Proceed Until Apprehended

This would be a new theory. Perhaps the title needs a little work.

Image Credit: http://mark.rehorst.com/Bug_Photos/index.html

Are you familiar with fractals? I’m fascinated by them. They are beautiful and simple. No, complex. No, simple.  That’s why I like them.

Here’s what they are for me: A foundational element replicated for infinity that creates an entity that is full of intricacy and detail.

Wikipedia, citing a guy named Mandelbrot, describes a fractal as “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.” Wow. No wonder I didn’t remember this from school.

Fractals and Personal Development

I think there are some fundamental principles that govern our interactions and create our legacy. In a fractal, if you change the fundamental geometric shape, you can get a significantly different shape. In life, if you change your fundamental principles and governing behaviours (your geometric shape, if you follow), same thing.

“I will embrace this event with a presumption of abundance” doesn’t change your story very much if you do it once. However, if you establish that presumption as part of your core it will rewrite your experience, your relationships and your legacy. Rather than a presumption of scarcity in the face of change, if you presume that resources, opportunity and happiness are abundant in every opportunity, it changes the outcome. It changes the entity.

If you change the scale (the detail) at which you look at a fractal, you see essentially the same image. It just keeps replicating at a smaller size. Here’s where my theory really comes together. Your principles create results at different scales, too. If I engage with each of my colleagues with honesty, enthusiasm for their growth and a true commitment to their success, I will be doing the same thing at the team level, the department level and the corporate level. I’m not so idealist as to say your choice in principles will change the organization, but it will change your experience with the organization.

Same with family, community or your weekend softball team. All part of the same fractal. All replica copies of the pattern you have established for your life. Each interaction carries an eerie similarity to other interactions, past and present. The accumulation of those interactions establishes similar relationships with groups and larger elements.

By the way, with all that consistency and replication, it pretty much defines how you’re remembered, too.

With this new, soon-to-be-famous (and renamed) theory now present, there are some barriers that would need to be addressed before this simple model is applied.

1) We have to deliberately decide to be owner of our choices

The reason life looks “fractured” rather than like a fractal right now is that we’re not replicating our own deliberate model. We’re getting sucked into someone or something else’s pattern.

2) We really should choose principles that we’re OK with being central themes in our eulogy

That’s sort of a bold way of saying that they need to be authentic and real. Contentment, happiness and success comes when we sustain our commitment to principles and replicate them in new, yet to be anticipated situations. When they start creating that full-sized, complex, nuanced entity, that’s when you see the real results.

Here’s a picture I have up on my office wall.

If you haven’t surmised it, I’m having a little trouble putting new stuff to my blog these days. I think I’ve just proven that there’s a direct, inverse relationship between how cool my job is and how much I blog. I’m not giving up on my little chunk of the internet, and I have some good ideas for future posts, but my work… my play, actually, has me using all spare creativity and thoughtfulness to resolve interesting, meaningful opportunities.

Today, iQmetrix was named number 24 on the list of best small and medium-sized employers in Canada. I share this not to gloat (though it feels good), but to give iQmetrix it’s fair due. The company’s not known enough, either in my community or the nation.

And before you write me off as a newly addicted workaholic, I left work at 3 today to give some quality attention to my family.

This, of course, is exactly the kind of thing that has me applying tremendous discretionary effort towards even more success for a pretty awesome organization.

As I leave my latest role in the provincial government, I think perhaps I can be more plain about my experience.  It’s said that one of the biggest challenges with recruiting is the tendency for the employer to employ the “bait and switch,” whereby they talk a game that isn’t the one they practice. One kind of employment experience is presented, another is on offer.

I think I’ve seen that first-hand. The first reason I give as to why I think it happened would be my own “grass is greener” lense, whereby I overlook the reality of the situation for its prospects, then kick myself for not being critical enough of the opportunity before signing on the dotted line. There are also circumstances that change the role once you get there. Government is especially vicious at redefining roles without the slightest consultation.

There’s also the question of whether the big stuff works as described. There’s the philosophy of how decisions get made, or the level of trust inherently given to an employee. There’s the vision for the organization and whether daily actions are aligned with this vision or pay it lip service.

I think it’s really easy for a hiring manager or an employer to have a real intellectual commitment to a higher purpose sort of role. All the buzzwords and catch-phrases are there. All the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed on the mission and vision statements. However, cashing those cheques is a lot different than writing them, and the employees you’re hiring will immediately experience dissonance if word and deed are not congruent.

This is costly. An unhappy employee that feels they’ve been misled under-performs. Well, I did, anyway.

So, this is called the “bait and switch,” except I think “bait and switch” implies a level of forethought and control that is often nonexistent in the formation of the employer/employee relationship. A better, less catchy title would be “deluded perception and inability to control reality,” as in, “I was excited about my first day, but then they made it clear that the job was more about keeping up appearances. They got me with the old ‘deluded perception and inability to control reality’.”

This doesn’t just go for hiring, of course. If word and deed aren’t aligned in any relationship, it’s a source of frustration and contention. If you’ve got drama in your life, it’s probably worth doing a gut-check. Are you pulling the “deluded perception and inability to control reality” ploy?

If you’re trying to memorize lines for a stage production called Catch Me if You Can by Weinstock and Gilbert (not the movie), boy, have you come to the right place. For everyone else, there’s nothing to see here. Mosey along now.

I’ve posted three powerpoint slides of all of the lines of Daniel Corban in the play, alternated with the “lead-in line” that prompts your line. If you view these in slideshow mode, they’re all animated. You can rehearse your line, click next and see if you got it right. For longer pieces, they’re broken into chunks so you can’t cheat. I found it to be a very easy way to memorize the lines… after I typed them all in. Here they are (right click to download): Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3. I hope this helps with your memorization.

If you’re playing Inspector Levine, Elizabeth Corban, Father Kelleher or one of the other characters, it’s still probably worth a look. Your lines are partially in here.

Hey, wait a minute. YOU aren’t playing Daniel Corban. You’ve never even heard of the play. What are you doing reading this? Oh. You just can’t believe I typed in all these lines. Fair enough.

Some other things, while we’re on the topic:

• I’m surprised how focused and obsessive I can get when I’m in a community theatre play. It’s a ton of effort, but I get more energy from doing it than it takes from me. It offers the most consistent feeling of being in “the zone” as anything I’ve ever done.
• The creation of these slides took a while, but even typing them helped me memorize. This character has the most lines in the play. Despite that, I had mine down pat well before many of my cast members. When it comes down to it though, I don’t know whether to credit the tool or a mild form of OCD.
• I’m curious to see if providing something extremely obscure but valuable will find a user. This is The Long Tail in action.

These powerpoints are free for you to use, modify, share… whatever you want. I only ask one thing. If you do actually use them, please let me know, for my own curiosity.

If you’ve created similar slides for a play you were in and would like to make them available, I’d be happy to post them.

I’ve found it quite frustrating to see up close some organizational attempts at improving culture. We seem to make piecemeal attempts. At one moment, senior leadership may set out a new vision or a new set of expectations but there’s no resources for follow-up. At another time, there may be a change in processes or compensation that is intended to influence the culture of the organization, but they compete against incentives supporting stasis. Next, an initiative is unveiled that promises you autonomy and the ability to make decisions… but no-one tells your boss. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a pretty rare circumstance where we see an all-hands-on-deck effort to address organizational culture. When an organization does, they’re an anomaly, they’re newsworthy and they might just get bought out for $847 million.

Culture, it seems to me, is a pretty static, identifiable thing. If only someone had studied the essential elements of culture… which brings me to my post title. Isn’t anthropology ALL ABOUT understanding culture? Well, not quite. Google tells me there’s more to it than that: define: anthropology – the social science that studies the origins and social relationships of human beings

On Wikipedia, I learned that E.B. Tylor is one of the grandfathers of anthropology. He described culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

There’s a start! If we’re trying to address culture, this definition provides some assistance. First, we can acknowledge that culture is “complex.” Perhaps with that knowledge we can forever disavow the use of uni-dimensional solutions that barely scrape the surface of addressing culture. Second, what a helpful list: knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws and customs. Maybe this needs a little tinkering for the contemporary organization, but we see all of these in the workplace:

• knowledge in, well, knowledge, and how we transfer it, share it and use it
• belief in our paradigms, like “senior staff always knows best” and “mistakes are bad”
• art – well, this one’s a stretch. There’s not much expression at work. Our lack of expression – the corporate language and the way we communicate is our “art,” I think, and it is significant in defining our culture.
• morals like putting in lots of hours, being available 24/7, producing just what the boss asked for… you know, the required societal behaviours to earn promotion
• custom – customs are things we just do because everyone else does, right? Like taking our shoes off at the door, shaking hands when we meet and defending our program even though the critic has a point.

This isn’t just a fun comparison, though. We could use this list. If we really want to address culture, this list is a great place to start. Tom, you create some solutions to improve how we write our documents. Sally, please put together a team to identify and question the customs we’re just doing.

I’d be pretty excited to work in an organization that said, “Culture is necessary for our success. Let’s put our energy into getting it right for the long haul.”

At my high school graduation, they held a play-money casino night as our social event. One of the venues at our casino was a horse-racing game. You’d bet on your horse, they would play the video of the race and you’d see how your horse placed. Now, I don’t know if the game was flawed or someone just hadn’t read the directions, but we had odds for all future races for the evening. Same horses, same names, just a “different day” at the track. After one race, it became apparent to me that the odds for each horse in the next race were adjusted based on their earlier performance. Essentially, the future odds told you what was going to happen in the current race.

Like any good bettor, I used the available information to place my bets. It looked like a tremendous winning streak, until there were too many wins to just be luck. Then others suggested that I had the game at home, or somehow I was cheating. I wouldn’t call it cheating. I was taking the loosely formed (and mostly just implied) rules of the game and using them as best I could. By (math) skill and insight, I was cleaning up.

Rationalization aside, I don’t think I can adequately describe the anxious feeling I had as I exploited my loophole. I was so far ahead, I was sure I must be doing something wrong. It couldn’t be this easy. I felt huge pressure to stop playing the game. Eventually, I did stop.

It’s a goofy little story, but I was reminded of it today as I read Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It’s an artfully crafted story about one team’s application of objective, rational assessments to the selection of baseball players when seemingly every other team in the league uses judgments steeped in baseball culture. They’re using beliefs that are irrational. The only thing that keeps the beliefs alive is that it’s what everyone else is doing, too. General Manager of the Oakland A’s, Billy Beane, is at a completely different level as he selects ball players because they’ll perform and win games, even if they’re not the traditional prototype. It’s a massive success. As an outsider looking in, it’s sort of a “well, duh” thing, but I know it wasn’t easy. There’s a breaking of convention. Unfulfilled social expectation. People that look for how you’re cheating. The possibility that you’re wrong, that you’ll fail. It would be so much easier to just follow the same implied rules as everyone else.

The lesson, of course, is that it’s the person with the willingness to stare down those pressures and stick to a new, rational belief that finds the way to be much more effective and, perhaps, eventually change the game.

If I had figured that out in high school, I could have purchased a bigger plastic novelty item with my play money.

I’m pretty sure the only thing stopping us from taking the action we really think we should be taking is ourselves.

A number of years back, I was feeling a tremendous frustration with some of the patterns and culture of my work. Everything was urgent and everything was a priority. I wouldn’t be surprised if this sounds familiar to a few of you.

I was challenged. When it has to be high quality, when it has to be done fast and “for the last time Nevin, no, we can’t hire more staff,” what’s to give? Time and time again, it was I that relented. I worked the weekend or the lunch hour, grumbled about it and ultimately got the task done.

Anyway, a couple years of this… yes, I said years… and as I said, I was sick of the pattern. I still wanted to create value in the organization, but I didn’t believe in our methods for creating it. Actually, I didn’t just disagree. I was confident we would NEVER reach our goals if we didn’t fix some of that systemic stuff. I also came to the slow realization that no-one was going to save me from it. There was no-one from up on high who “got it” and was going to eventually fix it.

Then it came to me. Titles and authority don’t matter. This wasn’t just me saying “Titles and authority don’t matter.” This was a change of heart. A deep commitment came with knowing titles and authority don’t matter. I knew change comes from those who simply choose to take personal responsibility, and this knowledge gave me permission to disobey, to challenge and to generally raise a ruckus.

We can look in the mirror and say, “I hereby authorize you to innovate.” I think that’s where the magic happens. Everything after that is just uncomfortable and deeply fulfilling.

I jest, of course. You get used to the discomfort.

So, here’s an exercise. All the things that we have declared as untouchable in our jobs? They’re not. Stop using that as excuse. Get honest with yourself. Ask what really happens if you don’t get it in on time? What happens if you say, “sorry, I’m keeping my lunch plans?” Prove to me that it does more than start a conversation, a conversation you’ve been wanting to have for a long time.

And by the way, “not getting that promotion” doesn’t count as a reason. We’re talking about strategies for REDUCING the insanity.

I had a media inquiry regarding my manifesto (a link to the manifesto is on the left if you want to see it). Here’s the questions and my answers. I hope you enjoy it.

1. You say that: The vast majority of employees sit on the fence. They’re not completely gone, but they’re not completely there, either. I think this is a dismal story of how our businesses and our economy exists. What is the best way to stop people sitting on the fence?

I am going to point you to another resource for a better answer for this one. The Canadian Management Centre wrote The Perfect Storm. I’ve attached it. Following my read of that, I wrote on my whiteboard at work, “The environment engages and retains.” That’s it. Give them an environment that allows them to be creative, insightful and passionate. They’ll do the rest. People sit on the fence because they don’t believe their effort will make a difference. Give them an environment that is open and responsive, they’ll see opportunity and get engaged.

My manifesto implicitly suggests that the creation of such an environment is not commonly done. If that’s true, I’m suggesting an employee could say, “I don’t care if they don’t want to create a welcoming, engaging environment. I’m going to get engaged anyway.” I’d say that’s option 2, after it’s clear the employer isn’t going to make the right kind of environment in the first place.

2. Have you ever been the mastermind behind a big employee engagement strategy?

No. I’ve worked to get my own direct reports engaged, with moderate success. That was a staff of eight. Unfortunately, I work in one of those big bureaucracies that just doesn’t have the impetus to create the kind of environment the Canadian Management Centre talks about. I may have created an environment that encouraged ideas, engagement, risk-taking and innovation, but I think there is always a level of distrust… staff know our ideas can and will get overruled. I am not the ultimate authority in that organization. This really spawned my vision for Flow, Flee or Fight. At some point, it becomes a very personal choice to instigate change from within your own circle of influence. Here comes option 2…

3. You make the important point that individuals within a company can instigate change. Have people written to you since your piece was published, to tell you they have done this successfully?

No. I get emails from people identifying with the article. They say that they tried fighting for a while, then they burnt out and switched to flee. That’s what I do, too. I think we’re not going to find that example of one person that changes the entire culture single-handedly, unless maybe they’re the ultimate decision-maker. More likely, you’re going to find subtle cultural shifts that happened because one, two or a dozen individuals make the decision to fight.

4. You cite a survey that has found that only one in five employees choose to undertake the discretionary effort required to resolve a new challenge. What does that say about modern workplaces?

It says that they are overwhelmingly inefficient. An employer could get so much more value out of employees, if only they made the investment necessary to create an engaging environment. I’m willing to wager that workers on the floors at GM have ideas and energy to reinvent that company… for real. Unfortunately, whatever environmental measures are in place have made an “us vs. them” environment. Employees are disempowered and disengaged. There’s no incentive to dive in and innovate, so employees watch the company flounder and cash their paycheques.
There is a school of thought that suggests the GFC simply accelerates a much-needed change in the way work environments are designed. Modern workplaces aren’t modern at all. They’re clinging on to a “command and control” paradigm that doesn’t motivate knowledge workers and is too inefficient. I suspect that most workplaces won’t respond to this accelerated requirement for an engaging workplace. They’ll keep clinging on to an old management philosophy while upstarts or progressive organizations figure it out and eat their lunch.

5. A lot of employees want to see change in an organisation, see the need to boost morale. Why do so few of these people ever do anything about it?

Fear. For every action they could take, there is a fear or social norm that they have to come to terms with.

The creation of an alternate culture requires leadership. It requires someone to say “I don’t believe in our practices. I want to get to the same place as you, but I believe there’s a better way to get there.” At minimum, they will be labelled a heretic. They’ll also be quietly encouraged to get back in line, to stop making the boss look bad and quit stressing everybody out. If an environment doesn’t encourage a challenge to the status quo, this takes a lot of self-confidence and conviction.

6. A lot of employees will not be happy with your perspective, preferring to pass the buck to “management”. What is your response to that?

OK. How’s that working out for you?

I’m talking about pursuing satisfaction and even happiness at work. I would be surprised to hear that someone is finding satisfaction through passing the buck. More likely, they’re finding validation and a moral righteousness but things still suck. I’m open to alternatives that give people a sense of control and engagement, but complaining about the boss, by itself, has never seemed very satisfying.

We spend all too much time worrying about the dissenters. I’m more interested in the huge majority of employees that are “on the fence” or are inclined to put some work in to becoming engaged. You don’t need 100 percent buy-in to change the environment.