Towards A New Viewpoint

Seize The Work

One of my favorite sessions I attended at #SIOP2012 was about the experience of working and the impact that has on individuals. This is somewhat heretical in the field, as we generally consider groups of people or the outcomes of work, rather than the in the moment effects. These are concepts that have been gaining my interest for the last few months, even before the conference.

A Philosophy Of Impact

One reason I’m becoming interested is because I see the individual as potentially being a better distribution level for our work. What I mean is: currently the system is set up so that consultants do research and put together an action plan. The action plan is then taught and handed off to internal HR folks, who then teach it to managers. Managers are your distribution point. But we well know there are good managers and bad managers. The employees under the bad managers are the ones who need the help more, but are less likely to get it (or get it effectively) because their managers are less effective. The employees under the good managers will get it and benefit, but the benefits are less pronounced because they already work with a good manager.

So our impact is minimized by the distribution point. If we study the individual level, and focus on distributing advice to individuals, it becomes a more self empowering process. What can I do to help myself? Managers can benefit from this too, but we skip them as a distribution medium.

Shifting Focus

Most articles I see around the web focus on what organizations and managers do or should do. I don’t believe these groups are without responsibility here. Organizations need to encourage the right climate and culture. Managers need to enable, encourage and respect. But at the end of the day, the individual is the only person with most of the control over their situation. Be it from dealing with circumstances or from changing their perceptions and reactions, individuals have the power. Right now I’m not sure most people understand that.

Attack Of The Clowns

There are a lot of self-help gurus out there, some more worthwhile than others. While any person who enables you to help yourself is good, I believe science should be a the root, and many of these people are not scientists or experts in any respect other than having life experience, a viewpoint and a soap box.

I aim to provide several scientific based articles in the coming weeks that aid the development of a person based focus.

Meaning

I am going to be slowing down from my post-a-day pace.  I just can’t keep it up, in addition to a healthy lifestyle and my day job.  The day job’s gotten heavier lately, and keeping up the pace in addition to that has just gotten to be not so much fun for me.  So I’m going to be pulling back to something like 3 times a week (and hopefully still on twitter more than that).

However, I hope the quality of my work will go up as a result.  I hope to reference some more real hard science, and hopefully find topics more interesting.

License To Make Mistakes

Roderick On The Line episode 32 starts with a great bit of wisdom. (WARNING: quickly devolves into NSFW conversation)

Paraphrased:

People learn to be critics before they learn how to properly make things. This is why many people stop trying.

Wow, that’s a great one Mr. Roderick, thank you!

We know how to critique things, we start to do it when we’re toddlers. Obviously we’re not quite so good at it then, and our sensibilities may change over time, but we do it and we are generally very certain of our critique.

When you start doing a new thing, how COULD you do it well? Luck or prior knowledge, transferable skills maybe, but odds are you won’t be near professional level. Why judge yourself? Take it easy, back off, and keep working. Don’t worry about how good you are.

In The Work Context

This is one that drives me crazy. In the name of efficiency at work, we tend to cut out as much spare time as possible (at least in my experience. If yours is different, consider yourself lucky). When you don’t have spare time, it means we can’t take chances and try new things, which means we can’t make learning mistakes. We will still make mistakes, but not the kind you can learn from.

This morning I was daydreaming, about a world where instead of trying to shorten the amount of time needed for projects, we added some extra and encouraged creative risk taking while still leaving time to do things the way we know we can do it. Who knows what kinds of mistakes we might make, learn from, and what great findings we could potential make.

Misuse Of Science In The Workplace

Wood Co. wants employees to get active

So close, and yet so far. People need to take breaks. People need to stand up and walk away from their desks every once in a while. Absolutely. And people shouldn’t take advantage of a policy that encourages them to do so, for their own health.

But to also focus on how managers need to make sure people don’t take advantage of this policy? What does that say to the employees? It says, “even though we want you to get up and move around, we only want you to do that for 3 minutes and we will be watching the clock”. What’s the difference between two fifteen minute breaks, ten three minute breaks, or thirty one minute breaks?

They all amount to the same total time, but the key is you can’t care about the time. If you care about employee health, you always care about employee health. Not just because one study said x. Are we going to encourage employees to drink 6 cups of coffee a day because studies show that decreases mortality… But shame upon the employee that takes a seventh cup!

Employees are not children (hopefully), and you can’t treat them as such without expecting it to come back to bite you.

Recruiting Kobe Beef

The High Cost of Treating Job-Seekers Like Cattle (via WSJ)

Short one today. The recruitment process is your employees first taste of who you are as a company (some companies get to people when they’re customer: Apple comes to mind). The way you treat people during the recruitment and selection process is what they come to expect. Treat them with respect, and they will see you to be respectful. Make them jump through hoops, and they will expect you to be annoyingly bureaucratic.

To keep the cattle metaphor from this article: Treat your cattle like just another thing you have to manage to get to a steak, and you get an average steak. Treat your cattle to good food, good drink and massages, you append up with a Kobe beef. It’s “garbage in, garbage out”.

So why don’t we emphasize the potential benefits of our selection process more?

Control and Reaction, separated at birth

When It Comes to Employee Health, More than an ‘Apple a Day’ is Needed (IO Psychology)

We need our health to be productive, and lots of factors act as mediators and moderators between organizational actions and employee health outcomes. Let’s assume the organization will do things that cause stress, because that’s kind of what organizations do. Why and how the organization introduces these stressors make a big difference in how it hits individuals.

Two factors in particular that make a strong difference are how much the employee has control over things that happen to them, and how they choose to react to things.

Control

There are natural variations in how much control over their lives people feel they have which is fairly stable over time (locus of control). However, the way things happen and how much information about how and why decisions were made have an impact as well. The article mentions different kinds of justice which can deal with this. Another important concept here is line of sight, or how well can we predict the rewards/punishments/outcomes of our actions? If I do X I expect Y. If I do X 3 times, and get two Y and a Z, I’ll be surprised. If I do X 3 times and get a Y a Z and a Grape Ape, I’ve got no clue what to expect and have no reason to expect a positive outcome from doing X.

Reactions

One important variable in the stress-health equation is our reaction. WARNING: MINDFULNESS TALK TO FOLLOW. What causes the negative outcomes is not the stressor, but our psychological reaction to it. Have you ever worked with someone who is annoyingly positive regardless of what happens? That. The “zen” thought here would be;

Mind Like Water

“Mind Like Water” is a phrase I picked up from David Allen. When you throw a pebble into a lake, the lake responds with a small splash and ripple. When you throw a larger rock in the lake, the lake responds with a larger splash and ripples. The point is, the lake responds appropriately to every action (Newtons 3rd law). And so we have control over our emotions, and can manage them through. We can regulate our experienced stress level, with practice and focus.