Authenticity, engagement and standard setting

The CEO has made a post which is being read by a lot of people as permission to vent.

Lower level people that is.

Upper level people are all 'rah rah yes yes'.

And I suspect middle level people are going to be very silent as they need to do both.  (Although I have noticed a lot of likes...)

To me, it's made me look at the question of enablement again. We have system after system that gets put in place collecting staff ideas and getting very enthusiastic and then nothing happens. And every single system I've seen has this same breaking point : you begin to submit... and you get to this point in the submission process where basically they expect you to do everything, you the submitter.

They expect you to understand the scope of the problem and your solution

They expect you to be able to cost it (get real???)

They expect you to have all the details of the solution.

They even expect you to proof of concept it.

It's this constant push back on the submitter. It's like they don't really want to hear. It's like they really don't want to do anything.

It's like a wall.

Seriously the last time I submitted something if I hadn't had my secondment experience over the previous 3 months I would have had no ability to participate. The process itself has demonstrated this massive disconnect between senior leadership's understanding of staff enablement. We have all these staff who really want to do something but can't do it. And then the upper levels go 'yes we care, tell us your woes' and the cycle starts again. Again and again and again.

Anyway, I posted. I can back up everything I posted.

And it's an interesting problem to think through how, if I were upper levels, would I break this amazingly stupid cycle.

Team ratings while thinking about trust

My one on one with my new manager yesterday. He's now acting as GM too so it's a wonder he has the time. So I think we all save up a lot of work stuff to ask/tell him as he's too busy to barely breathe the rest of the time. But wow, best manager so far, he does not cancel them. That's a real testament to wanting a good staff culture. I can almost count on one hand for each of my previous managers how many 1 on 1s I had with them. They very little seemed to value the time. This big corporate and they go on about 1 on 1s every so often and I don't understand why they can't see that they just don't happen.

But anyway he brings up end of year ratings. And immediately my stress levels go up - I've realised that they were a way that previous managers have justified their treatment of me. If they gave me a reasonable rating then they would have to explain the missed opportunities, lack of responsibilities and just generally the way they talked to/of me. I remember at one point they used to ask us to sign our ratings after they gave them to us. I refused due to how wrong I thought my rating was one year. I don't remember having to sign anything years after that. The one decent manager I had during my years working in that toxic place (besides the manager I got when I was seconded out of there - oh how I wish I had had him years earlier) wanted to give me a middle rating and the manager above him (definitely part of the old guard toxic crowd) made him rate it down. By then I was able to reassure him it was fine as I didn't care - he cared though and I never really got why but possibly because he could see it was unfair too.

But my new manager brings it up and I point out how counter this is to team building as it is one rating against another. And how I don't care as it does not affect my remuneration - all I care about is his review of me as that is what I will take if I was to leave. He's knows all this but at the end of the day he's got to give me a number - that is a problem that this corporate forces on him.

And this seems to run counter to various values they seem to have around working together, etc. It's one of the nails ultimately that pits one person against another, and one team against another.

Seriously, I just don't get it. This is what seems to hurt the most. The large disconnect between corporate values and how they are acted out when it gets down to the lowest levels.

I guess I'm being idealistic. A lot of other companies out there have the same thing. Maybe I just need a holiday. Maybe I need to leave and see what else is out there and what their cultures are like.

Trust

So many differences in the whole approach to work now. In my old section I had set ways of doing work and it had to be 100% correct. In this new area, there is this rough concept of a goal for which we develop an understanding based on business need and business strategy, folded through with the various values we have around customers and with legal and regulatory needs. And 100%? Nice goal there. Let's try 50% if that on the first pass. I'm almost fell off my chair when my senior colleague told me this. About an hour later on the phone my friend who is similarly senior but working in a different industry at the same type of job told me the same and emphasises regularly it will never be 100%.

And this goes straight into the heart of my fears from what happened before and how I learnt how to deal.

Because when you're being bullied/discriminated/  - and I've learnt a new term here - mobbed, one of the ways they get at you is when you make mistakes, when you're not 100%.

I have to send work out that I know is less than 50%. And that goes straight into the heart of my fears. And I have to send it out like that asking for feedback. Be willing and ready for challenge and change.

There is zero room for defensiveness here. All those old rules and protections I've built because I had to before do not work here. If anyone challenges me like that - and they do as there are gossips who pick at people and snipe behind people's backs  - I just have to shrug and focus on the work.

But for the most part they're not like that. And that's another big thing I have to adjust to. As it's not such an overall toxic workplace, the the other areas I deal with are not so toxic, they don't behave in ways (mostly) where I actually have need to throw up my defences. There is a softness there. A willingness for suggestions. A willingness to work together and accept feedback and direction where needed. Everyone who approaches anyone starts with a kind of humility at least while everyone works out who is what where (it's a huge company so this is almost a constant thing to work out for all of us as people swap in and out and are moved around). 

And it all in the end comes back to trust. 

Each year or so I work on a word. Something to think about, something to theme, something that I want to understand in life. This year I was thinking I need to understand relationships better and was going to have the word 'community' but something made me change it just as I was sticking it up there to remind me to 'trust' instead. And... I'm glad I did. I mean practically what does trust mean? It's one of those words that I go, sure I know what it means... but then you think about it a bit more and everything is expressed in a kind of experiential way. So the dictionary definition "firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something." But these days the concept of truth is challenged everywhere. So no wonder I wonder about the concept of trust.

And it affects everything.