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Category: POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, WELLBEING & POETRY

Where are the system specialists in UK? The amber light for UK today

Published November 14, 2009 by Jo Jordan

EPS

If you are an accountant or financier, EPS means earnings per share. If you are a staff manager or systems designer, EPS means events, patterns, systems.

Events, patterns, systems

Here we are in November 2009, a good year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and two years after the run on Northern Rock.

Events

Each of those is an event. People on the front line had to respond. They stood in the queue to get their money out of Northern Rock. They carried their belongings in a forlorn cardboard box out of the Lehman building.

Events are about doing. What we do brings them about. What we do deals with their consequences, good or bad.

Patterns

Two banks going under (and later more) may or may not be part of a pattern. In this case, we have a pattern.

As soon as people made a “run” on Northern Rock, many of us will have asked, is the ea pattern? And if so, what shall we do about it?

Many of us sat down immediately to review the stability of our own banks. We checked out all the rules and moved our money about so all our eggs weren’t in one basket.

Patterns are about asking questions. Is a pattern emerging? If so, what are the forces behind the pattern? How will the pattern effect us? What does knowledge of the pattern allow us to turn it into an event ~ to do.

Systems

And as soon as we had moved our own assets to safety, we asked the next question: why? Why and how did we run our affairs so they led us to this peril? How was it that we missed earlier patterns and did not take evasive action earlier?

For ordinary people, systems are about pondering. And for some ranting and raving. Professional systems designers and staff managers review the information systems alert the people who “do” that something needs “doing”. We review the information systems that trigger, or failed to trigger, question. And we review the information we used to look for patterns.

Events, patterns and systems correspond to the three circles of managers.

Do-ers

On the front line are those that do. They need information to warn them of events and to manage events as they unfold.

Managers

One step back are managers. Their job is not to ask whether the doing is getting done ~ that is the job of doers. Their job is to look at patterns.

They might compile the information on whether the job is getting done and feed it to the frontline. But if the job is not getting done, they should ask whether the right information is being delivered at the right time.

System designers

A second step back are system designers ~ managers of managers. They neither control events nor deliver information directly.

They ask another question: will the system of doing, pattern detection and information give us the patten of events that we are able to manage?

Many people start to glaze over at this point.

What kind of work do you like to do?

Doing is busy and immediate

Most people work on the front line. They like it there. It is busy, active, sociable and very very immediate.

Good management works ahead of the action using information from days gone by

The old saying, though, is that without good governance, life is nasty, brutish and short.

Let me illustrate in everyday terms with the smallest act of good management. An irritation shared is usually quartered. When someone is carrying a heavy load, we stop to help. It takes us a few seconds and it makes a huge difference to easing their day.

When we have the right information at the right time and the right place, everyone is able to do more, more quickly. Manager might not carry the heavy loads themselves, but they will have alerted people that someone needs help, or found out whether the heavy load could have been broken into parts, or worked out whether it would be cost effective to get in some machinery.

Managers work ahead of the action by using information from days gone by. They still see what is happening. They see results and often dramatic results. But they are not doers.

Managers miss doing

In many organizations, managers come from the ranks of doers and they resent not being part of the old team. And they resent no longer having the thrill of immediacy. In some organizations, like universities, they resent the sharp loss of status because doers – those who do research – know that managers are unable to do.

In most organizations, managers also have the power to order, rather than advise, doers. Managers are also paid more.

Higher status & greater authority makes sense when we are unable to manage without first having been doers.

Increasingly though, it makes no sense at all for managers to be paid more than the people they manage. Take air traffic controllers, for example. They are unlikely to have been jet pilots. Air traffic controlling and flying planes are two different career paths which are learned and maintained separately. For very limited periods, air traffic controllers are able to give orders to pilots, but this is only a pragmatic arrangement. A system has been worked out where you “take a number and wait your turn”. Air traffic controllers are announcing the pilot’s turn ~ not telling them how to do their jobs.

We see instantly from this example that more people prefer to do ~ fly the plane ~ than control. That is how it should be. Nonetheless controlling is an important job for those who have the temperament to do it.

System designers are removed from the action but think up the system

And now you walk away, a little bored but satisfied that you understand it all. You’ve forgotten the system designers. Who thought up the system of air traffic control? Who investigates when something goes wrong?

Well, the third tier are widely despised! We don’t do. We don’t control. We are rarely seen until after the action and then only when things have gone wrong. We are the system designers and we come in two forms: the forensic – the after the event crew ~ and the designers.

Either way, our job is look at the system and ask whether it delivers a range of situations that are doable and controllable.

Obviously there are few of us. We aren’t needed every day.

The ongoing work of systems designers is seen more obviously in process plants. Highly qualified engineers design the plant and are on hand to advise when the process limps. When the system becomes luggable, or otherwise incomprehensible, the engineers are called in to reveal the more obscure ways of getting things to run smoothly again.

Design work is even more interesting because it is done ahead of time. Design work in human systems often attracts people who have a lot to say about the world. They don’t necessarily fit in well to systems work simply because the world rarely obliges us by doing what it is told!

Good systems designers are savvy. They leave plenty of room for the system to wrap itself round people and the way they do things. System designers have a good sense of side-effects, they have a sense of how long things take, and they understand the stop-and-go nature of human affairs.

But note, systems designers exist!  They’ve designed every thing you use. Banks. Post offices. Roads.

They check everything you use. There are engineers out there right now checking that the bridges are safe. There are doctors running medical “seeing ahead” to possibilities you cannot imagine. There are auditors checking businesses and banks to make sure your money is safe.

Where are the people who designed our systems?

What has puzzled me during the scandals of the last two years is that we haven’t heard much about the system designers – both designers and forensic investigators. I am not sure why we have this silence.

We are left with the impression that system specialists have been taken out of the system and the top level managers who are responsible for overseeing them haven’t being doing their job.

An amber light for the great system of the UK

For me, that is the greatest “system” amber light in UK today.

Why aren’t the system designers more visible?

Why don’t we point clearly to work units, to degree courses, to professions whose very job is to make sure life is doable and controllable?

Isn’t the lack of trust that people have in UK politicians precisely because they cannot see where decisions are made?

Who designs the system? Who checks that it is running? Point me to their offices!

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Can you stand up in front of 1000 people and state your personal elevator speech in 20 seconds?

Published November 14, 2009 by Jo Jordan

A personal elevator speech

When I taught at the University of Canterbury, my colleague Peter Cammock, would ask our class of 900 or so students, whether they could stand up and state their life purpose in a 20 second elevator speech.

Elevator speeches are hard to write at the best of times. When they are yours too, they are really hard.

Crafting our elevator speech

There are perhaps 5 things that are helpful to understand about elevator speeches that help us in this task

  • Structure
  • Resonance with our deepest beliefs
  • The story of where we have come from and where we are going
  • Our immediate influences
  • And what we are still not sure about

Structure of an elevator speech

An elevator speech is a mini-business plan. Or a mini-operational order. It has five parts.

  • Situation – the story that is bigger than us
  • Mission – that part of the collective story that we will write
  • Execution – the chunks of our mission that can be fulfilled as sub-missions
  • Administration – the resources that we need
  • Communication – how will we know how well we are doing and who should we tell

[SMEAC]

Resonance with our deepest beliefs

Our elevator speech is not about what we must do, or what other people expect us to do. Duty wears us out and is sure to wear out anyone who is listening!

Our elevator speech is about those dearly held beliefs that are vital and engaging. Our elevator speech is about what brings us alive, what we quickens our pulse, and what brings a light to our eyes. If only we could see that!

The key to finding this magical place is to look at our relationship with others. What is that we love to to do and others love us to do?

We are likely to find this place in our our work, which even if solitary, like painting, is sociable ~ it is for others to use and enjoy.

Who are these others? What were we hoping when we started our work? How do we, or how do we hope to bring the light to other people’s eyes that we want in our own?

It is here, a unique place for each of us, where we feel totally at home. It is here that we live wholeheartedly and we don’t have to plan. It is here that “our deep gladness and the world’s hunger meets”!

Our story

The curious thing about our stories is that so much of our lives are disappointing. What would you feel if you were a graduate in today’s UK facing 20% unemployment and debts from your education?

How would you feel if you were like me? Your country gone. Your house gone. Your career gone. Your life in disarray.

Well, whatever we feel, we should not disown our stories. Our stories give us perspective and the more we have lost, the more perspective we have. As a noobe in the UK, my rich paste and perspective is a gift to people in my new home. My very disappointment is what I have to enrich the lives of others.

Our influences

As I arrived in a new country, I felt muddled. Any disruption ~ a new job, a new house, new friends ~ might have confused me. Losing a country is just an extreme mutation of a general theme!

Slowly, we begin to make sense of what we contribute through our interactions. I do a lot of work on the internet and I was helped on my way by reading the Chief Happiness Officer, Steve Roesler, and Barbara Sliter.

My mission is to be happy

From the Chief Happiness Officer, I learned that my job is to be happy. I felt a bit silly, I must tell you, until I realised that happiness isn’t my vision. My happiness isn’t the bigger story or the shared story. My happiness is my mission.

My happiness is how I contribute to the shared story because happiness is contagious. Because I am a noobe. Because I have a rich past and my perspective on what is good and true at this time and in this place helps people around me fulfil their missions, whatever those missions may be.

My vision is a world where we are confident of our countries

I learned my vision from Barbara Sliter.

“We are ready for more: more meaning, more challenge, better environments, interesting work, balance of life. We are ready to be co-creators”.

I want to contribute to the world where our search for meaning is more legitimate, easier, likelier, just fun. Less hassle and more fun.

My vision, which I think is widely shared, is a world where people wake up with curiosity about what the day holds and sure that their contribution today makes their country great and their community great, their workplaces, schools and colleges thrive, and their families happy and warm places to be.

The execution

And I learned how to execute my mission from Steve Roesler. Steve suggested that employees must start the conversation. I am a work psychologist, so this is important to me.

My specific task in the next year or so is to learn, with other people, how to have these conversations, what it means to have these conversations, what are our choices when we have these conversations, and ultimately of course, what we have learned from these conversations and how they have evolved.

My immediate task, or rule-of-thumb, is to attend to my own conversation with work and people I work with ~”The way we hold the conversation” as David Whyte says.

I am not going to worry about what other people are doing. I am going to ask: does the way I hold my conversation about my work make me happy?

And then I will ask, if changing the way I hold the conversation makes me happy, does the conversation become better, fuller, richer, for other people around me? Do I fullfil my mission of being contagiously happy?

Our uncertainties

Like most people, I don’t say aloud, or post, what is really important to me. I wrote this post a good 18 months ago and I didn’t post it! But it was still in my drafts. Thank goodness for blogging! I wish I had posted it though. This is how far I have come.

I have pursued the vision and mission OK but I didn’t follow through the execution in a focused way. Imagine where I would be now if I had done so? Of course, I can do that now! With a little bit of thought, I can add the steps to be executed to other work that I am doing now!

Elevator speeches in brief!

And there we have it. Elevator speeches have a standard structure. We find out who and what we are in conversations including our work. Some people help us pinpoint what we are doing and where we are going.

We bring in our own story ~ as it is. Often our very disappointments which give us the perspective that others find valuable.

And then we must be bold enough to say what we are doing aloud!

Possibly I should add a step under execution:

Find more places to say my elevator speech aloud so that it gets better and crisper, shorter and more relevant.

I want to bring a light to other people’s eyes.

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Languishing? Hire a psychologist

Published November 14, 2009 by Jo Jordan

What to expect from your psychologist

If you make an appointment to see me, I am going to ask you the toughest questions of all time.  And I am not going to stop until you either run away, or, you tell me this

  • Which ring is you hat in?
  • Who is the critical mass of your believers?

The feisty & the “out-of-it”

In my work as a “work & organizational psychologist”, I work with basically two groups of people.

The feisty & decisive

The first group are feisty, decisive people who have a clear sense of where they’ve thrown their hat. They know what they are about and what they stand for.

People like their energy and gather around them. My job, in the busyness of it all, is to slow them down and get them to look after the critical mass of people around them – not all the time and not every day – but just from time to time.

The hatless, the ringless, the lost

The second group in the world are those who don’t know what they have done with their hat. They might have torn it up and put a little in several rings. They might have forgotten where they left it.

The hatless often masquerade as organized people. In fact, we may recognize them precisely because they accuse the feisty types of leaving their hats lying around!

The truth is they lost their own hat a long time back and they can’t commit to any ring until they remember where they left it! As Paolo Coelho said on Twitter the other day ~ Distrust people who like everything. Distrust people who like nothing.   Particularly distrust people who are indifferent to everything.

Their lives have become sad. They don’t trust themselves to choose a ring and throw in their hat. So no one trusts them. And because no one trusts them, they lose more faith in themselves.  If they know where they left their hat, they will not say.  They feel ashamed.

Trusting oneself, trusting others and being trusted, all three feed each other in a spiral that moves up and down quite quickly.

Tough-minded psychologists help you find your hat!

Tough words? Yes!  When we let people drift, we are not doing them any favours. This is where your tough-minded psychologist comes in.

We begin with you pitching up being prepared to work.  You signal your intent by paying. Nothing like some good money to focus your mind.

Then we get down to work.

Well what are you prepared to commit to? I want to see it.

I am your audience of 1 who won’t let you get away with 2nd best.

And that sets off a positive process. Fortunately, the whole process works as a spiral and it feeds off itself. Once you get going, you won’t need me for a long while.

You do it, not me

But I can’t do it for you. If I do it, you still haven’t committed to anything.  Until your hat, with your name on it, is in the ring for everyone to see, things won’t work for you.

I am your coach and cheer leader

My job is to get you going. To be your cheerleader as you pick a ring that you can cope with. To be there the first time you try. To celebrate with you and to cry with you. Just at the start.

We aren’t feisty or uncommitted in perpetuity

The two groups – the feisty and the uncommitted – don’t have permanent membership. If you have been in either too long, you probably need to get hold of your psychologist.

Just don’t choose a softy. Don’t chose someone who is themselves uncommitted to anything in particular.

Look for 100% commitment from your psychologist

The first thing you look for is whether the psychologist has thrown their hat in your ring. Are they behind you 100%?

If not, don’t waste a penny!  If their hat is not in your ring, nothing they do or say will work. That’s how it goes.

Start watching the hats and the rings. Be upfront and the world is upfront with you.

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Bless the baby boomers! Exploit the strategic pivot points!

Published November 14, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Annoyed by purveyors of the ‘way back machine’?

I am.  I shouldn’t listen to people who tout nothing but nostalgia seemingly unaware of what is happening now.  But if we don’t listen, we are in danger of losing touch ourselves.

Opportunities in other people’s dilatoriness

The big question, then, is how can I listen without just being dismissive or contemptuous?

I am tidying up my blog right now and I came across this sentence in a long post.

I would look for opportunity precisely at the point we say “I’m alright Jack”.

Exactly!.  If I am dismissing someone’s views for being out-of-date, then I am accusing them of being half-asleep.  If I am right, their customers aren’t being looked after very well. They’re mine for the taking!

Celebrate other people’s slowness!

So I will keep listening.  Every time I feel impatient and annoyed by what I consider to be uninformed and patent nonsense, I will

  • jot down the thought
  • think about who the person serves – who are their customers?
  • think about what their customers want and need
  • think about what I can deliver
  • and see if there isn’t a profit in my patience!

The opportunity is where someone is saying “I am alright Jack”.  That is the strategic pivot point!  What fun!

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Happiness, positive thinking, nonsense?

Published November 14, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Are you confused by the nature of happiness?  Or, by the usefulness of positive thinking?

This picture from Roy Goodman explains the essence of happiness.

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Happiness by Roy Goodman

The idea is to live happily.  Period.

Being successful, or getting somewhere, doesn’t make you happy.  Nor does being happy get you anywhere.   You just chose to be happy, or not, as you are getting somewhere.

Roy, the picture is linked to your Etsy site. If you object to your picture being displayed here, please me know.  Great picture.

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Are we doomed to repeat subprime crises – or could we manage better?

Published November 13, 2009 by Jo Jordan

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Subprime crises ~ again?

Umair Haque‘s article in the Harvard Business blog of yesterday nudged me to think through Donella Meadows 12 levers to change a system.

Umair thinks a lot of activity in Web2.0, or social media, is little more than a “sub-prime crisis”.  And implicitly, he argues that we will continue to have sub-prime crises until we improve our moral and ethic act.

I think we will continue to have sub-prime crises because it is possible for sub-prime crises to happen. What is possible is possible. We don’t control everything!

But we also don’t have to lurch from crisis to crisis.

Managing systems is a little more than just managing

My argument though is that we have to think more clearly.

  • We can think about systems as systems.
  • We can watch that we don’t confuse our individual behavior with system behavior.
  • We can understand the linkages between our individual behavior and system behavior ~ and work clearly on the linkages without confusing these with our emotional reactions to changes in system behavior.

Sadly, few of us are educated in systems thinking. Even fewer are fluent.

In the management world, we have long separated the work of the line (the people who do work) – from managers (the people who make the system) – from staff (the people who manage the managers).

  • It is very necessary for managers to think clearly about systems without  muddle the overall effect with what any one of us does. The art of management is also leveraging without exaggerating or underestimating any of levers.
  • And the staff – the managers of the managers – have their role in training managers and holding up a mirror of their behavior so they have accurate and timely feedback.

Next step in clarifying my thinking about systems

My next step is to review my current think with what Donella Meadows wrote on managing systems.

The subprime crisis is a good impetus to check the quality of our systems thinking!

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Not make toxic junk – not enough – nurture the polity

Published November 12, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Toxic junk

“The great challenge of the 21st century isn’t churning out more toxic junk – it’s learning to make stuff that’s not toxic junk.” So said Umair Haque in today’s Harvard Business Blog.

Pointless work

Umair’s challenge reminds me a science fiction book that I read years ago.  Some bright young man, working in a high rise building slowly worked out that the papers in his in basket, and every one else’s in basket, never left the building. They were working on a closed make-work system and the papers were designed to circulate endlessly without achieving anything in particular.

Most people know that they work in non-jobs. I’ve even asked people commuting on trains into London what they do.  Some people laugh outright and say nothing.  Others will tell me some detail – like how to maintain the railway tracks.  Few people refer to the bigger picture though.  They know where the water cooler is.  They know when they get paid.  They haven’t much of a clue about what their organizations do.  More importantly, they don’t care ~

  • They assume it is normal not care.
  • Feedback loops are very slow so they don’t see any consequences.

Provided money is paid into their bank accounts, they assume it’s fine not to care too much.

Empty lives ~ lives we cannot call our own

Sadly, most of us do not feel that we are able to live full lives.   And even if we wanted to care, do we have the understanding or the competence to manage systems?

Systems surprise us

Lets take the example of Facebook that Umair uses in his example.  Facebook grew out of a college-student prank.  I am sure many people think it is evil. Without knowing the facts, I am sure College Adminstrators thought that at first. Now they just send requests for donations!  Simply, Facebook is a good example of how good things come out of laziness or mischievousness.   Our drive to take short cuts can innovate.

The converse is also true.  Many of the people who are sleep-walking through non-jobs believe they are doing good.

Very simply, the interaction between the system as a whole and our individual actions is too complex for the one to be reducible to the other.

Systems must be managed as systems

We have to watch the system itself.  We need metrics for a system, and we have to understand its possible trajectories.

We have to understand the complex way individual actions interact with the system and the slowness of the feedback loop connecting the two.  Because of that slowness, individuals need feedback about their individual actions over and above the trajectory of the system itself and their effect on the system.  All three sets of information must be available.

Let’s use an example uncluttered with the emotion of who-did-what

Let’s take the weather.

Weather systems vary world over and predicting the weather varies.   In some countries, the weather is very predictable.  In others it is quite changeable.

I lived in a place where it only rained from November to March. In that time, we needed to

  • Grow all the food we needed
  • Collect all the water we needed for the dry months
  • Protect ourselves against too much rain (floods, in other words).

It was well known that in the north of the country, that the rains would fail in 1 year out of 3.  We would never know which year the rains would fail and if we were wise, we kept enough food and water for three years (1/27 or about 3% chance of running out).  There was still the possibility of a drought four years in a row.  So we needed a plan for that too.

Managing at system level

In the south, rains failed on average, every 2nd year – so they had to plan harder.  In the north, we knew the basic parameters and we knew we had to

  • build enough dams
  • move water around
  • store food
  • and build big drains because when it rained, it rained!  It came down in buckets.  The drains had to be massive.

We could mismanage this system easily.  A full dam looks like excess.  Why not use the water?  Why be so prudent?

We could blame shortage of water on climate change.  It could be true, but if we haven’t stored enough water for what we knew already, which was the average frequency of droughts ~ well what can anyone say?  Recklessness is recklessness.

The system can be managed at system level.  And should be.

Managing at individual level

Now let’s look at the actions we needed to take at individual level.  My individual actions will not affect the presence or absence of a drought!  It won’t affect the presence or absence of dams or drains either.  If I judge my individual actions by the state of the system, I will get confused and become helpless and inactive.

But if I know that the dams are insufficient and the price of water will be high during a drought, I can store water for gardening and non-drinking purposes like flush toilets.  That is a judgment I make as an individual. I can ask myself will I have enough water and what am I going to do about it?

Actually, the house I lived in was plumbed to use a reservoir of water collected from the roof, but the reservoir had been removed when adequate dams had been built.  So my decisions work both ways.  Sometimes the munificence in the system allows me to take no action.

The general rule is that I had a multiplicity of choices to make at individual level to ensure that I had sufficient water for my needs and i made my decisions by taking into account all the factors at the system level.

Managing at the collective level

We can also manage our collective response at system level by voting for more dams, or by cooperating or not cooperating with rules prohibiting sinking boreholes to use underground water, for example.

My individual action alone won’t influence the system but some of my individual actions have some influence on the system!

Acting effectively

Now that I understand the system and the actions available to me, I can decide what I am going to do to maximize my interests.  These are steps that I take.

  1. I learn the basic parameters of the system to be managed (enough water for three years).
  2. I judge the health of the system for myself (shall I keep my reservoir to collect rain water or not).
  3. I judge the state of the polity and figure out whether to engage to improve the system or not, as the case may be.
  4. I judge whether I will act against public interest and use underground water (for example).

Those are my choices.  Similar choices will exist for any system.

If I were to pick on any one feature that can be influenced to change the state of the system, it is the state of the polity.  If I cannot pull people together, I have to wonder what will happen to the systems.  Will they spin out of control, as they did with the banks, and if that happens what will I do then?

I think what Umair was trying to get across was that many people have already opted for 4. They don’t care and are cashing in and running ~ though it is not quite clear where. But then when we are deranged, do we need a ‘where’?  If that is what he meant, then I agree, and I think we should turn our attention to engaging effectively – to pulling people together.  That won’t stop disasters. After all, even in a healthy polity, we might still have 4 droughts in a row.  But we can be certain that in an unhealthy polity, we withdraw, we become apathetic, we don’t even try.

Managing systems

Time to cross reference with the work Donna Meadows has done on managing systems and the work Karl Weick has done on systems.  Enough for tonight while I look those up!

My three points are this

  • The systems as a whole must be monitored at system level
  • Our individual actions will be judged against a simple criteria of fulfilling our own needs
  • We also have some individual actions that affect the system.
  • Because our individual influence is weak, we should put our energies into building involvement in the polity.  The more people are engaged, they less they will behave cynically.

But nothing will insure against bad things happening.  The system happens at another level.  Paradoxically, when we understand that, we are more likely to manage our affairs in ways that system events don’t destroy us.

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Pull people together? No? Is the problem that you don’t believe in you?

Published November 12, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Down-to-earth expressions

I heard the expression “pull people together” today for the first time in a long time.  General Colin Powell used it ~ and he is a very down-to-earth man.

Down-to-earth actions

But how many of us have any ability to “pull people together”?  When was the last time that you “pulled a group together”?

  • What happened?
  • What needed to be done?
  • How did you focus their attention?
  • Why did they listen to you?
  • Why did they trust you?
  • How did you know they were listening and would continue to listen?
  • How did you thank them?

Why don’t you take the lead more often?

Is it because you don’t feel the group is together?

And if so, why don’t you pull them together?

Don’t you believe in them?

And if you don’t, why are you still part of this group?

Or is the problem, you don’t believe in you?

Despair

When you no longer believe in you, that is called despair.  You want to do something about that.  Really.  Start doing small things.  Little things.  Start listing what you love to do.  Start listing all the things in the day you would like to repeat.  Run some little, little, experiments.

Despair is amenable to repair, but you have to begin, and you have to begin small.

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Want efficiency? Make the space and time for people to be efficient.

Published November 12, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Chain-of-command

Imagine 6 000 students gathering in a hall and becoming a little rowdy.  The police arrive. The local Chief Constable arrives.   So does the head of the riot police.  Who is in charge?  Who decides what will happen?

Well, the riot police often think they are in charge because they are bigger and more powerful. The local Chief Constable is likely to assert him or herself, though, and say, “I am in charge in this place.  Everyone will take their instructions for me.”

Chain-of-command in business

We might think that this reasoning only begins in the uniformed services. But it is relevant in business as well.

At any moment, it is someone’s job to make a decision.  We should not get in their way. Even when we are bigger and more powerful, we may not have all the information we need to make a good decision.  Nor can we follow through.  We simply have no business making decisions that we will not see through to the very end.

Work & organizational psychologists and the chain-of-command

Work & organizational psychologists, or occupational psychologists as they are known in UK, or IO psychologists as they are known in the US, are well trained to identify who is making the decision and what information they need to make it.

We often have massive status but we should not get in the way of the people who are doing the work. We wouldn’t get in the way of a surgeon and we should not get in the way of anyone else either.

Work & organizational psychologists respect the skill of decision making in each and every job

The information that people use to make decisions is also not immediately obvious to us.  Skilled workers have mental models for organizing their work.  They have goals, they recognize information as signals, and they pick up information as feedback which tells them whether they are approaching their goals.  We don’t have their expertise and when we move things around, we can utterly muddle the way they organize information.  Taking a single piece of paper off someone’s desk can be akin to knocking out a a supporting wall of a house -whereupon, it all falls down.

When we are working in someone elses workplace, we are trying to read what they are noticing, what they are responding to, and what they are trying to achieve.  None of this may be obvious particularly if they’ve been doing the job for a long time.

Work & organizational psychologists do not set up goals or targets for other people

Setting up goals or targets for skilled people is utterly absurd. When we do so, we imply that they have no mental models or expertise to organize and to bring into being a smoothly operating system.

Setting up targets shows incompetence on our part.

Goals & targets are set up in basic professional training

The time to set goals and targets is during professional training.  At that point people are learning what information is available and how it comes together into a working system.

Everything we do thereafter needs to recognize that organization or requires a hefty reinvestment.  We will always look first to see if we can wrap a system around skill models before we take that route.

So how do we work out how people make decisions?

  • We watch what they do.
  • We watch how they respond to different situations.
  • We notice what irritates them because that tells us their efficient operations have been disrupted.
  • When it is safe to do so, we interrupt and listen to their inner talk as they try to remember where they are in a complicated process!

And above all, we are patient.

The people we are working with may have inefficient habits.  But, it is much more likely that they have deep professional considerations for what they are doing.

Our job is to broker boundaries and space for people to do their work

Our first obligation as psychologists is to broker the space in the organization for people to follow the logic of their trade or profession.

Are we doing that?  Are we adequately setting the boundaries and making the space and time for people to be effective?

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Happiness getting confused with the pleasure of meanness

Published November 11, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Zimbabwe's 'funny money': old and new currency
Image by Sokwanele – Zimbabwe via Flickr

I’ve just read this on  a university chat board:

If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich?

Sadly, our first impulse is to try to answer the question.

Then we do a double take.  Are we trying to sell happiness?  Aren’t happiness and money two different currencies?

Then we get the real meaning.  What would you do that would make your friends jealous?

Happiness is not consistent with raw competition.

Happiness is consistent with good ‘sportsmanship’ and fair play, yes.  We can  be competitive when competitiveness is kept within the bounds of pleasure and fun.  As soon as winning becomes so important that we care neither about how we behave nor how our actions impact others, as soon as competition becomes excluding, then happiness is inconsistent with the project.

When happiness means oneupmanship that is not happiness.  It is just the pleasure – the pleasure of meanness.

When we win we should be deeply grateful to the losers

This one always baffled my students.  When we win, we should be grateful to the losers, for without their willingness to engage in a race with us, we could not win.  The three cheers for the losing team is not a ritual.   When the three cheers  is not longer more important than the game itself, then maybe we should stop playing the game.

People won’t play when the refereeing is bad

When a game gets too rough, in it or in the consequences after the finish, people stop playing.  They simply won’t come back.

We can bribe some greedy players to take part, true.  The world is a big place and if we have enough money, we can always find enough people who are unscrupulous, unsightful, greedy or masochistic.

Sometimes we are dazzled by their participation to think that something is acceptable. After all, why not take the money and worry about the morality later?

Go on, then.  Do it.  But when you come back to play with us, remember that we will not necessarily be impressed by your spoils.  We won’t give you a headstart in our game when you return ~ because headstarts are not what it is about. Fitting in is what it is about.  Taking part is what it is about.  Playing a game that everyone enjoys is what it is about.

If you don’t fit in now

If you don’t fit in now, you won’t fit in later just because you ran away to prove you could do something.

You have three choices:

  • Stay and make your way with us by fitting in.
  • Leave and find a group where you fit in and you feel you can be loyal and they to you.
  • Leave and take part in a race where winning and losing is what it is about ~ but enjoy the race for its own sake.  No one else will be impressed.  They aren’t impressed that you won it. They want to win to lord it over you. Get it?  So if you race, just enjoy it.

Race for the sake of it, not for the sake of money or happiness

So race because you want to.  Don’t race to get rich or to be happy or to impress anyone.

And if you enjoy the race so much, do it here!  Now!  If you just like racing and you don’t want to hurt anyone, they will enjoy your enjoyment and you will fit in.

And if someone insists on racing .  .  .

But if someone is racing against you and hurting you, if you cannot protect yourself, if your really, really cannot, then maybe it is best to leave and find a place where you can be yourself.

Leave to do what you must do but not because of them. Leave them to their misery and meanness

Happiness is just not competitive

Really it is not.  It is about finding a group where you are loyal to them and them to you.

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