Some thoughts on Business, Management and Consulting from a couple of years ago. The highlighted section of the final paragraph is particularly relevant to the present time !
Common Sense Consulting (December 2006)I am neither particularly accommodating nor tolerant of other people. Therefore it always comes as something of a surprise to me to say that I have never worked with anyone whom I would regard as stupid. Indeed, I have often stood up for people whom others have regarded as incompetent because I knew that with the right supervision – and sometimes training – these individuals could perform well (and often as well if not better than the people who were regarded as good at their jobs). Equally surprising to me is the constant whinging from employers about the problems of younger (and older) ,workers and the lack of people available to do particular jobs, whether skilled or unskilled, amongst UK nationals. As something of a networker (a highly skilled one in fact) I know there are plenty of people around for all manner of work, provided you aren’t prejudiced against, for example, people with too few or to many qualifications, and with too little or too much experience, or those who “don’t seem to fit” a particular context : something which seems to be more important these days for some reason.
In my professional and working life, I tend to view people objectively. Everyone has their strong and weak points. Equally, people whom I would not seek out as friends make perfectly good work colleagues (and vice versa). This is not to say that I do not have good friends amongst people with whom I also have professional relationships, but one type of relationship need not assume another. In fact, some of my most enduring and successful business relationships are with people I know little of personally. Friendship is inevitably subjective and, lets face it, friends often fall out over subjective things. The good thing about professional and working relationships is that they generally occur within an enterprise (whether commercial, social or some combination of the two) which gives them some objective structure and, indeed, objectives.
As mentioned earlier, I have noticed a growing pre-occupation amongst employers, and also workers, with recruiting people who “fit in” with them. This may have something to do with the New Labour administration which has “cascaded down” into the wider community. The need for people to “fit in” has certainly, from my perspective, gained momentum in recent years, and, I would argue, is a often a more important requirement – for consultants as well as employees – than hard skills and experience. At the higher level of decision-making, I will call it, this “fitting-in” often accompanies a certain requirement for “group think” when major investments with an equally major public interest dimension, for instance, are being embarked upon. On the office or shop floor, “fitting in” often has more to do with shared life circumstances and/or outlook. On balance, there is a strong presumption in favour of family-orientated people (even amongst the young and “gay”) of conventional values – which may be one reasons why Polish workers are so well regarded – who attach considerable importance, consciously or unconsciously, to group “equilibrium”.
Is this all a good thing ? Not from my perspective, professionally and, for that matter, personally. One of the most worrying trends I have observed is what could be described as “a requirement for the willing suspension of common sense”, or put another way, organisations of all types increasingly require a certain aptitude for stupidity. Let me provide an example. Someone recently described to me the “brainwashing” (their words) process which recruits to the call centre operations of a highly reputable company in this country are required to undergo. As it happened, I knew a young man with joint United Kingdom-United States citizenship who had recently been recruited to the organisation in question. A lovely – and by no means stupid – chap, he could perfectly fulfil the requirement for common sense suspension. It came as no surprise to me therefore, that recent callers to a radio phone-in about call centres should complain, almost unanimously, about the “stupidity” of the call handlers at these centres. Personally, I don’t use them !
The woman – a very sharp lady in fact – who described the “brain washing” of call centre recruits had, as it happened, just recruited the young man mentioned to the centre described above. Like many people, she possesses a strong aptitude for Orwellian “doublethink” which forms an increasingly important part of the personal and professional tool-set for “getting on” these days. By “doublethink”, I mean a recognition that something may be, for wont of a more elegant expression on my part, “a load of old cobblers” but you buy into this nevertheless, particularly if doing so means alot of money could be coming your way, either organisationally, personally or both. Indeed, it is almost certainly the case that the greatest instances of both doublethink and the willing suspension of common sense occur at the higher levels of organisations, decision-making and salary scale (not to say bonuses) which is rather worrying, I feel, both professionally and personally. For herein lies the two of the main conditions for great disasters amongst private sector corporations and public institutions.
Therefore, I’m sticking with common sense consulting, even if some clients won’t buy it !
