The accidental manager

It’s an old cliché that people join organisations but leave managers and I was reminded of this recently whilst speaking to the manager of a medium sized company. They’d recently done a lot of organisational surveys and the results weren’t good: trust was low, many people were discouraged by the style of leadership and parts of the organisation were very unhappy. It started me thinking about those simple – but often powerful – questions that I like to ask.

Pretty much the first question I ask of any new or aspiring manager is “why do you want to be a manager?” The number of people who struggle with that question might surprise you. Often it’s not something that they’ve ever asked themselves before but it’s a question worth thinking about in some detail, even if you have to mull it over for a couple of weeks before coming up with a reason that you feel comfortable with.

I hear many different answers but they broadly break down into three. Some people become a manager because it’s the natural next-step on their career path; if they want to progress within their organisation, they have to move to a management role. Linked to this, for some, is the fact that – in their organisation – it’s the only way to earn more money. Alternatively, some people have a desire to work with and a love of people; for them, the buzz of working closely with people, being responsible for their performance and their development is what leads them into management.

Or, some people become a manager just because they were promoted into it. They were the most productive/technically skilled/best looking in their team and the powers-that-be decided that being so good at whatever it was they did made them the perfect candidate for management. Within this group is a small subset of people who just find themselves there, without having much planned or thought about it and without really knowing what they’re doing there in the first place.

None of these reasons is necessarily a better or worse reason than the others. Whatever anyone’s reason is, it’s their reason and it’s not for me to tell them it’s the wrong one. Nevertheless, I’d argue that, in order to be a successful manager you’d need to (at least) like working with people and want to do it. Perhaps I’m being unduly harsh on the manager in question but these qualities seemed to be lacking – and it seemed like the organisation knew it.

What do you think you're doing?

When I was a child, one of the phrases I heard most often from my parents – usually in response to some sickening crash or disaster that I’d caused – was “what do you think you’re doing?” All these years later and that phrase still has a great deal of resonance for me and I like to ask it regularly, of others and myself. I’m often surprised to find that they – and sometimes I – don’t actually know. Sometimes there’s a difference between what I think I’m doing and what I’m actually doing but that’s a discussion for another week.

As I sat down to write this week’s blog entry, that phrase came back to me. Back in August last year, when I started this blog, I wrote that beginning something was easy but continuing was difficult. Since then, I think I’ve done pretty well – there’s been an average of a blog post a week, I have a handful of (intelligent, sophisticated, attractive) followers and sometimes people write to let me know that they’ve agreed with what I’ve written. But still that question keeps echoing in my mind: when it comes to this blog, what do I think I’m doing? It’s become even louder since I started a marketing campaign for inspired, trying to find new clients and new work: what do I think I’m doing?

Once I’d started asking the question I found that I didn’t have a convincing answer – not consciously, at least. Re-reading the blog, however, a pattern began to emerge and a realisation dawned on me. What do I think I’m doing? I’m simply trying to change the way we all – each one of us – think about work.

I’ve written before that I’ve seen too many people who’ve mistaken their job for a hostage situation. People for whom Monday morning – and sometimes even Sunday evening – is the low point of their week. People who can’t wait for the weekend – or even retirement – so they can do what they really want. People who are being ground down and used up by their employers and employers who know this is what they’re doing but can’t think of any other way to be.

Carrying on the way we are simply isn’t an option anymore: if the last couple of years have taught us anything – and that’s an open question – it’s that our current approach to work is unsustainable. We have to find a new and better way. I believe work – whatever that work is – can be inspiring. I believe work can provide dignity and fulfilment, can provide opportunities for creativity and service and links to a higher, more engaging purpose. I believe work should enhance life, not make it miserable. I believe all of this is possible and achievable, for everyone, and that’s what I’m trying to achieve – that’s what I think I’m doing.

It’ll take effort but the reward will be worth it. Who’s with me?

The dignity of labour

Are you busy? Feel like you’ve got too much to do? If you do, it would seem that you’re not alone: I was struck by some recent statistics from the Corporate Leadership Council showing that the average job “footprint” (i.e., what someone is expected to do as part of their job) has increased by a third since the beginning of the recession. The Hay Group has found that two-thirds of workers say they are regularly putting in unpaid overtime, in order to cope with this increased footprint.

But, you might argue, these are hard times and we must all pull together and do our best; it’s all hands to the pumps. Companies and workers understand that and the extra effort people put in now in order to help keep their employers afloat is appreciated. Except it isn’t: in the same Hay survey, 63% of workers say their employers do not appreciate their extra effort and 57% feel they are treated like “disposable commodities”. Around fifty per cent say that their current level of work is unsustainable. What are the consequences of those statistics?

This is a familiar theme on the inspiredblog – it’s one that we’ve returned to a number of times over the months. Booker T Washington said “no race can prosper until it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem” and it’s true. At inspired, we strongly believe that all jobs contain and provide dignity. Work defines us and having spent some time in the past without a job, we know how corrosive it can be, how meaningless and empty the days can become, and the crippling effect it can have on self esteem. But, to quote Camus, “there is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted” and what we’re seeing increasingly is that work is not freely accepted; it’s forced on us. It doesn’t provide dignity, it provides anxiety and illness. Is it any wonder that absenteeism, disengagement and low level corporate crime are all increasing, at precisely the time we need people to stay and engage the most?

Have you ever heard anyone say that their employees are their company’s greatest asset? Next time you hear it, remind them that employees are people, not assets. We’re human beings, not “Human Resources.” Unless employers ensure their employees are treated like people – with care, with consideration, with respect – statistics like the ones quoted above will increase and I fear that this recession will get an awful lot worse before it gets better.

Coincidence?

A few months ago, I wrote about the spate of suicides that occurred amongst employees of France Telecom. Since 2008, 46 France Telecom employees have committed suicide, following a downsizing programme that resulted in the loss of 20,000 jobs. The situation is complex and investigations – in both Paris and Besançon, in eastern France – are ongoing, so we can't draw any definitive conclusions. However, an apparently similar situation has come to light in Longhua, China, at the Foxconn electronics construction factory. So far, around a dozen workers at the factory – reports vary, making exact numbers difficult to rely on – have killed themselves this year. In response, Foxconn have increased salaries, brought in Buddhist monks and installed 1.5m square meters of safety netting.

Context is everything: the Foxconn factory employs nearly half a million workers and the number of suicides is not – in statistical terms – remarkable; suicides tend to happen in clusters and the average suicide rate in China is around 13 per 100,000 people. It is true that some workers at the plant have blamed a culture of bullying and harassment from managers but others have dismissed that idea. No one knows for sure what is causing the suicides but Foxconn is interesting, not just in the light of the France Telecom case but also because it constructs some of the worlds most in-demand consumer electronics. If you’re reading this on an iPhone or an iPad, the chances are it was built in the Foxconn factory in question.

As yet, there are no answers from either case and we may never know what caused the suicides – each of the 60 people who chose to end their lives may have done so for entirely separate and unconnected reasons. Each one is an individual tragedy and deserves both our sympathy and empathy. But this is the second time, since the beginning of the financial crisis, that two such suicide clusters have come to light within two separate employers. Is the financial crisis, with its attendant increase of pressure on employees, in some way connected to this? As the saying goes, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence…” For Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, three times meant enemy action; we’ll have to watch for a third cluster before we can judge whether there is something here about which we, as a wider society, need to worry.