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We create the culture (when) we hate

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Social media isn’t what it once could have been. Perhaps it was always destined to be this way – factious, opinionated, angry and blaming. Perhaps it is just places a magnifying glass on the society that we are creating, that’s playing out in front of our very eyes. Perhaps it is a bellwether of something more deep rooted that’s going on around us every minute of every day.

James Marriot wrote a brilliant piece in The Times a few weeks about the importance, in some respects, of social conformity in ensuring thoughtfulness and meaningful discourse. The idea that simply through the presence of others, the expression of ideas is likely to be more thoughtful and we more considered in our views. And we’ve all heard the sage advice to write nothing that we wouldn’t say to someone in person.

But the social norming of social channels is entirely different to sitting in an office, a pub or in a debating chamber. Many years ago I wrote that the problem with the democratisation of the media was that it places a voice in the hands of the “dull, feckless and boring”. I’m not sure that is entirely fair, but it certainly creates a false sense of importance through audience and – at the extreme – a blue tick on Twitter suddenly gives a legitimacy that historically would only have been given by an organisation willing to pay for a view or opinion, or through a public mandate.

There is a clear argument to be made that this is a good thing. Remove the shackles of economic or political barriers to entry and open up the airwaves to anyone, let the most popular thrive. In the same way that I’ve spoken about the dangers of choice, popularism brings with it more downsides than it does up and fuels the increased polarisation that we see in so many situations. “It’s complicated” or “I can see both sides” wins fewer short term support than an over simplified, energised opinion.

Which is why one of the biggest game in town now is blame. Whatever the situation, the moment or issue, somebody has to be singled out and responsible for anything that we disagree with – and as publicly as possible. At the same time fuelling the division and the polarisation that is already spreading like a poison in our social and political discourse and pretty much every aspect of society.

Take the recent period of extreme hot weather (yes that’s a fact it was extreme) and immediately the social verse was full of opinions about how it “wasn’t really that hot” and that health experts were some how trying to dupe us, to spoil our fun. Alongside the extreme and ill formed opinions, “I went to Ibiza once and it was way hotter than this”, we get the misinformation both idle and intentional that then follows. (See the false weather map as an example). The powers that be couldn’t be considering the minimum mortality temperature or likely excess deaths, there was bound to be an ulterior motives. And we, through the power of our social presence, we’re going to point that out.

But of course, this isn’t about weather or temperature it is about how we, each and every one of us, contribute to the culture and the society that we live in. When we get likes or retweets by shouting our view point louder, when we feed the bravado of others by doing it back to them. When we are hurtful or spiteful or divisive. We spread hurt, spite and division much further than our original premise. Our actions facilitate the actions of others whether they agree with our view points or not – we are condoning a way of behaving. And that culture, those behaviours, the belief that there is someone always at fault spreads pervasively and causes misery throughout our communities and even into our workplaces.

Dignity, respect, curiosity and inclusion is built on acting dignified being respectful, remaining curious and seeking to include. It doesn’t happen because we wish it to be so, but only through the integrity of our actions.

Actions and consequences

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Are we always responsible for the consequences of our actions? It seems that’s the accepted wisdom, but I’m really not so sure. On one hand, it makes for a remarkably neat way of judging others, but it also feels like a convenient “get out of jail card” for absolving others of acting in an appropriate way.

Our social and political landscape is full of judgments on decisions that were made and the unintended consequences;

He should have known…

She should have seen that coming…

And similarly, our organisational rhetoric often places so much onus on individual actions and the subsequent consequences. Particularly the more senior that an individual gets.

I have no doubt that our actions define us, how we choose to be, how we present and behave, how we interact with others. Unless you believe in a higher force, we are all responsible for our actions. But in accepting this, do we throw ourselves open to however the universe responds as entirely fair?

If you choose to go out at night, are you responsible for being mugged?

Or wearing the wrong clothes, accepting of being harassed?

I don’t think anyone would suggest that the individual has to accept these consequences. Yet in the political, social and commercial aspects of life we hold a different burden of proof.

Being able to differentiate responsibility for the choices which we control and the consequences we do not allows us to analyse and interrogate responsibility in a much more balanced way, but it also helps us place responsibility where it really lies.

None of us want to be held to account for events truly out of our control. But whether we set the same bar for others…well that’s a different question.

 

 

 

To choose is to be free

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“But I don’t have a choice”

If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard this through my career, I’d be able to buy you all a round of drinks. It is a curious phrase and worth another look,

I don’t have a choice.

As I sit here writing this I”m struggling to think of situations where this is entirely true – hitting the ground when you’ve fallen off a building, growing old, chewing on a fruit pastille. The examples are few and far between.

In most cases people are either saying, “I can’t see the choices that I have” or, “I don’t like the repercussions of the choice that I have”. The implications of either stance is one of impotence. Simply put, when we refuse to see or accept the choices that we have, we deny the very essence of being. And in doing so, we diminish ourselves.

The nub of this human dilemma is often played out in a scenario where a house is on fire and you have the ability to save one of two much loved people. Who would you choose? Who would you save? Of course any choice in these circumstances is unpalatable, but as grotesque as it is, it is undeniably there.

Closer to home we can see it manifest in our organisations, where colleagues, employees and bosses will talk in tricky situations about, “not having a choice”. This is rarely, if ever, true. Or colleagues and friends who become stuck, lost in a self induced mental fug that leaves them static and inert.

In most circumstances where I see people unhappy, demotivated, depressed or disengaged, the root cause is their inability, or unwillingness to engage with the choices in front of them. This is overwhelmingly more common than people who are feeling the same way because of a decision or choice they have made.

As one of my favourite philosophers put it, “freedom is what you do with what’s been done you”. Given it is a Monday morning as we slide towards autumn, I’ll frame it a little more positively; happiness isn’t about the choices that you make in life, but the ability to see those choices exist.

Lead for the many (and not the few)

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It is July 14th, 2015 and, despite the generally good weather, there has been a sudden and heavy downpour. I remember it well because I was on foot making my way to speak at a CIPD event at City Hall. Unfortunately I’d understood County Hall, which is in a completely different part of town and ended up arriving late, drenched and grumpy.

The result of this was a rather dark and pessimistic take on the impact of flexibility on the workplace. Speaking alongside Dave Coplin, who was ebullient with the opportunities, I saw a much more dangerous and divisive trend. At the end of the sessions, I left the venue and skulked off to, once again, be late for a drink with a friend.

Four years later, I am more convinced than ever that the way in which we approach flexibility in the workplace is an exemplar of the way in which we are building a two tier workforce, built by the haves for the haves, designed for the few and not the many (to bastardise the current phrase of a certain political party).

In 2014, when Virgin announced that they were allowing employees to take as much holiday as they wanted, an HR policy decision became front page news. They were following the approach taken by Netflix, amongst others. More recently we’ve seen organisations, include the Wellcome Trust, talk about the introduction of a four day week. When the Virgin story was unpicked, it became clear that it wasn’t actually applicable to all staff, as they said themselves, “[it] permits all salaried staff to take off whenever they want for as long as they want”.

What do Virgin, Netflix and Wellcome Trust all have in common? Simply, and I mean this with the deepest respect, if they didn’t exist no-one would notice. But perhaps more importantly, they have a certain workforce segmentation that more easily allows for the introduction of such policies. They don’t represent the workforce experience of the many.

We don’t have to go far to understand that the use of workforce “flexibility” can be a double edged sword – enforced part time hours, rotating shift patterns, annualised hours and of course, our dear friend, zero hours contracts. The point I was making back in 2015 was that whilst flexibility might be the emancipation of the few, it was potentially the shackles of the many. For every one tech wizard working on their laptop in the Bahamas, there are ten delivery drivers working on a “self employed” basis.

Which is why as a profession we have to be super vigilant of not drinking the Kool Aid. If you believe in good work, you believe in it for all. If you want to drive flexibility, then it starts with individual choice. Across western economies we’ve seen an increased polarisation in our economics, in our politics and in our workplaces. We’ve created inequality and now we are looking to reinforce it.

None of these policies are wrong per se, but the application of them, the thinking behind them and the championing of them is shaped by an unhealthy preference to consider only “knowledge workers” (yes I hate the term too) to be worthy of such freedom. Only when we start to design workplaces that treat workers of all types with equality of treatment will we create organisations which we can proud of. Let’s start with the many and not the few.

NB: The Wellcome Trust actually abandoned their plans after a three month trial describing it as too “operationally complex”. Interestingly, they were brave enough to try and do this for the entire workforce, regardless of role.