http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cf3f994-4437-11df-b327-00144feab49a.html

“The culture made me do it”

Richard Holmes, in his book Age of Wonder, describes how the young scientist Humphry Davy hoped to seek a cure for tuberculosis. Looking to improve respiration, he tried inhaling a variety of different gases, eventually making his way to nitrous oxide. Laughing gas.

The nitrous oxide failed to have an impact on the health of his lungs, but Davy did notice, during one experiment, that a toothache he was suffering from subsided whilst he was under the effects of the gas. So he wrote a short article for his scientific peers suggesting that nitrous oxide might be useful to people undergoing surgery.

Now here’s the thing.

In 1799 there was no word for ‘anesthesia’. They were not saying that word yet, had not invented it yet, because they were not thinking it. The thoughts ‘pain-free’ and ‘surgery’ had not been linked together yet. What was being thought was something that now appears quite startling – shocking? crazy? – that pain in surgery was a good thing. Pain, in the thinking of the day, had benefits for both surgeon – the screaming encouraged them to cut fast and accurately – and for the patient – post-surgery pain, writes Holmes “was proof that the body was fighting back and healing itself.”

It took another 40 years before science expanded its thinking to move the thought ‘pain-free surgery’ out of the realms of mockery, through possibility, into normal, everyday practice.

I tell my clients that work and suffering need not be linked. I hope they don’t take 40 years to believe me.

I love Columbo movies. I’ve just finished watching one this afternoon, whilst waiting for the Volcano in Iceland to stop reminding us about who really runs things around here…

I love Columbo movies and I love Sherlock Holmes stories. I have all of those in text, all of them as audiobooks and most of them on DVD played by a brilliant actor called Jeremy Brett.

What is it about detective movies I love so much? Much as I enjoy watching the ingenious lengths the villains will go to to convince themselves that they are carrying off ‘the perfect crime’ (clearly villains never watch detective movies), more than anything I love that Columbo and Holmes consistently display a human quality I admire deeply. They never give up.

They never give up.

No matter how complex the crime, no matter how smart or vicious or crazy the criminal is, they keep on going. They are professionals who have decided that certain things always work for them. They know that if they stay curious enough, that will solve the mystery. They know that if they keep asking questions – always the questions! – eventually they’ll uncover the insight that will lead to capturing the criminal. They know that they have a thing called the Mind, and that the right use of it will always bring results. Columbo may have to smoke one more cigar, Holmes might be faced with one of his ‘three-pipe problems’, but there is never a doubt that the right use of their mental faculties – curiosity, reasoning, creative imagination, logic – will prevail.

My friend’s nephew has just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Awestruck at his age and at the experiences he’d no doubt accumulated (most of which he did not intend sharing and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear), I asked him ‘What helped you the most out there?’. He said ‘I do what they train us to do.’

For some people I meet, however, they can’t be trained enough to give them the confidence they need to fight their battles. They’d never admit it in that way of course because one of things I notice about people who tell me about ‘The Real World’ is how convinced they sound when they describe it. Sounding convincing is part of the game. Like  saying ‘Let’s stop talking and take some action!’, the phrase ‘You don’t live in The Real World’ is something that will always make us sound cool in a business meeting. If that is what matters to us.

What they say is this:

There’s this place called Here where we are right now and there’s this other place Not Here right now. And that place is called The Real World. The Real World is a lot bigger, hairier and scarier than where we are now, and what we are thinking, saying and doing right here will not work back there.

There’s three things I am always intrigued about here, three things advocates of The Real World seem to forget:

1. Everywhere we are is the real world. At one moment I am in a packed commuter train, at another moment I am hugging my children, at another I am negotiating a new business deal with a stressed out client, at another I am sitting in a hot tub looking out over the mountains, at another I am simply walking down the street. One moment my friend’s nephew is on the battlefield with a gun in his hand, another he is telling me about what works for him when he is on the battlefield with a gun in his hand. Are any of these worlds not real? Are any of them ‘more real’ than others? I hope not. Our lives occur to us moment by moment.
2. Our lives are created. Each of those moments shows up for us as a sum of two factors – (a) a set of data – there’s an volcano in Iceland erupting, there’s a business deal happening – and (b) what we bring to those moments: what curiosity, what imagination, what reasoning. Our lived experience is always a function of both. And if, as they do for Columbo and Holmes, certain things are known to work for us, then we have to trust that exactly those skills or qualities will work in every moment.
3. Our words matter. One of the ways we create our lives is through the language we choose to use. In this way, we are what we edit. If I asked you the question “Tell, me, what’s your company like to work at?”, I’m sure you could find the evidence that demonstrates it to be the greatest company in the world (if you wanted to). But that wouldn’t be ‘the truth’: it would be a story – “an edited account of reality”. The next of your colleagues I asked could edit the same available data to assure me that it is in fact the worst company in the world and moments away from self-destruction. For both of you to make your claim, you’d need to highlight certain facts, edit others out of the equation, and deliver your argument with conviction. This is what we do. This is how we live. And the point is that the words we choose to use to describe our situation don’t just impact others. They impact us. We are the audiences for our own stories about the world and our place in it. It’s a bit’s like telling my friend’s nephew that the fighting techniques he has been taught don’t really work on the battlefield. It’d be like saying to him ‘Don’t you realize how terrifying and violent a real battlefield is, soldier; we could never arm you against that. Now, off you go!’

The battlefield will not be more real than here, it will be different. Our moments all have different qualities. But the principles we learn in any one place will apply also in that different sphere. Trust the training, trust yourself. That’s a message I’d like to give others in my work, and I’d like to give myself. There are no guarantees in life, but there is always a willingness we can create inside ourselves to keep going. To never give up.

Now, light a third pipe, Holmes, and think about that…

One of the consequences of writing about themes such as meaning and purpose at work is that you are reminded to keep questioning your own work’s impact. Because generating a certainty that ‘my work has meaning and serves the world’ has to be balanced every so often with an inquiry into ‘what good does it (really) do?’

A good – and humbling – place to start such an inquiry would be to try and describe your work to an alien. And in the absence of an available alien, try a 6 year old child. If my son Lexxi can’t quite see the need in the world for an Organizational Development consultant, it might be healthy for me to look more closely at the assumptions I’m making about my work’s importance.

It’s a dialogue we all face from time to time. Is my work critical or worthless? Does it really help someone, somewhere, at some time? Or would no-one really notice if I didn’t turn up tomorrow? Does my work claim to be important or special – perhaps by hiding behind a set of models, theories or languages – when in fact there’s a hollowness at the heart of it? Or the opposite – does my work appear at face value banal and ordainary, when in fact it is making a difference in someone’s world?

From one perspective, perhaps, all of our activities can be made to be a nonsense. Developing the technology for the next generation of mobile phones might at one moment be celebrated as a high expression of human innovation, at the next moment a ridiculous waste of our human talent.

Finding ever more creative ways to advertise face cream as a key to deep personal happiness could be deemed a crazy affair, meaningful only to fellow marketeers, unless yours was a face that was one of your own keys to self-esteem and presence in the world.

But the skills required to do these things – creating ideas, generating energy around a message, building engagement, momentum, implementation are the source of meaning and power in our work.

And the personal development we experience whenever we try to do these things better and better – the development of patience, for example, persistence, influencing or listening skills – can never be a waste of our time and energy.

So it seems we have a choice. The value we claim is our own to declare.

So make your ‘job’ as amazing as possible and use that to drive you to be better and better.

Or make it as empty as possible – face up to its emptiness if that what it has become for you – and use that to drive you out of it and onto something different.

But don’t be half-assed about it, to use a technical term. A life of resigned ‘quiet desperation’ (Henry David Thoreau) serves no-one at all. Least of all you.

Although my office is still in the very wonderful Fort Collins, my family and I now live in Loveland, a small town 15 miles South of FC. Just as children can send their Christmas Lists and have them postmarked The North Pole, so too people apparently send their Valentine’s Cards via Loveland so that they can have them postmarked from the Land of Love. Nice, eh?

Anyway, in tribute to the Valentine’s Day celebration, I am posting this entry from an old essay I wrote back in 2003 (!), prompted by a Love-themed leadership conference I’d been contacted about.

Enjoy, and please be my Valentine (I promise I’ll be yours…)

————

I’ve just been sent the summary of what four speakers said at a recent conference about ‘inspirational leadership’. I bear no ill will towards conferences in general nor these speakers in particular. This conference, a regular one, is revered for being at the cutting edge of best practice when it comes to ‘the people thing’. I’m choosing this one – I could have chosen any one of very many – precisely because the advice, by business leaders to an audience of their peers, is the ‘best of its kind’. And I want to point out what is hollow at the heart of it.

This particular event had the theme of Love as a business driver, not just because it was held near Valentine’s night, but because of this:

Passion-themed cocktails from the bar, heart-shaped eats and music (‘the food of love’, of course) all helped focus our minds last night as the [audience] gathered to distil out a love potion of our own: the formula for making your people passionate about their work and turning ’I love my job’ from a rarity into the norm.

Now Love, even in 2003, may be a fairly unusual word in relation to business, so

let’s take a moment to review how we got here. How did we get to a point where businesses want this for their people?

Prior to the eighties, business was largely about Strategy, Structure and the efficient Management of resources. Then the Tom Peter’s Excellence effect brought two ideas to the fore: that we have these things called customers, they are important and we ought to treat them that way. And that we have these things called people, they are important and we ought to treat them that way.

The two ideas are linked by a third idea: that if people are resentful, unmotivated and unskilled in their job, it will be impossible for them to treat the customer well, no matter how much our technology is up to date or how well are processes are engineered (these being the other two major concerns of the 90s).

And from these three ideas (plus changing social mores and historical events like the fall of the Wall etc) came the concentration on making sure that people at work are happy, creative, passionate, smart, collaborative and so on – so that they can serve customers better.

And who can argue with that?

Me. I can.

Because it does not matter now that what we want has changed from fear to love; what matters is that the mechanism for producing what we want is still the same:

“Bosses have a problem, they need to fix it;

here’s what they should do”

In all the advice given at this conference – and inevitably generated from this way of thinking about leadership – the boss is centre stage. The boss is told that certain beliefs, attitudes and behaviours will, once activated, have positive impacts on employees. Do this and passion follows in someone else. Do that and love is produced in someone else. Do we really believe that life is that simple? In all this advice, the boss is the lever for change: the cause of things.

That we are striving now with apparently more ‘humane’ objectives (passion, love, creativity as opposed to simply Efficiency, Quality, Productivity) does not excuse the dismissal of the freedom and power of a whole community – ‘the people’ – to simply being the effect of bosses’ behaviour. The Generic Employee (Hi I’m Genny!) was ‘solemn’ thirty years ago, and is now ‘passionate’ – but nothing has fundamentally changed.

Because Genny is still compliant. Still doing what she think her bosses want. Still dependent on leadership to think and feel on her behalf (does no-one stop to ask Genny if she is already passionate without her boss needing to model it for her?). Maybe Genny’s turning on the passion because that’s what pays the bills (it’s in her appraisal for goodness sake).

[And in fact I’d argue that nothing’s changed either on a surface level let alone a fundamental one – I don’t meet any more of these ‘passionate’ people than I did ten years ago, despite masses of this advice going about, but I do hear and read a lot more about bosses being told that their people ought to be that way].

Let’s look again at the conference objective:

… to distil out a love potion of our own: the formula for making your people passionate about their work and turning ‘I love my job’ from a rarity into the norm.

Note this making. It’s your job as boss to make them do things and feel things. And making your people. You own them. That’s apparently why you can make them do things, because you own them.

Whether the gift I’m being given at work is Love or Fear, it is still done within a structure of compliance. Someone else decides what I need to be, and then I do it.

Have a look at some of the other traditional beliefs and assumptions embedded in this ‘good advice’, and let’s imagine what Genny, the generic employee, might say in response:

[italics are direct quotes from conference summary]

1. Advice: Change is inside out

Bosses are told this:

And, since only half a dozen hands went up in answer to the question ‘Do

you love your job?’ the very first thing I’d ask you to do is start, as

Gerry Farrelly said, with YOURSELF before you try turning your people on to

the idea that work (surprise, surprise) could be the fulfilment they’ve

been looking for elsewhere in their lives…

Genny replies: Work as a medium for fulfilment – I’d go for that.

But not because of what a boss might do for me. I don’t think a sense of self-fulfilment is dependent on someone else’s behaviour. That makes my fulfilment conditional on you being what I need you to be for me to be fulfilled.

Now that makes me put a great deal of expectation on you which you probably can’t sustain – so I’m engineering my own disappointment here. And it may even depend on me behaving in ways that make you what I need you to be for me to be self-fulfilled. So, for example, if my definition of fulfilment at work requires you never to be stressed, I may decide only ever to tell you what you want to hear. In other words, I will learn to create you as the boss I want, as opposed to the boss you may need to be given the realities of the world in which we are operating.

2. Advice: Bosses are models for what is required

Bosses are told this:

IT STARTS WITH YOU

Managers are very good at asking others to change. But, it’s your behaviour

that has to change first. I can’t expect a disciplined approach from others

if I haven’t first displayed a disciplined approach to living our values

myself.

Genny replies: Why do I need someone else to get me to behave correctly? I’m not my boss’s child (unless I think, say and do that I am…) How come I’m waiting for you to be wonderful first? And how long should I wait before I start on me?

3. Advice: Make Work Fun!

Bosses are told this:

WORK AS DRUDGERY SUCKS

I came across a survey in 1998 that said: 21% of people enjoy going to work

48% blame long work hours and their managers for no longer having the time

to read, reflect or even maintain relationships with loved ones.

So, I asked the staff how they saw their jobs and the answer was ‘as a struggle’.

Genny replies: Of course. But that’s not your fault. I’ve been trying for years to prove that work is a struggle. It’s what I focus on and moan about with my peers. Maybe I do it because it feels like I’m doing something worthwhile and noble with my life that way. I have a cause, like a revolutionary. Join the struggle! Don’t let the bastards grind you down!

4. Advice: Trust is a Good Thing

Bosses are told this:

THE SEE-THROUGH LEADER

Historically, people don’t trust management because decisions are made

behind closed doors. So, we opened ours.

Genny replies:  You can take them off the hinges for all I care but if I think that bosses are untrustworthy, nothing bosses do will make a difference. The closed door is in my head and is my creation.

You see, if there’s a closed door then I can’t make a difference. There’s no point offering up my ideas. There’s no point in letting my voice be heard. Nor will I ever have my ideas and performance tested in the harsh light of reality. Thank goodness. That certainly reduces the risk for me. If there’s a closed door, I will never find out that I’m nowhere near as clever or insightful about this business as I sound in my head or in the bar. Or that I am. This ‘openness’ is a bit of a gamble, a risk. Am I up for that?

I think if you don’t mind, I’ll keep the closed door there, even though you tell me it’s open.

5. Advice: being a great leader is a Great Thing to be

Bosses are told this:

I discovered the majority of people would take less money to work for a great leader.

Genny replies: Me too. Give me a great leader please. Thank you. That feels better. Oh, time has passed and he’s not so great as she was. Can I have another please? Thank you. Hang on, this one is not as great as the last one. Get me another one will you please? Ta.

[Same conversation, funnily enough, had by employees of their bosses and shareholders/the City of CEOs].

Do you know what? I’m learning something here. I’m learning that I like great leaders much more than I like poor leaders.

That’s what I’ve learned.  So see what you can do for me on the leader front, will you?

Thank you for listening.

Actually, don’t bother. Give me a crap boss again and I’ll take the increase in pay…

(besides, what sort of trade-off was that anyway? Greatness costs?!)

The only reason I feel able to question these five pieces of ‘good advice’ is because I’ve given them myself time and time again. And I wondered why things weren’t changing.

It’s me I’m railing at as much as the conference. But I’m going to stop giving this advice, because it is flawed.

Everyone in an organisation needs to be responsible for what they are experiencing and producing, and we all need to let go of the fantasy that it’s the Leader’s job or fault.

Finally, notice that the email summary sent out from this conference is headed Action Required – manifesting that other great assumption: what you do matters – when in fact no more action of this sort by bosses is going to help at all – but thinking by all of us might.

We don’t need more leaders, we need more awareness.

Arnold Mindell