Euan Semple's Blog, page 100

Roads not travelled

With recent trips to Sweden and Norway, and upcoming ones to Dublin, Brussels and Berlin in the next few weeks, I found myself yet again thinking how lucky I am to get to travel the world and work with such interesting people and organisations.

I also got to thinking about the ones I didn't get to work with. The ones who enthused about world changing projects who then didn't get the funding. The ones who talked about long term relationships who stopped responding to emails after a month. The ones who thought about getting in touch and then didn't.

If any of you have seen the film Sliding Doors you will know how tantalising it is to think of the parallel lives we might have had. But it is so pointless. We are where we are and we've done what we've done.

"Whenever you come to a fork in the path take it" - Yogi Berra

Shadow IT

Today, yet again, I tried to send a copy of my presentation to a client in advance of my keynote on Wednesday only to have the file rejected by their email system due to a file size limit. So guess what I did? I stuck it on Dropbox and sent them the link.

I have also set up a Slack team this morning to work with another client, and most clients resort to using their own phones or tablets to carry out Skype calls when we need to coordinate. This sort of "Shadow IT" is becoming the norm.

In their efforts to maintain control IT are losing it. Isn't it time for an attitude of enabling pragmatism?

Lipstick on pigs

I am lucky enough to see, hear about, and get involved in many brave and well intentioned attempts to change the workplace. Few of them succeed.

The theory is right, the communications plan impeccable, the deckchairs have been rearranged, but deep down things remain the same.

We hold on tightly to some very deep seated and long held assumptions about authority and our relationship with it. You can change a manager's job title, you can make him dress down more often than just Fridays, you can even get him to work virtually. But if he still sees himself as in charge of an unruly bunch of miscreants who, if it weren't for his valiant efforts and ever so carefully designed systems, would run amok, then nothing has changed.

More time and effort has to be spent exploring and questioning our assumptions about the world of work. It needs to be an ongoing process. It's what I aspire to do with my blog posts. More of us need to do it.

Grounded

There is something intensely grounding about mountain walks. The textures of the terrain you are passing over; worn paths, springy bog, hard slippery rock. The weather changing from cold and wet to sunny and warm. Views that disappear in shades of gray as far as the eye can see. The burning sensation in your muscles as they wake from their usual sedentary slumber. Even a little buttock clenching tension as you skitter down smooth rock having strayed from the path.

It's all very real and very different from our day to day concrete covered, air conditioned, electronically mediated lives.

It makes you realise how unreal much of our modern existence is. It makes you realise how many people never experience this feeling of groundedness. It makes you realise how many of the people running our world have lost any connection with it.

It makes you worry.

Afterlife

My wife had a dream about our former neighbour, Connie, last night. This happens to all of our family occasionally. Even during waking hours there is hardly a month goes by but one of us will think of Connie and mention her in conversation.

Connie was a small lady who had led a small life. She was "Bucks" born and bred, had lived in the house next to us since the forties, rarely travelled (except for weekly attendance at the local Salvation Army), and had tended her coal fired kitchen range up until the last few months before she died eight years ago.

And yet...

I am sure Connie believed in a "real" afterlife. As for me, I'd be more than pleased if I thought that people would remember me this long after I've gone!

Doing nothing

"“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal

It is ridiculously hard to do nothing. Despite the sound advice to be found in Tom Hodgkin's wonderful book "How to be Idle" I still find it challenging. Even when I am taking a bath or lying in bed I always have a book in my hand. Forever trying to cram more knowledge in, to not waste time when I could be learning.

Even when meditating I am "trying to meditate". There is effort and endeavour in even that form of doing nothing. I can do it well, I can do it badly, I can give up doing it.

But really sitting; just sitting; not trying to do anything; just being; not noticing; not allowing; not resisting; not observing. Truly doing nothing. This might just be the hardest thing in the world - but also the most worthwhile.

The darker side of our nature.

The internet is a mirror and an unforgiving one at that.

Whether it is paedophilia, misogyny, racism or bullying, by indulging our weaknesses in a public "place" we will get to see them, perhaps for the first time.

Thoughts that we have harboured in the safety of our own skull are suddenly exposed. We get to see other people's reactions to them. We get the chance to adjust.

I hope we take it.

Professional Niceties

Clearly being nice is better than being nasty.

Business assumes professional niceness.

I occasionally resort to it myself.

I regret this.

Generally I prefer spending my time with enthusiastic amateurs.

Linguistic Epistemology

Linguistic Epistemology: the study of the way our language shapes our reality. In the interests of your reality and my own I promise not to use the phrase again but I do want to talk about the way we use words in our day to day lives.

Words box us in, even our own words. How often do you find yourself saying "I am [sad/angry/afraid]"? We may be feeling angry or afraid for a moment but defining ourselves as angry limits us, shrinks us.

Be particularly wary of defining yourself by other people's words, especially your parents'. How often is your sense of who and what you are a legacy from your childhood, the result of unthinking but repetitive use of critical words when you were at an impressionable age and too young to know better.

And then there is work. Not only are we at risk of our boss carrying on where our parents left off, but we are subject to whole teams of professionals hijacking and misappropriating otherwise useful words. Turning them into weasel words: "engagement", "collaboration", "content". The phrase "on boarding" always makes me think of water boarding. [Maybe if having read this you too will feel uncomfortable and stop using the awful phrase!]

We label the world around us. We can't help ourselves. We may not even be able to think without using words to do so. Words are as about as intimate and personal as our experience of the world around us gets. We need to choose them carefully.

Working things out at work.

Working things out at work.

We spend a great deal of our lives at work and, while there is a fair amount of routine, it can also present us with our most challenging situations. Apart from time spent with our families work is the setting for our most intense relationships with other people. We get to test ourselves, to discover ourselves, to act out different versions of ourselves. We do this along with dozens, or even hundreds, doing the same thing. It's no wonder work gets stressful.

As line manager of a large group of people I got to watch them doing this day in, day out. Sometimes they soared and became the best that they could be; sometimes they crashed and burned causing distress and chaos for those around them. Sometimes I was able to be of help, sometimes I made things worse. Either way I had the honour of accompanying a group of fellow human beings as they faced the challenge of working things out at work.

But I too was working things out and in a position to have disproportionate impact on those around me as I did so. This was a privilege I had to earn through gaining their trust, it was not a job title conferred right. The higher your position in your organisation the more this is true. Remembering this is an obligation.