change

Everybody hates your project name

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One of the strange things about the corporate world is the love of a project name. We create these with the stated aim of confidentiality, rather than call something what it is – we give it a “project name” so that no-one will ever know what we’re working on. The corporate halls are filled with projects named after gem stones, countries, animals, plants and pretty much any other grouping that you get taught about in kindergarten.

Don’t get me wrong, there are clearly big commercial projects and programmes that require the sort of confidentiality that comes with a project name (and normally a Non Disclosure Agreement) too. But there are also a hell of lot where it simply isn’t necessary. I’m not naive, I recognise I’m not going to change that, too many people are circling back, to move the needle on project names and sometimes taking them offline to create a win win.

You get where I’m going…

But I do want to talk about those people related changes and why your project names are bad for you, bad for employees and bad for your business. HR loves a project name, because it makes us look special, important and allows us to hold power through secrecy. We create these because it makes US feel special, but ultimately disrupts the business more than necessary and makes us look like fools.

Fresh Start!

One Team!

Fit for the Future!

Reset!

Chrysalis!

Re-vision!

(The exclamation marks aren’t necessary but whilst I write this my inner voice is taking control)

The first reason not to do is this is the names are always divisive. The people coming up with them are seldom impacted by the change other than having to implement it. Whereas the people who have their lives turned upside down due to rubbish piece of branding have to go home and tell their families that they might not be able to pay the bills because of a project named after insects transforming.

The second reason is you create a “thing”. Organisation memory lasts longer than most leaders. It is much more likely that people will remember and talk about the impact of, “Fit For The Future” rather than the time they changed the management structure. The point of a brand is to make it memorable, but on people related change you want quite the opposite – you want people to move on as soon as possible.

And the final reason is it stops you thinking about the people. When you start to measure success in relation to a project, and stop measuring it in terms of the impact of people’s lives you fulfil all the stereotypes that people have of management and leadership. Imagine you were managing Project Cause No Distress. What decisions would you make then?

Sometimes changes need to take place in organisations, that goes without saying. Our job is to implement them with as little unintentional impact as possible and to help individuals, teams and the organisation to heal and move on as quickly as possible. There’s no project name ever created, that’s additive to that.

The big admin blob that drains us all

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I was struck the other day by a post that Tim Baker shared on Linkedin suggesting that one in three HR professionals in the UK were considering leaving the profession, with 41% suggesting unnecessary admin as one of the causes. Now, of course, the company behind the research has a solution and….surprise, surprise…that happens to be exactly what they do as a company. But despite my loathing of this kind of “research”, (so much so that I’ll share link above to Tim because he’s worth connecting with, but I won’t share any links to the company, because…it is very average), yes, despite all of this, it did get me thinking.

I wouldn’t mind betting if you asked 100 random employees what they thought of HR in their organisation, one of the things the majority would raise is the unnecessary paperwork, the bureaucracy, the processes that seem both endless and pointless. And I wouldn’t mind betting if you spoke to 100 random HR professionals and asked them what they liked least about their jobs, they’d say the unnecessary paperwork, the bureaucracy and the processes that nobody seems to follow and so are endless and pointless.

So what on earth is going on? Who is responsible and simply, why can’t this all stop? As someone who has raged against process most of my career, to the understandable frustration and eye rolling of my colleagues, and who has (sometimes successfully but mostly unsuccessfully) tried to reduce it, I’ve got a few theories:

  1. The power of one – Every form that’s created or process that is added is only looked at as a singular piece of work, not in the entirety of the experience. So every time something is added, it seems eminently reasonable in isolation. But lumped together with everything else, the whole thing becomes an unmanageable blob.
  2. The lack of measures – I don’t know of any organisations, although they might exist, where there is a firm rule on the amount of admin that any one person is expected to do and therefore a finite limit. Why does this matter? Because if you had a firm rule and you were at the limit, then to add something in, you’d need to take something out.
  3. The fear of lawyers – Well, it isn’t really the lawyers, they’re generally an amiable bunch, it is the over regulation and imposition of onerous burdens of proof on the employment relationship that means that the simplest way to defend against anything is to document it to within an inch of it’s life. Although, I’m told by those on the inside that law companies are the worst for following any kind of process – surely what’s good for the goose is good for the gander?
  4. The calibre of the profession – If you’ve only ever worked in process heavy, admin focused HR functions then how can you be expected to know that anything else is possible? And anyone who suggests it can must be mad, bad or ready for retirement! But where are the creative thinkers coming through the profession who want to shape a completely different future of work? Oh yes, they’re working from home and on Teams meetings all day…adding value.
  5. The belief in a silver bullet – The very average research was carried out by a company that sells tech solutions. As long as I’ve worked in the profession we’ve been told that tech is going to be the answer, most recently AI. Systemising or automating rubbish doesn’t stop it being rubbish, it just makes it expensive rubbish that likely disappoints.

HR teams say they want to be more strategic and less admin focused, yet they are the ones that create the admin in the first place. Businesses say they want their HR teams to be more strategic and less admin focused, but they rarely hold them to the account. Managers say they want to be able to get on with their jobs, but they don’t want to take the responsibility for making decisions. Sometimes it seems to me we all want the same things, but maybe it suits us all better the way that it is.

Sometimes things change

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One of the very few things that GPs and HRDs have in common, is that people tell us their personal woes. Actually, I suspect the other thing we might have in common is that people complain about the service they get from our profession, but that’s a whole other post for a whole other day. And whilst it isn’t physical ailments that people talk to HR professionals about, at least not in my experience, what they do share gives you an insight into what is going on and going wrong in the world of work.

In the 30 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve spoken to hundreds of people from outside of my organisation, normally the conversations start with a, “they can’t do that can they?” or a “what are my rights in x situation?”. And the honest answer is normally, “yes” and “very few”. Of course there are a number of cases where organisations, or more commonly individual managers, have behaved very badly. But in the vast majority of the cases the issue is simply that the organisation and the employee want to go in different directions.

You can, and I would, make an argument that organisations are bad are taking their workforces on a journey of change. So often, management spend lots of time thinking and planning change and then communicate it and expect people to come along in a matter of days. I’ve written about that previously and the disconnect between the psychological preparedness of leadership and that of their workforces. But the whole responsibility doesn’t lie with just the organisation it lies with individuals as well.

Sometimes we have to recognise that the organisation is going in a direction that we don’t want our own careers to go in, and we have to take the only action available to us – to leave. It doesn’t need to be an acrimonious split, it is a simple, grown up, thought through recognition that the things that we want are not in alignment with the things on offer from the organisation. Think about it in terms of your favourite restaurant or bar changing owner, or changing its offering to something you don’t enjoy – would you still go along and give them your money?

Of course, sometimes there are economic arguments in favour of staying and it goes without saying that there are different degrees of choice for different groups of workers. But quite often the one’s that I hear from who have the biggest issues are those with more choice. So what makes them stay? Personally, I think it comes down to a lack of ownership, an unwillingness to take responsibility for choices, and not being open to the recognition that sometimes things change in a way that doesn’t suit you.

But if you can do these things, if you can flip them on their head then acceptance and embracing a different direction is simply part of taking care of yourself and your health and wellbeing. Come to think of it, maybe that’s another thing we share with GPs.

It is all about the rituals

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I’m sure like me you have your rituals, whether that’s the daily coffee always bought from the same coffee shop, the time that you eat your lunch or the run that you take after work. The small and seemingly important fabric of our lives that we execute without much conscious thought or application. And as we go about our days we notice the pattern in others, the woman always stood on the same corner waiting for a lift as we drive to work, the car that always parks in the same spot in the carpark, the person who gets on the train in the same carriage every day, the person who sits in the same seat at the bar, come rain or shine.

Those of us who’ve been involved in the raising of children are acutely aware of the importance of ritual, the bed, the food, the temperature, the bedtime story and hot milk. Change any of the fundamental parts and we deal with the repercussions for days if not weeks thereafter. And anyone with a pet will tell you that they become accustomed to patterns and will know when to sit by the door for a walk or when there is likely to be a warm lap about for a snooze.

When we think about work and the workplace there is, of course, no difference. Our workplace rituals form part of the same fabric, equally important but also so deeply ingrained that they cease to play in our consciousness. The seat that you sit in, the coffee with the team before setting out for the day, the coffee break to catch up on the chat and gossip with our co-workers, the order in which we approach work and how we deal with the daily tasks that arise.

And in the same way we rankle when someone is parked in our space, the coffee shop is closed, the same way that children fail to sleep or wake to early, when we mess with these rituals then we create a sense of disquiet and unease. That’s why change at work is never a science and is always an art. Over the years I’ve learnt that anyone who thinks change is explained through a gang chart is probably going to be gone before the full ramifications are understood. It is why I hate the faddism for “disruption” promoted by the same Linkedin voices that will also happily share their daily routine for success, “I get up before I go to sleep, run two marathons powered only by pecan nuts and then meditate on hot stones. Smashing it.”

We’re hugely adaptable as a species, the pandemic has shown that in technicolour, but that doesn’t mean that the adaption doesn’t cause stress and discomfort. And during that period we are less productive, less focused, more risk adverse and generally less happy. To make change effective we need to understand this, support it and take it into account in our planning but execute it with compassion, care and consideration.