covid

What’s going on?

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It’s fair to say that the last year and a half have been pretty rubbish for everyone. Whatever your circumstances, you’ll have had some aspect of your life changed and, as is the nature of time, you’ll never be able to get it back. But of course the “rubbishness” of the last year has also been different for different people, some of us will have been seriously ill, some of us will have lost loved ones, some of us will have experienced extreme financial pressures and other will have lost their homes and/or their jobs.

From an intellectual, rational perspective we can make comparative assessments of the impact. It is probably something we can all agree on that losing your life partner is more impactful than having to work from home for a year. From an emotional and psychological perspective though, it is harder to start to make relative assessments of the impact on one person compared to another.

When we go through a collective moment like this, the danger is that we apply that rational assessment to belittle the emotional impact, it manifests itself when we say, “at least you’re healthy and well” or, “well you still have a lot to be grateful for”. By applying our logical assessment of others emotional impact we are effectively negating their reality, we are choosing not to listen to how that person is feeling and instead telling them how they should feel.

There’s a brilliant explanation of this in the wonderful book, “It’s ok that you’re not ok” by Megan Devine which was recommended to me when I was going through my own grief a few years ago. Devine wonderfully articulates the impact of people rationalising away other people’s feelings during bereavement by drawing from their own experience, “you’re still young” and, “you’ll move on eventually”. Our awkwardness or unwillingness to exist in the moment of someone else’s emotions and our desire to fix it with rationality.

Whilst bereavement and the pandemic are at the more extreme end of human experiences, the same thing happens each and every day as we go about our work,

“Everyone’s busy, that’s just how it is”

“Well at least you’ve got a job”

“There’s millions of people without a job”

I’m not, of course, saying that sometimes some relativity and structure can’t help people when they’re distressed, but it starts by taking time to understand what’s going on for them, what’s happening in their life and what support, or help (if any) they need, rather than trying to fix or rationalise their situation for them without their permission.

When there is so much pain, anxiety and fear going on, we can all become a little tired and even desensitised to the world around us – that’s part of our own self protection. But to get out the other side of this, in our homes, workplaces and communities, we’re going to have to start by acknowledging how those that are around us really feel. That’s the work that needs to be done.

If you’ve got three minutes to spare, I’d recommend you take time to watch this.

The folly of individual choice

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It is very rare that I recommend a book, I did enough of that when I worked at Penguin Random House so I figure I’m due a break. And, to be honest, I’m baffled why my ex-colleagues didn’t acquire “The Lonely Century” by Noreena Hertz, because, quite frankly, it is brilliant. If ever there was a book for our current times, then this feels like it. But I’ll allow you to explore that for yourselves and instead move on to a few reflections that come from it.

If I think back to my early studies and career, I recognise now the relentless push towards individual focus in the workplace. Often driven by research from the US, we were encouraged to look at performance related pay, individual rather than collective bargaining and concepts such as engagement and discretionary effort. After decades of frustration caused by industrial disputes and fuddled business thinking, a new doctrine was emerging – singular choice.

I think most of us would conclude now that the push on performance related pay based on granular performance reviews is folly which failed to deliver on its one stated aim and of course we’ve seen the impact the individual bargaining has had on the gender pay gap, not to mention the inherent discrimination in many organisations against black, asian and other ethnic employees. And yet, the direction of travel continues through other elements such as pension choices, extreme flexible benefits and individual learning accounts.

And now, perhaps the biggest threat to collective organisational culture and support. The “choice” about where you work.

If anything, our workplaces and organisations should be a driver of societal cohesion. They should be places that bring people together to deliver collective outcomes and goals, they should be places in which we identify and feel we belong. They should be places that celebrate and welcome difference, through unity. They should be places that literally bring people together.

And in many cases they haven’t been anything like this.

The answer, however, cannot be to further fragment our organisations to allow people to choose when and if they come together with their colleagues. It cannot be to allow the behaviour of the majority to leave others feeling left out or to create organisations where only one “type” feels that they can truly fit in, or to create two or three tier organisations where only certain rules apply to certain groups.

The answer instead is to recreate our organisations around our communities, to be truly inclusive, cohesive and welcoming. Recognising that sometimes we all have to make individual sacrifices in the pursuit of a higher collective goal. Where we sign up (explicitly or implicitly) to support one another first and to think of ourselves thereafter, where the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts. The answer has to be to try harder, not to give up.

If I think back to March this year, there was genuine hope that we would emerge from the pandemic having rediscovered concepts around community, collective identity, selflessness and the recognition of previously unsung heroes. As we go into the autumn and winter (and another lockdown) I worry this was more of a temporary blip, I sincerely hope I’m wrong.