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From Benign Neglect to Millennial Snowflakes

22/8/2019

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When I think about my childhood, I think of it as one of mainly benign neglect. And when I talk to friends it seems a similar pattern. In the holidays I would be told to go out to play and not come back until tea, I was never told to do my homework, no interest was taken in my sporting endeavours, and I don’t think my mum has ever said one word of encouragement to me. And with the benefit of hindsight we seem to have repackaged this monumental mountain of boredom and imagined it as freedom. And now, when looking at children, we seem to deplore this loss of independence.
 
But wasn’t it our generation that caused ths loss of independence?  Wasn’t it us, perhaps looking to replace that benign neglect with a greater involvement, that started the trend of micro-management, of not allowing kids time alone, time to be bored, time to play on their own. Of slicing the day into one-hour slots of activities, of doing their homework for them, of agonising over their exams, of taking them on a nationwide tour of universities, and of letting them hang around the house until they’re thirty. I expect
technology and social media probably bowled a few bouncers along the way, but frankly it’s a wonder they can even feed themselves (they don’t of course, they use Just Eat).
 
Now, I don’t have kids, so this is a bit like me yelling at the TV, shouting at a jockey’s inability to ride a strong finish on a horse I’ve backed, without facing up to the fact I have never even sat on a horse my entire life, and am indeed totally terrified of them. Plus, I also l know that I would have been similarly interfering.
 
Because I have Bobby. When I was young, we lived in a row of twelve houses backing onto an open field. Our boxer dog, Honey, would be thrown out of the house to take herself off for a walk. She’d trot off into the field, amble into a few back gardens, say hallo to similarly roaming delinquent mutts, perhaps snaffle a treat or two along the way, before strolling back home along the main road. No-one thought this unusual. (If you read Mark Wallington’s 500 Mile Walkies, written in 1983, you’ll find that the dog wanders about entirely at its own leisure.)  Bobby, not so much. Weeks go by and he has never been out of my company. We tell people that he suffers from separation anxiety and he does, but I think it’s increasingly obvious that the bigger problem is so do I. Precious parenting, there you have it.       
 
Now, personally, I like most of the kids I know. They seem much more emotionally mature than I ever was (or am). I’d say my friends generally have done a much better job than their parents did. But say it’s true that today’s kids are indeed millennial snowflakes, or some other sneering pejorative, that our generation applies to them (often in Daily Mail articles bemoaning something or other) isn’t that, um, down to us?         
     
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Management - More or Less Immeasurable

11/5/2015

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Often in today's organisations, only what is measured is valued.  Which also means things are only valued which are measurable. But there are things which are critical to an organisation thriving that are not only never measured, but probably can't be measured; the very act of measurement would cause it slip away out of reach.

I'm thinking about niceness, again. I'm thinking about example-setting, fun and laughter; happiness, generosity of spirit, integrity, growing self-awareness, caring, humility, respect, mutually beneficial outcomes - hardly an exhaustive list.

We need to recognise this. Ignoring it is one of the main reasons why organisations fail to function properly – they spend too much time focusing on the wrong things, just because they can measure them. 

Gather teachers together, or NHS staff, or policemen, or operational staff of any sort in any industry, and they will nearly all say the same thing. Especially those old enough to remember the days before consultants. The days when they used to concentrate on the students, on the patients, on crime, on service, on their work. They nearly all say that measurements are useful and IT can provide information now unthinkable in the past. But they will also say it feels completely out of control. That IT has taken over. And along the way the students, the patients, the public, the customers have all been pushed down the queue of priorities.

Worse, get them drunk enough and they will tell you all the ways they game the system. Fantastic tales of fixing data, under-reporting, over-reporting, massaging stats, double-counting, hiding, passing stuff elsewhere, screwing up other areas of the company/institution to save themselves, selective measurement, puffery, self-promotion, success inflation. There's a whole sub-culture predicated on making the figures look good ahead of actually doing the job required. In fact, it's not a sub-culture - it is the culture. And this is not these people's fault. It is their ability to do this that ultimately measures their success at their job.  Personally, I was fucking brilliant at it. 



This is not good management. This is not the way. This is madness.   

 

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A Few Good Men

6/1/2014

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I've been talking to a major bank about how they might go about being a better bank. A good bank. I've spent many hours walking the dog thinking about the subject. And in many ways I've been guilty of complicating matters. Major culture change may be hard to achieve, but it's easy enough to say what's required.

I like this quote from Andrew Tyrie, one of the politicians charged with banking reform.  


“What we've seen in banking is no more than a reflection of the human condition.”

And I very much like this line from the advert for MoreThan Insurance.

“We're just doing what any decent person would do”   

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Training Skills

24/7/2013

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I'm writing a book about training skills, or sketching it out anyway. I've put my 10,000 hours in after all and, as you know, fancy myself as a writer. I had a feeling there was a gap in the market. When I did my teacher training back in 1984 at Goldsmith's College, South London, the best book I read was called "Craft in the Classroom" by Michael Marland. It was a slim, simple book but, I believe, more than anything else, made the difference between success and failure.  I hope to do something similar for learner trainers. 

I was doing some marketing research on Amazon for similar titles and came across "Tales from the Front" by Byron Kalies. It's not quite in my space but I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I particularly loved this bit:  
Training (like stand-up comedy) is a job most people - especially mangers and especially senior managers - deep down think they could do better than I can. But they can't. Trust me - this is what I do. Trust me - I'm a trainer. 


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HR: Are we the Baddies ?

27/2/2013

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I apologise for the poor quality, but you only need to bear with it for a minute to reach the punchline. 
  
I often feel like this when I consider the HR Function (in Financial Services) over the last 20 years. That somewhere in the race for a seat at the big table, we sold our collective soul. That, in trying to show how much we could contribute to  "the business", we sold the staff down the river. That, much like bankers and god knows who else, somewhere along the way, we sacrificed our integrity.    Maybe CIPD needs a new logo.  One with a skull...
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    A self-employed training consultant muses on the world of work. 





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