The view from here

I’ve been running some time management workshops recently and one of the things that we’ve been looking at is the direction in which people are heading, their longer-term goals. Having a direction is an excellent way (and possibly the only real way) of establishing your priorities, without which it’s impossible to organise yourself in any meaningful way. The thinking behind this is that it’s important to know where you want to get to otherwise, as Lewis Carroll pointed out, it doesn’t really matter which way you go.

I left school with weak A-levels and didn’t go to university. A few years ago, I decided that I was going to return to studying and get the degree I didn’t get a quarter of a century ago. As I was thinking about this, it struck me that it would take about six years to do this and that I would be 45 years old by the time I got my degree. That length of time felt daunting until I realised that, unless something dreadful happened, in six years I was going to be 45 anyway – I might as well be 45 with a degree.

My destination was the degree and I had a vague idea of what I was going to do with it when I began studying. An analogy that I often use is that of a pilot filing a flight plan: when the plane takes off, the pilot knows where he’s going to land – unless, of course, something unexpected happens. It’s a helpful analogy but, like any analogy, if you push it too hard it will break down. Since I made my choice, my outlook has changed and evolved. In the words of every contestant on the X-Factor, I’ve been on a journey and the view from where I am now is different to the view I had when I started studying.

Someone once told me that “to decide is to divide” – a yes to one option is automatically a no to another option. But that yes also opens up the possibility of a whole lot of other options. Because of the choice I made five years ago, I was alert to several opportunities that have come my way in the last few weeks, opportunities that have helped to clarify that vision I mentioned above. For us, the destination doesn’t have to be fixed in stone – we’re not locked into a flight plan and it’s possible for us to change our destination at any point. It’s what makes the journey exciting.

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.

Business Maths

I was never particularly good at maths when I was at school and that inadequacy with figures has, I’m afraid, carried over into my adult life. The chances are, many of you could or would say the same. It’s socially easy to admit to difficulties with maths whereas it’s very difficult to admit to difficulties with reading. Perhaps that’s what explains some of the very questionable business maths that I heard from a group the other day.

Let’s begin by setting you a simple problem. You have a team of eight people, all of whom produce one widget per day. If you take away four people, how many widgets per day will the remaining four have to produce in order to maintain your total output of eight? The answer is, of course, two per day: even I could work that out.

However, there’s a problem. The current eight people don’t appear to be slacking. They all appear to be busy each day; they’re not sitting around drinking coffee and gossiping. One widget per day appears to be about right; in fact given that you used to have a team of 16 people producing eight widgets per day, the current productivity seems very good. So what do you do?

The answer to that, of course, is equally simple: you make the cuts anyway and drive the remaining four to work even harder, until they burn out or leave. It seems crazy – no, wait; it is crazy – but that’s exactly what the company was proposing to do. The group I was working with were resigned to taking on a whole lot of extra work on top of their existing responsibilities. When I asked them how they proposed to do that, someone muttered something about “discretionary time” but, in order to be discretionary, you have to have some choice in whether you give that time. They felt they didn’t; they had to work the extra hours, just to keep up with the job.

Oh, I understand that there are efficiency savings to be made. I understand that there might be synergies (and, unlike a lot of people who bandy that word about, I know what it means) but there is a bottom line. This bottom line isn’t on the accounts: it’s the baseline below which no-one can go. Everything you do takes time; there is nothing you do that you can do in an instant. You can be more efficient and look for ways of, perhaps, doing two things at once to speed things up, but there is a bottom line below which we cannot go. There is a point at which there are no more efficiencies; there are no more synergies. What then? Work harder is no longer the right answer...

If things don't change...

Many years ago, I came across a Tibetan saying: “if you want to know your future, look at what you are doing in this moment.” At the time, I didn’t fully understand what it meant but over the years it’s come to be an important saying to me because it has two meanings.

Firstly, it reminds me of that other old saw – if things don’t change, they’ll stay the same. Whatever we’re doing now, we’ll still be doing it in ten years unless something intervenes to change it. Often, we rely on circumstances or external factors to change what we’re doing – we complain about a job that makes us unhappy but don’t take the steps to improve it or leave, preferring instead to hope that something – redundancy, retirement, a lottery win – will intervene to change things.

Of course, more often than not, those things don’t happen and so time drifts by and we find our selves fundamentally living the same life we lived ten years previously. It’s only then we realise that “if things don’t change, they’ll stay the same” isn’t the entire truth: that only holds true if the rest of the world is static, too. It’s more accurate to say that if things don’t change they’ll steadily decline – but that’s quite depressing and doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

The second meaning for my Tibetan phrase is the one that really resonates with me. Whatever your life is like in this moment, the chances are that the shape of your life has its roots in your past – often quite some way in your past. We plant seeds every day and they grow slowly – sometimes we do not even know that we are planting them but they bear fruit in our lives nonetheless. We are often too casual about this – not paying attention to the seeds we’re planting, only to have them blossom into a harvest that we really don’t want.

It’s truly the case that we reap what we sow in life. Each day, consciously or unconsciously, we are shaping our future and we must pay attention to the seeds we’re planting. This week, as you go about your life, focus on what you are doing in each moment; for every activity, think carefully about how it will shape your future – because it surely will.

Challenging the status quo

One of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits (Habit 7, fact fans) is “Sharpen the Saw.” It’s based on the idea of continuous improvement, on the idea that we have to continually learn, continually grow, continually expose ourselves to new interests and influences. Ghandi once said "we open the doors and the windows and allow all the currents to come in” and I think that’s a good philosophy: it’s important to let the tides come in occasionally, to mix things up. It’s not easy to set aside time to do these things – I’ve talked before about the tyranny of the urgent – but if we don’t continually improve ourselves, we’ll get left behind.

So here on the inspired blog, in addition to our regular weekly posts, we’ll occasionally be posting a series of interesting articles and videos for you to take a look at. Hopefully, they will spark thoughts in your mind or provoke a debate. I’d love to know what you think of them, so please do take a moment to leave comments or tick the little box below; the more I know what you like, the more I can deliver it!

This week, we bring you a video by Seth Godin from the ever-reliable TED website; if you’re not paying attention to what both Godin and TED are doing, you really need to give yourself a good talking to. As you watch this video, ask yourself what story you’re telling and how you’re challenging the status quo...

Planning weekly, not weakly...

When we last talked about time management, we talked about daily planning and while the format, degree or rigour of planning varies, many of you already take time to make some kind of plan for the day. However, very few people also plan on a weekly basis, which is one of those instances where we just make things harder for ourselves. Planning daily but not also weekly inevitably means that our focus will always be on the short term. By definition, we’re only thinking about the things that have to be done today. Weekly planning is a simple way of allowing ourselves the opportunity to schedule in those things that are important but aren’t urgent – they have to be done sometime, but not necessarily today and so inevitably they’re put off. If you’re looking for that elusive work/life balance, you’ll find it in weekly planning

Weekly planning only takes about fifteen to twenty minutes each week – I do mine on a Friday morning at 10 o’clock because I’ve found that’s what works best for me. You can do it whenever you prefer but my advice would be to avoid Monday mornings (it’s too late – the week has started) and Friday afternoons (things mysteriously seem to be sacrificed on Friday afternoons). Ideally, you should do it at the same time every week, so that it becomes a regular appointment with yourself.

Before we get to the step-by-step process, you’ll firstly need to understand what your roles are in life. The easiest way of doing this is to think about all the things you do on a weekly basis and categorise them. If you spend a lot of time laying bricks each week, it’s safe to say you’re a bricklayer for at least part of the time. If you spend time playing a musical instrument, you’re a musician for part of the week. For instance, over the course of the week I’m a facilitator, a parent, a friend and a student, to name just four.

If you want to improve your time management skills, take some time over the next few days to identify no more than seven roles that cover everything you do over the average week. If you come up with nine, merge a couple so that you bring the total down to seven but if you only come up with six roles, don’t make one up. There’s nothing magical about the number seven, it’s just a realistic number of roles on which you can focus. These roles aren’t fixed in concrete – some will change as your circumstances change – but understanding your roles is key to your weekly planning and establishing some balance and control in your life.

Happy New Year

I don’t want to start 2010 on a depressing note but I wonder how many people have already failed their new year’s resolutions? If they have, they’re in good company – according to a recent report, around 80% of people won’t succeed in keeping their resolutions. If you’ve set yourself some goals or resolutions for 2010, I’d like to offer some practical advice on goal setting and, more importantly, goal achievement.

Whatever it is you’re trying to do, you’ll need three basic things to succeed. Firstly, of course, you need to know what you’re trying to do. This is where all that “SMART” stuff comes in handy – you need to make the goal specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed. The more you can phrase your goal using these guidelines, the clearer the goal is likely to be and clarity helps you both achieve and monitor achievement.

Secondly, you need to know how to do it. There are simple things you can do that dramatically increase your chances of success: breaking the goal down into smaller, interim, steps; telling other people what you’re trying to achieve; keeping a record of your progress. All these things will help keep you going, as will understanding that you will sometimes slip back into your old habits. It’s important not to beat yourself up for this; keep visualising the positive results that come from achieving your goal or keeping your resolution.

Often, we know what to do and we think we know how to do it although sometimes how we go about achieving our goals sabotages our attempts. That’s certainly the thrust of the research I quoted earlier. But those of you who have children – or who have ever been children – will recognise that there is a third, crucial element. You can know very clearly what to do; you can understand explicitly how to do it but if you don’t want to do it then nothing will happen.

I start my time management workshops off by asking people to list all the things they know about time management. They list the stuff you’d expect: keep lists, prioritise, say no, focus on important not urgent and so on. So I asked every group, “If you did these things, would they help you manage your time?” – they would all say yes. Then I would ask, “Do you do these things?” and they would all say no. Ultimately, they didn't do them because they didn't really want to.

People often talk about not being sufficiently motivated to do things and it’s true that motivation is important. But all too often, lack of motivation is just a code for a lack of discipline. Sometimes, the things we want to achieve are hard – they involve sacrifice or hard work. It’s at those times, the times when you don’t feel like it, when discipline – mind over mattress – is what you need. But ultimately, whatever goal you set for yourself, whatever your resolution, it has to be something that you actually want to achieve. Don’t set a goal because you think you should achieve it – spend your time, energy and effort achieving something you actually want.

Have a very happy, prosperous and peaceful New Year.

Should auld acquaintances be forgot?

Many years ago, I worked at the same company as a woman called Irene; we started at the company on the same day and we kept in touch over the ten years that we both worked in the firm. Over that period, I watched as her career took an interesting turn and, by the end of the ten years, she was taking, on average, around about 80 to 100 days a year off sick.

It wasn’t that there was anything particularly wrong with Irene – she didn’t break her leg or anything; that 80 to 100 days each year was made up of the odd day or two here and there. Coughs, colds, sprains, migraines – there were always reasons for each absence and, over the months and years, they added up.

During her time at the company, Irene had a number of different managers, each of whom went through the same process. Initially, they would be crestfallen to find that Irene had been assigned to their team; then they would decide to resolve the problem and tackle it head-on; this would inevitably meet with failure and so they would give up, finally working to transfer her on to yet another unfortunate manager. Irene was not an easy woman to talk to – she was forthright, opinionated and generally older than the people managing her, so she found it easy to intimidate them. Some, less confident, managers would move from the first to the last step, skipping the middle stages entirely.

Eventually, Irene was given redundancy and received a cash payment, together with one month’s salary for every year she’d worked there. Everyone around her breathed a sigh of relief and made a little note to themselves that the consequence of continued poor behaviour is a large cash payout.

She never worked a full year over that ten-year period. Interestingly, though, Irene also participated in a local light operatic society: to the best of my knowledge, she never missed a rehearsal or a performance and I was reminded of Irene when I read this article. In particular, I was struck by the quote from Professor Cary Cooper: “if employers entrust their workers with flexible working, stress-related illness and sickness absence is lower and performance and productivity increases.”

What he’s talking about is an effort on behalf of employers to demonstrate the same flexibility and commitment they demand of their employees. While BA and its employees fight each other in the courts, politicians vilify bank employees and the country wonders whether it will still have a job in twelve months, perhaps Professor Cooper’s words point to a better way of working in the New Year. Perhaps one day, people like Irene – disengaged, unhappy, and reacting to being treated like a problem to be passed from pillar to post – will be treated differently. Perhaps an enlightened manager will one day tap the level of engagement she showed to her operatic society.

As the snow floats down outside and we prepare for the Christmas festivities that seems like a hopeful place to end 2009. We’re taking a break next week so we’ll see you again on New Year’s Day. If I could have one wish granted by Santa, it would be that, if you’ve enjoyed anything you’ve read this year on the blog, you to pass it on to just one other person who might like it.

In the meantime, have a very Merry Christmas.

Cause for hope

There are lots of drawbacks to the job I do – the endless travel and all the associated problems; long days and lonely nights in hotels, away from home; dealing with delegates who feel resentful or angry and seem to have forgotten their manners. As we reach the end of a difficult year, it’s easy for the negative things to stick in the mind, so it was good to be reminded of the upside of the job this week, which found me working with a bunch of graduate trainees from a large organisation on a corporate social responsibility workshop.

The idea was to give the graduates a project to do on day one of the workshop, have them carry out the project on day two and then review it on day three. It’s the third time I’ve run this workshop and previous projects have involved decorating community centres or building things. This time the task was even more daunting: the graduates had to go into a school and engage a group of 40 students (14 to 16 years old) on the issues surrounding electricity generation and supply and to conduct a debate about the “green” credentials of the electric car.

I’ve worked with graduates on development programmes before and, I must confess, my view of them is sometimes jaded. From some individuals on some programmes I’ve seen a sense of arrogance and entitlement that I find difficult. Not this time, though. What I encountered was a group of early twenty-somethings who were polite, engaging, thoughtful and fiercely intelligent. They worked together to achieve the project with a dedication, resilience and humour that I found quite inspiring. Not only that, the students they taught were polite, thoroughly engaged and grateful for all the work that had been put into the day. They were fascinated by the science they were being taught and had a surprisingly comprehensive grip of the issues surrounding electric cars.

I’m conscious that last paragraph contains a great many adjectives but I make no apology for trying to convey how impressive both groups were – if you believe everything you see in the media, it’s tempting to believe that the “youth of today” are nothing but feral, hoody-wearing hooligans. It was fascinating to watch the next two generations engaging with each other and discussing the future of the planet they’re inheriting and exploring practical ways in which to clean up the mess that previous generations have made. The whole workshop made me feel guilty and old but, above all, very optimistic about the future.