking Work?

May 12, 2017

I welcomed Matthew Taylor’s RSA report into the state of work this week as I welcome anything that brings the issue of work – not employment, but work itself – into the spotlight.

It rarely makes it. And, as I’ve said before, it’s not so strange we’re happy to keep it far back in the Chorus; it pulls focus from so much in our lives, we don’t want to be entertained by it.

At the end of a long, hard-working day (or night), we’ve had enough.

So the media, understandably, neglects the issue. It’ll happily feature humble-bragging PR pieces with ‘successful individuals’, and some of these will be dressed up as advice (some might have a smattering of advice in them), but the big picture stuff – workplace culture, purpose, motivation, fulfilment, policy – doesn’t get a look in.

Taylor’s review shows just how much of enough we’ve had.

Work is anxiety, insecurity, obscurity. Poverty. And, if we’re honest, most of those at the top of the tree are heavy-drinking, heavy-living, angsty people (albeit in plusher surroundings with nicer things).

Is it any different to how it’s ever been? Isn’t it better than it’s ever been?

Maybe, in the past, the thinking was a little more pragmatic. Work is the cage we all find ourselves in, one way or another. We have to pay our way in life. If we’re lucky, we find a cage that suits us, subdues us or enlivens us – keeps us pacing. Even those who reach the pinnacles of work success – the great leaders, the great artists – find themselves caged in, by their own mythologies if nothing else.

Only Earth’s Nomads are truly free as they keep moving and travel light.

It’s those darn things that we need, like a roof over our heads or food in our bellies, that force us into our cages. We go in armed with what skills we’ve found within us or been taught, hoping to survive and, reward-incentivised animals that we are, a little hopeful we’ll thrive (I don’t think many people take a job hoping to be bad at it – though that wish, miraculously, is granted for so many).

If we do well, like goldfish, we grow to the size of our bowls (finding we need plenty of stuff to spend our salaries on). This could be our biggest downfall. Whether our salary is keeping us wavering on the poverty line or getting swallowed up in school fees, not many of us could survive for very long without it.

And ‘they’ know it.

If nobody actually needed their job, just did it because they enjoyed it and were good at it, think how differently people would be treated in the workplace (not that this, sadly, applies to volunteers, who do do this and are often treated abysmally). But, in this fantasy land, I imagine there’d be heartfelt gratitude towards the people who showed up and did the work. High fives all-round.

Instead, all too often, ‘they’ begrudge you every penny.

It’s not their fault, in all fairness. They’ve been taught profits before people. And they’re anxious. They want big bowls to protect themselves in.

But the spin is the real sin, hooking people in with promises of self-fulfilment when the structure, the development and the culture isn’t geared up around that at all. It’s sink or swim. Work it out for yourself and, if fortune favours you, a few good guides may appear along the way.

What are sold as springboards bounce you right into another cage.

In my work, I’ve certainly seen the decline over the last decade in the positivity people experience and express about their workplace cultures. The widening gap between the promise and the reality. It’s not all bad news – there are some great employers, departments and jobs out there. There are people finding their ‘joy of work’. But my sense is they’re getting fewer and farther between.

Of course, we crashed the world in the global financial crisis and many are still recovering; many are yet to recover. It changed ‘the deal’ at work for a lot of people. A lot more employers began to begrudge every penny. You couldn’t give enough bang for your buck – and they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) give you the training, support, inspiration or nurture to fire you up.

Austerity in the workplace – of salary, reward, incentive, of sentiment – has set in. In the grand scheme of things, work has never been better, but the concern is we’re slipping into reverse and are now slow-clapping in a darkened theatre, facing an empty stage (rather than facing, head-on, the potential future of work).

The question is, when it comes to those big picture problems we need to address around the contract, the nature, the future of work, who should provide the direction?

In business, you have to start with the leaders, of course you do, but this is always problematic due to the very nature of how businesses are born. Go back to the genesis of any business and you’ll find it formulated in one brain, either with an idea or a desire to make money.

People start a business with the desire to have a business. They don’t start a business with the desire to run a company.

Or the knowledge. It evolves. As an afterthought rather than a forethought, this knowledge can take an awfully long time to come to fruition, particularly if the leader hasn’t realised, early on, the need to bring in someone to think about people.

Even more problematic, success can make you think you don’t have to. Cultures created that way are hard to shift (and can turn in a rather wooden performance in volatile times).

So we have to turn to the people employed to think about the people, HR – sadly, most likely too late to the table and not given much of a voice when they’re at it.

Lacking visionaries who see their role to nurture and unleash people’s talents, to create environments that bring out the best in them, that make ambassadors of them, instead HR becomes the legislative, data and attraction afterthought – the last to know, responding to fallouts, gaps to fill, requests for drilled-down micro data to justify every micro action or gesture.

All resource. Very little humanity.

Where HR does have a voice, an influence, a plan, it works. Healthy cultures yield better people, and retain them. Better cultures offer better jobs, true progression, real dialogue. Better results, greater productivity – via more productive meetings, well-thought-out plans and joined-up operations – are achieved this way.

Enlightened thinkers bring down the cages. There’s no reason for them not to; the evidence that the old ways are not the way forward is overwhelming.

But old habits die hard. People get used to their cages. They like others in theirs, too – where they know their place, have them pinned down. Have them where they want them. Fantasy land flipped dream-face down, the reality for too many: obligation and hand-wringing gratitude from employee to employer, whatever the pay, whatever the circumstances.

It being the right – if not the wisdom – of the business leader to decide whether or not they listen to their people, we have to look to the state to help shore up a solution. Their primary job, after all, surely, is to protect the rights and dignity of the individual citizen.

It’s also their job to create an environment for business to thrive in order to maintain a healthy economy, so it’s well within their interests that they intervene when it comes to ‘bad work’.

The stage is certainly set. We need to get on with the show.

Firstly, we need to define the cast of players. To bring any of this together will require a lot of intricate choreography between organisational leaders in the private, public and third sectors and each and every government department.

As any impresario knows, any project also needs the oxygen of publicity. We need to involve the media to hook in the audience. Enliven the conversation. Make it entertaining. There are plenty of lively ideas out there. We’re at a moment in time which is truly a new age: the digital age. We need a plan for it for it to work for everybody.

Work is a subject that touches all our lives – that should be able to draw a big audience. We need it to pull focus. We need it centre stage. We need to bring the house down. Break the bad once and for all. Make it work. Find new ways to ensure everyone can thrive.

Without more joined-up thinking, further division, further despair, will be inevitable. And if we don’t find better working solutions for this new world order, don’t wake up to the fact that bad work is bad for the economy, the show might be over sooner than we think.
The Replacement: The Mother Of All Workplace Dramas?

March 8, 2017

My lament about our inability in the UK to produce good TV about work has gone up before. Nevertheless, cock-eyed optimist that I am, I’m forever scanning the schedules for content that explores workplace dynamics, so I couldn’t resist being drawn to the BBC drama The Replacement.

For those unfamiliar with it, The Replacement is billed as a “psychological thriller about a woman who goes on maternity leave only to become increasingly paranoid about the motives of the person covering for her.”

Right, think I: this is going to be interesting. Maternity Leave is one of the thorniest workplace issues there is. Anyone who’s been there, or had a friend, partner or colleague who’s been there (and has had their eyes and ears so much as half-open) will know it’s a process fraught with many competing priorities, and that, surely, is as rich a seam as you can get to explore in a drama.

Whether planned or pronounced, a workplace pregnancy changes everything.

A future absence has to be accounted for. A body (once, hopefully, private property) suddenly becomes an object of public scrutiny, commentary. Familiar routines, like a pint of Pinot Grigio after work with the gang, may be thrown out of kilter, or thrown out altogether.

Pregnancy is a surefire way to assess an employee’s currency, and it can fluctuate more rapidly than the FTSE after a Brexit announcement from the PM.

For some women, the pressure mounts – sometimes just seconds after the grand reveal – about when you’ll be returning to work (with the implication being the sooner the better). For others – again, sometimes just seconds after the grand reveal – they’re treated like they’ve already left the building.

Sadly, even in small organisations, even in the most connected and personally intimate of workplaces, the descent of the stork is rarely, genuinely, greeted with delight. Even if people are thrilled for you, it’s still an inconvenience, particularly if you need to be replaced.

And, as with the character at the centre of this drama, it’d only be human to worry about who that replacement might be and what they’ll do while wearing your shoes; if they can fill them, or whether they’ll suit them better.

I’ve certainly known quite a few people who, while in an Interim Mat Leave cover role, have been secretly determined to outshine the incumbent with the aim to usurp them (proving the point that while you might not be paranoid, that doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you).

I can’t help feeling The Replacement could have explored these themes as a psychological drama a lot more without the ‘The Hand That Rocks The Cradle’ silliness, but, TV commissioners being what they are, the dial has to be turned up to thriller to reassure them they’ll get an audience.

It could have been just as compelling if it had been a lot subtler.

There have been some good moments. Little glimpses of the schisms in the workplace sisterhood relating to motherhood. We’re all moulded to compete at work and, from what I’ve witnessed, pregnancy – and particularly labour – is a fierce battleground.

No one is more publicly judged than a pregnant woman – and no more so than by other mothers.

There are the virtuous ‘All-Naturals’ who raise their eyebrows at anyone who stops breastfeeding at less than three years.

There are the ‘Guillotine Knitters’, desperate to tell any pregnant women how horrendous their labour was with a “Just you wait and see,” relish.

And, as with the creepy Paula in The Replacement, the ‘Seed Planters’ – those who, with a kind expression and a sweet smile, release a contagion of doubt into the mind of any pregnant woman they encounter (“Oh, you’re trying for a home birth, are you? I’m so glad I didn’t go for that in the end.”)

All of this is a pretty alien concept to most men (I’m a gay man with many female friends; I’ve, vicariously, lived through more pregnancies than Queen Victoria). As with the male boss in The Replacement, men, by and large, stay out of it. Without the thrills, this drama could have uncovered a lot more about the workplace politics involved and maybe enlightened a lot more men in the process.

If more men were able to make the connection to how they might feel should someone else come in the fill their shoes while they took a career break – examining how they’d like to be treated, what they’d want to know, how they would like to connect with the workplace during their absence – there might be more appetite to finesse policies and procedures (and behaviours) around maternity leave across the board.

It’s incredible, when you really think about it, that, biological inevitability that it is for the vast majority of the population, we still haven’t really worked out how to work work around parenthood (the fact that so few men are inclined to take up Paternity Leave, even when it’s promoted in a workplace, shows how far we’ve got to go to balance our priorities).

The Replacement certainly works well as a thriller in the vein of the aforementioned ‘Cradle‘ (with a few nods to Single White Female, Rosemary’s Baby and Fatal Attraction thrown in) and it’s a fine cast.

But I fear the final episode (airing next week) is going to leave us with nothing more than a series of improbable plot twists and two ‘hysterical’ women both disturbed and imbalanced by their relationships to motherhood and each other.

Not doing much for the sisterhood. Not shining much light on the issue of maternity leave. And not really telling us anything at all.
Out Of Focus: Going La La On The Job

March 2, 2017

You’ve got to feel a little bit sorry for the chap from PWC who, apparently (allegedly) too busy tweeting out insider pics of Emma Stone, failed to provide the right envelope for the subsequent Best Picture award at the Oscars.

He’s only human, right?

That said, he also only had one job to do, not the most complicated one one would imagine. Twenty four envelopes. Twenty four presentations. It might be the highest profile awards ceremony in the world, but it’s far from the most complex (just try the Sheen Lions Football Club Awards some time – that’s truly epic).

Of course, when you turn your attention to the La La Land team, you’ve got to feel a lot more sorry for them (even more so having made those lifelong rehearsed speeches before having their moment of glory so unceremoniously swept away).

No wonder the Academy is now searching for the appropriate level of retribution.

It’s all it takes, isn’t it; a split second, a little lapse in focus, and BAM! – you’ve sent the wrong message, you’ve liked the wrong tweet, you’ve stepped out in front of the bus, you’ve handed over the wrong envelope.

There’s almost nothing that makes me crazier (the curse of my hyper-vigilance). The screen-scrolling colleague in a meeting; the waiter who fails to look up and scan the room; the barista who is more interested in catching their reflection in their shiny coffee machine than allowing you to catch their eye.

THIS IS YOUR JOB! DO YOUR JOB! FOCUS!

The worst, the very worst, the service encounter absolutely guaranteed to bring me to boiling point is the distracted taxi driver. Usually the object of the distraction is a red top newspaper (I have also encountered a cab driver who was playing some kind of World of Warcraft type game on a propped up iPad, no less).

Now, first off, taking a black cab in London is never a cheap option. Every second costs, whether you’re moving or not. So, when someone keeps missing the lights because they’re failing to look up from their paper in time, or is happily static in traffic when there’s clearly a clearer alternative route available because it gives them the chance to mull over the commentary on Claudio Ranieri, my blood pressure starts rocketing up faster than the meter.

It was the World of Warcraft guy that really got me. Having not only missed about three sets of lights in a row but also only narrowly avoided killing a couple of cyclists, if I hadn’t been so pressed for time (and, perhaps, if it hadn’t been raining) I would have just got out. Less inclined to that option, I went for retribution instead.

“Excuse me,” say I, “can I tell you what I do for a living?”

“What’s that then?” he replies.

“I’m a heart surgeon,” I lie, “and, one day, when you’re on my operating table and your heart is in my hands, you’ll be glad to know I’ll be fulling focused on my job and not simultaneously flicking through a magazine. Right now, my life is in your hands and I’d really appreciate you paying me the same courtesy. After all,” I add, “I am paying for it, aren’t I?”

He looked at me, in all fairness, a little shame-faced, and, rather than screeching to a halt and unceremoniously dumping me onto the rain-soaked street, said, “Fair point Guv, fair point,” and, for the remainder of my journey, didn’t look to the iPad screen once (I wonder if he wondered why I wasn’t being dropped near any hospital, but my lie remained unchallenged; my point had been made).

I don’t suppose I really made any difference, but I did feel satisfied that I’d made my point (and I have, in fact, used the same ruse again to equal effect).

Maybe it’s right the Academy makes an example of Ruiz, Cullinan and PWC.

The lesson: put away childish things. Focus. Concentrate. Do your job. You’re an adult. That’s why you have to have a job. Do that job.

If you don’t, you never know what price you – or others – might end up paying for your going a little la la on the job. Waiting a little longer for a coffee or the cheque might be a minor inconvenience. Watching a cyclist get mown down in front of you, or looking at that achingly gaping space on your mantelpiece for the rest of your life, may be of more major significance.
The Lying In Winter: Proceed Or Retreat?

February 8, 2017

“What would you have me do? Give out? Give up? Give in?”

Katharine Hepburn (Eleanor of Aquitaine), The Lion In Winter (1968)

It’s official. Winter is not my season. I’m not saying I’m experiencing some kind of full-blown SAD (I’m actually, generally, quite buoyant), but, nevertheless, I’ve had enough: the dry skin that no amount of face serum and moisturiser refreshes; the spread-betting selections of multiple layers of clothes when facing the elements; the struggle of getting out of said layers of clothes when coming indoors; the constant craving for stodge.

The effort of it all.

I like December. I can cope with December. The darkening nights. The sparkly lights and rituals. But then along comes January with its unseasonal preoccupations with diet and fitness; February, with its rabid romantic expectations.

It’s a long winter.

Why do we do it to ourselves? At the bleakest time of year, when all most of us want to do is stay under the duvet, we obsess about perfect bodies and perfect relationships (while secretly hoping for a duvet of snow to hide us away from the world).

And, of course, this winter, for many, feels bleaker than most (whatever the weather). I’ve noticed a lot of people on Twitter stating they are trying to step away from conscientiously following current current affairs for the sake of their mental health. It’s a lot to take in. Daily. No wonder so many are seeking retreat.

Indeed, author and philosopher Simon Blackburn (‘Truth: A Guide’) suggests, in response to this ‘post-Truth/fake news/is-this-for-real?’ moment, many people may increasingly feel the need to just unplug from it all. Switch off. Make peace with their impotence. Disengage. Distract themselves in other ways.

Give out. Give up. Give in.

This is not good news. While picking up our fiddles to soothe ourselves may temporarily seem a solution, how will we know how great the fires of Rome are? How will we ever be able to extinguish them if we preoccupy ourselves solely with this season’s colours, the perfect abdominal crunch technique or Taylor Swift’s love life?

Getting to the place past caring is a terrible place to be.

In toxic, poorly-managed or purposeless workplace cultures, you’ll often find a lot of people occupy this ground.

Fake news is common place. Communications are viewed as, at best, spin, and, most likely, pure drivel. No one expects to get the truth. Promises from the leadership are meaningless. Any new initiative is deemed a failure before it’s started, or obstructed at every turn. No one buys the logic of what ‘they’ say they’re going to do, and no one really believes they’ll be able to do it anyway.

When people no longer have the energy to get angry about what happens in their workplace is when the leadership has got real problems. Angry workers, however unpalatable they may be, however much you might not want to hear what they’ve got to say, are still telling you they care. They’re still prepared to stand up and tell you they care. And the chances are they care because they still believe things can be better.

People who turn up, keep their heads down, say nothing and, when nobody’s looking, roll their eyes to the heavens because they just can’t bring themselves to give a monkey’s, are wasting their time and the company’s time too. Going through the motions never moved anything, or anyone, forward.

We all need a time out now and again. It’s probably a wise move right now to absent yourself occasionally from the 24-hour news cycle (or, at least, to mute the conjecture and only worry about what we actually, or are lead to believe, do know); muse, instead, for a while, on Baker-Miller Pink, Chris Evans’ abs or Taylor’s drought.

Enlightened managers and employers also know sometimes someone might need to take their foot off the pedal a little. That ‘always on’ isn’t always desirable (most likely because it’s unsustainable, but also because ‘always on’ people can exhaust those around them and end up taking a lot of shortcuts too, which can be very damaging and, indeed, dangerous).

But when healthy retreat turns into hermitage, hedonistic escapism or deep-rooted disinterest, it’s like living a half-life.

One of the most positive aspects of 2016 has been how many people its events have woken up. People are engaged. And yes, people are angry too, frighteningly so at every turn (in every other Tweet). But people are awake, alert, vigilant. Vital. That’s good news.

In the workplace, if people aren’t awake, that’s really bad news – for them, for the business, for your customers too.

How to proceed?

Stop with the fake news. Get your most disengaged employees to open up to you. Listen to what they have to say. Be honest with what you think about that. Be honest, period (people really can handle the truth).

They may, as a result, decide to retreat for good, but it’s also quite possible, together, you could be revitalised; you could even discover a new Spring.