I've recently started working with a new client. 

It's very different, and the people I'm working with reminded me of a time a couple of years ago when I started working with a very, VERY bright man. He was very different from me in that he saw behaviour change as pulling on levers, he had quite a rational, numbers led approach.  He believed that change should be seen - and if you can't see it, it hasn't happened.  And while thought was all very well, he liked to see plans.

He was challenging for me to deal with on a number of levels - he was highly analytical, even rather cold and often impatient. Initially, I wondered whether we'd get on - rational, numbers-led clients (which often translates to knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing) aren't usually my first choice of working partner.

The relentless drive for evidence caused me to think very hard indeed about how I demonstrated that what I was there to do - in this instance change communication - had value, or in his words "had moved the needle".

After my initial doubts, I began to enjoy myself. This was an assignment where the pleasure and satisfaction I got from my job varied considerably, depending on which day you asked. But the sheer challenge of working on a project where to had to evidence what value I added and where I was dealing - frankly - with a no-nonsense bunch of engineers rather than people who "got" what I did - was rather exhilarating.

I was at first gasping in shock at the cold water of a technical project where almost everything from the acronyms to the priorities people had, were unfamiliar.  But after a short time, I got used to the temperature, partly helped by forcing myself to concentrate on what I could do, rather than what I couldn't.

Remembering this experience has also reminded me that doing much the same kind of work can cause you to become lazy.  Attempting something you can't quite do, with people you don't quite like may not be comfortable - but by god, it kick starts the grey matter.

The shock of the new – how employees experience coming into an organisation

When was the last time you started a new role? Or a new job?  Can you remember how you felt?

Consider this (not impossible) example:

Ian arrived at his new job a bit nervous.  Eventually he was shown to the floor on which his new department was situated, having been issued with a visitor pass. Arriving at his desk, his manager suggested that as his new PC wasn’t going to arrive for another month, that he introduce himself to colleagues and arrange to share theirs. Ian asked about an induction. “That’s in six weeks,” responded his manager. “Read the company handbook in the meantime.” He then told him he’d be back at lunchtime and left. Ian ploughed through a quarter of the two inch thick file before needing the bathroom.  He had to ask for directions.  On the way back he attempted to get a coffee, but didn’t have any of the special tokens needed to get one, and it didn’t take cash.  Sighing, he returned to his desk and awkwardly asked if he could use a neighbour’s PC to look at the company intranet. The intranet asked for his user ID.  When asking his colleague about this, he was told that a User ID took about 2 weeks to arrive. Grimly, he continued to plough through the handbook.  At four thirty there was a fire alarm.  Ian filed out with the rest of his floor, found himself in the wrong area and therefore wasn’t able to respond to his name on the roll call.  The office was evacuated for the rest of the afternoon while the fire service searched the building for him.

Getting employees settled in their new positions – also called ‘socialisation’ by academics and ‘onboarding’ by business writers – is a focus for organisations as the try to recoup their investment in hiring as quickly as possible.  The problem is that, unless you arrive in a cohort of graduates, organisations often plan it very poorly.  Perfectly eager and enthusiastic individuals can find themselves battered coming into an organisation because they are, in the first instance, off-balance.

The key thing that characterises the academic research on newcomer employees is uncertainty – uncertainty about the nature and requirements of new tasks and uncertainty about how you’re going to fit in to the social network and how you’re going to get on with you colleagues.

Add to this, potential feelings of loneliness and isolation which are initially associated with a new location in an organisation (and even a new location geographically), performance anxiety and a lack of established routines and habits for the new role and you have potentially a very uncertain individual.

Academic research has identified that when people feel uncertain, they experience anxiety and they try to reduce this by either minimising the level or importance of the uncertainty (“I’m sure I’ll soon get the hang of it after a while”) or they look for information to help to increase their certainty.  Another danger of course, is that without guidance, even experienced workers guess, and make poor decisions which can go horribly wrong.  If this information is readily available, their uncertainty reduces more quickly. 

Which means that if people aren’t spending all their time worrying about where they are and what they’re doing, they can concentrate on their performance. 

Which in turn means that the organisation – which might have spent some considerable money recruiting them – can start to recoup their expenditure.

Organisations choose a number of methods to bring people into a company, or into a new role – people are socialised in groups (often graduate recruitment happens this way), or singly; they are thoroughly instructed in the ways of the organisation before they start work, or they learn on the job; they can be given a timetable for their induction, or they can be left in the dark about when they will be “qualified” as an organisational member.  It can be planned programme of events, discussions and activities, or it can be random, where recruits aren’t quite sure what to expect.  They may have a mentor or role model – or they may be left to make their own mark in the workplace.

In addition, they can be stripped of some elements of their identity to have them replaced by other, organisational attitudes (the armed forces is a good example of this), or they can be encouraged to bring their experience to the organisation and not be expected to change.

Regardless of how it’s done, all of the approaches can impact new recruits and what they subsequently do in their roles.  For example, someone who has been socialised in a group is more likely to conform to whatever the rest of the group does – it may hinder independent thought and action.  And for some types of organisation, that’s what is needed.  On the other hand, if someone is being socialised independently and “on the job”, they are reliant on their colleagues for help and support.  This can vary across organisations and may in fact be more hindrance than help.  In addition, because they are doing actual work, their tasks may be more limited because after all, this is real work with potentially real consequences if it goes wrong.  Which may lead them to be bored, or may lead them to build confidence, depending on the individual and the tasks.

So what are you doing to your new recruits? Have you thought whether you simply want them to tow the corporate line, or innovate?  The response to the induction should be considered as an outcome of the process.

And for young recruits in particular, are you providing enough information to calm their anxieties?  This doesn’t mean handing someone an induction pack and sitting them at a desk so they can read it cover to cover – it means leading them through the connections in their new role, helping them to understand how their role fits in with others – not just the nuts and bolts of it. 

For experienced workers, there is often the view that “they don’t need hand-holding, they’ve worked in other organisations before” – but actually, regardless of experience, there is always the need for newcomers to either a role or an organisation to find their feet.  

Is your organisation helping?  Or pulling the rug out from under them?

Karen Drury owns fe₃ consulting.  The notes on which this article was based were generated at a mindstretch® held on 28 April.  Karen runs these events on a regular basis.

Blogging, trolling and the art of petitions

It's quite possible that the internet brings out the worst in us - from pontificating on personal blogs, to saying hurtful and spiteful things without fear of the consequences to people we've never met.

The recent furore about trolling on Twitter puts how vile people can be to one another in the full glare of the public eye.  And glaring it certainly has been. 

Being a well brought up lass, I've been appalled by the language and crudeness of some of the responses to what seem to me to be perfectly harmless comments and campaigns. When all's said and done, if Jane Austen is finally to appear on an English banknote - well, fab. The vitriol occasioned by some fairly mild celebrations of the announcement was way beyond any reasonable response.  And I can barely believe that threats of rape, bombs and death followed in what seemed a mob-like mentality. And, no sooner had the clamour died a little, when the death of a young woman who committed suicide allegedly because of bullying on the internet brought this type of behaviour back into sharper focus.

But - signing a petition is not the right response.

It seems to me to be passive, lacking responsibility in the same way that unpleasant Twitter users don't seem to accept responsibility for their sexist and violent comments.

The threat of law may deter these idiots - but perhaps we simply encourage people to take less responsibility in this way.  By creating laws, those who witness this kind of behaviour simply believe that someone ELSE will do something about it, and therefore they don't need to.  In the meantime, those who are bullying, unpleasant and downright vile simply create false identities, harangue other users and then disappear into the ether. Wherever there's a law, there's someone trying to evade it.


I strain sometimes to catch a glimpse of that rare creature, responsibility in both life and work.  Responsibility is increasingly one of those things that belongs to someone else - the company, the Government or - as in the case of internet trolling - the Police.

But neither State nor employer can or should be expected to have the final say on everything.  In the last ten years, nearly 4,000 pieces of legislation have found their way into law, on everything from mobile homes to defamation.  A newspaper report I read noted that in 2010, 13.8 laws came into being every single working day.


Everyone has an opinion about what's right and wrong - but very few are willing to do anything about it. Which is why, apparently, we need the laws.  Someone needs to do something about it - "they", probably. The law gives that framework, but at the same time, puts the responsibility into someone else's hands - the police, the lawyers.

I believe we need to take action, to stand up, to not only voice objections, but get off our arses and do something. This something is not signing a petition, which I can do with little inconvenience and once done, absolves me of responsibility to anything else.  This is too easy an option, and involves too little effort. 

I'm conscious that writing this blog is another version of signing a petition, albeit with slightly more effort involved. So I have not only written this blog; I'm writing to my MP, and watching out for what I see as bullying on the internet and getting involved to point it out and stop it.  I may not always get this right, but at least I am doing something.

If everyone did this, perhaps we won't need to have so many laws.

Zero tolerance for zero hours contracts

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has underestimated by 50,000 workers the number of people on zero hours contracts, bringing the estimated total in 2012 to more than a quarter of a million workers.

The total number may easily be double that, according to The Work Foundation, that claims at least 400,000 people are employed on zero hour contracts by the public sector alone. Although the number of people on these type of contracts is small, the rise in use of them is not – more than doubling in the last eight years.

In other news, there is much hand-wringing about the levels of engagement, which came in at a lowly one-in-three from the US from Gallup. Apparently, levels are similar in the UK.

Zero hours contracts are just what they say they are – although you have to be ready and available for work at any time as an employee, as an employer, you’re under no obligation to give any work at all.  It’s true that the employee doesn’t have to take the work, but there are tales crawling out of the woodwork of employees being discriminated against if they don’t take work when it’s offered. According to research by the Resolution Foundation  http://ow.ly/nxWjG  those on zero hours contracts earn less, work fewer hours, and tend to be younger and less well educated than the average worker.

While some companies – Sports Direct, most recently – hail them as essential to business growth in an uncertain market, the devil is often in the detail.  In this case, the detail is in things such as whether workers should be paid the minimum wage while on call at or near the business or, indeed, whether someone on a zero hours contract has employee status.   Those with employee status have some protection in terms of the law – the right not to be unfairly dismissed, maternity right, redundancy rights.  Those who are classed as “workers” – don’t.

I understand that businesses need to be flexible; but to me it smacks of laziness that companies can’t plan their workforces sufficiently well to avoid the use of zero hours contracts, which can hardly be helpful to the UK’s appalling engagement figures.

This type of work is starting to resemble the labourers who turned up at the dock gates in the 1920’s looking for work.  Surely, we’ve come further than this?

Try something different - three things to get you out of a rut

Like millions of people, I watched Glastonbury on the telly, safe on my sofa, with a great view of the Rolling Stones and a cup of tea in my hand.  To many, this sounds terribly dull.  I have attended loads of festivals in my time - the last one was V at Chelmsford and returning to my hotel room after watching the Manic Street Preachers, the bliss of being able to get the dirt out of my hair in the shower was indescribable.

But I digress.

While watching the wall to wall BBC coverage, I came across a young girl band I'd never heard of called Haim.  Their set (on TV at least) was short, but electrifying.  Their sound was different - a cross between Siouxsie Sioux and early Police, and the lead singer, bassist and keyboard players were intense and very, very focused.  It's been a long time since I was really interested in something new in music, but I've just downloaded some of their songs.

Which got me wondering - what prompts you to try something new?

The first thing of course is exposure.  It’s difficult to try something new if you always see the same people, go the same places, read the same stuff.  Recently, I went back to Birkbeck for their annual Business Week (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/business/about-us/events/business-week) but instead of visiting the events for the school of Organisational Psychology, which I normally do, I went instead to a couple of events on happiness and well-being, hosted by the School of Business, Economics and Infomatics. 

It was fascinating, taking me into a discipline I didn’t know with authors I hadn’t read – but now want to.  It gave me a different perspective which has enriched my experience and my knowledge. So – tip number one:

1.       Go somewhere you’ve never been before, with people you don’t know.

Research indicates that what holds most people back from new experiences is fear – of being uncomfortable, of not enjoying things, or making their “stuck” situation worse. 

However, if your “new” experience is well crafted, it need not commit you to years of misery if you don’t like it – my foray into the world of economics lasted four hours. So – tip number two:

2.       Keep it short!

The physical environment is a key determinant of our mood.  A serene vista of water and fading light may make us gentle and reflective.  It’s the same in the office.  Some people feel much more capable when they clear up papers, and have a sense of starting anew with a clear desk.  But for me, one way of certainly changing your perspective is to physically move. So tip number three is:

3.       Move where you sit and work.

Moving where you sit and work enables you to see different things, feel different light and heat, and maybe even sit next to someone you don’t know.  When I’ve worked in culture change programmes, changing where people are located may sometimes be painful, but it signals very clearly that something different is happening. New conversations are had, new relationships are formed – even around the kettle in the kitchen.

So try something a little different. Small and contained at first, which will give you confidence, and be low-risk. Pretty soon, you’ll be climbing mountains, studying for that degree you always wanted, writing the novel or changing careers.

After all – as the NLP practitioners say – “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.”

Postscript:

I saw this article a day after I'd posted this.  Interesting additional reading!

http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-time-perception-how-to-make-your-days-longer?utm_source=feedburner

Being human? - social media and personal reputation

I'm only dimly aware of Big Data as yet.  Like the cloud, to many people it's a vague concept. Yet last week I talked with someone who told me that companies are trawling the bits of data that you leave behind - your credit card purchases, your online comments, your "likes" on Facebook and YouTube, routes through online content - and making patterns and pictures about your life, your thoughts. A silver snail trail of data, left indelibly, enabling the curious to see your preferences, your good days of triumph, bad days of whining.

I have to say, this brought me up short.  All my humanity - my generosity, my meanness, my sarcasm and cynicism, my joyous delight, my occasional unkindness, laid out for some unknown person (or machine) to peruse at leisure?  Waiting to catch you unawares, like a sly affair come back to haunt hubristic politicians.

I've had a conversation also with some who say that CVs may soon be obsolete.  Instead, recruiters will view posts, online articles and Twitter feeds as proof of your professionalism and proficiency. Nervously glancing back at previous Twitter feeds, I may be already doomed.

But also, think of the stress of being always reasonable and measured, always on message, bright and insightful every time you make a comment - never relaxing, always on show.

A few years ago, there was a lot of comment about "your personal brand".  I particularly loathed this idea, primarily because it treated real living people like commodities - soap powder or a bar of chocolate.  But as David Ogilvy once said, people aren't inanimate and as such can be unpredictable.  A Snickers bar, for example, can't have a bad day.

We are in short, human, and we have completely human feelings. So consistency of brand experience can get a bit more complex if you're talking about real people delivering it.  And indeed, this is what you see if you look at my timeline.  Someone who's been cross, elated, tired, defensive, supportive, joyful - prone to "the heart ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to".

Perhaps it is alarming.  Then again, perhaps it's an illustration of what working with me would really be like, and if it's basing the recruitment process on more realistic data, maybe that's the real benefit.  This only stands of course if my online persona is honest, rather than carefully crafted.  Anyone looking at it, can probably tell that it is!

But there are some interesting questions about privacy, the right to a personal (rather than JUST a work) life.  Whether you might ask for an amnesty for your Tweets, or whether you need to explain and chart your change of views within your online presence. 

What's your online persona like? Is it truly you or a PR-ed version?  Do you stand up to the scrutiny of social media watchers? Have you occasionally been human - and come to regret it?

Engaged - or just living together?

I see that the legislation enabling the employee/shareholder contract has been defeated in the House of Lords.  The proposal involved employees waiving some employment rights in return for shares in the business they work for.

As these rights included unfair dismissal rights, statutory redundancy pay, the right to request flexible working and training, and the time limit for giving notice of a firm date of return from maternity or adoption leave, I can’t help but be pleased that it has been defeated.  It will go back to the House of Commons, where I hope it will be quickly forgotten because the Government has bigger fish to fry.

Workers might well be confused.  While one part of the Government is reducing the period of collective consultation by half, asking employees to sell their right to redundancy pay, and increasing the fee for bringing employment tribunals, the other is banging on about engagement, and the vital need for employees to bring enthusiasm to do more than is in the job description. 

Despite it all, I am a supporter of engagement – indeed, much of it is such common sense it would be hard not to be.  Who wouldn’t want a workplace where people were challenged, supported, respected and developed.   Although the right to ask for training would have been one of things given up, had the employee/shareholder contract become law….

No, what I’m suspicious of is the motive.  Engagement emerged out of the depths of recession, suggesting that employers could and should arrange the working relationship so that more was done for and with less.  Unions at the time of the first Engagement report, notwithstanding the potential well-being benefits for employees, were wary.

And the other thing I’m suspicious of is the almost Nazi-like commitment to engagement as a concept.   This blog doesn’t have masses of followers, but I’m prepared to be screamed down by enthusiasts waving “evidence” at me and asking how very dare I.  The quality of the evidence is really not very good (and believe me, I have looked HARD at it) but is being touted like the answer to all organisational prayers. 

And indeed, engagement MIGHT just be that.

But not if the motive is wrong.  Employees aren’t daft.  They can work out soon enough if the benefits of engagement are shared , or why engagement programmes are being implemented.  Employee well-being used to be the raison d’etre of engagement.  Now it’s profit, productivity.

And, given the workplace environment at the moment – weak and divided unions who CAN’T call management to account in the way they ought to be able to; the weakest employee legislation in Europe; and employees being offered bright new shiny contracts for 30 pieces of silver and important employment rights – I’m not convinced of the current mode of “engagement” being a good thing for employees. 

I think the motive is suspect. And should - at least for now - be questioned.

http://kcdcoaching.moonfruit.com/#/momentum-blog/4573395166