Why we choose to live by the rules

A dear friend of mine shared her woes with me about her teenage son. He is testing boundaries, and the value of rules, in a very trying fashion for his mother.

All social systems have rules; most often they are a good thing and make our lives much easier. I am a Canadian and here in Canada we feel it is important to abide by the law and give everyone an equal opportunity. This means we respect line-ups, patiently wait our turn when traffic lanes merge, and we all experience equally unreasonable wait times for our certain medical procedures. Our tax laws are quite ridiculously cumbersome because they aim to be fair. That is the way we do things here.

And sometimes it’s frustrating. When you have to wait six months or a year for knee surgery – all this fairness seems, well – a little unfair. But for the most part it works and people respect the system.

Organizations too have systems and we would hope that when people join organizations they take the time to understand its values to ensure it’s a place they will feel comfortable in; a place where they can follow the rules.
My husband works for a large Canadian company with a very strong set of values. A small group of employees clearly did not share the same set of values; they broke the company rules – and the mess landed up on the front page of the newspaper.

That little drama has now played itself off of the front pages and out of the public arena. Inside the organization the drama has lingered. The remaining employees are deeply wounded. They were incensed that a few rogue individuals have brought into question their values. These are people who take great pride in what they do and the company they work for. This was a deeply personal and very upsetting experience for them.

I am given to understand that the executives were a little taken aback at the strength of the reaction. They should not be. We are all human and we all have strong emotional reactions when our values are messed with. Why should it be any different at work?

Employees need to feel part of a greater whole. They need to feel their values are in sync with those of the organization. They need to understand the big picture and how they contribute to the organization’s success; common values are a part of that bigger picture.

Generational expectations - implications for the world of work

My 15-year old daughter and I buy music in very different ways. She finds the notion that that someone would buy a physical object that contained a finite number of songs arbitrarily selected by someone else - rather quaint. My daughter is very clear about what her purchases and her expectations are high.

Businesses are beginning to catch on - music sellers, networks and studios are adjusting to a new world view where the customer is not only right, but expects to be able to exercise that judgment with a click of the mouse.

Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program and the author of a new book, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.” http://www.shirky.com/ suggests that the web is not competition for traditional media, but a completely different system that empowers groups and individuals, a place where choice is not only an option, but an imperative.

As a communications professional and engagement specialists I have to ask myself what this will mean for the workplace of the future. Portal-based web sites and customized benefit packages are just the tip of the ice-berg.

I was chatting with a young woman the other day – an engineer. One of her key motivators for becoming involved in volunteer activities within her organization is that she is able to exercise her creative design abilities. Can we expect to see a world where employees and managers co-design the job function? Take that one step further and one can envisage interactive strategic planning. Exciting or terrifying – depends how you look at it.

Tall tales and why we tell them

We changed the format of our blog and for a brief period of time all the blogs I had written since May disappeared. My first thought: “Someone on our team doesn’t like my blogs, they’re trying to get rid of them.”

Utter nonsense of course. It was nothing more than a technical problem. But I am human and like most of you I need to make sense of my world. So when something happened that I didn’t understand, I made up a story, namely that my colleagues hated my blogs and were hell bent on getting rid of them.

We do this all the time, especially in the complex corporate world. If relationships and communication are muddy we create stories to fill in the gaps. And frequently we don’t bother to go and check the accuracy of our interpretation.

But here’s the scary part. We then go and tell friends and colleagues our stories, who in turn tell others and these stories create a new reality.
This is not healthy. The only way to stop it is through open and honest communication. The basis for which is trust; strung together in this way these are four of the most challenging letters in our alphabet.

Respect builds loyalty

Eli's parents came to Canada from Poland. They did not speak English. It was the kindness of strangers that helped them settle in and make their way in the new world.

Eli's experience influenced his later thinking when he established his sanitation business. He made respect a cornerstone of his employee relations policy.

Most of the positions in Eli's organization are filled by immigrants; decent people who due to language constraints are not able to work to their potential. Eli tells them they are valued and respected in many ways from paying their benefit package in full, to welcoming children to the compulsory bi-monthly staff meeting, and arranging English lessons on Saturday mornings.

Most of Eli's competitors are struggling to find good employees and turnover is high. Eli has the opposite concern - he has a surfeit of loyal and dedicated staff.

The story was told me by one of Eli's managers. He spoke about his staff and colleagues with more respect and concern than we have grown to expect in the workplace. And that's a pity because the business benefits of valuing your employees are real and relate directly to the bottom line.