I start this week with good news. The lift in my top secret bunker I referred to a few weeks back is now working. I never knew that Cicero had the power to move the State security apparatus in this way.
As a regular reader of my warm wit and wisdom, you will know, that despite spending all my life in some of the finest towns and cities in this green and pleasant land, I have a great love for country folk and for the country. You will also know that I think there are many lessons we can learn from those who labour long and hard to put food on our tables. And this week is going to be no exception.
I have just come across a report from researchers at Newcastle University which claims that cows that are given a name can produce up to 284 litres more per year compared to cows not given a name by Farmer Giles. As the leader of the research team said ‘ just as people respond more to the personal touch, cows also feel happier and more relaxed if they are given a bit more one to one attention’. And such strategies also work for pigs and sheep and for poultry.
It is good to see that the hard earned taxpayers’ pound was being deployed in such ground-breaking research. Forget a cure for cancer, now we know that all farming folk need to do to increase production and productivity is to give their stock names like Daisy, Ermentrude or even Nichola. Problem solved. And to think you get PhDs for this. I suppose it beats working and making sure that state safety and security is protected. I must ask my farming friends what they think of such research and whether or not they will be rushing out to buy name tags for their bovine, ovine and porcine produce.
But before we dismiss and rubbish such work completely, maybe there is some learning we can apply to others of the animal kingdom. Us. And not surprisingly I believe that the lessons applicable on the farm can also be applied to every other work place and across the species barrier. For me this learning works in two ways.
Firstly I firmly believe that the more we can get up close and personal to our customers, the more productive they will be to our business. Now this does not mean that we need to try to be their best friend but does mean we should recognise them as individuals with an identity; that we should speak to them across all our human and written touch points in a way which is warm, human and adult; and wherever possible show that we know them, who they are and we understand the nature of the relationship our customers have with us.
There are some simple things we can do to give our customers that personal touch. We can stop addressing letters ‘Dear Customer’ and ending with an indecipherable corporate squiggle. People deal with people and like doing so
We could ensure that we ask for names before asking for a number when dealing with our customers. And how about using active verbs and personal pronouns when writing our customer facing material. Hardly radical or difficult stuff but simple to do and a start on helping make our customer relationships as productive as Daisy the Cow or Nichola, the pretty little spring lamb. And please share with me and my devoted and interested readers any other tips to help improve milk production and/or customer productivity.
And there’s more.
For what works with customers and cows, might also work with our people. Does something happen when we cross the threshold of our business that stops us being human and stops us finding ways to demonstrate the personal touch to those we lead, those we work with?
Again why is it that the first thing we always get asked for us is our employee number rather than our name? Why is it that our business communicates with our people and us like we were androids? Again the use of some personality in our communications with our people may go a long way to humanising the businesses we work in. Do we take time out to say thank you, to celebrate individual and team success, to remember significant events in the lives of our people? It may come as a surprise to many, though not you of course, that our people do have lives and that they are exactly that, people-not employees, not staff, not human resources.
Again not difficult, not radical, not rocket science.
And as I have said many times before let’s not wait for them. Let’s start with ourselves and that part of our business we can influence. And let us become the change we want to see in the world around us.
And maybe that PhD research was not wasted after all. Maybe it’s not just about extra pintas, more rashers of streaky bacon or better woolly jumpers from calling our farm animals Daisy, Ermentrude or Nichola. Maybe we should look closer to home for the real benefits.
Is it just me?
You may or not know, you may or not care, but most mornings and evenings I can be found cycling into and out of my new office. The other day I was stuck at some road junction or other behind a White Van and its White Van Man driver. And on the rear of this particular White Van was a plea to be told how WVM was driving accompanied by a phone number.
I know this is not an unusual request on many trucks and lorries but it made me wonder if anyone had ever rung one of these numbers. What happens if you do? Does anyone even answer the phone? What did they say? I am so intrigued to know that next time I see one of these requests for feedback, and if I should happen to have pen and paper to hand to jot down the phone and registration number, I am going to provide feedback, good or bad. I will keep you posted.
As always have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
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Saturday 25 April 2009
Saturday 18 April 2009
Time to stop doing dumb things!
For this week, and for one week only, Cicero is not going to speak but to rant. Forgive me but I need to get something serious off my chest.
But I want to rant in a constructive way as is Cicero’s wont. My rant is designed to make a point to those of us who want our businesses to succeed. And I am also hoping that the company which is the subject of my ire and splenetic rage may, if I am lucky, hear my angst and fury through their blog monitoring and alert services and address the problem so that some other sucker does not experience what I experienced.
I am so raging with customer dissatisfaction and splenetic rage that I am going to break the habit of a lifetime and name the subject of my ire. It is Abbey. And I want them to know that I will no longer be acquiring the Abbey habit.
To start with did want to say ole and si, si to their blandishments. What transpired was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions that it inspired a play, ‘A Comedy of Errors’.
I will spare you all the details of my attempts to become an Abbey customer but one small episode should suffice to illustrate Abbey’s poor thinking and low levels of customer centricity.
According to my Iberian amigos I had not supplied with them with a crucial piece of information needed to open an account. This only occurred to them 4 weeks into the account opening process and after 4 weeks of my subtle blend of cajoling and pleading and chasing. Now in this day and age, and knowing how keen I was to help shore up Abbey’s balance sheet with my liquid funds, you would have thought they might try to get in touch with me soonest. We now have the technology to facilitate this.
But no.
They sent me a letter. And not just any letter but one sent to me by a class of mail which meant that it took 9 days to get to me. Hardly an organisation keen to help me as expeditiously as possible, keen to help me get up and running, keen to make it easy as possible for me to do business with them. And to cap it all the form they needed to send me was not even enclosed.
This was the last straw for me and I told them where they could put their account. And by a delicious irony the letter confirming that my account was now closed and the return of the cheque I sent them to open the account, was with me the next day. A business clearly more proficient at closing accounts than it is at opening them. Brilliant. Don’t you agree?
So what lessons can we draw from this.
Well there is the obvious lesson that if you want to open an account, don’t go to Abbey. But for me the key lesson for us all is to ensure that we are in same business as our customer. For me, as for you, opening a bank account is a means to an end. We open bank accounts to help us live our lives. For Abbey and its people thought they were in the business of processing application forms. This was an end in itself and procedures and processes must be followed at all costs even when these do not dovetail to deliver what the customer wants. Writing a customer service strategy is easy-do it quicker, do it more accurately and do it cheaper. QED.
Abbey’s people failed to look at their jobs from the customer’s point of view. They were not walking in the customer’s footsteps but expected the customer to follow in theirs. For any business this is the wrong way round. I hope Abbey has now learnt its lesson from Cicero. And for a fee, Cicero would be more than happy to help get their account opening processes as sharp and as crisp as their account closing processes. They do close accounts brilliantly..
I read recently that today’s customer service and satisfaction theories are urging businesses to forget trying to delight or even satisfy customers but instead are telling them to focus all their efforts on fixing things that put customers backs up or which even drive them away. In other words customer satisfaction is easy….just stop doing dumb things to customers.
Are you listening, Abbey?
Rant over. Is it just me?
This week I am going to spare the eco -and environ-mentalists and even the trolley dolly brigade, my questioning scepticism and ask if anyone can tell me what exactly is ‘a traffic investigation’?
I only ask because after the recent Bank Holiday and what seemed like carnage on the roads, there would be appear to be a growing trend for roads to be closed for hours and even days for at least one county length either side of the site of the accident for ‘accident investigation’.. What are they investigating that takes so long? What happens to the results of these investigations? Does anyone care about the log jam of traffic caused by these investigations? I get the impression that no one seems to be in a great hurry to conclude these investigations and to get the roads back to normal.
It occurs to me that in olden days the ambulance would turn up to cart away the injured; the fire brigade to douse the petrol with foam; and the police to breathalyse and to take statements. And all this would be done on the hard shoulder while traffic whizzed by. Roads would only be closed to sweep up debris and for as short a time as possible. But now we have these Traffic Officers in cars that look like police cars but aren’t really, and roads get closed for an age while investigations take place real time. I wonder if this is a coincidence. Or is this an example of Cicero’s’ Law which states that work expands to occupy the amount of people there are involved?
If anyone can help enlighten me please do let me know.
As always have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
But I want to rant in a constructive way as is Cicero’s wont. My rant is designed to make a point to those of us who want our businesses to succeed. And I am also hoping that the company which is the subject of my ire and splenetic rage may, if I am lucky, hear my angst and fury through their blog monitoring and alert services and address the problem so that some other sucker does not experience what I experienced.
I am so raging with customer dissatisfaction and splenetic rage that I am going to break the habit of a lifetime and name the subject of my ire. It is Abbey. And I want them to know that I will no longer be acquiring the Abbey habit.
To start with did want to say ole and si, si to their blandishments. What transpired was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions that it inspired a play, ‘A Comedy of Errors’.
I will spare you all the details of my attempts to become an Abbey customer but one small episode should suffice to illustrate Abbey’s poor thinking and low levels of customer centricity.
According to my Iberian amigos I had not supplied with them with a crucial piece of information needed to open an account. This only occurred to them 4 weeks into the account opening process and after 4 weeks of my subtle blend of cajoling and pleading and chasing. Now in this day and age, and knowing how keen I was to help shore up Abbey’s balance sheet with my liquid funds, you would have thought they might try to get in touch with me soonest. We now have the technology to facilitate this.
But no.
They sent me a letter. And not just any letter but one sent to me by a class of mail which meant that it took 9 days to get to me. Hardly an organisation keen to help me as expeditiously as possible, keen to help me get up and running, keen to make it easy as possible for me to do business with them. And to cap it all the form they needed to send me was not even enclosed.
This was the last straw for me and I told them where they could put their account. And by a delicious irony the letter confirming that my account was now closed and the return of the cheque I sent them to open the account, was with me the next day. A business clearly more proficient at closing accounts than it is at opening them. Brilliant. Don’t you agree?
So what lessons can we draw from this.
Well there is the obvious lesson that if you want to open an account, don’t go to Abbey. But for me the key lesson for us all is to ensure that we are in same business as our customer. For me, as for you, opening a bank account is a means to an end. We open bank accounts to help us live our lives. For Abbey and its people thought they were in the business of processing application forms. This was an end in itself and procedures and processes must be followed at all costs even when these do not dovetail to deliver what the customer wants. Writing a customer service strategy is easy-do it quicker, do it more accurately and do it cheaper. QED.
Abbey’s people failed to look at their jobs from the customer’s point of view. They were not walking in the customer’s footsteps but expected the customer to follow in theirs. For any business this is the wrong way round. I hope Abbey has now learnt its lesson from Cicero. And for a fee, Cicero would be more than happy to help get their account opening processes as sharp and as crisp as their account closing processes. They do close accounts brilliantly..
I read recently that today’s customer service and satisfaction theories are urging businesses to forget trying to delight or even satisfy customers but instead are telling them to focus all their efforts on fixing things that put customers backs up or which even drive them away. In other words customer satisfaction is easy….just stop doing dumb things to customers.
Are you listening, Abbey?
Rant over. Is it just me?
This week I am going to spare the eco -and environ-mentalists and even the trolley dolly brigade, my questioning scepticism and ask if anyone can tell me what exactly is ‘a traffic investigation’?
I only ask because after the recent Bank Holiday and what seemed like carnage on the roads, there would be appear to be a growing trend for roads to be closed for hours and even days for at least one county length either side of the site of the accident for ‘accident investigation’.. What are they investigating that takes so long? What happens to the results of these investigations? Does anyone care about the log jam of traffic caused by these investigations? I get the impression that no one seems to be in a great hurry to conclude these investigations and to get the roads back to normal.
It occurs to me that in olden days the ambulance would turn up to cart away the injured; the fire brigade to douse the petrol with foam; and the police to breathalyse and to take statements. And all this would be done on the hard shoulder while traffic whizzed by. Roads would only be closed to sweep up debris and for as short a time as possible. But now we have these Traffic Officers in cars that look like police cars but aren’t really, and roads get closed for an age while investigations take place real time. I wonder if this is a coincidence. Or is this an example of Cicero’s’ Law which states that work expands to occupy the amount of people there are involved?
If anyone can help enlighten me please do let me know.
As always have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
Friday 10 April 2009
The lift is up where we belong
Welcome back and I hope you had a great Easter.
Please don’t think I am getting obsessed with lifts. You will know that barely two weeks ago I was talking about lifts and the need for us all to have our lift conversations to hand, ready and primed for use. I want to return to the questions of lifts again today but in a different context.
I am inspired this week by the works of Matthew Parris. I don’t mean the 13th century Benedictine monk, author and philosopher, though he does provide plenty of inspiration, but the equally inspirational 21st century columnist of The Times. I will come back to him in a moment but first let me tell you a story.
As I have explained to you before I am now sharing my marketing and business wisdom with an unnamed department of an unnamed government dedicated to ensuring safety and security for all its citizens. I would love to share more with you but I am sure you will understand the need for security and sensitivity.
In the building in which I ply my trade there is a lift and for as long as I have worked there, all of 4 weeks, this lift has been out of order. And not once have I seen anyone working on it trying to get it going. And according to the apparatchiks who have dedicated their whole career to serving the State and its citizens, this lift has been broken since at least the start of the year. I cannot say any more about this lift and even to disclose that there is a broken lift might be putting at risk my career and you would not want that, would you?
As is my philosophy I have picked up the napkin and reported it broken and tried to find out when it might be fixed. No one knows. No one cares. No one is it all fazed by fact that the lift has been marked ‘out of order’ for so long. Indeed people are more fazed that I should be so concerned.
Well I am concerned.
As I have said so many times before, everything communicates. To me, a broken lift that has been marked unusable for so long, says an organisation that can’t be bothered, that it doesn’t care, that it couldn’t give a monkey’s how it is perceived by its people, by its customers, by its stakeholders.
And I know that it does care but it is not communicating this thought at all times and across all touch points. In my book, if you get the small things right then the big things will surely follow. If you remove the interferences and barriers and excuses to great work then you get great work. It is that simple.
So where and how does Matthew Parris fit in?
Well my broken lift reminded of his experience of a squeaky door at Derby station which squeaked and squeaked to the annoyance and irritation of staff and customers, aka passengers, alike. All noticed but no one cared enough to fix it. And his solution was to develop a new branch of management consultancy and investigation.
Instead of businesses being subjected to major management investigation or scrutiny on the big issues, when it thinks it might be good practice to take a long hard look at itself, or when something big has gone horribly wrong to identify what went wrong, what lessons can be learnt, who should be blamed, it might be a much better idea ‘to zoom in with massive management attention to something trivial that went wrong, something just so blindingly, obviously silly that no one in their right mind could possibly defend it…..an investigation into how and why the indefensible was tolerated’.
And so going back to my broken lift, just think of the key questions needing answered;
Who knew?
Were there communication channels in place to bring the broken lift to attention of a higher authority?
Who should have shouldered responsibility for fixing? Why didn’t they?
Were people confident that their request to have lift fixed would be taken seriously or were they in despair and give up?
Etc, etc
I am pretty sure that such an approach to corporate investigation would reveal far more to an organisation about itself. The solutions would be easier to fix and maybe just maybe demonstrate and communicate better and more appropriate and relevant messages to all who work there and all who want to do business with it.
And so I ask and call upon you yet again to find and try to fix your broken lifts to help make your business a better place for your people and for your customers. As someone much more intelligent than even I, once said ‘you can become the change you want to see in the world’. Or as Bob the Builder said in similar vein, and who else can link Ghandi to Bob the Builder in the one paragraph, ‘Can we do it? Yes, we can’
And now for your favourite piece of this column……is it just me?
I have had a complaint from an eco mentalist who wants to know why I am always having a go at them. Well you will be pleased to know that yet again I want to ponder out loud about an eco mentalist absurdity and enviro mentalist illogicality.
The Green Brigade are always going on about the need to invest in renewable energy such as wind farms and solar energy. Has it never occurred to anyone that in this country at least it is not always windy or even sunny? This might come as a surprise to the eco warriors but I am sure that if you check with our meteorological media lovelies you will find that I tell no lie. This means that if we want to have 20% of our energy needs met from sources like this we also have to invest in traditional so called non green energy sources to make sure our lights don’t go out and our heating switch off when our weather takes a turn for the better or the worse, depending on your point of view.
So not only do we still need the energy sources that are seen as the Devil’s work, we also need to pay for all this surplus energy capacity. And there is only one person who is going to pay for this. Yes, you got it, you and me. Am I right or am I wrong? It is surely no coincidence that the word ‘mental’ is embedded in ‘environmentalism’.
I await more complaints
Have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
Please don’t think I am getting obsessed with lifts. You will know that barely two weeks ago I was talking about lifts and the need for us all to have our lift conversations to hand, ready and primed for use. I want to return to the questions of lifts again today but in a different context.
I am inspired this week by the works of Matthew Parris. I don’t mean the 13th century Benedictine monk, author and philosopher, though he does provide plenty of inspiration, but the equally inspirational 21st century columnist of The Times. I will come back to him in a moment but first let me tell you a story.
As I have explained to you before I am now sharing my marketing and business wisdom with an unnamed department of an unnamed government dedicated to ensuring safety and security for all its citizens. I would love to share more with you but I am sure you will understand the need for security and sensitivity.
In the building in which I ply my trade there is a lift and for as long as I have worked there, all of 4 weeks, this lift has been out of order. And not once have I seen anyone working on it trying to get it going. And according to the apparatchiks who have dedicated their whole career to serving the State and its citizens, this lift has been broken since at least the start of the year. I cannot say any more about this lift and even to disclose that there is a broken lift might be putting at risk my career and you would not want that, would you?
As is my philosophy I have picked up the napkin and reported it broken and tried to find out when it might be fixed. No one knows. No one cares. No one is it all fazed by fact that the lift has been marked ‘out of order’ for so long. Indeed people are more fazed that I should be so concerned.
Well I am concerned.
As I have said so many times before, everything communicates. To me, a broken lift that has been marked unusable for so long, says an organisation that can’t be bothered, that it doesn’t care, that it couldn’t give a monkey’s how it is perceived by its people, by its customers, by its stakeholders.
And I know that it does care but it is not communicating this thought at all times and across all touch points. In my book, if you get the small things right then the big things will surely follow. If you remove the interferences and barriers and excuses to great work then you get great work. It is that simple.
So where and how does Matthew Parris fit in?
Well my broken lift reminded of his experience of a squeaky door at Derby station which squeaked and squeaked to the annoyance and irritation of staff and customers, aka passengers, alike. All noticed but no one cared enough to fix it. And his solution was to develop a new branch of management consultancy and investigation.
Instead of businesses being subjected to major management investigation or scrutiny on the big issues, when it thinks it might be good practice to take a long hard look at itself, or when something big has gone horribly wrong to identify what went wrong, what lessons can be learnt, who should be blamed, it might be a much better idea ‘to zoom in with massive management attention to something trivial that went wrong, something just so blindingly, obviously silly that no one in their right mind could possibly defend it…..an investigation into how and why the indefensible was tolerated’.
And so going back to my broken lift, just think of the key questions needing answered;
Who knew?
Were there communication channels in place to bring the broken lift to attention of a higher authority?
Who should have shouldered responsibility for fixing? Why didn’t they?
Were people confident that their request to have lift fixed would be taken seriously or were they in despair and give up?
Etc, etc
I am pretty sure that such an approach to corporate investigation would reveal far more to an organisation about itself. The solutions would be easier to fix and maybe just maybe demonstrate and communicate better and more appropriate and relevant messages to all who work there and all who want to do business with it.
And so I ask and call upon you yet again to find and try to fix your broken lifts to help make your business a better place for your people and for your customers. As someone much more intelligent than even I, once said ‘you can become the change you want to see in the world’. Or as Bob the Builder said in similar vein, and who else can link Ghandi to Bob the Builder in the one paragraph, ‘Can we do it? Yes, we can’
And now for your favourite piece of this column……is it just me?
I have had a complaint from an eco mentalist who wants to know why I am always having a go at them. Well you will be pleased to know that yet again I want to ponder out loud about an eco mentalist absurdity and enviro mentalist illogicality.
The Green Brigade are always going on about the need to invest in renewable energy such as wind farms and solar energy. Has it never occurred to anyone that in this country at least it is not always windy or even sunny? This might come as a surprise to the eco warriors but I am sure that if you check with our meteorological media lovelies you will find that I tell no lie. This means that if we want to have 20% of our energy needs met from sources like this we also have to invest in traditional so called non green energy sources to make sure our lights don’t go out and our heating switch off when our weather takes a turn for the better or the worse, depending on your point of view.
So not only do we still need the energy sources that are seen as the Devil’s work, we also need to pay for all this surplus energy capacity. And there is only one person who is going to pay for this. Yes, you got it, you and me. Am I right or am I wrong? It is surely no coincidence that the word ‘mental’ is embedded in ‘environmentalism’.
I await more complaints
Have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
Tuesday 7 April 2009
The most fun you can have with your clothes on!!!
I don’t know about you but I spend an inordinate amount of my time either at work or getting to work or even thinking about work. I know, I’m sad, very sad. But I don’t think I am unique and I would challenge you to tot up the amount of time in any given week you spend on work related matters. The answer might surprise you.
And so I have come to the conclusion that if I am going to spend that amount of time gainfully employed I am damn well going to enjoy it and I am going to try my hardest to make sure that those around me enjoy work as well.
For me work ought to be the most fun you can have with your clothes. I will leave it to your imagination to determine what is the most fun you can have with your clothes off. That is not my responsibility.
It might run counter to our Calvinist work ethic, and believe me, given my Pictish and Caledonian background, there are few more Calvinist than me, but I firmly believe that the more fun you can create at work the more motivated and engaged our people are. After all we manage people with hopes, fears and emotions not robots or machines. And if laughter is what distinguishes us from animals then why not utilise this unique gift in the workplace. Surely we all want to do our best work in an environment which is human and humane, don’t we?
Now I am not suggesting that our offices should be a laugh a minute environment with a clown in one corner and a stand up comic in the other. But as leaders, no matter the environment or management structures or culture we find ourselves in, it is our job to create a human and relaxed environment for our people that they might give their best and produce great work.
So as a leader in title or by popular acclaim do you do any of the following?
Celebrate birthdays and other significant events in someone’s life
Celebrate success
Wander around the office and speak to your team, even the most junior
Show an interest in their work and ask questions about it
Find a way to share a joke, a laugh, a smile
Be self deprecating about yourself
And if you do all of these things then your place must be a great place to work and I want to come and work for you. It could be fun.
You might be a leader, the manager, the boss, but you are still a member of the human race so be human, be humane.
And there’s another reason why I think it is important that we learn to have fun.
When we were children, and even I was a child once though these days I can barely recall those carefree days of endless summers and absence of health and safety rules, we learnt and developed through play. The sandpit was our classroom, paints and glue our personal development programme, and Play School and its geometric windows our MBA. So what happened? At what age were we when we decided that, or it was decided for us, that play was now a waste of time and energy and not relevant to us anymore.
Balderdash.
Play and channelled fun can be a source of great creativity. The suspension of disbelief that goes along with play techniques allows us to explore new opportunities and allows us to break free from the surplus society that produces a surfeit of similar ideas.
Actors use play techniques to create; visit an ad agency and you will find rooms devoted to encouraging people to play; and some of the biggest brands in the world built on creativity and imagination, brands like Sony, Apple and Hewlett Packard, constantly challenge their people to do the normal and mundane and the similar in new interesting and innovative ways designed to encourage creativity and innovation.
I heard of one company who held a meeting on the London Eye to crack an issue and the solution had to be found in one full revolution. And they did.
So tomorrow, make a vow right here and now, to do what you can to make your workplace or workspace, the most fun you and those around you are going to have with your clothes on. Don’t ask for or seek permission. Don’t wait for someone else to go first. Don’t put off because it’s not the culture of your place. As someone far greater than me once said ‘you can become the change you want to see in the world’. Go for it and let me know how you get on. I await your stories and feedback.
Now is it just me?
I have to let you know that I am getting more than a little fed up with the constant preaching and hectoring of the eco and enviro-mentalists. It now seems that they are even telling me what kind of light bulbs I must buy. It is alright for me to strain and damage my eyes to read in the dim glow of the new eco friendly light bulbs just as long as the polar bears have an ice floe on which to perch.
Is it only me who thinks a nice dose of global warming might be good for us? Heating bills would reduce, a considerable help to hard pressed families and those on fixed incomes. And if we need less power to heat our homes there will be less need for the coal fired and nuclear power stations which the eco mentalists see as the Devil’s work. Am I the only one who sees things like this?
Have a great week. And, if I don’t speak to you beforehand, have a great Easter.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
And so I have come to the conclusion that if I am going to spend that amount of time gainfully employed I am damn well going to enjoy it and I am going to try my hardest to make sure that those around me enjoy work as well.
For me work ought to be the most fun you can have with your clothes. I will leave it to your imagination to determine what is the most fun you can have with your clothes off. That is not my responsibility.
It might run counter to our Calvinist work ethic, and believe me, given my Pictish and Caledonian background, there are few more Calvinist than me, but I firmly believe that the more fun you can create at work the more motivated and engaged our people are. After all we manage people with hopes, fears and emotions not robots or machines. And if laughter is what distinguishes us from animals then why not utilise this unique gift in the workplace. Surely we all want to do our best work in an environment which is human and humane, don’t we?
Now I am not suggesting that our offices should be a laugh a minute environment with a clown in one corner and a stand up comic in the other. But as leaders, no matter the environment or management structures or culture we find ourselves in, it is our job to create a human and relaxed environment for our people that they might give their best and produce great work.
So as a leader in title or by popular acclaim do you do any of the following?
Celebrate birthdays and other significant events in someone’s life
Celebrate success
Wander around the office and speak to your team, even the most junior
Show an interest in their work and ask questions about it
Find a way to share a joke, a laugh, a smile
Be self deprecating about yourself
And if you do all of these things then your place must be a great place to work and I want to come and work for you. It could be fun.
You might be a leader, the manager, the boss, but you are still a member of the human race so be human, be humane.
And there’s another reason why I think it is important that we learn to have fun.
When we were children, and even I was a child once though these days I can barely recall those carefree days of endless summers and absence of health and safety rules, we learnt and developed through play. The sandpit was our classroom, paints and glue our personal development programme, and Play School and its geometric windows our MBA. So what happened? At what age were we when we decided that, or it was decided for us, that play was now a waste of time and energy and not relevant to us anymore.
Balderdash.
Play and channelled fun can be a source of great creativity. The suspension of disbelief that goes along with play techniques allows us to explore new opportunities and allows us to break free from the surplus society that produces a surfeit of similar ideas.
Actors use play techniques to create; visit an ad agency and you will find rooms devoted to encouraging people to play; and some of the biggest brands in the world built on creativity and imagination, brands like Sony, Apple and Hewlett Packard, constantly challenge their people to do the normal and mundane and the similar in new interesting and innovative ways designed to encourage creativity and innovation.
I heard of one company who held a meeting on the London Eye to crack an issue and the solution had to be found in one full revolution. And they did.
So tomorrow, make a vow right here and now, to do what you can to make your workplace or workspace, the most fun you and those around you are going to have with your clothes on. Don’t ask for or seek permission. Don’t wait for someone else to go first. Don’t put off because it’s not the culture of your place. As someone far greater than me once said ‘you can become the change you want to see in the world’. Go for it and let me know how you get on. I await your stories and feedback.
Now is it just me?
I have to let you know that I am getting more than a little fed up with the constant preaching and hectoring of the eco and enviro-mentalists. It now seems that they are even telling me what kind of light bulbs I must buy. It is alright for me to strain and damage my eyes to read in the dim glow of the new eco friendly light bulbs just as long as the polar bears have an ice floe on which to perch.
Is it only me who thinks a nice dose of global warming might be good for us? Heating bills would reduce, a considerable help to hard pressed families and those on fixed incomes. And if we need less power to heat our homes there will be less need for the coal fired and nuclear power stations which the eco mentalists see as the Devil’s work. Am I the only one who sees things like this?
Have a great week. And, if I don’t speak to you beforehand, have a great Easter.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
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