Wisdom Wednesday – Overt vs. Covert

This isn’t really advice I was given by someone but more of a personal observation I’ve made after seeing it repeatedly over the years.  Whenever there is something decided, especially when its some sort of major decision, there’s usually an overt reason people give for the decision but also a covert reason they may or may not share (or may or may not even be aware of if it’s subconscious.)

Here are some examples:

* Someone leaves their job.  The overt reason they tell everyone is they want to move to a more exciting, busier branch.  But the covert reason that they share with a trusted coworker is they hate their manager.

* A manager asks you to fill out a spreadsheet that’s overly complicated and highly detailed.  The overt reason they give you is that these stats are useful for the annual report but the covert reason that they’re not really conscious of (or are they?) is that the manager is struggling and thinks that reams of data will cover up their struggles to their own superiors.

* Everyone is surprised that a very inexperienced manager is hired.  The overt reason is that they were the best person for the position and that their youth will be an advantage in connecting with younger staff but the covert reason is that the first three preferred candidates all said “no” for various reasons so the organization’s first choice was actually their fourth choice.

Again, almost every decision that gets made, especially major ones, will have covert and overt reasons for being made.

Oftentimes both the overt and covert reasons are valid.  But it’s always the covert reason that gives you the best explanation of what is happening and why.  So that’s the one you should try to understand.

Music Monday – “Don’t get any big ideas/They’re not gonna happen”

“Nude” – Radiohead

Secular Sunday – Sunday Payday!

Saturday Snap – Eagles Club

I’ve lived in Regina most of my life but had never been to the Eagles Club, a members-only space downtown that’s reminiscent of a small town bar mixed with a Royal Canadian Legion with a focus on charitable giving.

So when a neighbour who’s a member invited Shea and I to join him and a few other friends for half-price pizza night, we decided to take him up on it.

Had a blast – great food, great company, and lots of laughs.  Who knows – might even decide to get a membership to support them!

Friday Fun Link – Must Sea TV! A Mid-Week, Mid-November Game Between The Two Worst Teams In the NHL Delivers Joy and Unity To The Hockey World

 

Reddit almost broke from the reaction when the league-worst San Jose Sharks who only had one win on the season in just their previous game beat the “Stanley Cup Favourite” Edmonton Oilers.

Last year, the Oilers, who are led by arguably the two best players in the game, talked about “Cup or Bust” but perhaps didn’t realise “Bust” was a 50/50 option!

Flames fans (like myself) took special joy because even though our season has also been terrible and our team sucks, we’re *still* ahead of the Oilers and no one was predicting us to be Stanley Cup contenders!

The Oilers have become coach killers and one of their most successful coaches may be the next casualty…

 

 

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – HR Unit (January 2012)

Yesterday’s post got me a bit nostalgic for the HR Unit I was part of for the first few years of my career at RPL – what a great team!

Wisdom Wednesday – Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch

I first heard this advice years ago when I was still in the role of Organization Development Specialist at Regina Public Library.

In hindsight, I don’t think I appreciated what an amazing job that was to have right at the start of my library career.

Our Director (still the same guy all these years later) was in on my interview which rarely happens – even for management positions.  When I started, I got toured around to all branches by the Deputy Director and had monthly breakfast meetings with her after that.

The position was unique in a few ways – I was the only MLIS-holding librarian reporting to a non-librarian (our HR manager) in our entire organization and I was also the only in-scope employee in an otherwise completely out-of-scope unit.

(I often think about how I could go to a union meeting on a Monday night to hear CUPE’s position on an issue like pensions then go to our daily huddle in HR the next morning and hear management’s take on the same topic.)

I had a range of responsibilities including all aspects of staff training & development, working on change management initiatives, proposing and participating in bringing innovative ideas & services to the library, being chosen as one of only half a dozen new librarians from across Canada to attend the CLA’s “8 Rs HR Summit”, organizing new staff orientations and chairing our annual Staff Development Day committee.

There was also the nebulous “Organizational Culture” aspect of the job where I tried to build a culture of engagement, transparency and fun as outlined in the Powerpoint I presented in my interview…

Being at the start of my career, I was a bit naive (one coworker still teases about how idealistic I was – guilty as charged!) and I think I didn’t realise the enormity of the hurdles that I would encounter trying to create a strong supportive culture even from people who had *created* the position and said that was what they wanted.

I’ll always remember being in a car with that same Deputy Director going to one of our breakfast meetings and her looking over at a stop light and saying “You know, Jason, workplaces aren’t supposed to be fun.”

She knew I was a big fan of tech companies and I think we had a misunderstanding – she thought I was talking about nap pods and trampolines in the hallways like they famously had at Google and Facebook at the time.

I wasn’t saying that at all – I was saying that, at its core, culture comes from your people.

And, as summed up so well in that quote I heard in a webinar, you can have all the strategic plans and brand booklets and dealing with change workshops and performance reviews (blech!) and other traditional elements of organizations up to and including direct management instructions.

But, at the end of the day, the ultimate thing that will define your organization is its culture.

And as much as we want to think that everyone is a leader who helps define the culture (which is true to a degree), it is the people in the highest levels who set the tone for the entire organization by the range of their impact.

From an organizational culture perspective, you have to ask: Do those people have emotional intelligence?  Do they inspire trust and loyalty?  Do they demonstrate good judgement, strong decision-making ability, and a modicum of common sense?

Because one of the biggest misconceptions about managers is that they are the smartest or best people for the job.

This is often not the case at all.

Instead, they might have gotten the job because they are the one least likely to question their supervisors.  Or who are willing to put in 80-hour weeks and forego meals to show how “dedicated” they are.  Or on the flip side, who slide into a position but turn down good ideas because doing that would actually create work.  Or who reinforce their superior’s need to feel important by constantly consulting them.  Or because they’ve been a longtime employee and it would look bad to not hire them.  Or who are forced to take a job because they got fired from another position and may be bitter.  Or who see those below them on the hierarchy as lesser beings instead of trying to help raise up everyone.

(Full disclosure: As much as I’d like to believe my interview was a slam dunk, I suspect that at least a small part of what got me hired initially was because I took initiative to plan monthly pub nights for Regina and area librarians that both my Director and Deputy Director attended at different times and I think it showed that I was creative, a self-starter and someone was interested in bringing people together – exactly the skills they wanted for their Organization Development Specialist position!  Heck, it maybe even showed that I was fun!) 😉

Anyhow, what is often missed in this blender of positive and negative qualities that  managers exhibit is that all of this serves to create the organizational culture – for good or for bad.

And that is often the organization’s loss as they tread water or get caught up in minutia or infighting or waste money in various ways (I’ve seen situations where they would spend $500 to save $50 just to make a point!) or have low morale and high turnover instead of becoming a forward-thinking, engaged, team-oriented group with a strongly defined organizational culture.

Oilers v. Sharks #ToiletBowl

Music Monday – “I know it’s true/It’s all because of you/And if I make it through/It’s all because of you”

Now and Then” – Beatles

Secular Sunday – Religious Fails