I can see clearly now.....

Hello.
According to Bob Geldof who said recently ‘a blog is like an arsehole-everyone has one’. Hopefully that is not how you view these words of wit and wisdom. Or the author.

And many thanks to the many women who expressed through private back channels their support for last week’s thoughts and opinions on Mummy Leave. It is interesting that it is women who support these views and that few will go on the record or commit their opinions to paper. Wonder why? Do they think they are letting the Sisters down? Do they fear reprisals from Harry Harperson and the Guardianistas? Hopefully the Two Caesars are taking notice of the lack of support for some of the more inequitable aspects of Mummy Leave.

And if you did leave a comment, thank you. But please note it wasn’t the principle of Mummy Leave which was being attacked but the principle that even when you get back you are still entitled to the holidays you would have had if you had not been on Mummy Leave. This still makes no sense.

Last week Cicero had to get a new windscreen for his chariot.

The woman at the dreaded Call Centre was charming and helpful and without being told knew that the windscreen required had to be heated to endure the cold winter months.

A few days later the fitter turned up as arranged and guess what. Wrong windscreen. ‘We will need to re-book appointment’, explained the fitter.
Needless to say Cicero was not happy with the re-inconvenience and calmly as is his wont explained that it was he who was being inconvienced despite providing all the required information.

‘Nothing to do with me, mate, I just fit them’, was the comeback as if that was a sufficient explanation. This is exactly the response that will always infuriate Cicero to the point of exasperation.

And to add to the infuriated exasperation, Cicero was advised that this happens all the time and yet it never seemed to occur to ‘nothing-to-do-with-me, mate’ to challenge or question a process which seemed to send him out on a regular basis with the wrong chariot windscreen. This was just the way life was. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

We will not bore you with all the grisly details but after hitting and bouncing off the ceiling quite a few times while Cicero dealt with Mr Jobsworth, and after a call to said Mr Jobsworth’s Head Honcho, a new fitter was despatched to Cicero’s chariot forthwith. And this time he brought the right windscreen.

Incidents like this happen all the time. They certainly happen when Cicero is around. They must happen to you. And right now something similar will be happening near you, possibly even in your business to your customers. How can people be so lacking in curiosity? How can it be beyond the wit and wisdom of anyone not to look to solve problems that you know are going to cause your frustration? How can anyone think that ‘nothing to with me, mate’ is an adequate response to an irate and disgruntled customer?

There's a one-word answer to all those questions: silos.

The call centre’s job was to take the order and transmit it to the local depot. There it was the manager’s job to put the right equipment in the right van. And it was the fitter’s job to fit the windscreen. The fitter would have done a great job if he had been supplied with the right information to do his job. But he wasn’t. And so he didn’t.

Here's the problem: Our jobs are complex and interdependent, but our goals, objectives, and, most importantly, mindsets, are often siloed.

We each have a job to do — sell a service, design a product, address a customer issue — and the underlying mindset is: if I do my job well, and you do your job well, we'll achieve our organization's goals.

But it rarely works that way. People in one silo often have information needed by — but never given to — people in another silo. And, as my experience showed, if there's a problem anywhere in the organization, everyone fails. Who is responsible for fitting the windscreen? It's a waste of time to parse that one out. And it's damaging to try. The truth is, they're all, collectively, responsible.

In other words we are all responsible for each others' work. It's all about collaboration. And every organization of two or more is a collaborative effort. And we are only as strong as the weakest link in our chain.

How do we escape the silo mentality?

It helps if leadership is explicit about the cross-silo outcomes that are most important in the organization. It helps if everyone working in the business is clear that satisfying customers is their number one priority and that everyone is collectively responsible for that outcome. It helps if each person is committed to a whole that is larger than their part.

It also helps if the organization's structures and processes support collaboration. If people meet regularly to share what they are learning and are taught the skills to give and receive feedback. It helps if people are taught to communicate clearly, gently, and inoffensively with each other, avoiding blame and embarrassment, for the sake of cross-silo outcomes.

All that helps. But even with all that support, direction, and skill, it still takes one more critical ingredient. Perhaps the most critical.

Courage.

The courage of a single person willing to take personal risks for the sake of the organization's success.

Because no matter how clearly leaders reward cross-silo outcomes, it takes great personal strength to identify and help correct a mistake in "someone else's" silo and to overcome the fear of the consequences of taking responsibility for colleagues' work.

But at least Cicero can see now clearly.

Is it only me.........but please sit down.

The other day I was on a train. The train was no more than half full. It was very early in the morning after all and only early birds looking for worms are up travelling at that time in the morning. And so I easily found a seat, parked my behind and hid myself in my work and in my music. Bliss!

One stop later and a fellow early worm approached me. ‘Excuse me’, he said, ‘but I think you are sitting in my seat’. I engaged my mouth and resisted the temptation to point out that since the train was half empty he had his choice of seats but since he clearly felt he was entitled to this seat I, like the true Brit I can be from time to time, apologised and huffed and puffed and went through the mighty rigmarole of getting together my stuff and moving to one of the many empty seats strewn through the carriage like scatter cushions. Perhaps, I thought, this seat is specially designed for his back or maybe it reaches our destination a wee bit quicker than every other seat on the train.

You see the same thing when you fly. You have inadvertently sat in an aisle or window seat, got yourself settled, and someone will come up to you, block the aisle thereby stopping everyone else from taking their seat, and refuse to move until he, or she, and on this occasion I am afraid to say it usually is a he, gets the seat they have paid to get.

Whether in the air or on the tracks, a seat’s a seat. It is not going to give you a massage. You are not going to be able to take it home with you. Nor will it, like Jimmy Saville’s used to do, make you a cup of tea. It’s the same seat as the one next to it or across the aisle from it or opposite it. It’s not your personal seat. So what’s the problem?

It might only be me but why can’t people just for once apply common sense. Surely I am not the only one who takes the view that at the end of the day a seat on a plane or on a train is the same as every other seat, unless you have paid a big wedge of cash more to avoid travelling Cattle Class, and it does not matter where you sit so long as the seat is free. Why add extra hassle to everyone’s lives by insisting that you get the seat you think you have paid to rent for the duration of your journey?

Why can’t you just sit down and be quiet.

If you are one of those who insist on getting the exact seat allocated to you, please tell us why.

In meantime, have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.