Life in the 21st Century should be getting easier to manage, not harder.

Photo credit: Littledan77

The traditional image of the sun-bronzed, ‘no worries’ Australian has become more of a myth than a reality in the past few years. Instead, our working hours have increased in line with jobs being vacated but not filled and employers expecting overtime as the norm instead of the exception. All of which is leaving us with less time for home — but still working harder to pay for it — and virtually no time or energy for meaningful relationships, family, friends or hobbies.

For most people, the main source of relaxation is to slump on the sofa with wine, chips and bad TV for dinner — only to wake up the next morning with the remote control imprinted on our faces. The day starts again when we leave for work in the dark. Sound familiar to any of you?

This gloomy way of living and working has been examined by Clive Hamilton, Director of the Australia Institute, who found that if the average Aussie worked the same hours as the average worker in other industrialized nations, we would be able to take the rest of the year off from the 20th of November. When you consider that the average number of hours worked per week also includes part-time work — with Australia having the second highest proportion of part time workers in the world — the picture looks even worse. Read the full story

Hey, Guys, haven’t some of us been saying this all along?

According to the New York Times, a group of major hi-tech corporations are getting together to fund a nonprofit group that will study information overload, publicize the problem and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with cellphone calls, e-mail and instant messages that destroy people’s attention spans and hurt their productivity (“Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast”).

I guess the message is finally getting through — ironically to the very businesses whose products most help cause the mess in the first place.

It seems that the typical IT person, sitting all day in front of the computer screen, “turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times.” It’s also estimated that “unnecessary interruptions” cost the US economy more that $650 billion each year. Read the full story

Why do macho management cultures treat working long hours as a badge of honor?

I wonder why we see working long hours as a mark of excellence in a professional; even to the extent that rich executives, on being fired (and typically made even more extravagantly wealthy via the pay-off) seek fresh employment, though they clearly have no need for more money? What gives a heavy workload its social and professional value?

I suspect that the reasons for today’s epidemic of long hours and short vacations lie in the hope that ostentatious overwork will induce other people to believe you must be important — even indispensable. Only this can account for why being overworked and stressed — long the preserve of unfortunate peons driven on by heartless employers — has become the proud badge of the executive and the professional.

There are, I think, three principal reasons why the long-hours culture has come to be valued as a badge of status.

1. A culture based on the Protestant work ethic promotes working for its own sake

According to the notion called the Protestant work ethic, work is good in itself. If that is so, more work must be even better; whatever you achieve can be increased in value in direct proportion to the amount of effort and dedication you put into getting it. This sounds natural to most of us because we have been brought up in a culture based on the Protestant work ethic. To someone from a different culture, it might sound more like a way to win status despite a complete lack of talent or ability — and to justify inefficiency on a grand scale.

Since the rich and powerful always want what is best for themselves in a cultural sense, as well as a material one, lavish displays of devotion to work have become part of their way of showing their value to the world. Read the full story

Human beings are the only species that thinks, reflects, questions, wonders, daydreams, imagines, and allows for curiosity. We can reflect on the past and ponder the future. Yet, in an age of 15-second sound bites, 24-hour in-your-face news, and the constant bombardment by electronic devices, many folks are spending less and less time actually thinking.

This raises some interesting questions, not the least of which are: “Why do we seem to be doing less and less thinking? and “What are we allowing to get in the way of thinking?”

With so many people living their lives at a constant 90 miles an hour, we have less and less time to think, really think, as opposed to reacting. That’s maybe why we find ourselves always doing, doing, doing, without thinking about what we do.

Making time to think again

In your workplace, how often do you take time to think? How often are you encouraged to stop and reflect? How often do you encourage your direct reports to be curious about something and take the time required to pursue their wonderment?

Sadly, our over-emphasis (really, an obsession in our Western culture) on efficiency and productivity has not resulted in wiser choices, better solutions, or greater insights. It certainly hasn’t led to improved relationships and deeper and greater passion and engagement in our work. What is has produced instead is simply doing whatever we do in less time. — drone-like. We’re in danger of becoming simply faster robots.

Why does it matter?

What are we sacrificing to gain speed and efficiency by avoiding thinking and reacting instead throughout most of each workday? All species react. What of our humanness are we jettisoning in this “live reactively” approach to life at work?

Of course, to answer a question like this you have to think, which is maybe why it’s rarely even considered.

What if you did spend more time thinking at work? Would that even be a plus in your workplace? You may work in a not-invented-here type of work culture where thinking creatively, reflecting and imagining upset the apple cart, threatening the “business as usual” culture, and challenging the status-quo. If that’s the case, others might view you as dangerous. Being known as a thinker could be dangerous to your workplace health, which is why some people stop doing it.

What will it take to put things right?

For many folks, “act, don’t think” has become the ubiquitous workplace mantra. In a world of macho management, ideas and action don’t mix, like oil and water. Do we take enough time out to delve below the surface, explore, and allow our curiosity to discover something new and unexpected? Do we dare to take the risk of thinking at work?

As Bob Dylan wrote, in It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding): “He not busy being born Is busy dying.”

Thinking equates to being born, being alive, growing, and self actualizing. Simply “doing” equates to withering on the vine.

Now that’s something to think about!

This week’s food for thought questions

• How often do you really, really think, about your relationships with colleagues at work (let alone your spouse, your children and others)? Are these relationships improving, worsening, matter-of-fact, evaporating?
• Do you allow enough time for curiosity? Do you take the time to “drill down” to engage in discovery and exploration; or do you simply live your life on the surface of things?
• Have you spent any time reflecting on what upsets, frustrates, or angers you? Have you thought deeply enough about what’s underneath any habitual reactivity (doing without thinking)?
• Are you encouraged to think at work? Do you spend a majority of your working hours attached to an “electronic leash” — plugged into everything, everywhere, but your deeper self and creative potential?
• Do you foster a thinking climate and culture in your team or department? If not, why not?
• Do you take time out for yourself — to walk, be still, reflect, muse, wonder, and breathe deeply into your experiences? If not, why not?
• What one baby step could you take next week to allow for more thinking and reflective time?
• What do you think about thinking? Do you have (can you make) the time to even think about that?

Technorati Tags: thinking, reflecting, time for thought, creativity, exploring ideas, being curious, taking time out to think at work, living on the surface, reactivity, action in place of thought, mental abilities, thinking about thinking

If we can learn from it, we can establish management approaches that will do better

Photo of Hurricane Frances taken by Astronaut Mike Fincke aboard the International Space Station as he flew 230 statute miles above the storm at about 9 a.m. CDT Friday, Aug. 27, 2004. (NASA)

Our current management system is broken.

If anyone had imagined a world like this, it could only be in a book or film based on sadly black humor.

Writing in the British Sunday Newspaper The Observer on March 23 2008, Simon Caulkin, management editor noted:

‘The Americans have invented a system with no commitment, trust or long-term relationships,’ wrote Will Hutton in this newspaper last week. This is not aberration, but design. Behind the City and Wall Street firms that epitomise, in Indian business guru Sumantra Ghoshal’s words, the ‘ruthlessly hard-driving, strictly top-down, command-and-control-focused, shareholder-value-obsessed, win-at-any-cost’ management model stands the invisible weight of half a century of agency theory, transaction-cost economics and game theory — as taught in business schools, solemnly embodied in corporate governance codes, reinforced by consultancies, aped by the public sector and duly absorbed into the executive bloodstream.

I think he has it about right.

This approach has failed — spectacularly — and is now causing misery to millions around the world. It’s time for a re-think.

Here are my suggestions: Read the full story

Conversation is becoming a lost art, replaced by endless one-way talk and organized “spin”

This is a revised and expanded version of a post I wrote back in 2005. If anything, the situation I describe seems to have become worse since then, so I believe that it is well worth repeating.

“To converse” means to share ideas and learn from one another in the process. It’s a back-and-forth process that demands listening and talking in equal degrees. It has roots in the same idea that produces the word “conversion” in the sense of change. To converse with someone is to be open to being changed by what they say to you.

“Talk” is one-way. All those people endlessly talking into their cellphones, the TV and radio talk shows, the instant pundits on any topic, all of them involve people talking, yet rarely pausing or caring to listen. We live surrounded by egocentric speeches and constant chatter that amounts to little more than fear of silence.

Go to any meeting in any organization. What will you discover? People who spend their time between bouts of talking thinking about what they will say next. People eagerly seizing on someone else’s words as the excuse for talking themselves. People “taking positions” and telling other what they think, what matters to them. Fine . . . but is anyone listening? Instead of conversations, there are endless presentations: one-way, carefully prepared speeches with limited “feedback” — to which the presenter pays little attention, given the enormous effort already put into those words and pictures. How could anyone who merely listened to them have a better idea that the one who prepared them?

No one listens. No one is open to persuasion. Attendees are briefed to make specific statements, regardless of what’s said after they arrive. Like politicians toeing the party line, they have open mouths and tightly shut minds. Many — maybe most — decisions are made before the meeting ever takes place. The presentation offers a series of pegs on which to hang more one-way talk.

Those strong and silent types are usually neither

Organizational hero-leaders are like John Wayne, strong and silent types, hiding themselves behind the action-man exterior. Part of the proof of their action credentials is that they act as if they cannot communicate in any other way. They have no time for mere words; action is all that matters.

Image from WikipediaYet acting without explaining — or seeking ideas from others — amounts to little more than more egocentric dominance. When you act first and explain afterwards, you are passing the message that you know best; that other people’s input could not possibly change your opinion. Read the full story

I came across this picture on the web recently. I think it shows the perfect attitude to take to working on the computer. It can also be seen as a perfect example of sleeping on a problem.

A bit of nonsense, I know, but sometimes it’s worth it to relax a little. Animals are what they are. They don’t fret about it. Only humans seem to get hung up in what the rest of the world thinks about them and start posturing as a result.

That’s what lies at the root of today’s epidemic of macho management: a continual worrying about appearance and conforming to the fashion for obsessive, short-term action.

Perhaps we should all lie back and forget about the world’s preoccupations a little more often.

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Technorati Tags: right attitudes, taking life easy, relaxing, enjoying work, sleeping on problems, being what you are

High achievers are often highly superstitious as well

There’s an interesting article in Psychology Today about magical thinking: what happens when our natural ability to find and recognize patterns in events goes a little haywire and we start to believe (or half believe, which is enough) in some strange link between events and the outcome we want.

. . . you are wired to find meaning in the world, a predisposition that leaves you with less control over your beliefs than you may think. Even if you’re a hard-core atheist who walks under ladders and pronounces “new age” like “sewage,” you believe in magic.

Magical thinking springs up everywhere. Some irrational beliefs (Santa Claus?) are passed on to us. But others we find on our own. Survival requires recognizing patterns—night follows day, berries that color will make you ill. And because missing the obvious often hurts more than seeing the imaginary, our skills at inferring connections are overtuned. [All quotes are from the Psychology Today article]

The more stressed we are, the more we are — unconsciously — pulled towards superstition and magical thinking. It helps if we feel that someone or something is guiding our life towards some good end — even if we can’t yet see it. It makes our situation seem less bleak if only we can sense some meaning in it. Read the full story

Respectfulness towards others is the key to a more civilized workplace

The challenge for life at work is this: how to be a “business” person and a “human being” at the same time. How to be compete, yet cooperate; be hard-nosed, yet ethical; keep one’s nose to the grindstone, yet still take time to “see” and acknowledge others; be professional, yet personal; to make a profit and yet not be greedy.

You don’t have to look far to discover folk whose life at work takes the low road. Business magazines, journals, and news shows are replete with instances of individuals whose workplace demeanor is described as rude, insensitive, disrespectful, unethical, uncivil, ego-maniacal and self-serving, greedy, and dishonest. You might rub elbows with one or more such people on a daily basis — despite the plethora of books, courses, seminars, workshops, policy and procedure manuals, and treatises focusing on ethics and codes of conduct.

On the other hand, there are those whose lives at work are driven by an internal moral compass: guided by principles that support behaving decently, truthfully, and with integrity — people who take the high road, even when they face major challenges, problems, and difficult choices.

What can support you to change lanes and move from the low road to the high road is “Li.” Confucius comes into it because he wrote about the nature and practice of Li.

What is “Li?”

Around 500 BCE, Confucius described Li as a code of conduct that focuses on such things as learning, tea drinking, how to dress, mourning, governance, and interaction with others. The underlying notion of Li is how to be respectful of nature and one another. Translations or meanings for the word “Li” include propriety, reverence, courtesy, ritual, or the ideal standard of conduct.

Li is what the sage uses to find that which is appropriate. It is both the means which sets the example for others, and the end which maximizes understanding, pleasure, and the greater good. Words and behaviors that show respect for another are contained within the framework of Li.

Confucius believed that Li was the source of right action in all behavior — that coming from a place of respect for all others was at the heart of living a harmonious and worthwhile life. As the practice of Li was continued through centuries, one central theme began to stand out — cultivating your natural human tendency to be decent and kind towards your fellows.

Li in the workplace

The practice of Li runs the gamut from smiling at a co-worker to holding a door open for another; from serving others to being self-responsible. It includes questioning practices that are unethical, corrupt, and disrespectful or demeaning of others. It means choosing to behave in ways with a conscious focus and intentionality on supporting the well-being of the workplace and those who work there.

Li, however, does not come to consciousness naturally. It has to be cultivated. You must first learn, then practice, the art of being in integrity; respecting the dignity of every human being. Only then can you become become committed to, and disciplined in, the practice of Li.

The challenge in today’s workplace is to overcome more common modes of behavior, based on phoniness and convenience; approaches in which, more often than not, rudeness and selfishness are the guiding principles.

The opposite of Li is the common focus on “me, me, me.” It’s a way of life given over to rudeness, insensitivity, verbal abuse such as bullying, gossiping, and being disrespectful, and treating others as irrelevant. It’s being ego-driven and not cognizant of others around you: constantly interrupting in meetings, “one-upping” and speaking over others, and hijacking others’ experiences. It’s also revealed in simple, everyday things, like needing to be the first one on and off the elevator, not holding a door for another, not saying “please” and “thank you”, and slyly speaking ill of others.

How to cultivate Li

The way to cultivate and practice Li at work begins with becoming conscious: asking yourself, “How am I behaving right here, right now?” “Am I taking an opportunity to allow my natural tendency to be decent, good and kind to arise?” “How am I showing up?” “Am I being authentic”?

Li is not syrupy stuff. It’s not fluff. It’s not being effusive. It’s not being fake or phony. It’s not being patronizing. Li is being natural, honest, sincere, self-responsible, and relaxed when you interact with another — any other.

And practicing Li does not mean you stop being firm and assertive or stop holding others accountable. Still less does it require you to stop telling the truth or the bad news. Those who practice Li strive to come from a place of internal truth and integrity that supports them to be more forthright and courageous; it requires trusting that they “show up” in a way that is respectful and decent; that they can be who they are right here and right now — without using any “side” to shore themselves up.

Confucius believed that to truly achieve the principles of Li — the character of the true person — you must look within yourself. This is what he means when he says:

We know what is proper (Li), especially in difficult situations, from the wisdom arising out of contemplation.

Li means regularly spending time on self-reflection, inner listening, and sensing your “gut”, to access that inner wisdom that leads right knowing, right understanding, and right action. Li supports us to live life, even life at work, with your eyes wide open; to act decently, even when it might be “inconvenient.”

Each of us is born with Li. Over time, however, we lose our sense of it as we allow life get in the way of being our true and real selves. We take on fake personalities, personas, and masks and become poseurs. In the process, we learn to navigate life, especially life at work, with our “eyes wide closed” — reactive, fearful, resistant, and deficient in basic humanity and decency.

Questions for self-reflection

• Do resentment or greed drive your interactions with others? Do you admit when you are wrong? Do you apologize openly for misdeeds?
• Do you ever lie or stretch the truth? Do you ever lie, cheat, or steal simply because it’s convenient — because you can?
• Are there others you admire because of their integrity, sincerity and authenticity? Would folk at work (and at home and play) characterize you as a decent human being? Would you characterize yourself as a decent human being? Do you live up to this characterization?
• Does your organization have a code of ethical conduct. Do you follow it? Do others?
• Do you have a personal code of conduct? Do you follow it?
• What one or two things can you do right away to begin to cultivate and practice Li at work?

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Technorati Tags: Confucius, Li, finding a code of conduct, respectfulness towards others, the key to a more civilized workplace, looking to the greater good, the practice of Li, why you should support others’ well-being, how to be a decent person

Perhaps, by seeking endless youth, we’re missing the benefits of maturity

In the natural world, growth is never endless. Things begin, grow, mature, fade, and die. Why should we imagine that our human constructions like corporations and careers should be exempt from this universal law?

Many people are attracted to the benefits of a more “natural” way of life: organic foods, free from so many artificial (and often harmful) ingredients; clothing made from natural materials; a lifestyle that includes periods spent in purely natural environments. Why not “organic” careers and businesses? Why not accept that everything in this universe has a natural cycle of growth, maturity, and decay?

That’s certainly not what happens currently. Rather than allow products, systems, or career paths to run their course and be replaced by others, there’s a frantic straining after eternal youth. Even network TV shows — especially the most repetitive and long-drawn-out series — continually advertise additional episodes as “all new,” right to the point where the series dies from lack of interest.

In the natural cycle, youth is typically brief

In most creatures and living systems, the period of rapid growth from birth to maturity is rather short. The majority of the most creatures’ lifespan is spent in the period of low or nil physical growth we call maturity, ending in another brief period of decline into eventual death. Only certain insects spend long periods immature, ending in a frantic adulthood of non-stop sex, sometimes lasting only a few hours or days.

Even human beings, who have a far longer period childhood and youthful immaturity that nearly all other creatures, face at least half of their lives (maybe as much as three quarters, given today’s extended lifespan) as physically mature adults.

Trying to prolong youth artificially is not just difficult and expensive (and, in the human case, often somewhat ridiculous); it robs us of time to enjoy the benefits of maturity. It’s as if we either yearn always to be young (an impossibility), or jump directly from youth to death, without anything in between.

Our obsession with youth and growth is becoming neurotic. Unending individual “growth” has become a shibboleth — a sacred cow. There is surely a time to grow, but that time — like all other stages of life — will pass. Trying to keep it in place is trying to make time stand still.

Our obsession with growth may be based on a simple misunderstanding

Physical growth is not the only kind. When we focus on youth, we focus primarily on the physical. Mental growth, the growth of wisdom and understanding, is the “growth” task of maturity. Even in physical terms, we know that the human brain does not become fully formed until the late teens or early twenties — just about the time when physical growth stops.

It’s pretty much the same with a career. At the start, there is a rapid addition of basic skills. Only after this is complete can the longer — and often more important — process begin: adding experience and know-how to turn a newly qualified person into an acknowledged expert. If we really believe in the primacy of youth, we should all ask to have a just-qualified surgeon with no experience conduct any operation we must undergo.

Maturity has the more vital tasks

The period of maturity is there to allow us enjoy and utilize what life has to offer — and nurture the next generation.

Instead of trying to be young for ever, we ought to be focused on how best we can nurture a coming generation to take over and extend our own accomplishments. It’s a common piece of management folk-wisdom that the main job of any leader is to produce his or her successors. But, while this is honored in words, it’s rather rarely translated into deeds.

Rather than encouraging potential successors, many leaders try to keep them down for as long as possible, just to maintain their dominance — just as they squelch new ideas in favor of whatever they can put their own name to. Even those who most benefited from a mentor on their own way to the top don’t always extend the same help to those below them.

But isn’t growth essential to any business?

The assumption that next quarter’s/year’s/decade’s results must always exceed the last is just that — an assumption. Aside from sufficient monetary growth to offset inflation, anything else is simply the wish of investors to see their piles of money increase constantly. Even to accomplish that, growth isn’t always the best way.

I recall a British TV program, aired quite a few years ago, in which a supposed leadership guru was paid to offer on-screen advice to the top teams of other companies.

The guru visited a specialist maker of sports cars that relied on retro styling and a reputation for old-fashioned excellence and exclusivity. The guru ranted on and on about how to produce more vehicles — until he was brought up short by a flat refusal by the corporate team to listen any further. Growth in production, they explained, would destroy the very exclusivity they were selling. Sure, customers typically had to wait two years to get a new vehicle, but that was part of the car’s mystique. Take it away and you had little left other than a nice, slightly old-fashioned car.

The guru couldn’t grasp the concept and left, muttering about obstructive management and people who resisted change.

Selling more may not be worth it, if the result will be to reduce your product or service from something that carries a premium price to a mere commodity. Look at Apple computers. I’m sure they could find ways to make more and price them lower, but would it actually be a benefit?

Trying to produce extra growth artificially can be a disaster

Plants offer a good example. It’s possible to stimulate excessive growth by piling on the fertilizer. The plants appear to be lush and healthy, but it’s an illusion. All that extra growth is soft and weak. At the first touch of frost or bad weather, it collapses, leaving the plant an exhausted mess, unable to grow back.

That is almost a perfect analogy for what has been happening in the world of business recently. There has been a period of hyperactive, excessive growth, fueled by the artificial stimulus of easy credit. Now rough times have arrived and those seemingly lush and healthy organizations are collapsing into blackened misery, like dahlias caught by an early frost.

Let’s hear it for maturity: the stage of life that is our true goal.

Much of peoples’ frantic activity is about trying to turn the clock back — or at least stop it advancing. We know that young people are active and engaged in growing, so we try to copy them in the attempt to make ourselves young again. We also fear death. To preserve our existence, we crave constant growth — the opposite, as we imagine, of death and decay.

Maturity means you have at last reached your correct state. It is the goal of youth, not a sign of coming decay, to be delayed as long as possible. It should be a time to be enjoyed; the culmination of everything you have done up to then. If you try to put it off, you risk jumping directly from grow to decline, with no period in between to enjoy all that you built.

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