Tactical Genius

Trouble with taking action, is... I've been doing too many other things to be able to sit down and blog. Sorry for the full week without a peep. Here's a wee something, harking back to previous diatribes and musings about motivational speakers...

Browsing the books and blogs of motivational speakers like Robert Holden (see here), I'm struck by how many high-profile conferences and courses and development days he's spoken and coached at. Not all, but most, seem to have been at senior manager or chief exec level. If all these senior managers of all these big organisations are attending these sessions, all about 'love', flexibility, communication and change in the workplace... How come the lower ranks rarely see any change? Or only changes that work them harder, control them more, and increase stress?

Is it just a junket? A 'jolly' for all those at the top of the tree? All the inspiring talk of change, values and success is fun and heady at the time, but implementing it turns out to be too much effort.

Or, is it an indication that things are gradually changing? That interest in these notions is growing? That a tipping point will soon be reached? I'd like to think it's this second option...

But is it? What about when Holden and his ilk get to speak for the lower ranks? The occasion this happened at my work (see previous post here), it created a real feel-good and revolutionary buzz for a day or two, before a 'healthy' dose of cynicism kicked in. We critiqued the speaker's message all to shreds, and went back to the same old. Did management authorise, invite, and pay for both the motivational speaker and all our man-hours because they really wanted change to take place and spread from the bottom of the organisation up? Or was it a good-will gesture of tactical genius? A way of giving us what we want, no, more than what we'd wanted, and then having us crush it all by ourselves?

There would have been the risk that a tiny minority of staff might've been inspired to do something radical and wonderful, or quit (which may amount to the same thing)... But it would arguably be a risk worth taking for those who prefer the status quo. The potential loss of one or two skilled staff who're already wavering, must be more than outweighed by the double-bluff of offering the majority a dream that they reject for themselves.

Image by Martin Kingsley

Fat or Manic?

There are some great bits of terminology evolving out there, amongst the people who think hard about the world as we know it.






Some examples are:

• The Joyless Economy
• The Overwork Culture
• The Hyperactive Workplace
• The Manic Society
• The Wage-Slave System

These terms are great.  They make neat and emotive short-hand for long, complicated concepts and arguments. I have slipped into using them, on a not irregular basis. But sometimes... I have to take a step back, and say "hold on a wee minute there!" What they describe and assume, doesn't always ring true. Sometimes I wonder if we're all playing a game, signing up to notions that tell half a story, because they excuse us from our mistakes and our failures.

Take an example, the Manic Society. This is one of Robert Holden's bits of jargon that I came across in his book Success Intelligence: Timeless Wisdom for a Manic Society (2005). But while he's responsible for the term, he's certainly not the only writer out there describing this phenomenon.  The way he tells it, we live in this 'manic society', where everyone is so busy, busy, busy all the time.  So far, sounds so true.

But it strikes me that we're also a society characterised by quite a lot of stagnancy and sloth. Now that would never be acknowledged in the writings that are focused on unpicking this 'manic society' for readers who are already interested, and identify with feeling too busy, and too pressured, and too stressed.  But come on. Look at this carefully.  We're so manically busy, that we're too busy to physically do things for ourselves:

• We're too busy to wash our own cars, we'll drive through a carwash instead.
  
  
• To busy to carry our groceries from the shop to the house, we'll get them delivered.
  
  
• Too busy to walk anywhere, we'll drive.
  
  
• Goddamit most of the time we're all too busy to move at all.

We are all so manically busy... that we're getting fat?

Is this not a contradiction? There's this trend in the media to describe ourselves as a manic society, to lament that we're all so busy, and never have enough time... Its a terrible problem, for which you deserve sympathy and maybe should demand change. And at the same time, it's a complement - there's kudos in being super-uncontrollably-busy. There isn't in being a lazy, apathetic, fat bastard.

Yet most of the time, admit it, most of us are manically sat on our bottoms.

Likewise, there's this trend to analyse how we're all so busy that our personal lives suffer, our relationships falter through neglect. The media is full of these surveys and stats around the breakdown of family life, parents spending 8 minutes per day with their kids or some such horror... But the same people do get through an awful lot of hours watching TV, and movies, or browsing online (me included)...

I'm not denying that people are busy, and stressed, and working very hard, and doing stupidly long hours, and worn out, and all the rest of it. I think we've nearly all been there, seen it, done it. But it's half a story. We're manically busy, and we're lazy sods.

Why is that? Is it the way it has to be?  And who gets to decide?

Image by herval

It's About Compromises

It's Christmas time, and the shops are full of 2009 calendars. I had a day off work on Thursday, and went into the city to do some Christmas shopping. 8.30am and it was still pretty dark outside. As I walked along through the business district, I nosied in the bright-lit windows of all the offices. Many shades of grey lay before me. I was glad to be able to keep walking - through the rain and the icy patches - rather than climb the steps into any of those buildings and have to seat myself at a screen in a blanket-grey environment for the day.

After a bit, I noticed a colourful pattern developing as I passed building after building: it was in the calendars hanging on the office walls. Glossy pictures of amazing exotic beaches, of surfers catching splendid waves, of sunsets, autumn leaves, and astonishing natural wonders across the world.

On Friday, I went to my work and gazed at the calendar hanging above my desk - Scottish mountains no less - in a new way. It was meant to be motivational and inspirational. But really it's a compromise. A salve for an aching soul. Is that enough?

Too Canny For Any Of That Nonsense

Last year, things were not too good at work. Morale was exceptionally low, staff shortages were chronic, the new pay deal was felt to be a slap in the face. And so the management paid for us all to go to a 'motivational day.' The speaker was a guy who'd worked in the same field we do, suffered burnout, then rose from the ashes, all phoenix-like. He ranted about the overwhelming negativity of our culture, the language we use that oppresses us, and the lifestyles that entrap us. He pointed out the harm we do to ourselves and each other by bending to those pressures, and then the shame that we all go on to re-inforce those pressures on others. He waxed lyrical about inspiration, creativity, vision, and dreams (loosely, very loosely, within a work context). And he worked the crowd big time - he had us all eating out of his hand, he had us excited, energised, enthused. It was a grand day out, and as we left the conference centre, I saw friends and colleagues with their eyes shining and their hopes and dreams re-ignited.

Next morning, at the water coolers, people talked over the day with delight. Mostly about the irony of our employer paying for us all to go see a speaker who urged us to follow our dreams! Mass resignation anyone?

But by a couple of mornings later, the talk had turned scornful and cynical. People sneered and dismissed. He'd played us with sales technique and charisma, but strip that away and it all boiled down to a load of unrealistic clap-trap. With a hint of smugness, it was agreed that we were all too canny for any of that nonsense. No half-arsed salesman would be putting one over on us. And that was the end of that.

Once again, everyone buckled back down to the graft, and lunchbreaks continued to be long drawn out grumbles about pay and conditions. I didn't buck the trend. But I did squirrel myself off onto a computer, and looked into company policy on Career Breaks...