Two for One.
‘We need to consult with parents to get their opinions,’ he insisted.
As if no teacher was, or ever had been, a parent.
Mumbo Jumbo.
For the average worker in a medium to large organisation, management looks like magic.
Managers look like gods.
How things get done is a complete mystery.
Thus - the worker’s relationship to management is like the audience to a magician: curious awe.
After a while, the lustre fades and the worker sees the practice of management as necessary mumbo-jumbo.
The further up the hierarchy, the closer the worker moves to the machinery of management.
The mystique fades as the worker gets to witness the sleight of hand in the executive meetings.
‘I can do that!’ she realises, and signs up for the Aspiring Leader programme.
Believing that one day she too can be a god.
Assume the Burden.
In my view, this case was an example of a court being required to assume the burden of endeavouring to ascertain the rights of the appellant, which were obfuscated by his own advocacy. - His Honour Judge Sefton
A mature and confident decision maker, organisation, and process are not threatened by assisting a complainant or person with a grievance or interest from accessing their rights to be heard.
In the Heat of the Moment.
I am satisfied however that the opportunity afforded to the appellant fell short of that which at law was required to be afforded to the appellant. Regrettably, it would seem that both the appellant and the court were somewhat caught up in the heat of the moment. - His Honour Judge Sefton
Adulthood.
We reach full maturity the day we realise we have more to contribute to the world than what we assumed.
The day we don’t copy, or mimic, or regurgitate, or tinker, or follow, or respond to an external provocation.
We become an adult the day we reach inside and produce something new and present it to the world.
A Real Fête.
A real fête is one in which one participates as an actor. - Maurice Garçon
Most workers are spectators.
Which is why they are joyless.
Compensation.
Nobody speaks up to name the frequent wrongs in the workplace because we’re mercenaries.
When we choose to work for someone else we choose money over Truth whenever the two clash.
We accept the slow deterioration of our soul as a business expense.
That’s why another word for ‘salary’ is ‘compensation’.
Adding Value.
It’s about adding value.
Sizing up what you’ve inherited, recognising what you can do to make it better, and doing it.
Dormant.
Rules of Engagement (ROE) are a combination of a country’s national strategy, international law, and military capability.
ROE guide everyone from the Chief of Defence to a private solider on when they can use force against an enemy.
Countries have ‘dormant ROE’ which are pre-drafted ROE that can be activated as the strategic environment changes.
Every organisation has a governance structure - whether it knows it or not, designed it or not, applies it or not, or even knows that ‘governance’ means.
Every organisation has a dormant governance structure.
It’s perfectly compliant with every law and regulatory framework.
Regardless of what the board, the chief executive, or the governance person, reports or assumes to be their organisation’s governance, the dormant governance continues to apply.
What awakens and reveals the dormant governance?
A visit by a regulator. A crisis. An accident or injury. A whistleblower. A due diligence or merger or takeover or liquidity problem.
Any of these events triggers the measuring of the actual governance against the legal or regulatory or best practice governance.
You’ll get away with your presumed governance for as long as it takes for one of these events to reveal that the rest of us presumed your governance is.
Governance is like the iceberg.
Waiting.
How Bad Bosses Get Away With It.
A bad boss with an excellent worker can get away with a lot.
The excellent worker knows how to overcome their bad boss weaknesses.
The professionalism of the excellent worker sees it as a challenge and a virtue to compensate for their bad boss.
Thus, the badness of the bad boss remains hidden from their boss.
Worse, the bad boss looks good to their boss due to the efforts of the excellent worker.
Over time, the effort to compensate for the incompetence of the bad boss, as well as shielding any workers reporting to the excellent worker from the effects of the bad boss, depletes the excellent worker - who quits.
To which the bad boss (who is bad and therefore unable to recognise their debt to the excellent worker) shrugs and tells their boss that the excellent worker quit ‘to seek challenges elsewhere’, or similar nonsense.
Which is why good bosses look two down to where the truth lies.
10,000 Hours.
Apparently it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to master it.
There are short cuts.
Follow a policy.
Read a book.
Hire someone.
Luck.
Observers.
We enter the world as a participant.
Flailing and screaming and rolling, and crawling, and walking, and climbing to get involved.
Then we go to school and are trained to be observers.
Years of sitting in classrooms listening to experts reveal and reinforce our ignorance and lack of power.
Just when we think we’ve mastered something enough to participate - we’re moved to a new level of ignorance.
Then we go to work where we are in a master-servant relationship.
A few run businesses or enter politics or journalism or academia or another pursuit contributing to public debate.
The rest of us silently observe.
Until election time.
It’s About Time.
The more time you have, the better the decision you should make.
Good decisions are founded on creating time.
We create time for ourselves in several ways.
Policies are decisions made in advance. Applying a policy instead of gathering and assessing and resolving the information baked into a policy gives us time.
Experience - mine and others - that finds its way through continuous improvement processes into training or equipment or workplace structures gives us time to apply the facts before us.
Drills give us the security of a rote response to fall back on if we can’t create one in the time created by knowing drills.
Time invested in developing relationships pays off when we must pass off part of a decision or its execution.
Delegation frees us up to focus on decisions demanding our full attention.
Managing time expectations in those affected by our decision gives us time to assess the information and consider more options.
The successful ‘split second decision’ is either based on luck - or the unconscious experience built over time.
Team Player.
If you tell me I’m on your team - and you don’t do your bit as you promised.
Then I just look stupid.
With all the potential consequences that follow.
Including you telling me I’m not on your team.
New Church.
Workplaces and their HR Manual are the modern Churches and Bible for teaching values and ethics in relationships.