Adventures in home working » Happiness

Morale, that’s an employee issue!

Steve Richards — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:23:00 +0000

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:

Each week everyone in the team (including the team leads and I) posted a highlight report to a shared folder
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
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:

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
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!
We explicitly defined the scores so that a person could indicate that their level of satisfaction required some intervention and how urgent that was
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
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
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!

Take stress seriously

Steve Richards — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 04:33:00 +0000

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.

A whole new way of presenting

Steve Richards — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 02:38:00 +0000

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

The Chief Happiness Officer

Steve Richards — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:22:18 +0000

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

Meditation has changed my life

Steve Richards — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 20:52:37 +0000

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.

Drive to home working

Steve Richards — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:56:00 +0000

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!

Work life balance

Steve Richards — Sat, 27 May 2006 19:52:00 +0000

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.

For the love of movement

Steve Richards — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 00:18:00 +0000

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!

Fed up with negative news!

Steve Richards — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 22:11:00 +0000

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!

Success(1426)	Leadership(489)	Attraction(1004)
Innovation(156)	Time-Management(545)	Motivation(1206)
Inspirational(1284)	Spirituality(1823)	Coaching(741)
Goal-Setting(830)	Creativity(342)	Stress-Management(933)
Organizing(346)	Happiness(519)	Positive-Attitude(1017)
Grief-Loss(203)	Anger-Management(79)	Addictions(224)

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

How to deal with burn-out

Steve Richards — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 22:36:58 +0000

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

Find what you love

Steve Richards — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 17:53:00 +0000

I am still on a journey of discovery to try and “find what I love doing”, I am fairly content in my work, find it interesting and challenging, but I don’t feel I make a difference, at home I spend most of the time with my family – which is great – but very internal focused. I would like both work and home life to change over time to be more community centred and to feel that I am giving something back to the world and that I live in a more natural and sustainable way. My relatively poor health is currently the excuse I hide behind that stops me taking the risk associated with change.

I do however continue to be on the lookout for advise in this area and I recently cam across these two articles, one by Steve Jobs – You’ve got to find what you love and the other my Dave Pollard ‘Business’ Advice for Young Adults (and Their Parents & Teachers). Check them out if you ever think about your work or worry about how you are preparing your kids to help them make good choices about their future work choices.

A story that vindicates my approach to time management

Steve Richards — Wed, 11 May 2005 19:28:22 +0000

In this post I talked about my approach to time management. Graham has this great story on his site that illustrates the same approach but much more eloquently!

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He asked the students if the jar was full.They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly, and the pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full; they agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things: your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favourite passions, things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter–like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else: The small stuff.”

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just filler.”

One of the students raised his hand and enquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

A story that vindicates my approach to time management

Steve Richards — Wed, 11 May 2005 19:27:00 +0000

In this post I talked about my approach to time management. Graham has this great story on his site that illustrates the same approach but much more eloquently!

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He asked the students if the jar was full.They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly, and the pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full; they agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things: your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favourite passions, things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter–like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else: The small stuff.”

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just filler.”

One of the students raised his hand and enquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

Sharing and giving

Steve Richards — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 23:39:00 +0000

On Saturday I started to pull up all of the strawberry plants that had rooted from runners last year. I ended up with several hundred plants in a big heap. I decided that it would be a good idea to give them away, but my wife though tno one would be interested. I took this as a bit of a challenge, I am one of those people who likes to think the best of others (which is an extension of having a positive outlook) my wife in contrast always expects things to go wrong and tends to distrust those she doesn’t know. Anyway I bagged the plants up – 15 plants to a bag – and to make the challenge more interesting decided to give the plants away but allow for donations.

My eldest daughter, Stephie, made a lovely sign and we put the 15 bags of plants in a big plastic container on the path outside the house. The sign read – Free Strawberries – and was nicely illustrated. Next to the container was a small wooden bowl which I put a little loose change in; to get things going. After three days all 15 bags have gone, we collected about £5 in donations and so far as I can tell, none of the donated money was removed.

I thought it was a pretty good illustration of my view on life:

I gave something away which made me feel good
I provided the opportunity for donation, but no obligation, and most people donated
At least 15 people appreciated the gesture, so that made them feel good
No one stole any of the money, or took an unfair number of plants, (the bags went roughly 1 at a time), so I feel better about my neighbourhood
Hopefully people will enjoy the crop for years to come
Hopefully a few more people will stop and chat as the year progresses
Maybe others will do the same with other plants and spare produce and community spirit will improve, we will see

We give a lot to charity and to charity shops, but this tiny experiment was a much more direct way of engaging with the community and redistributing excess. It was also interesting to see the effect on the kids who were fascinated by the whole process, and it was all I could do to stop them from perching at the front of the house and becoming market sales girls, not because of the money but because of the enjoyable banter they engaged in on a fine spring day.

Thinking

Steve Richards — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 18:42:00 +0000

I am being bombarded by information and initiatives that relate to thinking from all directions. I thought it would be interesting to list the main ones and try and identify the many different perspectives.

Structure and rigour. It all started with David Pollard’s structured problem solving process, which although not a perfect fit for me was an interesting insight into how formal and rigorous the process could be.

Quick and intuitive. Then I read reviews of books that discussed rapid decision making, I have not explored them further but they support my gut feeling that my intuition is a valuable skill that I should nurture. I don’t have a very good memory for facts, but am good at remembering relationships. I have specifically avoided learning memory improvement techniques because I worry that whilst I will be better at remembering names my intuition and innovation will suffer.

Innovation. I came across a blog entry on types of innovation, quickly followed by one of my colleagues sending me a presentation, which led to me exploring innovation processes, in particular TRIZ and some of the tools that support it.

Mind maps. I then had the opportunity to use Mind Maps to help me brainstorm and structure the early lifecycle phase of a project, and interesting this linked me back to using TRIZ with Mind Maps, and David Pollard and his experiments with Mind Maps.

Blogs. I have always thought that blogs are a great way to help provide other people to get an insight into your thinking processes, so I liked the fact that a few people were discussing them for use in that way. Probably the best of example of this in action is the way that Kim Cameron developed his Laws of Identity. This page documents the laws and links to the blog sections that helped to evolve each law.

Intelligence and thinking. Then I got a nasty shock whilst reading The happiness Purpose, where de Bono shows how intelligent people may not actually be very good thinkers because they tend to rapidly come to a conclusion and then use their intelligence to defend it. Now my IQ is only 135 so I may not fall into that trap, but it’s worth watching out for and certainly worth making sure I follow a process, this blog entry shows there are quite a few processes to choose from.

Perspectives. Then in discussions at work around architecture I found myself amazed that I needed to defend the concept of having different people in the team to represent different perspectives of the solution, eg usability and supportability. This got be thinking about the whole topic of taking different perspectives when thinking about a problem which led me to The Six Thinking Hats, which I was surprised to find my kids had been taught at school. This led me to de Bono’s other book on Lateral Thinking

Happiness. I am undertaking a mini study on happiness, this study so far has taught me one major lesson, happiness depends more on the way you think than any other factor. If you look for things that are wrong, compare yourself to others and see success in terms of material things rather than experiences then you are going down the wrong road. I have a category of my blog on this topic.

Concepts. Last month I needed to understand a whole new subject area, Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture, so I decided to map the relationships of the WS* specifications using a concept map, here is an example. This helped tremendously.

Communication. Then one of my friends pointed me to a web site called beyond bullets all about the challenges of communications with presentations, in particular PowerPoint, now this site promotes the idea of story telling, I happen to think mind maps and concept maps have their place as well, but its worth a read.

Horizon. Finally last week I watched a disturbing episode of Horizon on cold fusion. In this episode it became clear to me the terror that must be felt by any scientist with a new idea that challenges mainstream thinking in an area of science where funding and ego are issues. The ferocity with which work, which may actually represent significant process, was torn to shreds by those with vested interests, eg funding or ego, was staggering. It was clear that such reactions stifle creativity, what happened to the idea of “not fearing failure”, and “treating failure as a learning opportunity”, certainly not a philosophy shared by scientific researchers!