101 Half Connected Things

A couple of years ago I was going through a particularly unfun time and I began to struggle with noise and light in a way that was more overwhelming than before. I now regularly suffer from sensory overload. It means I struggle (in fact I find it impossible) to filter out noise and my whole environment feels overwhelming.

There’s a video here which gives a reasonable idea of what it is like when I’m having one of those days. If I’m describing what seems like an alien problem to you then have a click.

https://youtu.be/K2P4Ed6G3gw

It isn’t fun. It cripples me and I’ve had long journeys where I’ve spent them in fear of the next station being announced or the next phone call someone will take. Because I know that sound will go straight through me. As will any sound. I’ve probably, on reflection, always struggled with it – it’s just been more pronounced in recent years.

I’ve had a couple of instances of it this year – and the woman putting on makeup next to me waving her arms and dropping things on the floor is currently threatening to overwhelm my morning so I’m trying to look away from her and do something constructive. So I thought I’d write this.

Part of my job involves hopping on stage and talking to/with people. I’ve had two times this year where I’ve not been able to do that at all well.

The first was at a membership conference earlier in the year. I stood up to speak and the official photographer had rigged up flash bulbs along the edge of the stage. They went off. My brain went off. I went blank. I gathered myself and tried to start speaking again. The bulbs went off again. My brain reset. I stood their blankly. I struggled through what I was going to say. It was vague and disjointed – because I was. It felt absolutely horrible. People tell me it wasn’t. But it felt horrible.

The second time was at an event called Recfest. Where every speaker was awesome except me. I’d had a bad day before and on reflection I should have called in sick or done whatever the equivalent was for speakers. But I didn’t want to let anyone down – buy then I did. I was spaced out and struggling to operate as I should. I had about an hour of material for a 20-25 minute slot (a normal thing…). After 15 minutes I was talking in circles. Words were very hard to come by. Ideas were lost. It was bad. Part of this blog is the fact I wanted to apologise to the organiser (in this case they hadn’t been anything but awesome – and certainly hadn’t blinded me. Sorry Jamie) for being bang average/poor. If you were in the audience then I’m sorry too.

Being suddenly bad at something you are good at is a strange experience. Having days, seemingly at random, where you are scared (that’s the right word) to leave home/the office as you don’t know how well you’ll cope with a normal street scene is odd.

I do the stuff you’d expect. I have noise cancelling headphones, I book onto quiet coaches, I try and avoid rush hour, I’ll take tube routes that are less bustly (I love you District Line). I’ve told some colleagues at work and they are really good at being happy to go to quieter bars when we go out – and they understand that I might leave at short/no notice if suddenly I just don’t want to be somewhere.

I’m writing this mainly as an outlet. I’m not campaigning. I’m not brave – a couple of times a year I struggle with noise and light. But I’m willing to share that sometimes my mind doesn’t do what it is supposed to and on those days I don’t know what to do with myself.

My brain is wired differently. That’s clear in a number of ways – some of which are strengths, some of which are weaknesses. Lots of people’s are and I think there is a growing understanding of that which can only be a good thing.

But for now… If you could all live a bit more quietly in case I’m in the same train carriage that would be great.

Synopsis: Why having values is tricky but, lacking them is far worse

At the weekend someone I respected posted a view on something that I didn’t agree with. I think we broadly want the same outcomes, but they are absolutely adamant that a change should come about that I’m not sure of. They posted it for the world to see and stood squarely behind it as people disagreed. They called out people who wouldn’t back the change they wanted to see.And that’s probably why we are friends. Because I know that even if I disagree with the conclusion of their thinking it comes from a place of principle.

Legend has it that Pythagoras (of triangle fame) died an odd death. There are many as 10 different accounts of his death and this one is, I think, the most compelling.

‘Pythagoras was being chased by a mob and ran towards a field of beans. His order or ‘brotherhood’ believed that the beans contained souls – and so he decided he would rather be beaten to death rather than risk accidentally stepping on and destroying one bean.’

Life, and work, is often full of messy compromises. And most of us, in our jobs, have to compromise a bit every single day.But there will come the occasional time where we have to decide what we will die in a ditch (or field of beans) for. Or to voice and unpopular opinion.

And those are the days when you can tell who is just drifting – and who really has conviction.Or as it was wonderfully put in cartoon form…

Synopsis: An emptying of my head around what I want (and don’t) from HR teams I work with.

I worked for years in HR. I now, technically, have a ‘normal’ role, despite still spending quite a bit of time writing and discussing HR.

Leading teams and doing work outside of HR has been a great experience in better understanding and clarifying what I want and need from HR (and what I don’t), so I thought I’d share some observations below.

Please note that this isn’t about the strategic future of a business function. This is what I turn up to work each day expecting…

i) Do the basics well – for all of the talk about HR needing to be more strategic I want my teams paid accurately and on time, supported to develop and I want my vacancies filled in a reasonable time (with a good pool of candidates to choose from). Where there have to be policies I want them to be fair, helpful (rather than cumbersome) and clearly communicated.

ii) Provide insight – I want to be given insight into my team, its dynamics and challenges that I might not find or know myself. I want to be better equipped and with a better understanding after each conversation. Bring me data and bring me insight and bring me suggestions. Expect me to prod and check that data and insight because you are asking me to act based on it.

iii) Provide challenge – I want to be challenged to be better. I want to be told where I can improve and I want someone to bounce my decisions off. I want to be shown different angles to approach a problem. If I’m wrong (I’m busy and we all have blindspots) then I want someone to call that out clearly. Be honest – I don’t actually have enough time for you to manage me as a stakeholder just tell me what I need to know. I need you to help me crack on with making things better.

iv) Provide support – leading teams can be lonely. I want someone that I can confide in and who will find ways to help. I’ve already got more than enough people judging my leadership – be the person that works with me on it.

v) Problems solved – I don’t just want commentary and chat. I want problems solved and action taken. I want to notice the difference to the organisation and my teams of having a good HR team in place. I want to see that activity has value. I want to look at whatever you do and see the link to improving the organisation.

What I don’t want

i) My team’s/my time sucked up – I want as low an amount of paperwork to complete as humanly possible and if you are chasing me for it I want you to utter the sentence ‘I know you are busy with other things’ and to know what those things are. And I’ll apologise if you do those things.

ii) Being told what I should value/what is important – I don’t need to be told that leadership/culture/x/y is important. The problem is juggling that with also delivering performance and operational requirements. I need practical help to get that balance right.

iii) Distant judgement – Step into my world…it’s a mess in here and every time I think I’ve got it sorted something else moves or breaks. I don’t need you to visit that world, I need you to live in it with me. Part of ‘the business’ rather than talking about it like it is somehow ‘other’ to you.

iv) Initiatives – if you want me to support something then it needs to have a concrete output and be joined up with other work. Don’t give me posters and isolated work. It’s about the outcome, not the activity.

I’ll be sharing this with my HR team too, because I need to get better at ‘contracting’ too and that’s my side of the deal (we don’t have a problem here, but I can be better)…and typing this out certainly made me aware of where I hadn’t provided support and challenge in the right way over the years.

Quick PS – a couple of people have described the activity above as transactional. I would see solving problems and delivering value across an organisation in a joined up way as transformational. I’d include effective change management etc within that.

Synopsis: short read on interpretation of performance and motivation. Deals with how to agree that someone is underperforming (there is no strengths based thinking in this blog, it’s about agreeing it is going wrong…)

One of the hardest challenges in organisations – and indeed society – is where two people have available the same information and draw radically different conclusions. It can be hard to fathom and hard to engage when your world view leads you to a (seemingly) unavoidable conclusion – yet someone else ends up somewhere else. Because for most of us perspective and emotion are layered over facts.

In work you see it in cases of fundamental attribution error/correspondence bias, where we allow far more leniency for context in our own performance but more readily assume that underperformance in others is due to character/capability. I also think people are often more likely to give some slack for context in our own teams than in others.

That doesn’t, however, mean that nobody is ever underperforming, but it probably means we need to do two things

i) be a bit harsher or clinical with ourselves in terms of appraising our own performance

ii) ensure that we have sufficient context to understand challenges facing others

It doesn’t mean that once you understand those challenges that people can’t be accountable for not surmounting them – but assessing work devoid of context is as unhelpful as not setting standards in the first place.

One of the questions I often ask is ‘How different would it look if… ‘

For instance if you have the same information about someone you think is underperforming as someone else (who thinks they are performing…) then ask

‘Once I’ve taken into account context… how different would things have looked if someone I did rate had completed the project/been in the role?’

This approach shifts the focus from the person to thinking about acceptable outcomes in context. It shifts the conversation, quite often, to not being an emotive one about whether the person is ‘good/bad/indifferent’ but a more constructive one about shared expectations and the gap to actual performance

• What are the outcomes we can both agree we think could have been achieved in the situation?
• Do we both think they’ve been achieved?
• Why?
• So what do we need to do?

I’ve written before about the mantra of ‘Cold assessment of the facts, warm development of behaviours’ and to do this we need to be clear thinking enough to understand acceptable levels of performance in context before we take next steps. And we need to be fair and open in the way we do that.

1. Context – understand it
2. Clarity – over what was achievable
3. Contrast – with what was
4. Constructive steps forward – to address gaps

Because people love lists that all start with the same letter.

Content: a short reflection on how being shouted at when younger still has a positive impact now. Even though I’d never recommend shouting

When I was about 16 I was working in a fast food chain that has a largely arch based logo. I had been told to fill up the milkshake machines with new mix – and then suddenly I was being shouted at. I was putting my second bag of mix in and one of the shift supervisors suddenly was shouting at me about costing the organisation thousands of pounds.

He picked up the ’empty’ milkshake mix bag and showed there was still more I could have squeezed out. He pointed out how many restaurants there were around the world and how often they would be using a bag of milkshake and if they all threw away as much as I did… Then just how much money did I think my laziness would cost the organisation each year? I just stood there. And then squeezed the hell out of every bag I ever used afterwards.

He taught me the value of not leaving money on the table. A lesson that has stayed with me throughout my career. Being shouted at in a giant fridge taught me that.

What’s interesting for me – and the more important provocation – is that I’d never advocate people shouting at each other and certainly not shouting at more junior members of staff in a contained area.

But like lots of life’s lessons I’m not sure that if it had been delivered in a less visceral way it would have stuck. I can still feel the emotions from that exchange. I’ve benefited from it every day of my professional life.

Like I say, I’d never advocate for that behaviour, but at the same time a two minute rant in a fridge has stuck with me for decades.