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.
Behaviour change
Two days. Two stories.
It started at a recent lunch with a past client. She’s a senior executive who’s been around the board rooms of some of Canada’s largest and most influential companies for most of her career. We were talking about the ‘soft’ side of institutional life and the potential power there is in strengthening the employee relationship. “I agree with you”, she said. Then came the bomb… ”but unfortunately the executives I know just aren’t interested. This is simply not on the agenda in the C-Suite”.
Fast forward a few days and I’m attending an evening with Dr. Jody Heymann, Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Social Policy and head of McGill’s institute for Health and Social Policy. She and Magda Barrera co-authored the recently published book “Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce”. After years of research their conclusions are simple – listen to employees [especially those ‘at the bottom’], treat them with respect and you will reap the rewards of higher profits. This is not necessarily new news. Nor is it a surprise. It makes sense that you treat people well and they will be more engaged and productive.
So, how do we think about this apparent discrepancy between the research results and C-suite priorities? What’s going on?
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Celebrating failure
Engineers without borders publishes something called a failure report. They “…believe that success in development is not possible without taking risks and innovating – which inevitably means failing sometimes.” And, they go on to say that they “…also believe that it’s important to publicly celebrate these failures, which allows us to share the lessons more broadly and create a culture that encourages creativity and calculated risk taking.”
Talk about missing the point. The organizational objective isn’t failure. The organizational objective is learning. Celebrating failure isn’t the same as celebrating learning.
And for me it raises a question. How is it that good ideas like organizationally learning becomes something that ‘glorifies’ failure. Is it really so hard to learn from our organizational failures?
For two other perspectives, more individually than institutionally focused check out:
- Steven Parker’s post “Are you part of the cult of failure?”
- Bill Jensen’s post “I F@#ked Up: Big Time… Introspection is Hard!”
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Do we know what we’re doing?
I’m just back after an “official” training run. Those of you who know me, know I am passionate about chiwalking and running. Though a “late in life” runner I came to believe what my trainer told me, that running is “perfect freedom”. It took three years to find any level of enjoyment, but I did and was getting quite confident and competent.
Last June due to unrelated injuries Michael and I stopped running. It started as a short break. We continued to chiwalk regularly and at a pretty fast pace – racking in many kilometres up, over and around Mont Royal during the fall, winter and spring. In fact our winter chiwalks made the winter quite wonderful no matter what the conditions – rain, snow, sleet, sunny, cloudy, -10C, -30C. They are all about focus and alignment two of my favourite things.
Now, almost a year later we realize that even though our chiwalks have no doubt kept us relatively fit, they aren’t giving us the same results as chirunning. Over the spring we’ve integrated a few short 20 minute runs, but without any real discipline [and to be honest mostly downhill – small cheat]. This morning was different. We followed lesson 1 of Danny Dreyer’s training guide for beginners, a 12-week program to prepare for a 10K. We went for a relatively flat [not my favourite, since I like the variation of trail running] 5 minutes on and 1 minute off chirun repeated 6 times.
Big lesson: If you want to build and maintain capacity then there’s only one way to do it and that’s with discipline and practice.
You’ll not be surprised to hear that this experience has made me think about whether and how we can achieve an adequate level of communication mastery in our organizations?
Relationships are fundamental to organizations. Organizations exist based on the assumption that working together we can do something we can’t do alone. Given that human relationships without communication are impossible to imagine then communication mastery, must be a critical factor for success of any organization. But do we think about communication in that way?
I don’t think we do. We may make the odd nod to individual development, but institutionally I think we make the assumption that since virtually all employees can speak, write and hear then as an institution you’re communicating. This of course is simply not true. Any more than making the assumption if you can walk, you can run is true. [Or if you can walk you’re walking in an aligned and efficient way that will protect your body [that’s another story].] It takes training, discipline and practice to build and maintain adequate levels of skill and capacity.
So, what would communication mastery look like? Not just for your employees or managers but for your institution as a whole? What are the institutional benefits of achieving that level of mastery? Where are you today in relationship to that level of mastery? What actions would you need to put in place to get there? And, how do you create the right conditions for achieving it?
I think these are fundamental institutional questions. Shouldn’t we be thinking about getting this conversation going? Are you ready?
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From words to action
Sustainability is on my mind. I’m literally trying to get an urban farming project off the ground – it’s a roof top garden – here in Montreal. I’m attending talks and workshops on urban farming and spending an increasing amount of time hanging out with food security, food systems, social business types and environmentalists. I’m learning about their passion and energy and the power of their grass roots orientation.
But in the past month, I’ve been increasingly struck by how the rhetoric hasn’t changed since the 70s when I was getting my first degree in Biology [e.g. big corporations are bad, our economic and financial systems are at the root of our environmental problems, we need more direct control over our food sources and quality, think local, there are “limits to growth”, climate change is a real and growing issue, “small is beautiful”] And, I’ve been wondering what we can learn from the past 40 plus years.
It’s not that advocates and activists have not been making a compelling case. Here in Canada, David Suzuki has been speaking out since the late 60s. Over the decades he’s had important and influential platforms from which to preach and enlighten – hosting weekly radio and tv shows, writing bestselling books, and doing cross country speaking tours more times that I can count. Al Gore’s case was so compelling that the movie won Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and for Best Original Song in 2006 and he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his work on raising awareness on climate change.
It’s not that our behaviour hasn’t changed at all. A second or third season episode of Mad Men is a good reminder of how far we’ve come. It’s the sixties. Don Draper, an advertising exec in New York, buys a Cadillac convertible. The family takes it for a spin and a picnic. Once they’ve had their lunch, they stand up. Betty, his wife picks up the picnic basket. He bends down lifts the picnic blanket up. Shakes it. And they all turn and walk to the car leaving the refuse and garbage from their meal in the field. Our reaction in the west is visceral. We can’t believe we’d every have lived like that. And we know we did.
But the unfortunate reality is that though we may be changing, we’re not changing fast enough to make a significant difference. Somewhere between our hearing the message and real and significant action something happens. We hold back as individuals, families, communities, provinces and nations?
Some friends recently suggested the issue needs “The most colossal mother of all change programs ever“.
From a communications point of view I’m fascinated. What will it take to bring this message, this conversation to life in a meaningful and sustainable way [Inconvenient Truth, let's face it is so yesterday in people's minds]? What will it take to radically change our behaviour? What will it take to make sure the next 40 years sees the change we need – environmentally, socially, economically? And how can we as communicators be part of the answer?
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The golden rule at work
There’s much “wrong”, and amusing, with this short little orientation film from the 50s [with thanks to Michael's recent post]. But there’s something very right. The message that the teacher, Mrs Percal, delivers to her students: “Don’t forget the golden rule” just because you’re at work.
Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion, her mission to bring compassion to the world [including some pretty surprising places like Pakistan] and the movement that is growing daily in support for the Charter reminds us of the power and importance the golden rule can have in our lives. But what about our work lives?
The golden rule in the work place. Now that is “an idea worth spreading“!
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The emotional reality of the workplace
In my early career I was a retail turnaround specialist and managed a series of successful business transformations. One principle I held for myself, and others who worked with me, was that we could fire ourselves and each other and “get off the floor”. Sometimes being face to face with customers is too much. And, when you’re not in the mood, or not able to get into the mood, then you better “get off the floor”.
Well turns out this principle is grounded in science. There’s something called emotional contagion. And those of us who work in and around organizations have probably all experienced it without necessarily recognizing it or knowing what to do about it.
Emotion in the workplace is not something we’re that comfortable with. We prefer to think that our workplaces are emotion free zones even if we know from experience that this is just not so. We’re emotional beings and our moods – happy, sad, afraid, angry, friendly, surprised, disgusted – come with us to work, are created at work and spread.
Something to consider when you’re in communications. These moods individual and collective create the context for communications.
How aware are you of the emotional context for communications? Does it change what and how you communicate?
In the organizational environments I find myself in, I’ve never seen any program for raising awareness and developing skills for managing emotional contagion – the good and bad of it. Maybe it’s time we recognized that we aren’t robots just because we’re at work. We have emotions. We don’t need to be helpless in the face of them. We can understand them – our own and others’ – and manage them. And, sometimes it means getting off the floor.
What do you think? Could you and your team be better at managing emotional contagion?
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Asking the right questions
I got a note from someone who’d just read the IBM Global Human Resource Officer Study for 2010: “Working without borders”. He was disturbed to discover that Chief HR Officers are positioning themselves to “leverage collaboration”. His question: “How can Organizational Development lead the design of Organization 2.0?”
It’s the kind of question I hear regularly. How can function X own [insert your choice – innovation, employee communications, the brand, etc.]? How can function Y think they can lead [insert your choice again]?
But, are these the questions we should be asking? Instead, what if we asked:
- What is the collaboration for?
- How will collaboration support the business strategy?
- What impact will it have? Do we expect the impact to change over time?
- Does the level of collaboration need to be the same across the whole business – from function to function, from exec level to front line? Or is it needed only in certain pockets [product development and customer service, marketing and sales, etc.]? Will this change over time?
The conversation changes and depending on the answers, “ownership” [function, level] should be obvious. Is your organization asking the right questions? Are you asking the right questions?
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Time warped 2
I’m reading “Where Do Good Ideas Come From?” by Steven Johnson for my book club. I’m not that into it, but there’s one thing reading it has reminded me. Sometimes your best and most creative thinking happens when you’re not trying. For me my biggest insights happen when I’m walking up Mont Royal or when I’m asleep [and yes sometimes I even remember them].
So that means that one of the conditions we need to create for ourselves if we want to have good ideas is downtime. Time away from the pressure to write, think, make, perform.
For anyone working in, or near, institutional environments knows that this is virtually impossible. We’re now working at least 10 hours a day, 6 or 7 days/week. More work piling on with every passing day. At the same time as virtually every organization I know is looking for more insight into and innovative solutions for their business and organizational challenges, and every government I can think of is looking to recreate our economic model, we’ve got less and less time to just down tools and let our brains do what they do – noodle when we’re not thinking about anything.
There’s something wrong here and we don’t have the time to stop and think about it.
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Time warped
Michael and I were on our way to London, Ontario from Montreal. For those of you who’ve made that trip you know that once you’re on the 401 you just want it to be over. It’s like you’re in a long and endless slip stream of traffic going 120 km/hour. We stop in Kingston for lunch. And as always at our favourite spot the food doesn’t come fast enough. 10 minutes – “Don’t they know we’re on the road?” 15-minutes – “Will it never come?” 20-minutes. “Oh yeah now I remember they make the burgers from scratch.” It’s what we love about the place. Delicious.
And today, I went to Birk’s Jewelers to see about having a sterling spoon repaired – you can’t drip bleach on silver. Who knew? The poor woman behind the counter was apologizing before we even started. “It will take a really long time just to see if the silversmith can do anything.” I know a long time. I once took a gift my mother-in-law had given me – a small leather agenda cover – back to Hermés for repair. It took nearly a year and came back like new. “That’s OK,” I said, “How long?” “Three weeks.” she said. “But even then if they can do something it will take another 4 to 6 weeks.”
Four to six weeks to have a master craftsman repair something with value beyond silver. Why’s she apologizing. Why aren’t we celebrating the mastery.
These stories I think say a lot about our relationship to time. We’re running. Heck we’re sprinting – at home and at work. We’re piling more and more into our days. And we’re forget that mastery takes time and it’s worth the wait.
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Recent Posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
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- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
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- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
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Recent posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
- Staying in touch with reality
- “Just hire a Dalek”
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