This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
Work
Worker health and safety and you
It’s a shocking fact that according to Canada’s health and safety website, “… every year work-related injuries and diseases cause nearly 1,000 deaths” in Canadian companies and organizations. That is nearly 3 work related deaths per day! That’s in a country with a relatively small population and well-publicised and enforced worker rights.
So, even though the two recent worker disasters in Bangladesh:
- a fire killed at least 112 garment workers at Bangladesh’s Tazreen factory who were locked in
- the building collapse at Rona Plaza that has reportedly killed nearly 400
The question remains what is the real cost of fast fashion and our seemingly insatiable demand for stuff? How many Bangladeshis are dying as a direct result of health and safety issues that could and should be changed? We don’t know. What we do know is that these deaths are avoidable.
Time to think about the impact of the story of stuff on workers…
What does health and safety and workers rights look like in your organization? Your supply chain? What role can we, as leaders and professional communicators, do to change this very human disaster?
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Our preoccupation with innovation. Is it just “lipstick on a pig”?
I was walking through the McGill University campus the other day and noticed a poster that described the invention of the Kellogg cornflake. It reminded me again of how chance has led to some of the most innovative creations of the past century: vulcanized rubber [think tires], Post-it notes, Teflon, mauve [yes, and a must read on this], the x-ray, superglue, stainless steel, and microwave ovens [for more]. But, there’s more than happenstance and chance or even serendipity, to these breakthrough events. There was the ‘accident’ and then there was insight.
Virtually every organization I know is trying to find ways to encourage and capitalize on innovation. Big and small, customer or operationally-focused innovation is the new ‘silver bullet’; a “key growth lever”.
What are they doing organizationally to increase the potential for ‘chance’ and insight?
Well, they’re benchmarking. They’re designing new workspaces to support innovation – atriums and agoras, open offices, whiteboard walls and basketball hoops. Mimicking the Google and Apple campuses in the hope that they will inspire new ways of thinking. They’re giving employees access to more and more collaborative tools and creating opportunities through internal innovation challenges.
But most of these same organizations – whether they are white collar knowledge workers or blue collar labourers – are designed to produce widgets. It’s the nature of the work and the day-to-day deliverables. The design of the overall business operation is more like a production line in a sausage factory than a research and development team in a laboratory.
Are we just “putting lipstick on a pig”? Or are these changes – especially in older traditional businesses – really delivering the promise?
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Google Glass at work!?
There’s a lot of interest, OK hype, around Google Glass. Let’s face it, the futuristic glasses are pretty cool looking just as a fashion accessory, but add in all the power of a smart phone and well it’s a pretty compelling offer.
Here are some of the features in the current prototypes:
- Responds to voice commands
- Answers questions [since it syncs through the net it means you can search the net - it's a Google product after all]
- Translates
- Has GPS
- Takes and shares photographs and live video
- Sends and receives text messages and emails
- Provides digital voice assistance that is customized to your personal habits [e.g. weather, traffic]
All this in a range of fashion colours!
At least one of my luckier, dare I say it geekier, friends [Mitch Joel] has already had a chance to try the Glass. His take: ”I think this will blow people away.” I’m pretty sure we can expect that by the end of 2013 we’ll start seeing the Glass on others if we’re not lucky enough to have one ourselves.
So, here’s my question: What impact will Google Glass have on the workplace? You know it will, so it’s definitely not too soon to start thinking about the potential and planning for the future!
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Telecommuting. The promise and the reality.
“We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”
What? With that short message to all employees last week Yahoo opened the door to some pretty strong feedback from the blogosphere. Immediate reaction from outside has been pretty negative. And, one can imagine even stronger negative reaction from affected employees.
I think we can safely assume Yahoo has strong business reasons – beyond what was stated in the employee memo – for making what is a very bold announcement. From the business side of things, we know we’re never going back to 40 hour work weeks so one might wonder how Yahoo is going to pull this off. And in the coming days and weeks the implications of the decision on the business will be clearer.
In the meanwhile, let’s take this opportunity to think about telecommuting – the promise and the reality of telecommuting from an employee point of view.
Social technologies have made it easier and easier to work where, when and how we want. And that can be a very good thing.
But, is the choice of where, when and how to work really our choice? When you’re accessible 24/7/52, are you expected to be available 24/7/52? I certainly know of organizations where that is the expectation no matter what any handbooks say.
Are your human relationships – work, family and friends – enriched or diminished by the technology?
Is it easier or harder to get/be part of teams working to create meaningful outcomes for yourself, your organization, your community?
The Yahoo! policy, opens up the opportunity to think about the kind of places, choices and ways of working employees really want.
It’s just not as black and white as the initial reaction would have it. What do you think?
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“Make it work people!”
OK so now you know. I love Project Runway. And, I especially love Tim Gunn and his iconic line: “Make it work people!”
Why?
Well because in business it’s something we don’t do enough of. Instead, the reflex is to bail. Go back to planning. To second guess the original decision. To rethink it. To run another brainstorming session. To have another meeting.
When Tim says it, it’s because the designers have an adequate idea. They’ve made a decision to go with it. They’ve got what they need to do it. They just need to get on with it.
“Make it work people!”
I think we’d accomplish more. Learn more. And, we’d probably have more fun!
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Burst your bubble
It’s time to burst your bubble. Getting out of your office or cubicle is a good thing. Getting out of your organizational silo is a good thing. Getting out of your profession is a good thing. Breaking out of your bubble is a good thing. Different perspectives bring rich insight and potentially innovative new ideas.
I was struck by this again when I heard an episode of “White coat. Black arts” on CBC where Captain Scully – you know the one whose emergency “landing” in the Hudson saved all passengers and crew! – was talking about work he’s doing to bring the discipline of the airline industry to the medical profession. It’s a fascinating conversation. And a great example of breaking out of our bubbles and learning from each other is a really good thing. Check it out here.
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Building practical institutional wisdom
The psychologist Barry Schwartz, says in his fascinating TED Talk from 2009, that any job that involves working with people is moral work. It’s hard to imagine any institutional work that isn’t moral work.
According to Schwartz moral work depends upon practical wisdom. Building the reflex to know and do what is right is practical wisdom. But, he also says this skill is destroyed by the over reliance on rules and incentives. Since so many of our organizations are so rules and incentives oriented this can’t be a good thing.
How does your organization encourage moral skill and moral will? How well are you doing in building practical institutional wisdom?
For some inspiration, and some practical approaches to building moral capacity, check out Schwartz’s talk:
With thanks to the Charter for Compassion and Marilyn Turkovich for bringing this TED Talk to my attention.
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Communication as the fall guy
Communication is almost always the institutional fall guy when things don’t go well.
Over the holidays I found myself helping an elderly friend manoeuvre through our medical system. It’s been quite a journey and seems to be ending well for my friend. She’s home and slowly getting better.
And it seemed like the biggest challenge over the past couple of weeks has been communication. But has it?
In Quebec, we have clinics – les centres local de services communautaires or CLSCs – where as a citizen of Quebec you can get free access to doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists, physio and occupational therapists, etc. A fabulous idea. They were initially designed to take pressure off of the emergency rooms in our hospitals. Today they are also replacing general practices – in Quebec we don’t have enough family doctors, so if you need one this is where you go. And, they’ve become the frontline coordination hub for services that enable patients to remain in their homes rather than in institutions. That’s all a very good thing. Unfortunately it doesn’t work nearly as well as it might. Ask anyone in the system and they’ll tell you the problem is communication.
Within the CLSC we went to things actually worked well. We spoke to an intake nurse right away. We were assigned a long-term nurse within 24 hours. The first full evaluation of my friend at her home happened very quickly. My friend can can have access to a social worker and other resources that will advise her about what she needs to do to stay safely in her own home and connect her to other resources if she wants them – meals on wheels, hairdressing, etc. It isn’t perfect, but it is pretty darn good especially given we were dealing with them over the holidays.
What didn’t and doesn’t work all happened once we had to deal with other professionals outside the hub. The CLSC is neither well connected to the hospital – where my friend ended up in emergency for 3 nights – or to the patient’s doctors – in this case a general practitioner, a cardiologist and a vascular specialist. And the hospital wasn’t connected to the pharmacy – which is the only other hub where critical and integrated information on the patient’s care is held. In fact, the hospital sent my friend home on New Year’s Eve without a single and very critical dose of antibiotic to tide her over until the pharmacy was doing deliveries after the holidays. These disconnects are big problems. The long-term care nurse has [or should have] the complete picture of what’s going on with the patient on all fronts and what that looks like from the patient’s point of view given their context. In this case it was impossible and felt like a telephone game we played as kids but with much more dire consequences if things went wrong.
There are disconnects and overlaps in communication at almost every point in our journey.They are costing the system significant dollars and, I can only assume, the lives of patients.But, look a little deeper and there’s a more fundamental problem. The protocols are there. They just don’t work. They were designed for a different system: A siloed hierarchical doctor-centric system. And, it was often badly executed. Except for the patient’s health there seem few consequences.
How many of the communication problems in your organization are the result of management system design and execution problems and not just communication. Let’s stop being the fall guy and push to be part of a fundamental rethink and redesign of management and operational systems that no longer work.
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Is doing good good?
Companies, all kinds of companies, are getting more involved in “doing good”. But, why? What’s the primary motivation? Building the brand or creating a better world?
Flash back to the mid 1840s, Titus Salt a woollen manufacturer had already made his fortune. He was planning to retire. Instead, he decided to consolidate his 5 mills on one site and improve the lives of his workers. He had already begun to try to improve the living conditions of his employees and would take 2,000 workers {and their families] on day trips out of the dirt and grime of Bradford and into the fresh air of the country around it: by train into the Yorkshire Dales, to his own estate or the seaside at Scarbourough.
He was not alone in taking action to improve the social needs of his workers, but his vision was bigger and more comprehensive. He would open one huge woollen mill, Salts Mill, outside of the heavy pollution of Bradford in Shipley. He would create a healthy place for workers to live and work.
They would have access to a dining hall across the road from the mill. Workers homes would be built in a ‘village’ near by with a church, schools, a library, a hospital, a park, allotment gardens. Everyone would have access to water, drainage, gas and a backyard with a private toilet. The main street would have shops to provide for all of the tenants needs. He would build almshouses [in the end 45] and a chapel for the infirm or aged on one edge of the village near the hospital. And he did. He built Saltaire – named after the mill/founder and the river that runs beside it.
The cynical would say this was all paternalistic and self-serving, but when Titus Salt died 100,000 people thronged the funeral’s processional route. And, 100,000 people can’t all be that wrong.
Titus Salt was a man of his time. He was a man who wanted to create a better world. And in making a better world for his workers he did better business and created a brand that endured well into the 20th century. Today Saltaire, the town Titus Salt built, is a UNESCO heritage site. A monument to a man and a time of incredible social vision.
Flash forward 160 years. How many of today’s brands will be remembered for the good they did? What will their legacy be?
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Employee involvement. It’s not magic!
It’s coming up on that time of year again. Year end results. Launching new strategies and plans – for brands, for products, for businesses. The big employee event. And, maybe an employee campaign.
A recent article in the Globe and Mail, “A question of engagement: do you employees want to come to work?” got me thinking about this. According to the report, 67% of Canadian employees aren’t engaged. They would rather be somewhere else, doing something else than coming to work. The article goes on to make two important points:
- An engaged workforce isn’t necessarily a happy workforce. [think about nurses - super engaged, but given their working conditions not so happy]
- An engaged workforce isn’t necessarily a productive workforce. [it may be a contributing factor, but just one of many]
- in knowing what they’re expected to do and how that work contributes to the overall ‘customer’ experience
- in having what they need – information, tools, workspaces – to make it easy for them to do their jobs well
- by developing leaders that know how to listen and to respond as well as to tell and motivate.
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Recent Posts
- Building a brand experience is just not that complicated…
- 100 years of brand building wiped out in one walk
- Communication failure in Montreal. Sir Richard Branson dies.
- Not all stakeholders are created equal. Now what?
- Why you need to master the art of segmentation
- The single most important question you can ever ask
- “We didn’t know…” Now what?
- Worker health and safety and you
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Recent posts
- Building a brand experience is just not that complicated…
- 100 years of brand building wiped out in one walk
- Communication failure in Montreal. Sir Richard Branson dies.
- Not all stakeholders are created equal. Now what?
- Why you need to master the art of segmentation
- The single most important question you can ever ask
- “We didn’t know…” Now what?
- Worker health and safety and you
- Innovation. You gotta be a little bit crazy!
- In search of great communicators