Experience Ontario from the Grassroots Up

 

 

Last is the government's plan to spend more on skills training, including a new program called Experience Ontario - details of which are not spelled out in the speech - to help recent high school graduates get work experience.

 

That's great - truly.  We can do so much more than that, though.  What about empowering youth with leadership skills, business management, project management finance, etc. - and doing it through NFPs like SoJo or through youth job subsidies to employer that require certain training components attached?

 

There are so many innovative, cost-effective and community-empowering ways this stuff can be done, if the consultation and planning process behind these initiatives is done right. 

 

Two things not yet addressed that I hope to see - you can't do labour and hiring better unless you include things like management training and cognitive labour, which has to include some emphasis on mental health.  This is simply what the evolving nature of work requires.  It'd be great for government to take the lead.

 

And - Open Government.  That one has to happen.

 

Teachers and the No-Fail Mission

 

 

"He is the nicest person and gives the best constructive criticism... he's a teacher that doesn't give us the option to fail, only tells us how to succeed," she said.

 

 

Failure is a loaded term.

 

There are those who disdain feel-good marks and "cushioning" students from bad marks.  Failing, these people say, pushes people to work harder. 

 

Sometimes this is true - but sometimes, it encourages people to think different.

 

Standardized tests aren't about teaching students, but about rating students.  Standardized education is, likewise, about turning out a few narrow streams of workers - applied vs advanced, arts vs sciences, so on and so forth.

 

Life, however, is not so linear.  Not any more, at any rate.  It's unreasonable to expect any student to get boxed by school, shipped off to a career path and stay there until retirement.  The world doesn't operate that way, and hasn't for a long while.

 

This is why a rebranding of failure is necessary - it's not about demarcating students, any more than it should be about eliminating competitors.  Failure, pure and simple, is about adaptation.  You need to make mistakes, plenty of them, and develop intuition about how to handle failure, how to learn from failure and how to adapt for success. 

 

It's not a one-off process, this; life is a constant battle of adaptation, skill-building and communication.

 

Slowly but surely, leaders are cluing in to this new reality and adapting their own management practices to benefit from the social evolutionary wisdom of behavioural insight.

 

Which is why the best leaders are acting less like managers and more like teachers.

The smart leaders are cluing in to something similar - it's not tough bosses that students will promote of their own volition, but their educators.
 

The Return of Don Drummond

"You need to look at what public services you want to deliver then what's the most efficient way of providing them," economist Don Drummond said in an interview with Tom Clark on The West Block.  "You don't arbitrarily constrain a certain outcome."

Drummond's not the only one who's suggested that clear-cutting the public service isn't the best way to nurture sustainable growth and efficient service delivery.

The Mowat Centre took a hard look at structural failings within the public sector and offered suggestions on how to fix them.

Through his Open By Default report on Open Government, Don Lenihan did the same thing.

The truth is that we have a oxymoronic silo-based system riddled with duplication, gaps, overlaps where title, process, position and information hoarding takes precedence over efficiency or results. Mid-managers are downloading the innovation imperative to staff, expecting them to include metrics on how they're going to think outside the box in their self-written performance reviews.

Clearly, they haven't heard of the candle problem.  You can't pressure people into being innovative. You can't force innovation through competition.  

Worse, a complete lack of communication flow leaves our public servants in the daily equivalent of shoveling water - they don't know what they're doing, why they're doing it or what result it's expected to have.

It should come as no surprise how heavily medicated our OPS is, but doing anything about that would mean a whole lotta culture change and a great number of entitled folk recognizing they're part of the problem.  

That's not gonna happen overnight, but it won't happen at all until someone takes ownership of the problem.  That ownership doesn't necessarily have to come from government.

But he pointed to an example of a recommendation ignored: restructure business subsidies.

There is plenty of money out there.  More than this, there's as ridiculous an amount of inefficiency in the private sector as their is in the public sector (we won't even get started on the NFP sector).  Like lighting a fire when all you want is light, a great deal of energy is being wasted to create new wealth without sufficient effort being spent on internal management.

This is particularly true where it comes to HR.  

Precious little time is spent on the "onboarding" process and few employers have the slightest grasp of environmental/work design impact on productivity, presenteeism, innovation and customer experience.  They just want things to work, damn it, without having to put thought into how to get the results they want.

Fortunately, there are best practices out there - people and organizations in the private sector that are adapting to the Knowledge Economy by improving how they do HR, how they consult and how they engage with their clients and the community at large.

Just imagine if there was a coalition of the willing that banded together and told government "we want to partner with you on these big, structural solutions - but we want your help, and we want to see you setting the example.

How likely is this to happen?  Not overly, but you might be surprised how many willing parties there are already.

It's a good kind of problem to work on, and to gain brand from being part of.

Just ask Don Drummond.

Do You Remember? The Importance of Time and Recognizing Mistakes

Another nurse said three words to me that are the three words that most emergency physicians I know dread.  Others in medicine dread them as well, but there's something particular about emergency medicine because we see patients so fleetingly.

The three words are do you remember?

Do you remember that patient you sent home, she asked matter of factly?  She's back, and she's near death.

True story.

I was having a chat with this senior political adviser guy one time when he breaks out this story about an interview he'd done with a reporter.

This guy, he's built businesses, advised leaders at all three levels of government - he's one of those go-to types with high-brow networks the likes of which most people will can't even fathom.

Back to the interview.  It wasn't going well, the guy told me; for whatever reason, the reporter, a woman in her 30s, seemed to have a dislike for him.  He couldn't place it.  It wasn't until after the interview was over that he found out what was up.

"You don't remember me, do you?" the reporter asked.

"Um, no, why, should I?" the guy queried back.

"I worked for you for years.  Then you fired me."

The moral of the story, according to the consultant, was that he's always happy to see people who'd worked for him succeed doing whatever else.  That was his takeaway.  I asked him how the story turned out; he rolled his eyes and, essentially, said that reporters will write what they want to write regardless.

That story stuck with me.  It reminded me of the countless, hard-working staff I know that engage tirelessly in political work during and between elections.  It reminds me of the countless "faceless bureaucrats" who toil away, considered little more than cogs in the wheel by many of those who work above them.

There are reports about how this faceless, black-hole culture is a massive problem impeding efficacy in our public sector.  The same holds true for countless private sector corporations, too.  I once did a time-audit of a consultancy that makes ridiculous amounts of money, but has ridiculously poor internal organization.  

It turned out that, by improperly aligning internal work schedules and a boss culture that felt meeting times were flexible for them (but not their staff), tens of thousands of billable hours were being lost.  A high price to pay for being too busy (or too important) for your staff.

Money isn't the only thing that gets lost when managers don't take their teams seriously.

One service I offer (currently through Wakata Inc, if you're interested) is internal/external organizational management; making sure that work flow, responsibility, communication, transition and knowledge transfer are all properly designed for efficiency and maximum value add.  My area of particular interest are smaller organizations that otherwise wouldn't have the resource capacity to get organized themselves (being too busy).

What find, consistently, is that where staff turnover is taken for granted (often leading to a focus on lower-wage labour and less training), important institutional memory gets lost without its loss even being recognized.  New staff will develop their own filing systems, ignoring old ones they don't understand, only to abandon their work when they get rotated out and someone else gets rotated in.

When managers take a "someone has to bell the cat" attitude - essentially, putting leadership responsibility on low-wage staff without giving them official mandates as such - they will repeatedly get upset at new staff unable to meet the unclear expectations set by the person in charge.  It becomes clear to these managers what the problem is - a lessening quality of staff.  If it weren't for inept staff, their lives and works would be so much easier.

And the problem only deepens.

I've seen a lot of small Not-For-Profits that do important work fold because they simply didn't have the resources or managerial capacity to get past the moment or, quite frankly, because the people at the top couldn't get over themselves.  These services disappear and don't get replaced, meaning more and more people of the people who relied on these services - battered women, new Canadians, youth with mental illness, etc. - go without.

Meanwhile, more cracks are showing in the services being offered by the public sector.  More blame is being placed on "entitled" front-line staff or the odd Minister or Administrator who double-dips or under-produces, but the focus is always on the individual - get rid of them, put greater restrictions on their replacements and carry on.

This brings us back to Brian Goldman's example.  A busy doctor - too busy and mentally over-saturated to keep track of every single patient made an avoidable mistake and a patient died.  Could he have done something?  Could he have saved her life, if he hadn't rushed her out the door?  What of the second patient - what if Goldman had taken the time to talk with that patient a little more, come to understand the nature of his ailment a bit better?

Goldman is a doctor in a culture that is all about churn - working through a massive patient flow as quickly as possible, seeing as many people as possible.  He has no control over that culture.

My friend the senior consultant guy is not a doctor; what he does is high-level, has no impact on the direct lives of individuals, right?  He's a businessman making money, period.

The people he works with are policy makers - their job isn't to get into the weeds, either; they're too busy for that.  Their job is to make efficient, cost-effective policy at the high-level and punt implementation responsibility down the chain.  When something goes wrong, well, blame is one of those things that rolls downhill.

I know countless people like my friend who are "too busy" to engage with their teams - they expect their staff to come to them, full of piss and vinegar, or go out and find them on the golf links.  

They are the bosses.

These are the people who define the cultures of our emergency rooms, our service centres and, where it comes to managers, our work cultures.

When the people in charge don't recognize the value of taking the time to know their teams, to respect their teams as individuals rather than assets, they are weakening the strength of their own institutions. 

If you can't make the time to remember your team, can you expect them to take the time to fill in blanks for you after they're gone?  Will you be able to recognize growing structural rifts within your own organization?  What about that one client that is back at you with a request, or a complaint, that you know nothing about?

Perhaps there's a lesson in this worth remembering.

Forbes on Right To Work

Not recognizing what's important to employees can translate into more job dissatisfaction, lower productivity, and higher volunteer turnover," says Rosemary Haefner, vice president of Human Resources at CareerBuilder.  "It's critical that companies regularly take the temperature of their workplace and survey employees to identify where the company excels in providing a positive employee experience as well as opportunities to improve."

What's with the sociology committing at Forbes?  Look, these employees have to quit expecting to be hand-held by bosses or unions through the work process.  They work, they get paid.  They work harder, they get paid more.  If they think their deal's not adequate it's up to them to make that case to their boss.

Employers, after all, own the means of production, like a field or a factory.  The workers are given access to the employer's resources and brand - it's up to them to produce to standard and if they bring in a bit more, well then they may get to keep some of that.

To expect an employer to wade into the emotional well-being and job-satisfaction of their employees - why, that's as unnatural and flighty as this play-based learning or innovation stuff.

Better to ignore special interest parties like Forbes and go with common sense policy, like Right To Work that has a long lineage of success.  

Right?

Employees Are Not One Night Stands

HR is becoming a big pain in the neck for employers.  They have bottom lines to meet, work to get done - they want to quickly get the talent they need, pass on work (or vague concepts that can be crystalized into work and sales - hence the "hiring talent" piece) and move on.  There's a growing frustration with these apparently needy, cheeky millennials that expect clarity of direction, recognition for work done and meaningful engagement in a company's decision-making and implementation.

Um, no.  That's not how the real world works.

In the real world, bosses are in charge and new hires have to work damned hard to prove their worth. This means overtime, grunt-assignments and developing the capacity to intuit the boss' needs without them having to waste time explaining it to you.  If you can't manage this, well, that's why the new hires are on contracts only - they can be quickly canned and replaced.

You see, bosses don't have time to hand-hold or train new staff; they've got some significant sustainability issues due to the massive uncertainty around the global economy and their own sector. Partisan wars are making the policy landscape unpredictable, it's hard to know what may be a good investment or a bad one.  In a lot of cases, the solution appears to be hunker down and weather the storm.

Which brings us back to HR.  

Hiring can be a lot like speed-dating - you read a bunch of CVs, buy a couple of kids some coffee and bring on the one who seems like the best fit (skills and personality) for your shop.  If it doesn't work, well, they're only on contract; you tell um it's not going to work out, send them on their way and move on.  And on.  And on.

The more you do this, though, you begin skewering your view of what a potential hire is all about.  Are they trying to tell you what you want to hear to get the job, or are they equally interviewing you to see if there's a fit?  Is their priority to grow in a role and maximize their potential, use you to pad their CV or do they just want to make some money?  We'll get to the money-focused piece later.

Employment isn't a transaction; to say labour-for-money is the entirety of the process is like saying that food is strictly about sustenance (or romantic relationships are strictly about sex).  If you get enough value out of bread-and-water, fine, but in a competitive, evolving marketplace I'm gonna hazard a guess and say you've probably realized you need to branch out a bit.

The employer/employee relationship is not transactional - it's multi-dimensional with a whole host of factors including management style, clarity of communication, flow and even work design impacting the productivity, health and creativity of your employees.  All of this, in turn, impacts the adaptability and responsiveness of your team.

It is absolutely true that millenials have different expectations from work than their parents did - but then, the sorts of opportunities and challenges they face aren't the same as those their parents dealt with.  

This generation will live longer and work longer than the previous one.  As the CPP discussion rages on, there's less and less sense that retirement is even an option.  Besides, if you want to make money and make a difference, you're not looking at 9-to-5 jobs, either.  

There's an expectation on the side of youth that they'll have to blog, tweet and instagram about their day jobs, take calls at random hours and spend more time at networking and other related events.  They'll be thinking about their work and the value they can add while they're out with their friends, riding on the subway or shopping.

They want more from their employers, but their instinctively prepared to give more, too.  They're not looking at employers as pay cheques, but parts of their expanding network and future plans for growth.

Here's the big irony - bosses who either don't recognize the need to change and are fighting to hold the line or those who recognize that something's gotta give and are reducing their focus on HR so they can spend more energy on exploring new business avenues are missing the point.

If you hire well and commit to your staff, you can build a lasting relationship with them that will add value to what you do now and down the road.  Like any relationship, you should not expect employees to be constantly in agreement with you or to understand everything you say immediately; the reverse is equally true.  The goal isn't simplicity or one-way message flow, it's about complimentary capabilities and healthy friction that results in innovation.

Yes, there are certain basic skills you will want to look for in filling positions, but your focus should be more on the people than what they bring to the table on paper.  Understand clearly what you're hiring them for and what your expectations are (or perhaps even make the expectations development part of the hiring process) and plan accordingly.  If you, as a leader, go in looking to empower your future hires to reach their goals through adding value to their company (instead of a linear focus on what they can do for you) you'll be surprised what they'll be prepared to do for you in return.

All it takes is commitment.

Now back to the money-focus.

We have an increasingly laissez-faire culture that puts more pressure on front-line workers to be all things to all people - they need to follow instructions, intuit direction from unclear messaging, give regular (but simple) updates without expecting the same in return, have to find clients, pitch to clients, close deals and implement the work.  If they can't do all that, well, someone else can.

The same is being taught to students/new graduates - the ability to sell is the most important skill you can develop.  You need to sell yourself to employers, make them understand why they should hire you. Always Be Closing, etc.  To understand how foolish an approach this is, you need to have some understanding of behavioural economics.

Selling is not the same as accomplishing.  It never has been, nor will it ever be.  When you're focus in on selling, you're trying to portray confidence and incite a sense of urgency.  You have a problem, I have the solution, nobody else does.

That's what politicians do.  They overstate their capacity and undermine their opponents, then create a sense of urgency pushing you to donate to them or vote for their candidate.  Attention, Interest, Decision, Action.  So, how well and universally do politicians perform?  When does the selling game stop?

It doesn't.  Errors get downloaded, spun or ignored.  Wins are taken credit for where involvements was minimal and blown up to be larger than they are.  Problems that don't look like they have clear, communicable wins to them are simply overlooked.

It's not dead - it's resting.

Selling is about controlling the narrative, keeping up appearances and making a profit - which is not what accomplishment is about.  Accomplishment is collaborative, iterative and focused on the long-term, not the quick-hit.

We have sales-driven politics that are failing to address structural problems, but doing a great job on advertising.  We have firms across the board who are investing more in superlatives than they are in innovation or HR.

With all this selling going on, we're falling behind the curve.  Other jurisdictions are spending less time on preening and more on rolling up their sleeves.  It's time we catch up and start realizing that nobody buys the spin any more - they want to see results.

Are You a Brandlord or a Leader?

The feudal system was simple - lords were masters over plots of land that they would defend through the employments of soldiers.   The people who lived on that land did so at the whim of the lord, but the right to space and the relative security from brigands the lords' knights came at a price.

The peasants privileged enough to live on the lord's land had to give something in return - a portion of crops grown for instance, or a certain number of hours working directly on the lord's work.  Peasants rarely had to do things they would not have done regardless for their own survival - they simply had to produce more.  

So long as the lord provided space an relative security, his job was done.  Soldiers served not only as guardians of the realm, but also enforcers of production.

That was the arrangement - space and security for labour, which was supervised by a middle class of managers.  There was no cause for the peasants to collaborate on anything except the lord's work, and then under tight supervision.  It was not in the lord's interest to let his peasants fraternize, lest they get ideas (which happened anyway).

Feudal societies tend not to be very innovative ones, as you can imagine.  That's not to say innovation never happened, it simply wasn't nurtured.

This basic laissez-faire model - lord (or boss), enforcers (or middle management) and at the bottom, the labourers has been repeated across time and geography.  The rules are the same - stay in line, or you'll be punished.  Produce more, you'll be rewarded.  Do things differently, well, there's not much place for that.  It's the model that sustained the Industrial Age, Tokugawa Japan and arguably, many an organized religion.  It's become the de-facto model of the Knowledge Economy as well.

How many employers today believe that, by providing their employees with a desk, computer and phone, plus the right to slap the company name on their card, they have lived up to the fullness of their responsibility   How many of these brandlords believe it's up to their employees to self-motivate, create content, satiate clients and do the ever-demanding job of sales?  How many mangers feel their role is about driving activity, not coordinating success?

We have entered a new world of neo-feudalism where the it's the job of the bottom to sustain the top rather than the top to empower and propel forward the whole.  Adding value, at least in  Canada, isn't of interest - simply more of the same is.

Which is why, in a pandemic of youth unemployment, the message being conveyed is that kids these days have unrealistic expectations when they think that higher education in promoted programs will translate into higher starting salaries.  It's a privilege to be able to hold a job and earn any kind of salary - to expect more from those with capital is unrealistic.

It's not that the bar is being set higher so much as it is the floor has been raised.  Is it any wonder that the middle class is shrinking?  In a society that promotes management over motivation, how many middlemen do you really need?

While nations the world over are evolving their economies, Canada remains frozen.  We don't care, though - instead of nurturing collaboration and new ideas, we're pushing competition over natural resources.

There's a big difference between harvesting the fruit of someone else's labour and nurturing innovation and value-add.  You don't grow a garden by expecting vegetables to audition for the right to be planted in your soil; similarly, you can't expect your employees to add value unless you're providing direction, support and coordination.

Are you an employer?  If so, are you a leader or a brandlord?  

If it's the latter and you've got a simple model that just requires unchanging mass production, carry on.  

If, however, you're in a business that relies on creating new solutions, products or services for your clients, you might want to try a different approach.

Don't Ask Me - You're the Boss!

Bottom line?  If you want someone's opinion (and believe me, you do), don't set yourself up as feudal lord.  If you do, you're setting up expectations for your team.

Leaders are catalysts, conduits, motivators and mentors.  It's takes more effort, greater personal engagement, but it produces results.

If results don't matter, though, carry on - after all, you're the boss.

Boss: The Worst Four-Letter Word in Business

Remember George Carlin’s 7 Dirty Words comedy skit? It’s brilliant. Irreverent. It’s funny because it’s true. But it’s incomplete.

At least in a business context, there is one word that’s worse than all the rest – yes, even worse than the one you’re thinking of right now.

The first time I was CEO, I made an enormous list of mistakes, but at the time it looked like everything I touched turned to gold – so I made a big mistake when I let a friend call me Midas without calling him on it. “Boy, this guy’s so successful, and he’s calling me that? I must really be good.”

The truth is, I was more like a gambler on a roll: I was Midas until the day I wasn’t. Ouch. Looking back, I wish I’d read Tim Harford’s Adapt before I’d founded that company. Oh, well.

Midas is a bad word in business, but it isn’t the worst.

Around this same time, I also made the mistake of allowing our girls’ niñera (babysitter) to call me “Mr. Coiné.” As with Midas, my ego did not need anyone calling me “mister.” Neither does yours.

But Mister isn’t the worst thing someone can call you, either. You know what is the single worst four-letter word in business? Boss.

Oh, boy. I’ve learned from personal experience to hate that one. Here’s why:

• What the speaker means: “All I have to do is obey my boss’s marching orders, keep her happy, and I can keep my job. Someday I’ll even get promoted for my loyalty. Critical thinking? That’s above my pay grade. It’s my boss’s job.”

Is this who you want to lead? A follower?? Me, too – when I was a less confident kid. These days, I refuse to lead anyone other than other leaders. Meanwhile…

• What the listener hears: “You’re important. You’re wise. You have all the answers.”

I’ve met plenty of egomaniacs who think they have all the answers. Time typically proves them wrong. I’ve never met anyone who’s had more than a few of the answers herself. That’s why we need other leaders to help us. Build a well-rounded team, hopefully one with plenty of misfits, and typically someone in there will have the answer you need to any given problem – or they’ll know where to find it.

Please, do your whole company a favor, and ban the four-letter word “boss” from your workplace entirely. It’s a bad message sent, and a cancerous message received.

Something Employers Should Focus On

What's more important to you - ensuring your employees are keeping you up to date and making sure they're ready to drop whatever to listen to your latest whatever?  

Or getting their work done?

In the Knowledge Economy, distraction is the new repetitive stress syndrome.  If you want to maximize the output of your cognitive labour, it's time to think different about work.

The Two Biggest Distractions – And What to Do About Them

Distractions are the enemy of focus. Being able to keep your focus amidst the daily din of distraction makes you better able to use whatever talents you need to apply – whether making a business plan or a cheese soufflé. The more prone to distraction, the worse we do.

Yet we live in a time when we are more inundated by distractions than ever in human history. Tech gadgets and apps invade our concentration in ways the brain’s design never anticipated.

Scientists talk about two broad varieties of distractions: sensory and emotional. The sensory ones include everything from that too-loud guy at the next table in the coffee shop while you’re trying to focus on answering your emails, to those enticing pingy popups on your computer screen.

We are constantly ignoring sensory distractions – that’s the essence of paying attention. William James, a founder of America psychology, wrote a century or so ago that attention comes down to the mind’s eye noticing clearly “one of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.”

Notice, for instance, the feeling of the chair as it supports you. That sensation has been there all this while, though included among the vast amount of mental stimuli you’ve been ignoring.

Much harder to ignore than these random sensory inputs are emotional distractions. If one of those emails you’ve been working through happens to trigger a strong reaction – annoyance or anger, anxiety or even fearfulness – that distraction will instantly become the focus of your thoughts, no matter what you’re trying to focus on.

The brain’s wiring gives preference to our emotional distractions, creating pressing thought loops about whatever’s upsetting us. Our brain wants us to pay attention to what matters to us, like a problem in our relationships.

There is one key difference between hopeless rumination – the kind of thought that awakens you at 2 am and keeps going until you finally drift off again at 4 am – and useful reflection. The key: whether we can come up with some solution or new understanding that at least tentatively solves the difficulty so we can let go of it and get back to whatever we were supposed to be doing.

So what’s a strategy for dealing with distraction? Here’s one of mine: as a writer, my job comes down to producing a certain amount of useful text regularly. So my daily routine starts with a cup of tea, breakfast with my wife, and then a meditation session where I gather my focus. Then I write.

I don’t look at emails, take phone calls, or otherwise let distractions creep into my focused time. That keeps the sensory kind out, and the emotional kind to a minimum. I’ve got the whole rest of the day to deal with those.