Tag Archives: Leadership

Here’s what’s wrong with the debate on remote work

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Ever since the pandemic, the debate on remote work been both fascinating and frustrating to follow. 
 
Before the pandemic, remote work was practically unheard of. Some organizations allowed it do different degrees, but on the most part it was rare. Then when the pandemic hit everything changed overnight. People weren’t allowed into the office and all of a sudden work that had been considered impossible to do remotely turned out not only to be possible, but actually worked quite well. People realized, that working from home offered a lot of flexibility and now, post-pandemic, most employees don’t want to stop doing it – at least part of the time.
 
Employers, on the other hand, feel differently, which really isn’t very surprising. Research has shown that managers found remote work during the pandemic to be much harder than other employees did. They couldn’t fall back on old management routines but had to come up with new ways of managing their teams when team members were no longer right there in front of them.
 
Now, post-pandemic, organizations have been trying to call their employees back to the office with varying success and some have even abolished the possibility of working remotely altogether. Employers argue that face time is crucial for innovation and development as well as for new recruits, which is true, but getting people to want to come into the office is still challenging. Some organizations set rules for when you have to be in the office, but no matter what they decide, people still aren’t happy. 
 
The on-going debate has been very black and white. Is remote work good or bad? Should people be allowed to do it or not? Yes or no? There are arguments for both sides that are valid, but the debate doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere. That is because it’s missing the point.
 
First of all, one problem is thinking about remote work in terms of how we used to think about work when everyone came into the office. Yes, it is true that innovation suffers if people don’t engage enough with each other. But this isn’t actually a problem of remote work, but rather an issue of leadership. If people work remotely, we need to make sure we create opportunities for collaboration and innovation. This is fully possible. We need to make sure we have routines for including new recruits in the community so that they feel welcomed and become part of the team. It doesn’t happen automatically just because we’re in the same building, but it certainly doesn’t happen if we don’t consciously make it happen when working remotely.  We need new routines for leadership and organization. Just like during the pandemic, we – both managers and employees – need to do things differently to make it work. 
 
The other thing that frustrates me is how organizations go about deciding what their policy for remote work should be. It seems that no matter what they decide, people are unhappy. What strikes me is that most organizations fail to see that remote working practices and policies are a question of organizational culture and any changes made with regards to ways of working should be treated as any organizational change. 
 
In order to get people on board with change you have to involve them in that change. On the one hand, you have to allow them to create their own understanding of why the change is necessary and, on the other, you have to let them be a part of the solution. If they actually feel the need to change and have been involved in developing new solutions and routines, they will naturally also be committed to them. 
 
The same goes for remote working practices. Those of you who grapple with this, have you talked to your employees about it? Have you asked them what their needs are? Have you involved them in thinking about what it is you want to achieve as an organization or as a team and what they best way to go about it is? It’s not just a question of how many days to work on and off site. It’s a question of what needs to be done how to best create solutions to achieve that. 
 
Some say people simply don’t want to come into the office anymore, but this really isn’t true. It’s just that they don’t want come in if they don’t feel like there is any point. People have seen what a positive impact working remotely can have on their lives and their wellbeing. 
 
Experiences change us and we can’t go back to the way it was before the pandemic. We can only move forward. Remote and hybrid work are here to stay in one form or another, and that is not a bad thing. They are an excellent way to provide employees with more flexibility and to create sustainable lifestyles and solutions for work. Office work isn’t a thing of the past either. 
 
We can figure this out, but we need to think about work a bit differently than we’re used to.

Nonsense work – let’s stop doing it! 

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I read an article the other day about nonsense work. This is the type of work that is completely unimportant and meaningless; work that no one notices or cares about. According to the article it can be things like selling products that no one wants or writing reports that no one needs. And it is very problematic because, as you can imagine, it is demoralizing, anxiety inducing, and chips away at your motivation and energy. 

Understandable. 

People generally want to live meaningful lives. No, you don’t have to love your job. A lot of people go to work just to get a pay check so that they can follow a passion outside of work. That’s fine. But if what you do is completely meaningless, it’s bound to have an impact on your sense of worth. 

It got me thinking. Nonsense work doesn’t necessarily only have to be about work that is completely meaningless. Also, for those of us with jobs that we find deeply meaningful, there can be elements of nonsense. But if there is a very big dose of it and if the degree of nonsense is disproportionately high, this nonsense work and the frustration it triggers really starts to get to you. 

One thing that I’ve learned on my own opting out and in journey, is that there tends to be a lot of nonsense work in the academic world. In Finland, we have very strict laws concerning universities and what they do. This means that there need to be operating procedures and routines that uphold the law. Unfortunately, as a result, a lot of academic organizations create routines that are astonishingly bureaucratic. 

This includes things like logging on to a program to click a button once a month confirming that you have indeed worked that month (preempted by an email from admin reminding everyone to do this plus reminder emails to remind those who forgot despite the initial reminder email). Then line managers go in and click to approve the initial click, approving hours that have been added by HR but are arbitrary because they do not reflect all the extra hours or weekend work that being an academic entails. And I’m sure there are reminder emails written for line managers too but that I don’t really know anything about because I’m not a line manager myself. 

Did I lose you? 

Don’t worry, understanding the minutiae of how I report my working hours isn’t the point here. It’s just one example of the nonsense work I do. 

Now, I do know that there are different ways of both interpreting and upholding the law. Things don’t have to be quite that bureaucratic in order to follow the rules. There are simpler ways (and this also includes reporting working hours). However, after about a decade and a half in the academic world, I also know that there isn’t much hope for me to change this in my own place of work. That in itself would be quite a formidable exercise in bureaucracy. 

But there is hope for you!

When faced with a task that takes time and energy, but that feels completely superfluous, question it. Does it really have to be this way? Is it really adding any value at all? Or is it just a complete waste of time?

If you answered no, no and yes, change it!  Let’s focus on more real work and less nonsense! 

Your people will thank you. Your organization will thank you.

Why are there so many bad bosses?

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Well, I can think of a few reasons. First of all, being a boss is hard. Leading a team or an organization takes skill. 

You may have heard the statement that people don’t leave companies, they leave bad bosses. Well that isn’t always true, but what is true is that a bad boss is one of the main reasons, if not the main reason, that people leave. And as we know, ever since the pandemic, people have been opting out in droves, and work-related mental health issues are at an all-time high. According to The Mental Health at Work Report 2022, three in four employees are experiencing mental health issues at work. 

But first, I want to say that there are a lot of really great bosses out there. For some it comes more naturally, and others have to work harder for it, but they are out there. The problem is just that there are a lot of bad bosses too, and bad bosses, without meaning to or even being aware of it, can really cause a lot of harm. 

So how do people become bosses in the first place? Often it is from being really good at what they do. A person without leadership responsibilities might be excelling at their job and then get awarded for that with a promotion to lead the team. So, a salesperson, for example, who is a wizard at sales is made head of the sales team because they are so darned good at selling. But being a wizard at sales is no guarantee that you are going to be any good at leading a team, or that you even like doing it. Do you see what I mean?

And there is a lot of prestige associated with leadership roles and having people report to you. So, people often accept the raise and the status without maybe thinking about what it really entails. 

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, but people do get leadership training to support them in their role. Yes, this is true, some do some don’t. And leadership training certainly helps. I encourage everyone who is in a leading position to get leadership training. 

But there is also something about our working cultures that doesn’t exactly foster the kind of skills and routines that you need to connect with your people.  In fact, studies have shown that there is a growing sense of disconnection in our workplaces and people are feeling lonelier than ever.

Organizational cultures tend to encourage us to push forward, be competitive and not show emotions. Business is business, right? It isn’t personal.

Wrong.

Business is personal. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s highly personal because we (employees) make up the business and we are all people. But because of this norm, we are encouraged to keep our personal lives separate and not show emotions at work, or at least only show the ‘right’ emotions. But, the thing is that what happens in our personal lives deeply affects how we act and perform at work. And vice versa, naturally. Also, when people aren’t allowed to bring their real, whole selves to work, it makes it really hard for them to realize their full potential. 

This is because we are whole human beings and as much as we are encouraged or would like to leave parts of our selves at the door, that’s actually not how it works. 

I just finished a book, HumanForce: The Power of Emotions in the Changing Workplace, and the author, Natalie Boudou, hits the nail on its head again and again. She talks about how we need stronger, more intelligent workplaces and how a strategy of greater emotional intelligence and openness is the key to successful leadership. It turns out that compassion and emotion, traditionally thought of as soft, fluffy bunny issues and words not generally used in conjunction with work, are in fact strategic issues that provide the key to healthy, creative, productive and competitive work places. 

Leaders simply need to be emotionally intelligent. If this doesn’t come naturally to you, and for most people it probably doesn’t, you need to work on it. It’s an acquired skill. And if you are a boss or a leader, you need to want to be around your people and connect with them. If you do, you will have a better sense of what they are going through and a better understanding of their needs, which will help you adapt your leadership style to different people in different situations. If you don’t, you’re not really being a leader. 

P.S. Read the book! You can find it here.

You can prioritize people and still be very successful

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I’m working on a book again. It’s another book on opting out, but this time it’s out of an organizational perspective. More specifically, I’m writing about what organizations need to do to create working environments that people won’t long to leave. Because studies have shown that a lot of people do. A lot of people dream about opting out.

The situation isn’t all bad. There are of course organizations that do great things and there are a lot of people who are happy in their jobs, that’s true. But it’s also true that organizations can be places of profound suffering. In the past 30 years or so, mental ill-health has skyrocketed, the main reason being work-related stress. Main factors include constant cost cutting and reorganizations, as well as work that is dehumanizing and where people are disrespected and not valued. Did you know that there is something known as Blue Monday? Apparently, people are more likely to have what is thought to be stress-related heart attacks on Mondays than any other day of the week. 

So, this book that I’m working on right now is part of my personal mission to change working life as we know it. 

While doing research for my new book, I stumbled across another book that made a really big impression on me. It’s a book by Rob Chapman and Raj Sisodia called Everyone Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family.

Rob Chapman is the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, a large American industrial company. When he became CEO of the company, he “threw away” traditional management practices like the ones you learn in business school and replaced them with what he calls “a truly human leadership”.

This spoke to me right away because I spend a lot of time telling anyone who will listen that business is personal (contrary to popular belief) simply because it’s about people. And people are personal. Companies love to say that their people are their greatest resource, but honestly, it’s a bit problematic to think of people this way. It’s kind of dehumanizing if you think about. 

Chapman gets this. His thinking is, why do we treat people at work differently than we do people we care about? If we say things at work that we wouldn’t say to our own children, for example, why do we think it’s okay to talk that way to someone else’s child? Chapman’s point is that everyone is someone’s child and everyone should be treated as such. Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect. 

According to Chapman, fostering a people-centric culture is to truly care about every human being whose life the company touches, be it employees, employees’ families, customers, suppliers, business partners… A people-centric culture is about including everyone (not just the very talented, everyone is needed and everyone wants to contribute), keeping them safe and sending them home fulfilled. It’s about respect, it’s about trust, it’s about listening to people, and it’s about treating everyone the same no matter where in the organization they are. 

This people-centric culture was implemented during a financial upswing and things were going well for company. Then when the financial crisis of 2008 hit it was really put to the test. Companies were laying people off everywhere to survive the sudden loss of business, but not Barry-Wehmiller. They were reluctant to do it because layoffs have a profound negative affect on people’s wellbeing. It’s affects them, their lives, their health and their whole families. Not only that, it also really affects the morale of those who don’t lose their jobs, which also affects business. So, they just really didn’t want to have to do that. 

What did they do instead? Well, they thought about what a family would do in a time of crisis. They wouldn’t kick some of the family members out to cut costs. Instead, they would all come together and pitch in in any way that they could so that everyone could make it through the crisis. And this is what they did. They treated the company like a family.

One thing they did was that they decided that everyone had to take a four-week furlough, including members of management. They had a system where everyone was allowed to take the time off when it suited them best. Also, if someone felt they wanted to or could afford it, they could take over some of someone else’s furlough if someone couldn’t afford taking that much time off without pay. When employees realized they weren’t going to lose their jobs, everyone pitched in and people felt committed to do what they could to save the company. They made it through the recession without letting a single person go and they came out of the recession strong, and also faster than the economy as a whole. Already in 2010, they made record earnings and decided to write every employee a check for the salary that they had given up to save the company. 

By the way, did you know that regular restructuring, downsizing and layoffs is a relatively recent phenomenon? It isn’t something companies started doing systematically until1990’s. I’ll leave you with this quote:

“Rightsizing, de-layering, business reengineering, streamlining… these are some of the other euphemisms for the now-routine business practice of eliminating jobs to improve profit. Downsizing has become a reflex response to business adversity…to preserve financial performance, raise investor confidence, and boost share price. We know of one company that deliberately over-hires when times are good so it can let people go and get a bump in the share price when it wants to… Simon Sinek puts it this way: “In the military, they give medals to those who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that other may gain. In business, we give bonuses to those that are willing to sacrifice others so that they may gain.””

                                                               (Chapman & Sisodia, 2015: 95)

If you want to hear Bob Chapman talk about this in his own words, google him. He’s all over the internet.