Month: January 2020

One of my favourite stories of last year was of someone complaining of their photo (from a stock gallery) being used in an article about hipsters. The claim was that their photo being used portrayed them in a negative light. The article was on group conformity and on how, whilst trying to show they don’t conform, all hipsters end up looking alike.

The kicker was that it transpired that the person complaining proved that point by mistakenly thinking it was an image of them – when in fact it was just another hipster. You can read a thread about it here. The overall contention of the article (based on a paper here with maths I don’t pretend to understand) is that “people who oppose mainstream culture all end up looking the same”.

It is rare to find people who don’t seek out a tribe/group identity – even if sometimes that is joining forces with other people who boldly say they don’t want to be part of a group. The kids at school who agree that everything sucks except people who agree that everything sucks – and the same people who turn up in organisations. I think we see the same in HR and it’s interesting to witness. Jane Watson has written this excellent piece on normative vs descriptive theories of HR and – over time – you can almost see multiple camps form, disband and reform.

There’s a group ‘doing the do’ – and a group saying ‘this is how the do should be done’. And they have their own languages and signifiers and champions. And it’s really, really interesting to watch. Of course the real win lies in the best of both. It lies in the desire for better being married with ways of delivering that. It lies in endeavouring for a higher standard whilst understanding the constraints that prevent things from being perfect. It lies in people bringing energy into shared ambtion, not just revelling in points of difference. Most of the goals are shared – we shouldn’t define ourselves simply by degrees of fanaticism. We should solve together.

One of the most fascinating things I’ve seen in my role is the constant desire of groups to define their boundaries exclusively to then claim a space as an out group. ‘Nobody gets us, that’s all your fault’. If you take a step back and just observe it’s intriguing, it’s understandable but arguably ultimately unproductive. Don’t be the hipster not wanting to be a hipster. Or the hipster saying everyone else is wrong.

Be whatever you want to be and find others happy enough to be what they want to be too. Find your learning and challenge wherever you can. It’s too precious not to take everything available.

Please note: the author has absolutely nothing against hipsters. I just liked the story.

Early in my career I took a job in a department that was supposed to be delivering a major new product for one of our business partners. It seemed like a great opportunity. What happened next was that the deal was delayed and the delayed again. But we were already in training and so the organisation decided to leave us in this new area until we were needed. So after training was completed I was earning the most money I ever had (low bar at that point, we aren’t talking Jeff Bezos money) but had no work to do.

Technically there was some work to do, but I am an early riser and a quick worker which meant that most days I had finished my allotted work by the time I was actually supposed to start work. Leaving me a whole day of… Well, what?

It turned out pretty quickly that the team of 8 were part of something that should have been monitored and evaluated as part of a social experiment. We all reacted in different ways.

• One person (low level of drive…) simply kicked back and relaxed so much they could often be found asleep at their desk with earphones in. Other teams complained and he didn’t care
• Another took to professional gambling through their phone
• Several of us started Fantasy sport leagues with multiple teams and competed against each other there. Or played the stock markets with imaginary money
• One person was so bored they would get everyone else cups of tea or do favours for them… if the other team members would leave extra work for them. Yes, they actually worked for work to avoid having no work
• I read everything that I could on the area of expertise so that subsequent training courses became a bit redundant because I’d put in such intense study that nothing was new to me
• Tempers would flare and people would shout at each other – not because of the pressure of work but because of the lack of it
• Other colleagues in the business hated us for the lack of work and we hated them for having work

I guess it taught me very early that for some getting out of work is bliss. Yet after a short period of excitement for most people there was a hunger to do something that had a value or was valued. We wanted to be productive. We weren’t saving lives, but whatever we did was going to be better than things we knew had no worth.

So whenever someone tells me that someone is lazy I’m tempted to suggest that you give that person no work for a year. There’s nothing more strangely useful in helping us see the perverse value we place on it. It’s also worth remembering that you can place 8 people in an identical situation and get 8 completely different reactions. We are curious beasts.