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The productivity trap

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I’ve recently participated as one of the contributors in the Stoddart Review – a well-respected study on workplace productivity. Around the table of my presentation were a range of the industry’s leading lights, ready to face my ramblings on the future of the Workplace. Below is the first of three points I made. The other two will follow in the coming days.  I welcome your input & feedback!

Productivity. First of all, I struggle somewhat with the word. The dictionary defines productivity as “the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input”.  Inspiring stuff, huh?

But I’m not convinced that’s the purpose and function of the workplace. Producing widgets. Profit. Things. I’m sure that lots of workplaces care about producing more stuff, cheaper, with a better people-per-square-foot utilisation ratio – or that click rates, shipping targets and customer orders go up because the workplace is awesome… But a lot of industries define productivity differently! For some, customer relationships are key. For others, it’s about the quality of their publishing, effectiveness of their marketing or the reputation of their handbags. Does a charity care about productivity in the same way as a bottling plant might do? Probably not.

For me, “productivity” can be translated into “whatever success represents for that organisation”, and it’s a little naïve to assume everyone wants a high  work rate.

Part of the issue, I believe, is down to the sort of things that the Workplace industry measures. A lot of effort is put into quantifying the effectiveness of the buildings and environments (including visitor numbers, air quality, coffee consumption, call response times, energy usage, etc, etc). This effectiveness is naturally geared towards that which can be tangibly measured. I think the well-work aphorism, first uttered by Elliot Eisner works perfectly here, when he said “not everything that can be measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured”. 

Just because you have data that will tell you exactly “the effectiveness of productive effort… as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input”, should that be the intended outcome? What about value and effectiveness of the brand and your reputation as an employer?  What about the quality of ideas and level of inspiration and engagement? What about trust, wellbeing and the feeling your team get when they walk in the door every morning? What about the experience of your visitors? What about the cultural alignment of the workplace to the organisation?

Posted in Organisational Development
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Why don’t organisations ‘self-audit’ their personalities?

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Of course, every one of us are different. We all have different pasts, different stories, different mind-sets.  Organisations are the same – they all have different origins, different ‘DNA’ and different narratives. They are as culturally unique as snowflakes.  Although arguably, organisations are far more complex because of the magnified complexity of the people who work in them. 

Humans are on a never-ending quest to understand themselves better. From horoscopes to counsellors and from 360 feedback to MBTI profiles – we’re relentlessly pursuing the need to know more about how we tick and why we do what we do.  So why don’t organisations spend as much time looking at themselves? Sure, many of them take a cursory look with a ‘business improvement’ programme, Kaizen groups or Lean processes. But these are more of a look at what we do – rather than how or why.

Nowadays, many employers and nearly every HR professional talks about the need for an effective workplace culture… But does your business ever think about ‘interviewing’ itself to understand whether the culture that currently exists is the one that serves you best?  Does the organisation truly understand the character, attitude, personality and behaviours of its own existence? And if it did, would it lie down on the couch and work out how it could behave differently? 

Perhaps a start is by asking the people in the business some questions – and listening to the responses. Such as:

  • What three words would you use to describe the business, right now?
  • What words would you *like* to use to describe the business? Are they different?
  • Do you know where the organisation is going, and what struggles it’s facing to get there?
  • Do you know how well you are doing? Do you know what part you play in the organisations’ success?
  • Would you recommend working for your manager?       If not, why not?
  • Does your workplace allow you to work collaboratively and productively?
  • Is the communication you receive what you really want to know? Are you listened to?
  • Are you working to your full potential?  If not, what gets in the way?
  • Do the people around here demonstrate the behaviours that we say we really value?
  • What’s the worst behaviours that people are allowed to get away with?
  • If you had a magic wand at work, what would you wish for?

These questions (and many others) will allow you to diagnose what’s working well and what requires further attention. It will allow you to quickly detect the behaviours, communication preferences and ‘personality’ of the business. That way, you’re better placed to correct the attitudinal shifts that are required at their source – rather than dealing with the knock-on issues of high turnover, low engagement, poor customer advocacy and performance management issues further down the line…

Much like humans, organisations need the tools and insights that allow them to ‘self-audit’ – before they end up dealing with the resultant fallout of dysfunctional behaviour patterns.

Posted in Culture, Organisational Development
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Why you should pick a new boss, not a new job

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Most of us have changed jobs; some of us have done so several times. And I’ll bet that most of the time, it happened in the same way… Whether an internal move or with a separate company, you’re usually sent a job description or a role profile, either directly or via a recruiter. We have a browse over the salary level, type of duties, list of responsibilities, location and benefits. We may often also research the company and dig around on Glassdoor, their website and maybe check up on a few people on LinkedIn.

At the interview stage, the recruiting manager will quiz you on your experience, aptitude and fit for the role. Their ‘shopping list’ of candidates will be whittled down until the ideal candidate remains, resulting in a job offer.

But isn’t there something missing in this picture?

Loads of recent data backs up the view that managers are almost exclusively cited as being the principal influence on engagement, retention, development, happiness and overall job satisfaction. They can make or break a career, so why is so little emphasis placed on this during the recruitment process? 

Could there be a good shout for reversing this trend? Should we be promoting that instead of the company interviewing the candidate – that the candidate interviews their prospective manager in equal measure?

I’d love to see a candidate grill a potential new supervisor on his/her ability to delegate, how many of their team have been promoted, and how often they dole out reward and recognition. Managers could be given a similar amount of time in an interview to explain why they are the right manager for the new recruit, explaining how they plan to develop and mentor their team, and how much time they regularly dedicate to 1-to-1s and feedback. Perhaps the manager’s CV should also be included with the job description?

Posted in General, Leadership, Organisational Development
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“A workhouse, not a workplace”

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Mike Ashley is one of Britain’s richest men, and the founder of Britain’s biggest retailers.

The BBC news has today reported that in a Guardian undercover investigation (and subsequent parliamentary review), Mike Ashley’s firm has been found to be running “a workhouse, not a workplace”

Staff are effectively paid less than the minimum wage, because they are required to undertake security checks (read: they’re vigorously searched) in their own time. Conversely, if people are just one minute late, Sports Direct will dock their pay.  They also operate a “six strikes and you’re out” rule, for a range of ‘offences’.  This includes a December 2015 occurrence of someone giving birth in the toilets, along with four other “miscarriage or pregnancy related complications”, which came about because their staff feared disciplinary action. There were 72 other ambulance call-outs, including 36 of which were “life-threatening”. Apparently, it’s fine for staff to stay behind after work in their own time to be searched, but any other absences (even life threatening ones) could be punishable with losing your job. And Mike Ashley’s reply? “I’m not Father Christmas”.

These practices, with the review of any decent HR or Talent professional that I know of, would most likely be dismissed as unfair and over-the-top. These draconian policies were most likely dreamed up as a response to some perceived threat, and I’d like to think that no forward-thinking professional would consider them.

The effects of this “culture of fear” are certainly shocking, but I believe this is only the symptom of something much more insidious and disturbing. The thing that shocks me the most is how the mind-set of some organisations still exists in the industrial revolution. From the 1750s right up until the 1970s & 1980s, the ‘factory-line’ mentality worked very well, scaling down huge operations into bite-size, manageable, simple tasks. It was great for menial tasks that only required a human being to show up for work, on time, or the production line would stop. 

But nowadays in the post-machine, digital age, the means of production has shifted from employer to employee. If you want people to act like people (in other words to think, collaborate, use their initiative and solve problems), they you need to treat them like a human being and not a slightly better-smelling machine. 

Trust them implicitly; even if one or two of them might steal from you. Take care of their wellbeing and treat them like individuals; even if there’s hundreds or even thousands of them. Communicate with them, ask them what they think and then listen to the replies; even if some don’t want to talk. Develop them and grow them; even if some of them end up leaving the business. And recognise them, thank them and praise them; even if they’re only doing their job. 

In summary, I think leaders have a moral, ethical and legal obligation to treat people like people. The definition and concept of leadership has shifted in recent years, and I hope it continues to shift.

Profit is not the be-all-and-end-all, to be obtained at all (human) costs. Profit is a by-product of treating your people well. And for those people that dispute the connection between people-centric businesses and bottom line profit? Well, Sports Direct has just had an estimated £600m wiped off the company’s value, with untold more damage in reputation and brand. Imagine if just a fraction of that had been invested in developing a people-centred organisation.

Posted in Culture, Leadership, Organisational Development
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Behaviour change on Holborn escalators

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Recently, London Underground have embarked on a seemingly disastrous social experiment.  The plan was to cram up to 30% more passengers onto their escalators, improving flow at peak times, by asking passengers to stand on both sides of the ‘up’ escalator.

This has resulted in most of the Kubler-Ross stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression – everything bar acceptance. Their reasoning, according to the behavioural science department of the London School of Economics, was that escalators of over 18.5m tend to have fewer people walking up on the left, as it’s too much effort. The result is a vacant left side and a crowded right.

But it seems that the number-crunchers have forgotten a few key facts.

One rule for everyone doesn’t work

Just because fewer people will want to walk up long escalators, it doesn’t mean that no-one will. There will arguably now be even more angry, suited businesspeople who are blocked by left-standers.

This creates mixed messages

Only four London stations are above this 18.5m height ‘threshold’; namely Angel, Holborn, Green Park and Tottenham Court Road. If we have to stand on both sides at one of these, why not all of the stations? How will we know which ones to walk at, and where to stand?

They’ve underestimated our London-ness.

And by this, I mean our engrained mind-set. Us Londoners are happy not having to talk to anyone while travelling, wrapped up in our ‘social norm’ of civility and autopilot commuting. The shock of having this comfort zone unpicked in in such a blatant way is disturbing to the status quo. This is London, not Paris. 

Instruction doesn’t work

It’s one thing to be told with a range of methods (by a person, a robot-lady, over the tannoy and with some yellow stickers) what to do. It’s another to be told why. If people don’t know why, they are very likely to return to their original behavioural patterns as soon as they can. 

Above all, there are lessons for the world of business. Large-scale behavioural change does not come about overnight, nor does it react well to being told what to do. People need a range of factors to come into play, in order for the underlying culture and mind-set to shift. This often includes (but is certainly not limited to) communication methods, leadership and peer role-modelling, reward & recognition and purpose.

For me, it illustrates an interesting point. No matter what the numbers may say or how “good for us” it may appear to be, there’s just one group of people that might derail the whole programme… The very people whose behaviour you’re looking to change.

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