One Decision.
Being a good person only requires one decision:
Choose to be good to others.
Every action that follows is measured against that decision rather than a decision itself.
Are we there yet?
The Right Thing.
I drive on one side of the road and you drive on the other.
We take for granted the mutual understandings and cooperation and rules allowing our society to function cohesively.
Each day we enter into thousands of unwritten and unenforceable contracts with loved ones and strangers.
If someone swerves onto my side and we collide - there are avenues of redress and restoration for my loss.
But what happens when the boss doesn’t follow the rules?
Not enough to trigger avenues of industrial redress but sufficiently damaging to put a ding or scratch in my wellbeing.
What happens when an organisation doesn’t behave as promised?
It’s not until this happens that we realise with some shock and disorientation - there is very little we can do about it.
Too petty and burdensome and even risky to engage the machinery of any legal process, assuming one exists.
But significant enough to dent our trust and sense of how the world operates.
Our lives and society depend - to a degree we rarely appreciate - on other people doing the right thing
Easy to be a Bad Boss.
It’s so much easier to be a bad boss than a good one.
A good boss understands their sources of authority are external, and must be referred to and honoured.
A bad boss is their own source of authority and therefore if left is right and black is white - then thus it is so.
A bad boss defers to an external source of authority only to the extent it is consistent with their opinion.
A bad boss bends the universe towards their whims.
Cheered on by their enablers and blessed by those who benefit from the bad boss’s narcissism.
Simulation.
Some bosses, managers, and workplaces run simulations of what they think bossing, managing, and working look like.
A pantomime performance amidst which workers try to work.
Director of First Impressions.
You can tell almost all you need to know about a workplace from the receptionist’s greeting.
Just Like You and Me.
He dreams absurd stories while snoring.
Wakes with bad breath and his pyjamas askew.
Pulls on his pants one leg at a time.
Nudges his car with four wheels in a queue with all the morning traffic.
Has no idea how his accelerator works.
Sings the wrong lyrics out of tune to the breakfast radio station.
Remembers he forgot his sister-in-law’s birthday.
Pulls into his reserved parking bay, turns off the ignition, and passes wind.
Just like you and me.
Except for the reserved parking bay.
And that for the next eight hours we who also snore and fart will defer to his every utterance and crave his favour and basically lie about how we truly think and feel and desire and allow ourselves and our families to soar or sink on his judgement of us.
All because another who crawls along in the morning traffic and brushes their teeth made him the boss.
No Such Thing As Suddenly.
Workers don’t suddenly commit fraud.
Don’t suddenly bully someone.
Don’t suddenly suicide.
Long before crime, misconduct or tragedy strike an organisation- there are dozens of tiny harmful behaviours ignored, accepted, normalised or institutionalised that are too mundane to justify the response that follows a death.
Every inquiry-worth event is preceded by hundreds of micro events deemed not worth the effort to address.
Which Step?
Which step in a hike is the most important?
Which step could have been omitted?
Which step got you the furtherest?
Which step got you to your destination?
Which step did you owe to your mother?
Father?
A teacher?
No Greater Threat.
There is no greater threat to a person dependent on positional power than a subordinate with a better argument and an audience.
Airmanship.
Airmanship.
Pilots, aircrew, and anyone involved or interested in flying knows what ‘airmanship’ means.
They know what a compliment it is to say of a pilot: ‘She demonstrated fine airmanship’.
What is the equivalent in a workplace? In a boss? In a board? Executive? Worker? Manager?
It appears the only equivalent is ‘Leadership’.
Perhaps explaining why ‘Leadership’ is both over and mis-used.
Why haven’t workplaces developed an ‘airmanship’ equivalent over the years?
What about the term ‘workmanship’?
Is ‘workmanship’ confined to manual, artisanal labour - and even so - how seldom do we hear of anyone being described as ‘demonstrating fine workmanship’?
‘Deskcraft’? ‘Thoughtship’? ‘Executiveship’?
Language tells us a lot about a culture.
Words matter.
In the absence of an ‘airmanship’ equivalent, we’re reduced to complimenting someone as being ‘a hard worker’. Or ‘busy’. Or ‘working late and on the weekends’.
Thus, while aircrew refine their situational awareness, cockpit scans, flight preparation, and other technical and attitudinal skills in pursuit of airmanship, the 13% or so of us who are not disengaged from our work strive to work ‘harder’ or be ‘busy’.
Or worse.
Nominate for the Aspiring Leader Programme.
Eject, Eject, Eject.
Pilots facing the decision to eject from an unstable aircraft often report thinking two things in quick succession:
‘This can’t be happening’, and
‘What must I have done wrong?’
‘What must I have done wrong? is the burden of competent people of integrity and humility who accept agency and personal responsibility for their lives.
Like a Drunkard.
The bad boss stumbles along like a drunkard, supremely confident in their judgement and poise, oblivious to their staggering path and incoherent mutterings.
The bad boss attracts sycophants who cheer on their boss’s wisdom and navigation skills.
Thanks to the hidden efforts of the workers with mortgages, enough works out to create and strengthen a false sense of confidence in the meaningless meanderings of the bad boss.
Contradictor.
All decision makers need the benefit of a contradictor.
Not the annoying contrarian, devil’s advocate argumentative type.
The person who values the better argument over keeping the peace.
Every boss needs to be worthy of a good contradictor.
The Unthinkable.
The task of anyone involved with child safety begins with making the unthinkable obvious.