HR

We are as we act, even at Christmas

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Many, many years ago as a young student activist campaigning against the apartheid regime in South Africa I learnt a lesson about consumer politics that has stayed with me to this day. At the time we were handing out leaflets outside of a high street brand that was known to sell jewellery made from South African gold, at time when there was a voluntary boycott in place. The store manager came out and politely but firmly asked whether we knew the provenance of the clothes we were wearing, whether the conditions in the factories were ethical and whether there was any abuse of workers in the supply chain.

1-0 to the store manager.

The fact that almost thirty years later I’m still rehearsing the arguments I should have used is in some way testimony to the massive contradictions and tensions that exist in consumer politics. It is almost impossible to be entirely clean. There is always a trade off. And yet that shouldn’t be an excuse for inaction or used as some moral get out of jail free card.

Every action, every purchase is in some ways a political act. The topic comes to mind as I think about the preparations for the Christmas period. I’ve written before about the treatment of shop workers by angry Christmas shoppers. Young people who are paid minimum wage, not provided with proper training or uniform and then pushed out in front of the masses who are busy, anxious and pressurised. How we choose to act towards them is a reflection on ourselves and not them.

But it also relates to our arguments about the demise of the High Street as we shop on our phones. How we rage against work insecurity and zero hours contract as we wait for the same day delivery. How we worry about single use plastics as we order unnecessary and unneeded presents for people we don’t really like.

Of course no-one can be entirely righteous and one persons actions can’t change the whole, but we can choose to act in line with our own moral compasses, wherever they may point, and challenge ourselves when there are contradictions between our beliefs and our choices. Simply, we are defined not by our words, but by our actions. And at this time of the year too often we act in a way which falls short of our own moral standards.

All in the name of Christmas.

And on that thought I’m going to check out for a couple of weeks and come back at the beginning of the new year and the new decade when I’m sure there will be countless articles on new years resolutions, “look aheads” and “look backs” to rip into. In the meantime, however you choose to celebrate (or not) this Christmas time, I wish you peace, love, kindness and safety.

Peace out.

Neil

 

Time and space is the greatest gift

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Anyone who has ever been through the process of moving house understands the sensation of discovering a vast array of stuff that has been squirreled away in various cupboards, drawers and hideaways over the years. We also all probably recognise the thought process that led to us holding on to the item in the first place. It goes something like this,

I’ll get rid of that. 

Wait, hang on…maybe it will be useful.

I’ve got space.

I’ll just tuck it in here.

Fantastic, I’ll always have that, you know, just in case…

And of course, the extra foot for the microwave oven, the instructions for the long broken CD player, the box from the expensive chocolates that we were bought by a random relative several years ago, all sit idle in the cupboard in which they were placed until we are absolutely compelled to face into their inutility and avoid the transportation costs.

Unfortunately, we very rarely have the same opportunity within our organisations to spring clean and start afresh. The one exception that I can think of is in a merger or acquisition, where there are a new set of eyes looking in the metaphorical cupboards. So instead of cleaning out we continue to either force more “stuff” into the available space or instead increase capacity.

But we aren’t dealing with cupboards and stuff, we are dealing with people and processes and the effect of this is to place our colleagues and teams under increasing pressure to manage the conflicting requirements in a bewildered and beffudled state. How many times have you heard, “I just don’t know why we do this anymore?” or, “I’m not actually sure what happens with that”?

And our organisational lives are even worse, because when we “move house”, instead of taking our rubbish with us, we leave it behind for someone else to come and add to. Generation and generation of leaders come, take a look and implement. Because we all know that if something isn’t happening, the answer is to change the process…right?

Every organisation exists to fulfill a clear purpose, management is about helping to achieve that purpose, it is never and should never be an activity in itself. We exist to help and facilitate our teams and people, to make their lives easy, to allocate resource and to remove barriers.

Sometimes the greatest gift we can give is to get the hell out of the way, to declutter and throw out those unnecessary activities and to create a bit of space to breathe, think and act. That, my friends, is true leadership.

Holding yourself back

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I regularly meet people with a clear narrative on their unhappiness in their organisation. It isn’t that I attract it, at least I don’t think so, I just consider it a facet of the job; when you spend your life working with people you can expect to hear the good, the bad and the indifferent.

Whilst the situation, the participants and the timing of the narratives are different, the organisations, the villain, the circumstance all change, there is one common factor that links them all together. The victim is the narrator.

Life has a habit of throwing us curve balls, things don’t always proceed in the way that we would like, or indeed envisage. Sometimes circumstances run amok with the best laid plans that we have made. Our ability to move on from this determines both our success and our happiness.

I’m no life coach, so I’ll stick to the events that take place at work and offer you three options if you’re unhappy with something that has happened in the past that still holds you back;

  • leave and go somewhere else,
  • find a way to accept it,
  • remain unhappy at your own cost.

It really is that simple.

Ultimately, you are singularly responsible for your happiness and whilst you can’t control the things that happen, the promotion missed, the pay rise promised or the reporting change, you can control your response to it and your actions thereafter. Life is full of ups and downs, dwelling on the low points has no material impact on anyone else, it just holds you back.

Which, by all accounts, is a pretty dumb thing to do.

 

 

 

As we age we must change

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Most of us will spend most of our lives in work. We will enter in our late teens or early twenties and leave when we are in our sixties or seventies (unless we are very lucky). For the sake of argument, lets call it 45 years, the probable majority of our lives.

During that time we will experience so many different things in our lives; love, bereavement, birth, separation, happiness and sadness. Who we are and how we see life will change. In each era of our lives we become someone slightly different, moulded by our experiences.

Yet at work so often I see people who remain broadly the same, wired into the system and unable to change their self image or behaviours, whilst the lens in which the world views them moves on with age. The cheeky chappy at 21 becomes the lecherous man at 52, the rebellious upstart becomes the unhelpful detractor, the interesting maverick into the permanently frustrated and angry stuck colleague.

Further proof comes from the way in which we describe ourselves, talking first about the job title and then the organisation and rarely if ever about the informal role and behaviours that we contribute. We talk about what we are not who we are and we spend little time thinking about who we should and could be.

If our organisations are social systems, then our role in those systems needs to change as we do, we need to bring different things and contribute in a different way for the ongoing success of the system. Where we were challenging, we leave that to others and learn to focus on support. Where we were rebellious, we can help others understand what we learnt.

We can all take a moment to think about the person that we were when we started work and who we have become. Celebrate the change and embrace our new roles in the new stage of our lives, seeking not to hang on to the vestiges of the past, but grabbing boldly with both hands the opportunity that awaits.