truth

Who is your compass?

Posted on by neiljmorrison

The UK news was awash last week with contestants for media villain of the week – almost as if there was a competition to outdo one another. And without commenting on any of the specific stories or individuals, the question that came to mind when reading each of the stories was, “who let you get there?”

My genuine belief is that most people aren’t inherently bad, whether in the world of work, politics or sport. In the same way that I believe that most people come to work to do a good job, I don’t think that is any different for those in leadership positions in their respective fields. It is convenient for the media to portray it differently and it often suits the public zeitgeist to have someone to blame. But it strikes me that often the issue is more that people have lost their way, rather than intentionally set out on a particular course.

So why does this happen? Well it might not be the only factor, but there is no doubt that the failure to surround ourselves with people who are willing to speak up when they think we are heading off course and our willingness to listen to them plays a significant contribution. There is a weird dynamic that arises as a result of organisational power, where those around think that their success and progress is based on their ability to tell those in power what they think they want to hear. We all remember the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes from our childhood and probably laughed at the vanity, the pride and the ultimate stupidity. In our adult lives, do we consider which character we best represent?

Everybody needs at least one compass, the person that holds them true to who they are and what they are trying to achieve. We need someone who has little to lose, or is not afraid of losing what they have and is willing to hold up the mirror, to speak the unspoken truth and to bring us gently back onto course. Not in order to point out our failures, but to make us more successful. And we need to open our arms and our minds to those voices and trust that they want the best for us, no matter how hard the truth.

So my question is, who is your compass?

We need to embrace the truths that hurt

Posted on by Blog

I’ll start off by explaining why I do the job I do. Simply, I want people to have a better experience of work, to feel safe at work, to be fairly rewarded in exchange for their efforts. You can call it making work better, making work human or any other nomenclature that is in the current vogue.

One of the downsides of my role is that no matter how hard I work, no matter what improvements and changes we make, there will always be challenges and questions about where we could have done more. That’s just the nature of the work we do in the society that we currently live in. The challenges will be different, but we have to accept that no matter what we do, it will never be enough.

One of the downsides of this is that we can homogenise criticism of our practice as always being unfair. “That’s employees for you, never happy” or, “If managers just did their jobs, we wouldn’t have to deal with any of this”. And the danger of this is we fail to see the truths that we need to embrace.

Just because we will always be the focus of challenge doesn’t mean that some of it isn’t justified. Just because we are doing our best and trying our hardest, doesn’t mean we don’t get things wrong. Just because we want to do good, doesn’t mean we sometimes don’t wrong.

Knowing how to separate out the noise from the real issues is critically important and incredibly hard. Listening to the truths that hurt is at the heart of exceptional practice. If we want to be better, if we strive to be the best, if we believe in creating something that can be called a legacy, then we need to recognise that sometimes we get things wrong.

Ours is a profession that has the ability to transform lives and bring out the best in people, it has the ability to make society a little bit better and to impact on generations to come. But with that power comes the potential to do the absolute opposite – and that is the truth that we should always hold close to our heart when we evaluate our impact and work.

Our technology is making us dumb

Posted on by Blog

Stand on any street corner and watch people going about their business and you’ll see a curious sight, so many people looking down. Locked in to their personal experience with technology. There was a time when it used to frustrate and annoy me as I made my way to work; the people stopping, walking aimlessly, unaware of their surroundings.

But now, more than ever, it not only annoys, it fundamentally scares me.

Technology was supposed to be the great emancipator, the leveller, it was supposed to open the doors to new horizons and new opportunities. But the reality is not one of bright new dawns, but closing doors. We are narrowing our experiences and polarising our attitudes at a time when we need to be more thoughtful, more explorative, more inclusive than ever.

Our social networks through their definition are based on people “like us”, we share news and comment that we agree with, with people that agree with us. Anyone who wants anything to the contrary can be muted, unfollowed, exiled in from our social existence. The opinions reinforcing our views and the assurance that “we” are “right”.

We “choose” our media, the things that we watch, listen to, read from an increasingly reduced selection of “things we might like”. Losing the ability to have the serendipitous discovery, the accidental opportunity. Instead allowing algorithms to serve up our future, based on what we once consumed, reducing our experience to predictable similarity.

And we close ourselves off from the world, plugging our ears with preselected sound, looking down to view limited content, basing our existence on the screen, not the world. We eschew the chance conversation, the momentary eye contact and smile, the haphazard interaction. We close off the sounds of life, anaesthetising ourselves from reality.

In a world that feels increasingly polarised, where the signs of social isolation and abandonment are becoming central drivers of our political and economic existence. In a world where we talk about the need to be more inclusive, more open, more tolerant and understanding. We are instead shutting ourselves away in closed systems of ignorance.

It would be asking too much to change, to reverse and renew. But perhaps if we were all a little more aware of our choice to have no choice, of our willingness to give away freedom, then we could recognise the limitations of our existence and challenge ourselves to step outside more. To break out of our circles of similarity, to experience difference and to venture more in to the unknown.

Lies, damned lies and business

Posted on by Blog

Business is full of lies. FACT.

Sometimes the lies are big, sometimes the lies are small. Sometimes the lies are inconsequential and sometimes they rock the foundations of the civilised world. But like the urban myth that you’re never more than 8 foot from a rat, in business you’re never more than one cubicle away from a lie.

And that is just the way that it is.

I’m not going to try to argue that the Nick Leeson, the Olympus Corporation, Lehman Brothers or Jérôme Kerviel lies are in any way appropriate or defendable.

But the only difference between these and the others is the size and the consequences, those that make a moral judgment would be better off looking closer to home.

Is it a coincidence that so many public limited companies come in within their stated profit targets every year? Good management or good financial management? Over perform and you run the risk of raising expectations for future years, underperform and you run the risk of your share price being devalued and your tenure being reduced.

If you release provision in a bad year to bolster the bottom line, or take bad news in a good year to managed down profits, are these really lies? Well yes, in the truest sense of the word they are. But they are universally accepted and ignored.

And in the same way how many companies that state “people are their greatest asset” would stand up at the AGM and announce,

“Profits? Shareholder return? Pah…..we’ve got great people….we rock!”

Business is full of lies.

Anyone who has ever answered the question, “Which dress do you prefer?” with a, “they both look great, but I prefer that one because it matches your eyes, not because there is anything wrong with the other one which is perfectly lovely and looks great on you in every single way…..” (you can tell I’ve practised that).  Can easily transfer this to, “you performed really well and we really enjoyed meeting you, unfortunately we need to make a decision and there were candidates who better matched the criteria for the role”.

Likewise the “bijou property with unusual features and scope for improvement” can easily become, “we are committed to the development of all our employees and helping them fulfil their career potential”.

The language of business is a weasel mix of truth and lies, correct. But it isn’t any different from any other part of society. Politicians, Teachers, Doctors, Sportspeople, Charities, Husbands, Wives, Children.  Let he is who without sin etc. etc.

It is very easy for the press, for the public, for the politicians to highlight individual failings and to find a helpful scapegoat.  Business shouldn’t be held to any higher moral standard than we would hold anyone else. We shouldn’t confuse profit-making with profiteering, we shouldn’t engage in duality or assertions of duplicity. We should be open and honest about our imperfections and the societal need for conformity and complicity.

Lies are an everyday part of our lives and in covering over this fact we are of course reasserting its veracity; an inconvenient, but inescapable truth. Just like any other context, business needs lies to survive, it needs lies to maintain balance and it needs lies to underpin its existence. But like in our social lives, like in sport, like in the church, sometimes a lie becomes so big, so grave that it causes damage, hurt and concern. The fact that in business they are reported more sensationally, doesn’t mean that they are more prevalent or indeed any worse.

Business is full of lies. Guilty as charged. But lets face it, it isn’t in the dock all alone.