Why we have trouble with TUPE

I have been reading “The Structure and Dynamics of Organisations and Groups”, written by Eric Berne back in 1961.

Old as this is, it still contains some interesting ideas.  One of these is that groups come together for specific work or activities, which is carried out most efficiently during stable periods.  However, a group reacts first to any internal or external disruption to its structure in order to preserve itself.  This means that in times of threat much of the work that a group might undertake is displaced by activity centred around self preservation.

This reminds me of “forming, storming, norming, performing“, noting that performing comes last for a group.  It also fits with Heron’s model of change:

In Heron’s model, as things change they only get back to productivity after a period of emotion followed by experimentation, that requires the right type of interventions to handle well.

Observing TUPE transfers within supported housing, normally caused by changes in Supporting People contracts, has illustrated this in action for me.  The amount of effort spent on change management, or on groups resisting change, is extraordinary in some ways.  In other ways it is very normal, as changes in a group lead all members to lose much of the social capital that they have developed in that group.

However, if we also take the view that in a constantly changing world a useful metaphor for organisations is that of an organism, then we may think all that effort and lost work is worth it.  In this metaphor, the definition of death is something that is no longer changing.

Tired mistakes

Last week I discovered a mistake I made on the last day before I went on holiday.  It was a simple one, missing someone off an email address list, but caused a lot of disruption.  At the time I was really tired and badly in need of a holiday.

Comparing notes with a friend, she suffered from exactly the same sort of error, overlooking something when tired and under pressure just before going on holiday.   Tiredness contributes to more serious errors – something like 10% of road accidents or up to 20% of motorway accidents.  Its a subject worth taking seriously at work or elsewhere.

An article I found told me what not to do to combat tiredness – don’t rely on caffeine, don’t eat to boost energy, don’t try to sleep lots and lots – and as an alternative more water, healthy lifestyle, regular sleep.  Common sense things I know but don’t put into practice.

This made me wonder to what extent we self-sabotage.  Not just myself, but the others I see about me downing coffee, relying on the mid afternoon chocolate bar, or waiting for a lie in at the weekend.  The cultures I work within vary but tend to demand high levels of activity and generate stress.  People are always complaining of too much to do.

I can only speak about my own personal battle against “working too hard”, where I have discovered my greatest foe is myself.  I’m always obeying the shadow parent hovering at my back, saying I should work hard.  Simply doing nothing and enjoying myself generates guilt.  Letting go is difficult.

One of my favourite books is “The Tao of Pooh” by Benjamin Hoff.    Modern society is characterised as the “Bisy backson” (after a sign – busy back soon – misspelled by Christopher Robin).  On the other hand, the nicest of times is when you are going nowhere and doing nothing.

what I like doing best is nothing – Christopher Robin

Now if only I could get rid of that shadow….

Leaders and followers

In previous posts about transformational leadership and Singapore, I began to wonder about the leader and the led.  In Singapore I perceived a leadership focused on the material and secular, whom people were willing to follow because it delivered success.  This appeared to produce a sameness that I found stifling.

Should leadership also be about the spiritual in government and secular organisations?  In the UK church and state have been kept largely separate, but I’d like to apply the question to leading organisations.  Singapore also kept these things separate, and a wonderful diversity of religion existed – Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Chinese.  Yet outside this strict rules and materialistic sameness were backed by a culture of conformity.

Lee Kuan Yew’s (former Prime Minister) leadership might be termed transformational – he inspired people with a vision of a materially better future and led them to it.  However, this also created conformity and sameness that carries a risk for the future, one where the reliance of the people on good leaders is a weakness.

An alternative for a leader, be they a business or political leader (and are the 2 different?) is to lead not through inspiration, but by creating the conditions for people to question.  The Internet (self organising and changing like a living entity) is an argument that you don’t even need the leader, and that leadership distributed amongst participants is equally strong in the right circumstances.

Whether you need the leader or not, I’d suggest that a leader’s job must always be spiritual as well as material.  How we think and feel is linked critically to how we act and so to the business of business.  This is normally expressed as motivation, but I believe it is more than that and that a truly transformational leader would inspire people to examine their own beliefs and ways of being.

I’d like to suggest that its important for all of us to move from followership to discovery, and that the key to this is how we go about learning.  I’ll end with a quote I find important:

Learning to become an effective self-directed learner is probably the greatest intellectual and psychological challenge that an individual can face in a lifetime……  Some people never attempt to acquire the competencies of serious learning to learn as they are addicted to the deferential prescriptive approach.

- Dealtry, R. (2004), “The savvy learner”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 16

Older Travellers, sterile leaders

The backpacker scene in Penang is dominated by the 40+ age group.  Not to say there are not younger back packers, but perhaps they are all on the beach in Thailand.  Wondering why this is and listening to their talk, some of it is memories, some of it is early but not well off retirement, but some of it is the search for a less hermetically sealed and more abrasive holiday.

Coming to Penang after Sinapore, especially to the budget end of the holiday market, the differences are very noticeable.  I enjoy the dirt, noise and confusion, the sense that there is something more raw and less sterile here.  Perhaps I and others sense fewer barriers between our selves and others – the difference between seeing through a window, and standing in the scene yourself.  One contrast is the malls – Penang has them (see picture of a huge one) but they are more like market stalls and small shops moved inside than swish department stores.

Perhaps the difference between Penang and Singapore is about intensity of experience. We enjoyed the street food, but also enjoyed high tea at the Eastern and Orient hotel (the Penang version of Raffles).  Both things we would not normally do.  But then my partner and I are both people who enjoy change and variation, and do not have much problem with rats and cockroaches.

The other point of view is the bland shopping mall land that Singapore has become.  I’ll give you two quotes about it:

Lee Kuan Yew (former Prime Minister): “when you are hungry, when you lack basic services, freedom, human rights and democracy do not add up to much”.

A 65 year old taxi driver we asked about how life had changed: “people were happier then….now too stressed, too materialistic”

I’m with the taxi driver, but then I have the luxury of a full belly, health-care and public services.  As to the shopping mall, as Fiona says in Shrek 2, “I really don’t need all of this…”.  Perhaps that’s why there are few backpackers, let alone older ones, in Singapore (or could it be the cost of living in Utopia?).

Oh Brave New World – Singapore?

“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!  How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world!  That has such people in’t!”   – Miranda, The Tempest, Shakespear 

I write this post while on holiday in Singapore, visiting friends.  In the first few days I am struck by the difference in culture, and an immedieate feeling that this is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  It certainly has more than enough shopping malls to satisfy the most dedicated consumer.  It also has a high control/obediance culture.  This means low crime and decent homes, a good standard of living for most, and a powerful economy.

However, one friend complains of lack of creativity at work from Singaporeans.  This fits well with things I have read, that mark the local culture as good at getting things done in an organised and efficient manner, but poor at the sort of indivdualistic innovation we see more of in the West.  Another friend here said “it all looks nice, but scratch beneath the surface and there’s no history”.  Everything we see is new, as if the past has been deliberately obliterated. 

So low crime, good standard of living.  Yet this country of cleanliness and order makes me think of Australia, another good time culture, but where the vicious past and maltreatment of the Aborigines was hidden and largely ignored.  Not that I know of any darkness hidden in Singapore.  Its just that my internal bias kicks in to link the two.  If I had to pick a reason, its that I value chaos and creativity and dissent more highly than order, material satisfaction and community.  My bias probably.

Yet I am left with the question: “Is it better to be Socrates dissatisfied?” (J.S.Mill)