Adventures in home working

A couple of weeks ago I heard a manager say that employee morale was not a management issue, I hope I heard wrong, but I don’t think I did. 

To be fair though I don’t think the manager concerned really meant what he said and was in fact referring to an employees response to his remuneration was a personal issue.  Morale in contrast is much more than a response to remuneration and is very much a management issue.

I am not a great manager, however in my years I have learnt a couple of lessons about morale and the most significant being that individuals often tend to keep their morale troubles to themselves, sometimes grumbling to friends but not always.  I always found this really worrying because I know for sure that a persons peer group and manager can do a lot improve morale, if they know about it.

Over a couple of years my team leaders and I came up with a pretty good approach, which is worth sharing:

1. Each week everyone in the team (including the team leads and I) posted a highlight report to a shared folder
2. At the end of the highlight report they scored their overall satisfaction in the following areas:  frustration, too much work, too little work, skills, training, overall happiness
3. Our wonderful admin consolidated all the cores into a spreadsheet so that we could spot trends across the 30+ people in the team

I noticed some great benefits:

1. Everyone seemed much happier being honest in providing these happiness scores than they were with explicitly going to their team leaders directly, because they were concerned they might be seen as moaning
2. The team leads and I found that everyone understood us a bit better and the “what does he do all day” question never seemed to arise!
3. We explicitly defined the scores so that a person could indicate that their level of satisfaction required some intervention and how urgent that was
4. All the team leaders and myself scanned every highlight report each week and were very proactive and imaginative in addressing the issues, we were also much more relaxed about management because we had a great way of tracking team “health” overall
5. Very often we didn’t need to do much because when a person indicated an issue their team mates almost always rallied round and helped resolve it before team leaders got a chance
6. Team leaders shared the responsibility for everyone in the team, we often found that the best person to help address a persons motivation issue was not their direct team leader

I’m sure this approach isn’t in any management handbooks but it worked for us so I thought I would pass it on,  one point worth noting is that the issue was almost never money!

Over the last few years I have been much more conscious of stress,  I am able to detect it and don’t tend to miss the symptoms hiding away behind the adrenalin fuelled activity. 

I just came across this article which provides a very shot, but very insightful analysis of some of the main caused of work stress:

I think stress is, by its very nature, always negative. Pressure may create stress, but pressure is not negative in itself. Some pressure is even enjoyable, getting the blood racing and the mind whirring. What turns pressure into stress may be any of these added factors:

• Tiredness. Lack of time or opportunity to relax between bouts of pressure. Almost any stimulus, if continued for too long, become unpleasant or painful. It’s the same with pressure.
• Fear. If the outcome of the situation causes you anxiety or dread, there is no way it can remain a positive experience. A great deal of workplace pressure comes into this category, since there is often an implied threat if you fail to produce whatever is required, on time and to order.
• Haste. Doing things in a rush tends to make you feel anxious. You may fear you have not had time to do a good job, or that you have been forced to cut too many corners for comfort.
• Riskiness. Pleasurable pressure is usually either risk-free, or comes with the kind of risk people enjoy taking (like skiing fast downhill). Stress arises when the risks produce real anxiety and apprehension.
• Feeling out of control. No one can avoid stress when they feel that their lives are being forced down a path over which they have no control. Feeling that you are no longer in control of important parts of your well-being is inherently stressful.
• Excess. We all have a natural tolerance level for pressure. As soon as it increases beyond that level, we start to feel stress. It’s like an aircraft wing. It is designed to withstand a certain range of pressures, plus a safety margin. If the pressures on it increase beyond the design limits, stress results. Too much stress and the wing will break off.

Many people dismiss the idea of slowing down, or taking work/life balance seriously, out of a mixture of bravado and the idea that pressure is natural. It is, and so is stress. We can all withstand some level of stress, especially if it comes in short bursts, with gaps in between for recovery. What leads to burnout and sickness is long-term, unrelenting levels of stress. When that happens, things go badly wrong and may not be recoverable.

One of my most popular posts was a mind map that attempted to capture the main themes of Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind.  Presentation Zen has a great post which applies the themes in the book to presentations and it’s well worth a read.  I particularly liked one of the slides in the article, which I have re-used to the right.

The following short extract summarizes the approach taken in the article – excellent:

The six fundamental aptitudes outlined by Pink can be applied to many aspects of our personal and professional lives. Below, I list the six key abilities as they relate to the art of presentation. The six aptitudes are: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. My discussion is with presentations (enhanced by multimedia) in mind, but you could take the six aptitudes and apply them to the art of game design, programming, product design, project management, health care, teaching, retail, PR, and so on

I have just discovered the chief happiness officer blog, which focused on happiness at work and I think it’s great.  Just this morning I was talking to Graham on the phone while out walking (I had nothing better to do, Graham was late for a meeting!) and I was saying how I dislike it when a company says it is in business to make a profit.  I much prefer to think of a company seeing its role as:

Providing fulfilling employment to it’s employees and providing great services to it’s customers whilst making a profit.

Framed like this the company can rethink it’s objectives and derive shareholder value as a side effect of having happy employees and satisfied customers, which I think (maybe unrealistically) is a much healthier way to run a company.

Anyway back to the blog,  the author is in the process of writing a book and is blogging ideas along the way, which seems a great process and one that’s increasingly popular.  As a taster here are some of the recent posts, followed by my comments:

Dealing with uncertainty at work, very important and useful advise in today’s climate.  As a team leader I have been in this situation several times and this is good advise.

Ask a co-worker for advice, a few years I did some research into who people like to ask for advise and way out in front was co-workers.  This was in an IT environment and it’s interesting that help desks were way down on the list.  We formalized this by creating a well supported super user role and it worked very well.

Why job descriptions are useless, very perceptive – when was the last time you looked at yours, the post doesn’t just trash job descriptions through, it describes some good alternatives.

Secret salaries vs. open, most people seem to prefer secret salaries, I worked in a department once with voluntary open salaries – almost everyone decided to declare them and we found it worked very well.

For more on my own thoughts on happiness check out this list of posts

I have been meditating twice a day now for just over 3 years and it now plays a major part in my life, initialy I started to meditate just to help me manage the constant pain I am in, but as the years went by I realised that it has had a much broader effect.  There is no doubt that pain management has improved significantly, but I am also much more tolerant, easy going, mindful, and generally happier.  I also think it has helped me to focus more on enjoying everything that I do and to accept the parts of my life that are difficult/impossible to change and have the energy to change the rest.

For 2 years I used probably the most simple technique:

• I sit cross legged – in a quiet place
• close my eyes
• count my first 30 breaths
• from 30 onwards I just focus my attention on the air as it flows through my nose
• I do this for roughly 10 minutes, if my thoughts wander, I just bring them back to my breath and carry on

Recently I realised that I could also meditate very successfully in a constantly noisy place, which is really useful when I am waiting for a plane, or if the kids are off playing somewhere. My latest refinement is only a week old and it’s to meditate with background music. 

I came across the perfect music while out walking at Bolton Abbey, Debbie and I went into the Priory Church and there was a beautiful background chanting music playing,  as soon as I heard it I felt myself being drawn into the meditative state.  Unfortunately there was no one there to buy a copy from so I dragged Debbie back the next day and managed to get a CD, wonderful!  As luck would have it, when I got home I found a pair of noise isolating headphones – that I had bought off eBay a few weeks ago – had arrived from America and these are perfect for creating a completely quiet environment to listen in.

So that I don’t get in a rut I try and read a little about meditation each day and I have found Ezine articles to be the perfect way to do this,  I have subscribed to the meditation category using RSS and so at least one new article appears in my reading list every day.

The Inescapable data blog has two recent posts (here and here) that describe some of the gathering momentum around home working that are worth reading.  I am a great fan of home working personally,  although I have some short term reservations about how home working is often implemented by companies.  I think new processes, tool and cultural norms will rapidly mature to make home working a more satisfying experience in the medium term.  I think the nail in the coffin of the office will be when companies start to give employees an allowance that they can choose to spend on a company car, company PC, company phone, company desk and company office space all of which are optimised for the company or they can choose to spend it on creating an optimised personal environment that addresses their work and home life in a more integrated fashion.  I know which one I will be choosing. 

In fact I run an allowance system of sorts myself at the moment,  I gave up long ago expecting my company to invest as much in the tools of my trade as I would have invested if I was given the choice.  So when I started working from home I took the money that I was saving in fuel, personal broadband and other incidental travel and office related expenses and stuck it in a dedicated bank account.  I now draw on that account – without guilt – whenever I need/want to invest in my personal effectiveness and I am much happier as a result,  I no longer spend every day wishing my laptop had more memory, or wishing I had a second display, or a better headset,  I just buy them!

Over the past couple of years I have thought a lot about work life balance and think I have made real progress.  One of the small tips I have found useful is to subscribe to a number of more positive Ezine Articles on various self improvement topics.  I find it really helps each morning as I plow through my business RSS feeds to read a few articles on happiness or meditation for example.  This is a typical article on happiness just to get you started.

Kathy has yet another amazing post on her Creating Passionate Users site about the fact that animals love exercise, and she questions why we don’t.  Well whilst I think its a great article with wonderful pictures of her horses if she came around to my house and saw my four girls bouncing on the trampoline she would see a lot of parallels with her horses.  Some of us love exercise too, and its not just the kids round here who love the trampoline, the beach, the sand dunes, the tennis courts, the swimming pool and their bikes!

I must admit that I rarely listen to or read national or international news,  I find the signal to noise ration to be very low,  I pick up a little from the Saturday paper and from my family and friends.  Of course I scan a lot of focussed blog entries on technology and sustainable living as well.  Recently I added a whole load of positive news articles to by daily RSS feeds on topics that are broadly classified as “self-improvement” and they seem to provide a great contrast to my normal technology reading.  If you fancy some uplifting stuff in your aggregator then I can definitely recommend that you go here.  You will find the following categories to choose from!

Go up a level if your interests are broader!  I have quite a few from here is well

Its pretty rare that I get burnt-out, partly because I am pretty aware of my workload and the pressure I am under, but also because I have this sort of unwritten – until now – strategy:

• I encourage a peer group support culture,  help other people when they are struggling and they might help you when you need help
• I am honest about how I am feeling and am not afraid to have a good moan
• I speak up when I don’t agree with something,  but know when to give in
• I don’t keep lists,  I know if its important I will remember and if its not I will forget.  The ability to forget stuff thats not important or urgent means I rarely feel overwhelmed
• If I struggle sleeping, (because of work), that means there is a problem, do something about it the very next day
• I try to develop a relationship with my manager along the lines of – I’ll do my best for you, so long as you are there when I need you
• I keep good records and am pretty professional
• I break rules (but not important ones) or find ways around problems
• I operate on the principle of assumed responsibility (if something needs to be done and you don’t know who should do it,  assume you have the responsibility and authority to fix it and move on).  This works because for me frustration is the biggest risk of burn-out.

Still sometimes I do get burnt out,  here’s how it happens

• Someone does something very stupid or annoying,  my motivation drops to rock bottom, and coping yesterday becomes burn-out tomorrow
• I loose control, often because managers try to “help” me, they have me running around all over the place and not working on what I feel is important
• I become emotionally committed to the success of a project, if things get difficult I try too hard to make them work

When this happens I:

• Call in the favours
• Take the afternoon off and go for a walk or to the cinema
• Make a list or a plan
• Get the “in control feeling back”

To-Done “working to live” describes an alternative strategy