Jerks are Bad – issue 36

Jerks are bad –  issue  36,

 

I get a little snarky when people generalize about America, after all it is a very large country, and all of Australia has the same population as one major American city for heavens sake! With so many people, there are bound to be all sorts. This is why it is unacceptable for any of you to make fun of, or generalize about America. However, being an American citizen, it is fair game for me. Just wanted to get that straight.

My generalization – Americans are much fonder of automobile bumper stickers than the typical Australian. From my observation, the topics of the bumper stickers fall into three distinct categories. The first belongs to people with very nice expensive cars who only have a bumper sticker that demonstrate their devotion to their overly provided for children. This sticker would say something like “My daughter Sunday Roast is an honor student at West Tennessee School of Acting and Country Music”. Then there is the category of cars that look as if the bumper sticker is the only thing keeping the car intact. This category’s message generally proclaims something profound like “Tell me how you like my driving, call 1 800 eat shi$%#”. The third category is reserved for liberal, political hippy sorts. My friend Susan falls into this category, her bumper sticker says “defoliate Bush”. There are many of these types in West Seattle where I am staying with Susan. I saw one yesterday that had a map of the state of Florida that said “electoral disfunction” if you don’t understand Google the state of Florida, look at the map and then research the 2000 US presidential election.

What is the relevance of this? None. It was just a lead in to tell you about a bumper sticker that was popular in the US years ago, around the same time when bumper stickers like “save the whales” and “visualise whirled peas” were all the rage. This bumper sticker said “mean people suck” and you know I think it was ahead of its time.

I thought about this when a Geyer colleague and I had to endure an especially horrible meeting a few weeks ago. I wont tell you who the colleague was, or the job, because it is only right to protect the guilty. I will admit that enduring a two hour meeting with a bullying jerk that was downright mean to us is my inspiration for this article. I found the behaviour surprising, for finding a real live -no holding back – jerk in today’s workplace is quite unusual. Most of us working today would have undertaken some kind of ‘be nice to everyone’ program that has been designed to exorcise our inner jerk.

The times of it being acceptable to be a jerk are long gone. My friend and I were reminiscing about the ‘good old days’ when we worked together in Chicago. Our boss was a textbook jerk; he went from design team to design team berating them for substandard design work. He once told me at the top of his lungs that our teams design was so awful that he could have gone and hired of bunch of monkeys and they would have done a better job. My friend said that once when she laughed, a nervous reaction to a similar abusive attack, he asked her why she was laughing and offered that if she thought it was so funny she better consider another profession. He used some different words starting with F, S, and C that the e – mail marshal won’t let me repeat.

Ah the good old days. Well no more, because as the bumper sticker says, “mean people suck” and this is why so many businesses are working hard to eliminate jerks from the workplace. For example, there is the “no dickheads” (their name not mine) policy at Arup Australasia; if you cannot treat others with respect, you won’t be tolerated in the organisation. It is a tough stance to take, Arup is keenly aware of the critical labour shortage that exists in most countries today so this puts them in the position of having to walk the talk. Arup’s managing director Robert Care told the Financial Review that a positive aspect is the organization has become much more supportive in the past two years since he announced he would no longer put up with bad attitudes. The bad news is they had to have the courage to let some senior people go.

Arup is not alone; organizations right around the world are getting rid of people who are not nice. In every industry ‘no jerk’ policies are becoming a common staple for hiring and in some lucky places they will even sack clients who are tough to deal with. Believe it or not this has even entered politics where as you know Kevin Rudd dressed down Belinda Neal for her misbehaviour. Watching some of the election coverage here, they do not seem to be as enlightened.

Unfortunately, acting badly in the workplace is somewhat epidemic and it cost employers much more than they would imagine. A company in the Silicon Valley calculated the cost of an employee who behaved badly and found it was up to $US 160,000. Of course such a cost would not even have include the reduction in creativity and innovation, dysfunctional operations, inability to attract the best talent, impaired cooperation and collaboration and in some cases higher rates charged by others to work with you.

Workplace jerks can do a lot of damage to an organization. Demeaning acts can drive people to quit their job which can sap others left behind of their effectiveness. One study found that employees with an abusive supervisor quite their jobs at an accelerated rate and suffered from less work and life satisfaction, heightened depression, anxiety and burnout. It is clear that having a jerk in the workplace can undermine an organisation’s productivity.

According to some experts, jerks cannot be rehabilitated either. This is why the former Gillette CEO Jim Kilts’ created a “never hire jerks” policy. Other companies have started using Workplace Aptitude Tests to ensure they don’t hire jerks. At one Silicon Valley software company, new employees are asked to sign up to 17 rules of engagement which include not being a jerk, being nice, helping others, and having fun.

This is very good news because what I have learned from researching this topic is being a jerk is contagious! Even though the experts suspect some people are predisposed to being nasty, under certain circumstances almost any of us could become a jerk! That’s me or you folks, while we were concerned about bird flu and SARS we could have been slowing evolving into a jerk without even knowing it!  

You really have to watch it if you’re in a position of power. There is a substantial body of knowledge that shows when people are put in positions of power they want more, which leads them to ignore what others say or want and also ignore the impact their actions have on others. They treat any situation, or person, as a means to satisfy their own needs and are generally blinded to the fact that they are acting like jerks. 

In the event you find it challenging to identify a jerk in the workplace, here are a few tips from Robert Sutton Ph.D., who is a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University’s School of Engineering, he wrote The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilised Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t: He says that while you might call such people bullies, creeps, jerks, weasels, tormentors, tyrants, serial slammers, despots, or unconstrained egomaniacs; for him the best word to capture the fear and loathing that one experiences working with such people is “asshole”. While he acknowledges most of us have to deal with assholes at one time or another, the key is to not have yourself branded as one.

Sutton advises two tests before passing judgment on whether one of your co workers is an asshole. The first is to monitor your own feelings; do you feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled? The second is whether the person you believe to be an asshole aims their venom at people who are less powerful, rather than those that are more powerful. Sutton feels the test of a person’s character is how he or she treats those with less power. Do they give co-workers nasty stares, tease or use jokes to publicly shame others, exclude some from gatherings, invade personal territory, make uninvited physical contact, threaten or intimidate – verbal and nonverbal, send withering e mails, rudely interrupt, make two faced attacks, treat others as if they were invisible? If so, they there is great likelihood they could be classified as an asshole. They are probably also using these tactics as means of exercising power. Either way, it will have a negative effect on their co – workers mental health, their commitment to their boss, peer and organization.

So now that you can run a litmus test on your colleagues to determine whether or not they are assholes, now what? Suttons tips:

  1. Escape if you can. The best thing to do if you are stuck under the thumb of an asshole (or a bunch of them) is to get out as fast as possible. Not only are you at great emotional risk; you’re also at risk of emulating the behavior of the jerks around you, catching it like a disease—what Sutton calls “asshole poisoning.”
  2. Use polite confrontation. Some people really don’t mean to be jerks. They might be surprised if you gently let them know that they are leaving you feeling belittled and demeaned
  3. Limit your contact with the creep as much as possible. Try to avoid any meetings you can with him or her and try to  talk by phone rather than in person.
  4. Keeping an “asshole diary,” in which you  carefully document what the jerk does and when it happens. Helpful if you  want to sue them.
  5. Practice indifference. Sutton advises that when you work with people who treat you like dirt, they have not earned your passion and commitment. Learn to be comfortably numb until the day comes when you find a workplace that deserves your full commitment. Until then, direct your passion elsewhere, like your family, your hobbies, or perhaps a volunteer organization.

Sutton reminds us that being an asshole doesn’t just happen to others – it could happen to YOU. To protect yourselves stay away from those that could infect you with “asshole poisoning”. Also eliminate any unnecessary distinctions in power between you and others. Sutton acknowledges some people in an organization are more important than others because they are more difficult to replace or have essential skills – status difference will always be with us, but he says you can downplay and reduce the differences.

Another step is to get your friends and colleagues to tell you when you’re acting like an asshole. (What excellent advice to give when we are all setting KPI’s) Of course if they do tell you your behaviour is a bit off, it is wise to listen. Finally, competition breeds assholes so it is best not to foster an overly competitive workplace.  

I feel if by writing this we all have to deal with one less jerk it will be well worth the time investment of writing this on my vacation! I hope this has made you all a bit wiser and remember you can only change yourself, the project managers we work with are on their own. Oops did I say that – what a jerk.

 

Sources:

 

Smith, Fiona . “Now be Nice – There’s no Place for Bullies”

The Australian Financial Review, June 17, 2008

 

Bryner, Jeanna . “Workplace Bullying ‘Epidemic’ Worse Than Sexual Harrassment” LiveScience Webpage, Posted March 08, 08

 

Butcher, David R. “The Civilised Workplace: No Jerks Allowed” Industrial Market Trends , June 19, 2007.

 

“Dealing With Difficult People: Workplace Jerks”

On line newsletter www. Itstime.com,  April 2007

Sutton, Robert  “Are You a Jerk at Work”. Greater Good Magazine, Volume IV – Issue three – Winter 07 -08

 

 

 

Cheers from Oman – June 19, 2008

Cheers from Oman – Issue 35

When I was asked if I was available to go to Oman for business there was one important bit of information that was withheld, had I known about it, my decision may have been influenced. No it wasn’t the Australian travel advisory indicating anywhere in the Middle East is a possible terrorist threat, nor was it being in the Northern hemisphere, near the equator, at the onset of summer. It had nothing to do with having nothing to wear, Omani’s wardrobes and mine are a complete mismatch.

What they forgot to mention is that in Oman they don’t drink. Not only do they not drink, they don’t want you drinking either.

We were lucky to have been engaged by an expatriate UK/Aussie who had the wisdom to know the chances were high that we would be true to the Australian stereotype and come 5:00pm would feel a four X coming on. In fact, he was even kind enough to invite us to his home for drinks – twice! I’ll bet you are wondering how he got the grog if you can’t drink there? He has a special permit obtained from his employer that entitles him (a non Muslim) to make limited purchases of booze each month. The grog is acquired at special stores hidden away with no outside indication of what they sell. Telling names like: Desert Trading Company, African and Eastern LLC, Gulf Supply Services are the ‘go to’ place for booze. Once you obtain alcohol you had better not make any side trips, it is illegal to transport alcohol unless you are taking it from the shop or the airport duty free to your house.

Our host clearly understood the needs of those from the West, because he also put us in residence at the Intercontinental, where there is a thorough understanding of the important relationship that exists between catering to foreigners in the Middle East and alcohol. In fact, many of the large hotels in Oman such as The Chedi, Al Bustan Palace Radisson, SAS and Crowne Plaza will for the first time allow their guests to purchase and consume alcohol after sunset, from 7pm-2am, on Ramadan. This is a time of religious observance that takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. It is considered the most venerated and blessed month of the Islamic year; prayers, fasting, charity and self – accountability are stressed; therefore, the typical Omani would not even have a sip of water let alone a cosmopolitan.

Before jumping to the shallow conclusion that Caroline Burns, Kim Thornton- Smith and I are lushes, consider this. In Oman they work on Saturday and Sunday, and take Friday off. Having spent the first Friday in transit and the second preparing for a major steering committee meeting, following a busy week of preparation in Australia before we left, we were knackered. Any self respecting person from our culture would have felt like a Tooheys or two!

Aussies will never be like the Omani people, but we are changing. The culture of the work time liquid lunch has pretty much gone by the wayside. Even in journalism – a group I suspect has more cirrhosis of the liver amongst its members than architects – have hardened their attitude to hard drinking. One reason for this is the legal ramification of alcohol in the workplace including OHS and sexual harassment. In addition, we work longer hours, have decreasing job security and busier lives, so many of us can’t find the time to have lunch, let alone drink it.

I have a first hand appreciation for the dangers drinking on the job can cause having lived in Chicago when an apparently stoned driver took the turn to fast at 40th and Wabash and two cars were left dangling from the elevated track, 46 people got injured. I also experienced a summer of exceptionally long commutes in Seattle due to dock repairs required when a heavy footed and supposedly tipsy ferry driver rammed into one of the two docks that serviced the states three main ferry routes. This is why I was happy when a lunch guest from Queensland Rail declared no one in that organisation is allowed to drink during business, from train conductors to sales guys paid to smooze.

Luckily, Australia is right in the middle when it comes to drinking. In Japan overworked and frequently hung-over salarymen, go to special medical clinics where nurses administer intravenous drips for a rapid rejuvenation for as little as 2000 yen ($20). I don’t know about you, but I would say that is pretty messed up. Unfortunately, when you consider the result of a recent study by Stirling University in Scotland that found moderate drinkers earned 17 per cent more than those who didn’t drink at all, and that even those abusing alcohol were likely to earn more than teetotalers you get some understanding of why there is a relationship with drinking and work in some places.

Going back to Oman, it would be wrong for me to define their culture by whether they drink or not. Omani people don’t drink because it is contrary to their faith and with a population in Muscat that is 55% Muslim, 38% Sunnis, 4% Shia Jaffaris and 3% Hindu with virtually no Christians – the group where in some denominations drink at church – it is easy to understand why.
Drinking is very much associated with culture, anthropological literature shows that culture can shape the ways people learn to drink and how they will act when they do. It will be interesting to see how higher taxes, such as what Rudd has done with ‘Alcopops’ and the new catagorisation of binge drinking by the National Health and Medical Research Council – which renders most of us bingers – will impact our cultural approach to alcohol over time.
In many ways, particularly at work, Omanis have the same beliefs we do. In terms of business they want to be more innovative so desire a work environment that promotes collaboration and connection of their people. They have deep concern with their employee’s health and well being and are eager to introduce spaces like gyms, child care and restaurants into their work complexes. They recognise their building and workplace can drive cultural change, contribute to the community at large and be an attractor of a dwindling talent pool of younger workers. This last point is even more critical in a place like Oman where the majority of the population (60%) is under age 18. ‘Y worry’ is prevalent in Oman!

Despite these similarities there are major differences. I mentioned wardrobe earlier, appropriate formal work wear for an Omani man is the traditional white pressed robe called a dishdasha, buttoned at the neck with a tassel which was traditionally dipped in perfume, today the tassel is purely decorative. The dishdasha is worn with a kashmir mussar turban, together they are formal business attire. On the weekends and evenings the turban is replaced with an Omani hat and the dishdasha can be coloured. Westerners working in Oman are expected to wear a suit and tie to the office. Woman wear abayas, long black robes, and hijabs or head scarf. I know you all want to know whether Caroline and I wore a hijab and the answer is no. I brought along my most conservative outfits and had the good sense to leave the slutty things I wear on Fridays when I am in denial about being in my 40s at home.

There are plenty of women in the workforce; Oman has the highest number of working women among the six Arab GCC states, which include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Women not only work they are encouraged to do so by Sultan Qaboos who has called on female citizens to support the continuing development of the country. He describes women as “half of Oman’s potential” and invites them to assume responsibility for the development of the country.

One of the most interesting aspect s of Oman is the respect and admiration shown for His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Educated overseas with classmates like Prince Charles and Prince Abdullah of Jordan, His Majesty returned to Oman determined to use the wealth accumulated from oil sales to make a difference to the people of Oman. The Sultan is responsible for uniting people with a broad range of experiences and histories, improving the infrastructure, developing the educational system and improving medical services. When we asked why there are no issues with terrorists, like other areas of the Middle East, we were told everyone is accepted and heard leaving no cause for extreme measures.
Omani’s have a good sense of humor and pride and will not hesitate to have a go at their Arabian peninsula neighbors with the same determination and glee that we would discuss Tasmania or I would refer to anyplace in the US that is not on a coast. “People from Yemen think they are better than us, the Saudi are stuck up and the ones from United Arab Emirates are okay, but no one here is as good as we are”.
I believe them. Omani are highly intelligent people, totally in tune with what is going on in the world and far more entrepreneurial than we are here. By example, many of the people we were working with had other businesses they engaged in outside of their day job, and their employers didn’t care. Caroline and I got excited when one of the guys from the bank asked if we would like to go to his ‘Ladies Saloon’. Then we realised they spell the Western word salon, saloon, and there would be no martinis only waxing and pedicures.
The most refreshing aspect of working in Oman was the respect and admiration they show for one another which extended to us. Whether it was the CEO talking, or the tea boy bringing in coffee to a meeting, each person is regarded with dignity. This may sound odd, but in the many strategic exercises we have conducted in Australia and New Zealand this is not the case. In fact sometimes the way senior leaders in a company treat one another is appalling – fret with egos, posturing and the deliberate marginilisation of other’s views.
If it is not obvious, I loved Oman and am a better, more knowledgeable person for having been given the opportunity to go. If I had the chance, I would not hesitate to get on a plane for 16 hours to go back, preferable Ethaid business class. The only downside to Oman is the heat, but even that had an upside. As many of you know I practice Bikram Yoga which is done in a room heated to 38 degrees. I discovered that I could go outdoors on the hotel balcony between 5:00 and 7:00 am and it was only about five degrees warmer than the Bikram studio.
I practiced everyday on the balcony, in an outfit that closely resembles undies. Only once was I disturbed and then by an American guy from the room next door, who clearly did not read the sign on the sliding door that warned it would locks automatically when closed. He needed rescue, so being the humanitarian I am I called the concierge confess I did consider letting him perish in the heat to keep the vision of me sweaty, in my undies, between us. I wouldn’t have let him die; just pass out in the heat, that way he would think what he saw was a hallucination. All I can say is thank goodness I was showing restraint when doing Pavanamuktasana – wind removing pose.

Sources:

18 days in Oman with our main contacts: Kaleem Saleem, John Cooper, Khalid Al Raisi, Abdulnasir Al Raisi
The Bank Muscat Steering Committee: Mr. Ahmed Al Abri, Leen Kumar, Waleed Al Hashar, , Shaikha Al Farsi, Ilham Al Saleh, Wafa Al Ajmi
And our friends Fadi and Nahla from Design and Arches, Ben Cooper from Mace and the wonderful and helpful Rohan Thotabaduge from Atkins Architecture.

Bachelard, Michael and Gilmore, Heath. “Shock Alcohol Warning from Nation’s Top Health Boss”
The Sun Herald, June 15, 2008

Crisp, Lyndall. “A Matter of Substance – More companies are taking steps to manage the problem of drug and alcohol abuse among their employees” AFRboss magazine, May 08

Emerson, Sally. “The beginner’s guide to Oman – From goat auctions to Arabian princesses, Oman is less conservative than Saudi Arabia and less westernised than Dubai” The Sunday Times, May 25, 2008.

Norrie, Justin. “Hungover? Tired? Pop out of the Office for a Quick Intravenous Drip”
The Sydney Morning Herald, May 31, 2008

Shanahan, Angela “Nanny can’t end bingeing”. The Sydney Morning Herald, May 03, 2008

Steckel, Colette “Living and Workihng in Gulf States & Saudi Arabia” ACCA homepage (world accounting agency) April 07, 2008

Social Issues Research Centre – on line
Drinking on the Job
The Bad Old Days – Posted November 30, 2004
Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking – Culture, Chemistry and Consequences.

Reorganising – April 10, 2008

Reorganising – Issue 33

The other day I had a drink with a friend and they asked me why I no longer wrote the Future’s Rambling articles. It was the first time in the several months since I stopped writing that anyone noticed, or at least said anything to me about it. Interestingly, this person was not a Geyer employee and the reality is there are more people who read Future’s Ramblings who don’t work here than do. As a result I figured I could get away with a little hiatus, after all who was going to say anything? As always happens when you think you are getting away with something, you aren’t, as luck would have it someone did notice, Cathy Jameson.
Before you draw the wrong conclusion and align me with Tinkerbell, whose little light goes out when you stop clapping; you should know my purpose for doing these is not for you to clap. I would write them whether you read them or not as they are preparing me for my next career as a romance novelist. In addition to that useful purpose, the other reason that I write them is for you all to gain new perspective on what drives organizations and in turn apply this knowledge to workplace design.
Like many of you I have been flat out and this too was a contributor. A lot has gone on these past few months, one kid doing his HSC and now at Uni and the other continuously playing baseball. On top of that there is a new Prime Minister as well as all of the changes at Geyer such as our new operating structure. When the company restructure was announced I was asked if I would continue to write the articles even though I was not the Leader of Futures. My response was absolutely, just because there is no Futures doesn’t mean that I would, or could stop rambling. People have been trying for years to get me to shut up or at the very least get to the point.
Of course saying you are going to change and actually making the transition from old to new are two different things. Transitions take time and there are both emotional and tactical hurdles to overcome, letting go can be quite challenging particularly when you’re not entirely sure what it is you are going to. Sometimes the hurdles seem so large it makes you wonder why you would have ever considered changing anything in the first place. Really did you every stop to think, why can’t we just stay the way we were? Well I will tell you why with a quote from David Packard the founder of Hewlett Packard “To remain static is to lose ground”.
Many companies undergo change far more profound than our little old restructure and for many restructures are an annual event. My friends at the Financial Review claim they restructure about every 18 months and the practice I used to work with did it three times in the six years I was with them. I just caught up with one of our old clients in New Zealand and they have replaced the entire senior executive. So we not alone, nor are we unique, in fact we should pat ourselves on the back for being smart enough to respond to economic pressures and shifts in business climate.
Change is an inevitable part of life, just look down at what was your flat belly and is now your beer gut if you don’t believe that’s true. However, just because everyone does it, doesn’t make it easy. Change brings new challenges and demands for everyone within a business, from the CEO to the person who answers the phone. When companies restructure, expand, merge or takeover another business they can be quite vulnerable; if mishandled these changes can often undermine the positive outcomes the business hopes to achieve. Often this is manifested in a higher degree of employee turnover, decreased cooperation and teamwork and increased level of stress, anxiety, absenteeism and illness.
In the article 18 Ways To Survive Your Company’s Reorganization, Takeover, Downsizing, or Other Major Change author Morton C Orman, M.D lists ways that we can make these kinds of changes less painful. While not all are applicable to our situation, I have listed those I believe are:
1. Be Prepared for Change – Morton talks about Global transformations and local and national economic forces that we must respond to survive in business today. These bring new competition and technology that can often put us off guard. For those of you new to the industry this will be meaningless, but today Geyer now competes with companies they never competed with in the past such as Colliers and CBRE not to mention the furniture manufacturers. Morton’s advice is to assume the “rug could get pulled from beneath you” at any time. Then, if this happens, you won’t be caught off guard. You’ll already be psychologically and emotionally ready.
2. Express sadness, loss and anxiety about the future – We are not meant to pretend it isn’t painful when something we care about changes, it is part of what makes us human. Unfortunately the business world frowns on dummy spits and too much time in the bathroom crying.
3. Watch out for unrealistic expectations – When a company decides to change it is generally done in hopes of specific outcomes, we are cautioned not to expect too much too soon. Give it all a bit of time to settle in before you decide it doesn’t work.
4. Acknowledge any increased pressures, demands, or workloads – This one is near and dear to my and other’s hearts. It is difficult to transition to the new way of being when you are flat out doing what you did before.
5. Protect your leisure time – When changes occur there is often more work to be done to assist the transition which can lead to overwork by people responsible for making the change happen. At times like these it is particularly important that you look after yourself.
6. Don’t ignore your family – Even though work may absorb your time and emotions, make sure there is a reserve for those you care about.
7. Don’t turn to alcohol, drugs, food or other chemical coping strategies – Forget the Friday night drinks and call the EAP if it all becomes too much.
8. Remain upbeat and positive – They offer no advice on how you achieve this when you have turned away from alcohol, drugs and food. Never the less, Morton says when organizations change the climate must remain positive even though individual members of the organization may be having negative or uncertain feelings.
9. Get creative – “rev up” your natural powers for creative intervention, give yourself the opportunity to think about things differently.
10. Celebrate your accomplishments – We talk about this so much but do we really do it, and are we celebrating the small steps we are taking toward making our reorganization a success?
11. Improve lines of communication – Morton says the more crazy or chaotic work is, the more you need to talk. Not talking exacerbates the crazy feelings we are all having. He advises you should have more meetings, not less.
12. Learn from the experience of others – When undergoing organizational change many companies and individuals try to cope on their own when they could benefit greatly from the experience of others. Don’t just sit and suffer in silence.
13. Never become complacent – The advice is that once you sort out the emotional, physical and financial impacts of a change you should stay limbered up for the next change on the horizon – because there is bound to be one.
For many companies the key to making a restructure work is to be very clear about your company’s focus – at Geyer that is to be the global innovator in physical environment consulting. Now that we have cleared that up we can get going and may even follow the advice of Carly Fiorina the X CEO of HP who said “Preserve the best, reinvent the rest”. Sadly, she didn’t have great success with that, but it is still a good quote!
If all else fails we can follow the advice of Keith Yamishita a change consultant who has helped companies like Hewlett Packard, Mercedes-Benz and the Public Broadcasting Service. He says if the change is too daunting or pace is too slow you should hold your company hostage. “Declare your vision in a public way. It’s human nature to procrastinate. And without any kind of enforcement, your strategies will remain exactly that — strategies with no action. Avoid the problem by committing to a timeline. The good news is that it’s also human nature to perform — especially when you have a big audience.”

Sources:

18 Ways to Survive Your Company’s Reorganisation, Takeover, Downsizing, or Other Major Change Copyright © 1995-2002 M.C. Orman, MD, FLP
by Morton C Orman M.D

Designing Where We Work
by Peter Lawrence

Finding the Future Around Us
by Shoshana Zuboff,
Fast Company Magazine Issue 91 February 2005

The Carly Chronicles – An Inside Look at Her Campaign to Reinvent HP
By George Anders
Fast Company Magazine Issue 67, January 2003

Keith Yamashita Wants to Reinvent Your Company
by Polly LaBarre
Fast Company Magazine Issue 64, October 2002

Cultural Diversity – July 30, 2007

Embracing Cultural Diversity

Issue 32

I got a letter the other day from the Hon Kevin Andrews MP – Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. He was writing to say he was DELIGHTED to advise that my application for Australian citizenship had been approved. This came as no surprise; I had passed the entry test at the department of immigration the week before with flying colours. The short quiz one is required to pass to become a citizen of Australia paled in comparison to the horrendous mound of paperwork that had to be produced to become a permanent resident!

Please do not get the wrong impression, there were others taking the test the same day who were not finding it effortless. Those that do not have a command of written English found the essay questions very challenging; defining the terms ‘fair dinkum’ and ‘bloody oath’ and outlining the appropriate times to use them. The dexterity section required participants chug a scooner of beer while simultaneously turning over an entire barbeque grill of snags, which you might think is easy, but in some cultures ambidexterity is not common.

A woman taking the test the same day as me spilled her beer before she even got the barbeque tongs in her hand. Unfortunately, the rules are very strict. It was sad to think she would not achieve her dream; on the other hand, we simply cannot have citizens of Australia spilling our precious commodities. I am fortunate to have come from a country that has similar customs and beliefs, spending my teen years chugging warm Budweiser in the back of a pick up truck prepared me well.

Unless I do something really wrong or fall upon unfortunate circumstances like Mohamed Haneef – the Indian doctor from Brisbane, I am here for good. Of course Haneef can remain in the country now that all terrorist charges against him have been dropped; however, I suspect that now even applying for a rental card at Video EZ will be quite an ordeal for him.

Luckily Americans and Australians are quite similar: both thought the war in Iraq was a good idea, but thought the Kyoto Protocol wasn’t, both have an insatiable desire for reality TV. Naturally, there are some differences. Driving on the opposite side of the road, eating differently and fortunately for me there is a difference in approach to the topic of immigration and multiculturalism. While Bush has been working to keep foreigners out, Howard has boosted the rate of legal immigration to Australia – and one of those immigrants is yours truly.

One good thing for Geyer is that my being around will not warrant any changes to the work environment, which is not the case for many businesses that hire immigrants, and this can become a point of confusion. Knowing where to draw the line when it comes to acknowledging diversity is a challenge for many organizations. The reality is, we should and do, openly welcome people from other cultures into our work environments, but often do not want the baggage that comes with embracing their culture; whether that is celebrating different holidays, allowing native clothing to be worn, or participating in religious rituals unlike our own. Despite the fact that Australia is increasingly culturally diverse in terms of participants, our business culture continues to follow the predominant Australian culture.

According to the psychologist and IHR consultant Leonie Elphinstone the Australian business culture can be defined as relatively flat, egalitarian, time focused – sequential – monochromic. She says there is a focus on outcomes rather than harmony and that in Australian business communication is direct and of low context. Elphinstone goes on to explain that workplace cultures are influenced by industry area, size and ownership (Australian or International). 

Conducting a workshop with one of our clients a few weeks ago we were exposed to the often violent reaction many organizations have to suggestions that the work environment be amended to reflect the diversity of the people that work there. Like many, this organization was quite eager to point out that diversity is a major driver for their business, but when it came to providing prayer rooms, allowing employees to wear a head scarf, or installing squat toilets they wanted nothing to do with it. They said ‘this is Australia after all’.

After all it is Australia, and what that means today is that we are comprised of 216 different nationalities and speak 134 different languages. Only 60% of Sydneysiders were born in this country, in Melbourne that jumps to 64%. 36% of Australians speak another language and 7.5% speak a language other than English at home. In the workplace, the percentage of workers born overseas is 25% and 15% come from non – English speaking backgrounds. The inhabitants of the group of people I sit with in Sydney are a good example of this. I was born in the USA, Ji Wei in Malaysia, Neil in Wales and only Sally and Sean were born in Australia.

As you might expect, the biggest gaps in culture come as a result of different religious beliefs, so perhaps it is fortunate that in Australia 18.7% claim to have no religion. It is interesting to note that in Melbourne 20% say they have no religion, but only 14% of those residing in Sydney claim no religion – and this is the city referred to as Sin City? The source I got this from claims this is due to the fact that ¾ of all Lebanese Australians live in Sydney, and Lebanese are devout. It is also due to  the high percentage of Lebanese Australians in Sydney, that the percentage of those that believe in Islam is 4%.    

The question to consider is how much tolerance are we prepared to accept when it comes to embracing diversity? Beginning with dress, what ethnic and religious styles are appropriate in the work place, when is it acceptable to wear a sarees and kameez, dreadlocks, braids, and a turban to work?  According to Chandra Prasad, from the IMDiversity Career Center,many professionals are unwilling – and in some cases, due to religious and cultural beliefs, unable – to comply with the standard corporate dress code.

There are many reasons why people wear culturally specific styles in the workplace. It may be to maintain the culture of their homeland, or simply a way to express cultural pride. Some do it to be trendy, or as a means to educate others about their home and customs. All of these generally produce positive outcomes and do make the work place more interesting. On the other hand, when people wear culturally specific styles in the workplace it plays into our tendency to assume, or jump to conclusions. Prasad says a very common assumption made when one wears culturally specific styles is that they don’t speak English. 

Rosa Anabela Tavares is a family practice physician who is mixed Haitian and Angolan; she lives in New York and wears wraps on her head and sarongs to work. Apparently in the past she wore dreadlocks, which caused people to assume she was “radical, liberal and not approachable. Tavares says “In my capacity as a physician and role model, [my own style] is a strong signal to my patients and colleagues about being open and not being afraid not to be mainstream.” Tavares believes that people should wear the fashions with pride: “As a minority, you run the risk [of being labeled] regardless, so you might as well do it while embracing something you care about.”

A critical factor in this discussion is where you work, we have a great deal of latitude in our dress, it is almost expected that designers wear clothing that is out of the ordinary. Internet and high tech companies tend to be more lenient than law firms and some retail stores. Very traditional companies may regard cultural styles as substandard, so it is important that employees pay attention to what is happening around them and check with their employer if they wish to deviate. My son Harry was recently given a warning at work for not shaving, his employer Hoyts explained that facial hair was acceptable; however, the scruffy growth Harry was sporting could not be considered a beard. You cannot have a scruffy teen scooping out popcorn at the Harry Potter opening and uphold the brand.

Wearing different cultural styles may also bring unwanted attention to the employee, which may be positive or negative depending on the circumstances. There is the story I read of Mary, an Indian reference librarian, who believes that wearing a saree works to her advantage. She explains, “On the street when I wait for the bus, in the grocery store, and at functions on campus, students will stop by and say, ‘Do you remember me? You helped me with my research last semester.’ It makes me feel good about being recognized and acknowledged for my services in a vast, impersonal campus.”

Dealing with an employee wearing a turban to work is quite minor compared with other more challenging aspects of cultures that might be manifested in the physical environment. I mentioned earlier the suggestion of installing squat toilets in an Australian headquarters nearly made it necessary to get a defibulator for our client. After his violent reaction we didn’t have the fighting spirit to tell him about our other client just a bit further down the road that has had to repeatedly replace the toilet seats in their fitout due to employees standing on top of them.

Last year when working with Ngai Tahu our brief called for special areas and requirements for food preparation and greeting customs. This had an impact on the physical environment and amount of space required for the fitout. Given the purpose of Ngai Tahu it seemed natural and appropriate, but how would we have reacted if it was something less mainstream or from a culture more foreign to us than the Maori? How would we react if this was an insurance company with a large number of Maori employees?

As we enter a new chapter in the war for talent, the question of what is Australian and what is not will be on everyone’s mind. The labor pool we tap from will be increasingly diverse and as organizations we will all need to decide just how far we will go to make others feel welcome. Alternatively, those of us who are new entrants may just need to learn to adapt to the culture that has accepted us and get on with our work.

 

 

 

Sources

 

Exploring Culturally Specific Styles in the Workplace

by C Prasad

www.imdiversity.com

 

Cultural Diversity in the Australian Workplace

Leonie Elphinstone

Presented in May 2005 at Griffith University

 

Immigration the Defining Difference

By Duncan Currie

The Sydney Morning Herald

July 12, 2007

 

Two Cultures, Changing Dreams

By Deidre Macken

The Australian Financial Review

June 28, 2007-07-27

 

Demographics: The Population Hourglass

By Andrew Zolli

Fast Company

Issue 103 March 2006

Convergent Technologies – July 30, 2007

Convergent Technology

An important event is happening this month, and no it is not Peter Geyer returning from the ‘world tour’. Of course it is highly likely that you may not even be aware of this important event and that is not because you are out of touch, it is because you are designers and not nerds. It is quite possible that you are not sitting on the edge of your chair like every geek across the Silicon Valley counting down the days, hours and minutes to the June 29th release of Apple’s long awaited iPhone.

You might not care, but in the view of those at Apple, the iPhone will change life as we know it. Why? Because the iPhone will be the ultimate in convergence of technologies. To ice the cake, it will take Apple’s concept of user friendliness, exhibited in the iPod, and apply it to a mobile phone. This is good news for those of us who cannot figure out how to work their mobile phones. Sadly, I must admit that I am also personally challenged with operating an iPod. Let me be more specific, otherwise I risk fanning the flames for those of you who believe I am a complete technical moron; it is not the iPod that is confusing, it is iTunes and downloading that causes me to seek advice from my tech savvy son.

The Economist magazine describes Apple as “masters of innovation” they say we can learn four key lessons from the company about inventiveness. The first is to innovate from without as opposed to within, this is referred to as ‘network innovation’ Stitch together your own ideas with others, and perfect them. The iPod was not a new device, but it did have elegant software and stylish design and of course the iPod has the multi touch keyboard that makes it so much more popular than other MP3 players. Apple brought user friendliness, good looks and a dynamite marketing campaign to the game, they didn’t invent the portable music player.

Lesson 2 is to design for users not the demands of the technology; otherwise we run the risk of having devices designed by engineers for engineers. According to Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs “We are all born with the ultimate pointing device – our fingers – and the iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse” Jobs predicts the iPhone will “revolutionise the industry”.

The third lesson to learn from Apple is that smart companies should ignore what the market says it wants today. It seems a bit counter intuitive, but it makes good sense, you will never innovate if your frame of reference is how we do things right now – today. To drive this point home consider the absurdity of this prediction about telephones made by the Boston Post. “Well-informed people know it is possible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value”. Okay I am cheating; this prediction was made in 1865. The point is, we don’t know what we don’t know, and to stay ahead in the game we need to continually challenge ourselves to “think different”.

The final lesson to be learned from Apple is to fail wisely. Again not being geeks, the fact that the Mac was not Apple’s first foray into personal computers is probably not common knowledge to us.
Depending on the source, some say the Mackintosh computer was a descendent of Apple’s Lisa computer developed in the 1980’s. The Lisa was a personal computer with a graphic user interface. Lisa was a flop and Steve Jobs was forced to leave the project. Apple has a history of flops, but they keep going. They learn from their mistakes, and clearly Steve Jobs is tenacious. Some believe it is the leadership of Steve Jobs that saved Apple from bankruptcy.

So within days the iPhone will be released. When you hear so much about the arrival of such things you begin to anticipate, have expectations and in my cynical view wonder if you’re being duped. Is it ever going to happen, is it for real, will it deliver on the promise? e.g. the paperless office, Elvis being alive, the Geyer Blog or the completion of the Melbourne fitout.

The iPhone is a multimedia and internet enabled mobile phone. Its functions will include: a camera, a multimedia player, mobile phone, e-mail, text messaging, web browsing and visual voice mail. The touch screen will have virtual keyboard and buttons; it is a quad-band GSM phone. The phone has so much technology in it that Apple has applied for over 200 patients! Soon you will be able to purchase the iPhone if you are prepared to part with US $499 for a 4 GB model, or really go hog wild with the 8 GB model which will set you back US $599.

The lure of having one device that will do everything is attractive to some. For me I have my doubts, mostly because as a family we have gone through multiple mobile phones for a variety of reasons. You might say, of course, she has teenage boys they lose everything. Unfortunately, it was not my sons who popped my mobile in the washing machine on the normal cycle. Even after a rinse cycle retrieval and emergency mobile phone CPR (soaking the phone in mentholated spirits) it still wouldn’t work. By the way that technique was recommended to me by Peter McCamley who had a water accident with his mobile, it worked for him!

Whether we like it or not the trend toward converging technologies is in full swing. At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference – geeze sorry I missed that, I wouldn’t have been invited anyway because it is Microsoft’s annual meeting where they chart their aspirations for the future, At WinHEC Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, predicted “We don’t see the desk phone existing as a separate device in the future”. In Microsoft’s future vision, the PC would incorporate all of our desk phone’s functionality with our PC’s. We would be able to set up a conference call with the click of a mouse and you could play solitaire on the conference call if/when it got boring.

Sounds good to me, it took at least seven people to help me set up a three way conference call on my phone last week and that was just the people in our office working on it. The guys from the two other companies I was attempting to connect with couldn’t do any better. It wasn’t till Sean dug out the operating instructions for our 1975 handsets that we were able to successfully complete the call. Having this occur when the Sydney office was down an office coordinator and IT guy didn’t help.

In his article Skype Overcomes Hype with Fun Factor, Peter Moon talks about how much fun it is to make phone calls over your PC. It must be, why else would 8 million people be connected via skype at any moment. Just as we are seeing a convergence of technologies with mobile phones and PCs we are seeing it with skype too. If you think all you can do with skype is make phone calls you’re wrong. The latest release of the software provides the ability to transfer money using Pay Pal. Moon points out how useful this will be when your kids are calling you for money, one seamless transaction.

Wait – were not done yet, there are more converged technologies to report. There is the Qmedia speaker system that turns any MP3 player into a clock radio. With a secure digital card, a USB cable or a 3.5 mm jack you can go to sleep listening to your favorite podcast enabling you to learn as you snooze!

Wait that’s not all!! Convert your hand-held PC into a portable satellite navigation system, and with that you will have everything required to become a cab driver in Brisbane. My experience has shown one needs only a vehicle and a Pocket PC with a Bluetooth GPS satellite receiver and mapping software loaded – no need to have any knowledge of the city or speak English and by all means if you intend to be a cab driver in Brisbane don’t for one minute think you will need a street directory for back up. The receiver will cost you about $81 dollars, and the mapping software for a pocket PC will cost about $199.
A few warnings about the immanent convergence of technology; Don’t try to do it by yourself or bad things could happen such as attempts to converge your mobile phone with your I key in your purse. If you drive a Nissan or Lexus the mobile phone will render the key useless, the car wont start and the best thing is it can’t be reprogrammed. OOPS
Another warning, if you do intend to become a cab driver in Brisbane don’t be fooled by mobile phones with a built in GPS, every time you lose contact with the phone network you will lose satellite navigation capacity. This would make you no different than your passenger, if your passenger is like me they will have no idea where to go because they are from Sydney. To complicate matters further, they may even still believe that they are going ‘down to Brisbane’ from Sydney. This clearly demonstrates they don’t even have the most rudimentary knowledge of Australian geography. As a result you will be hopelessly lost and will need to charge your passenger a double fare.

Sources

It’s Not PC to Predict the Future
By John Davidson
The Australian Financial Review
May 22, 2007

Just the Gift Every Mum’s Waiting for
By Peter Moon
The Australian Financial Review
May 1, 2007

Skype Overcomes Hype with Fun Factor
By Peter Moon
The Australian Financial Review
May 22, 2007

Why Apple’s iPhone is Not the Next iPod
By Saabira Chaudhuri
Fast Company
May 2007

Podcast
TWIT # 98
The Big Bang

Podcast
The Economist
Apple and Innovation – cover editorial
June 8, 2007

Short Attention Spans – May 15, 2007

Future’s Ramblings – Issue 30
Short Attention Spans

Over the years that I have been doing Future’s Ramblings many of you have passed along your comment on the articles: if you liked them, were exposed to new avenues of thought , or had a spark of inspiration that came as a result of reading them. Not all of the comments are rosy. My personal favorites are those that are quick to point out grammatical errors and typos, advise me to get a technical advisor and the guy that ever so gently reminds me – over and over and over again – that Sony did not make the IPod. Yes you know who you are.

One of the most frequent comments I get is about the length of the articles and the fact that they ramble so much! (Hey maybe that’s why I call it Ramblings) After all, how can a busy executive be expected to read such a long diatribe off a blackberry in the airport? Well I want you to know that I do appreciate your comments both good and bad, and have taken many of your suggestions on board – I now use spell check. Just to show you how much I care I have also put my normal defensiveness aside to seriously considered the length of the articles. My conclusion is that it’s near impossible to cover a topic with any detail in much less and that you all must have seriously short attention spans.

Fortunately, I do have a soft side which I got in touch with, so upon further reflection decided my stance was a bit harsh. Consequently, this months Ramblings is dedicated to learning more about our ability to pay attention; in hope of gaining a better understanding of why some of you just can’t do it. My research began with an online quiz from Psychology Today that consisted of a series of questions. Here are a few examples:

 How often are you late for work or an appointment?
 How often do you find yourself daydreaming at work?
 Do you lose your patience easily?
 How often do you interrupt people during a conversation?

Well I must say it came as a shock, A SHOCK I SAY, to learn that I have a rather short attention span. The website advises this might make me disorganized, miss deadlines, and pay my bills late. They offer that it could be due to fatigue, the side effect of medication or a personal problem and suggest I visit a psychologist to asses whether ADD might be a factor. Well what do they know, that’s not a reputable magazine anyway. Not like Who Weekly and their excellent quizzes on how sexy are you? Or determine if you need a daily moisturizer.

It appears the US government is as shocked as I am about my inability to pay attention, which is why they have funded an effort to counteract what some medical professionals have termed “epidemic-level shortness in the attention spans of American citizens”. This was done in response to a study that determined Americans, compared to other nations, and themselves a few days or weeks earlier, suffer from dramatically short attention spans.

Psychologists in America think this may be due to the overabundance of irrelevant and distracting information. Thank goodness there is none of that here! Even though the irrelevant and distracting information comes from multiple sources, the television is a major contributor. In America 90% of children under the age of two and 40% of infants under three months old watch television regularly. Studies link television watching to not doing your homework, being bored in school, not going to college and shortened attention spans.

Another reason given for short attention spans is the time we spend web browsing. Apparently too much browsing can leave you with the attention span of approximately nine seconds – the same as a goldfish. The positive side to that is that every time a goldfish swims by the little castle in the fish tank he thinks it’s a new thing so has high job/life satisfaction. According to Ted Selker an expert in body language at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Our attention span gets affected by the way we do things, if we spend our time flitting from one thing to another on the web, we can get into a habit of not concentrating.” This does not seem to be the case with people who read news articles on line, apparently 77% of online readers finish an entire article where their print reading counterparts measure in at only 62%.

Having a short attention span, or making people think you do, is not completely bad. Last week articles appeared in the paper commenting on the Leader of the Opposition Kevin Rudd’s lack of concern for Peter Costello and the other Government backbencher’s yahooing. Everyone wondered why Rudd was unfazed by the yelling and heckling going on around him and questioned whether he was in fact paying attention. Rudd appeared to be tidying up papers and writing a speech while there was utter mayhem happening around him. This lasted about six months and then Rudd finally lost his cool and yelled at the Prime Minister. So good news, he wasn’t sleeping on the job or wearing ear plugs – a good move considering he wants to be the next Prime Minister.

You don’t need to have a long attention span to lead a country. Doug Hannah, a friend of G. W. Bush’s since childhood, has found that an attention problem runs in the Bush family: “They have an attention span of about an hour.” When he and George were boys, he remembers, “Mr. Bush would pick us up to take us to the movies and leave after an hour and 20 minutes…. At ball games George would sometimes want to leave in the fifth inning.” “Even today,” writes Gail Sheehy in the October Vanity Fair, “nothing engages Bush’s attention for more than an hour, an hour max? more like 10 or 15 minutes. His workday as governor of Texas is “two hard half-days,” as his chief of staff, Clay Johnson, describes it.

He puts in the hours from 8 to 11:30 A.M., breaking it up with a series of 15-minute meetings, sometimes 10-minute meetings, but rarely is there a 30-minute meeting, says Johnson. At 11:30 he’s “outtahere.” He tries everything possible to have at least two hours of what he calls private time in the middle of the day to go over to the University of Texas track or run a hard three to five miles on a concrete path at a pace of 7.5 minutes a mile, then relax and return to the office at 1:30, where he’ll play some video golf or computer solitaire until about three, and then it’s back to the second “hard half-day” until 5:30.”

Generally we don’t think about what we are doing between 80 and 90% of the time and for the most part this is harmless. Many of the common tasks we do through out the day do not require our full attention. The problem is when we are distracted from things we should be paying attention to. This can have catastrophic consequences, at the least you may miss your exit on the freeway, but in extreme cases you might end up like the guy that went to work and forgot his 10 month old son in the back seat. It was in California and it was very hot, unfortunately the child died.

Main stream psychology hasn’t paid much attention to distractibility, but now some scientists are beginning to see positive aspects of mind wandering and link this to basic operations of the brain. Since mind wandering taps into the same part of the brain that we engage when we are doing nothing, it serves the purpose of calming us. We can then apply idle brain capacity to planning and solving problems which is a perfect situation for creative thought.

As we move into an age where creativity and innovation will take centre stage it is worthwhile for us to consider how we can better tap into our natural tendency to day dream. We also need to acknowledge that, as interesting as we think we are, when we make presentations to clients they will most likely zone out part way through. This can be quite a challenge because we don’t want to dilute our message to the point that it loses meaning, nor do we want to make it so complicated that the average person can’t see it through to the end.

This is particularly prevalent in Futures. It is not uncommon for us to do months worth of work and have only three minutes at a companies board meeting to present it. In this kind of situation it is critical to make our point quickly and effectively. Since you know all of us you will understand what a challenge this is, we have the gift of the gab and getting us to stop talking is no small feat.

As with most things, recognizing you have a problem is the first step to solving it. So please have some patience, I for one am trying to muzzle myself. You could help too by improving your concentration by purchasing one of those new electronic games they have been marketing to senior citizens to keep their minds active. If that doesn’t work go get yourself a prescription for Ritalin.

Sources

Online Readers Have Longer Attention Spans: Study
By Humphrey Cheung
Trendwatch
April 2, 2007

“Short Attention Spans Serve Purpose”
By Malcolm Ritter
Discovery Channel News
March 19, 2007

“The Empire Strikes Back”
By Peter Hartcher and Phillip Coorey
The Sydney Morning Herald
May 12, 2007

“Nine in 10 US Babies Watch TV”
The Sydney Morning Herald
May 8, 2007

“Are We turning into Digital Goldfish?”
BBC News
February 22 2002

Bush Watch
RealClearPolitics.com
March 16, 2007

“Effort Underway to Improve Short Attention Spans of Americans”
By Ion Zwitter
Avant News EditorWashington, D.C.
January 19, 2007

The Wikiworld – April 9, 2007

The Wikiworld
Future’s Ramblings – Issue 29 – April 9, 2007

The Wiki world in 3 parts

Part one – World of Warcraft

My son Harry spends an incredible amount of time playing World of Warcraft. This game, created by Blizzard entertainment, is a MMORPG or massive multiplayer online role playing game that takes place in the world of Azeroth. In this game each player controls a character within a persistent game world; they explore the landscape, fight monsters and perform quests on behalf of computer controlled characters (sounds like a day in the office to me). What intrigues me about the game is that it requires players work together to solve problems, or in this case defeat monsters. The players do not know one another personally; never the less, they are in constant communication with one another via e mail developing strategies, discussing what has worked or not worked in the past and sometimes just chewing the fat.

There are 8.5 million people in the world that play this game, a little under half the size of Australia! Harry is now in level 70, which is the highest. A testament to his nerdity. Of course if you own shares in Blizzard you would be delighted that 8.5 million players happily fork over 30 dollars a month to play the game. However, as a mother of a child who plays, I have concerns. Mostly I wonder why can’t he do useful things in his spare time like sit on the couch with a beer and watch TV like his parents. Also I fear he is neglecting his formal education, even worse, he might get gaming addiction. Don’t laugh there is such a thing. As a matter of fact in an extreme case a couple in China was arrested for neglecting their baby because they spent so much time playing the game.

On a more positive spin, improving ones communication and collaborative abilities is a great thing to do given the role these skills will play in the future. Another bit of good news is the mainstream has now recognised that there are plenty of gamers out there who can work collaboratively to solve tough problems. A bunch of nerds playing a game to one mob is an untapped labour pool to another.

This is why researchers at Stanford University have struck a deal with PlayStation 3 which will enable PS3 owners to convert their consoles to help find a cure for cancer. The PS3 is powerful machine, its user interface and 3.26 Hz power PC processor allows the machine to download a segment of a problem from another source. Therefore, by connecting to Stanford’s systems through your PS3, any gamer can download their information and help out with specific program if they choose.

One such program at Stanford is Folding @ Home which is a study of how proteins fold. When a protein folds incorrectly it creates problems none us want to have, like Parkinson, Alzheimer’s and Mad Cow disease, not to mention cancer. This is similar to another system, SETI @ home, that crunches data from radio observatories looking for extraterrestrial life, despite the added manpower no aliens have been located. Never the less, the point is that by adding additional machines and brains your chances of solving a problem increase.

Part two – Living in the Wiki world

The reality is that Harry and all of the other kids that play this game live in the wiki world, and though you might not know it, you probably do too. If you don’t maybe you should because it is the wave of the future.

Wikis, blogs, chatrooms, open source, social networking, crowd sourcing, smart mobs, crowd wisdom what ever you call it the ‘blogsphere’ and new ways of collaboration are enabling millions of people to actively participate in innovation, wealth creation and social development by collaborating with others. People are using a growing suite of collaboration technologies to brainstorm new products and services, manage projects and share ideas and data. According to Brad Anderson CEO of Best Buy, North America’s largest consumer electronics seller, it is all about “unleashing the power of human capital”

Already this new economic model extends beyond software and music to every part of the global community. The new art and science of collaboration, ‘ wikinomics’ will force us to think differently about how we compete, how we maintain profit, and how we harness mass collaboration to create real value

We work in the ‘wiki workplace’ by collaborating with piers across organizational and geographic boundaries. We consume products that we helped to create online. If we at Geyer are smart, we will begin to brainstorm how we should design for the wacky wikiworld’s workplace. Amanda Wood put this challenge to the Melbourne office in a past presentation by asking how are we going to design for the ‘flat world’ because the status quo isn’t going to cut it.

In the flat wikiworld workers will develop their own self organized networks that will cut across company divisions, they will have the ability to communicate and interact as a global, real time workforce. This will be exacerbated by the entrance to the workforce of the Net Generation, a group with familiarity and comfort with working with web-based tools. All of this combined will drive a massive shift in how we design, produce goods and services, store service and sell product.
As a result, the way companies and countries compete will change; smaller companies will have the ability to go neck and neck with giants by creating partnerships to increase their size and skill base.

Not everyone embraces the wiki world, some are concerned with intellectual property and the risks of airing dirty laundry to the world, but the reality is that in the wikiworld you will not be able to hide. Every individual will have the ability to post data or a picture of you on the internet doing something you should not be; like watering your garden during restrictions or leaving your dog’s poo on the grass. This will be an especially enlightening time for politicians, organizations and companies. They will no longer be able to afford to not walk the talk.

Part three – Wiki Companies
Companies like HP, Chevron, Boeing and Telstra agree this is the way of the future and have joined the wikiworld through company blogs. While many are controlled vehicles used to blow the company’s horn, others are open means of communication engaging employees, customers, shareholders and the general public. The Telestra blog http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au bears all, complements and complaints of the company. The site launched in December and already it attracts 7000 hits a week. Editor Rod Bruem says “The company philosophy now, since Sol Trujillo came, is to be open and honest. What is worse? Somebody coming to us with a problem or going to Ray Hadley or the Today show?”

He has a point. No company, politician or person is immune to having their personal lives on view in the wikiworld. One of my favourite examples, DontDateHimGirl.com, is a site offering dating advice to young women by profiling men that are unfaithful, have sexually transmitted diseases, don’t pay child support, or are just plain cads. I have not checked the site yet to see if there are any Geyer guys there. Last week Judge Stanton Wettick ruled that he had no jurisdiction over a lawsuit filed by Todd Hollis who was profiled on the site. Lawyer Robert Byer summed it up well “I think he must have the idea that just because you can access the internet anywhere in the world you can sue someone anywhere in the world” clearly not true – there is no wikijustice.

Nope no justice for Mr. Holis or Tony Blair – pranksters added an entry to his profile on Wikipedia stating his middle name is “Whoopdedo” they also said that Kylie Minogue “is the more beautiful and more talented older sister” of Michael Jackson and that Sharon Stone and Demi Moore headed the Soviet secret service. Interesting but untrue and that is the challenge with open source collaboration it could be really good or really bad. This is why proposed guidelines are being created for blogging netiquette.

It gets a bit overwhelming, what does it means to free speech and personal rights, copyrights and most important to us, what does this mean to upholstery fabric?

Sources

“All Profit in the Wiki Workplace”
By Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams
The Australian Financial Review
March 29, 2007

“Kill Baddies and Fight Cancer”
By John Davidson
The Australian Financial Review
March 20, 2007

“How Gamers Can Help Cure Cancer”
By Jim Martz
Wired Magazine 6.14.05

“Baring It All on the Company Blog”
By Fiona Smith
The Australian Financial Review
August 15, 2007

“Don’t Date Him’ Site Beats Law Suit”
By Joe Mandak
The New Zealand Herald
April 12, 2007

“Wikipedia gets Minister’s Vote Despite errors”
The New Zealand Herald
April 12, 2007

“War of Words Prompts Call for Blogging Netiquette Code”
By Brad Stome
The Sydney Morning Herald
April 10, 2007

“As Gadgets Get it Together, Media Makers Fall Behind”
By Saul Hansell
The New York Times
January 25, 2006

Wikinomics
By Don Tapscott

The World is Flat
By Thomas L Friedman
Penguin Books

Chicks Rule – March 9, 2007

Chicks rule?
Future’s Ramblings – Issue 28 – March 9, 2007

I went to a lunch sponsored by the Australian Institute of Management earlier this week; it was in celebration of National Women’s Day. The main speaker Ann Sherry, the CEO of Westpac in New Zealand, made all of the women in attendance turn to the person sitting next to them and exchange a hair or make up tip, then we all did a show of hands vote on who Meredith on Gray’s Anatomy should end up with, McDreamy or the Vet.

Of course I’m messing with you. Ann Sherry talked about the status of women in business, which compared to the status of the women the speaker who went before her described, was pretty good. The previous speaker was from United Nations Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM works for women’s human rights, economic empowerment and political participation which is a pretty big deal in places like the East Timor, Cambodia, Guatemala and Afghanistan.

Of the many insightful things Ann Sherry said, the one that stuck with me was a message to all of us in the room that “with affluence and influence comes obligation” What she meant was that all of us educated and affluent women in the room should be supporting groups like UNIFEM and mentoring other women in business to enable them to make it to the tops in organizations. Her rational was not a moral one but an economic one, because if we do not engage the entire workforce, our chances of success in an ever increasingly competitive global economy are slim.

This made me think of my past mentors and my time at the University of Arizona, Judith Chafee one of only two female professors, did influence me greatly. Judith went to Yale in 1950 and was the only women in her architecture class; she studied alongside Charles Eames at the American Academe in Rome and went on to work with some of modern architecture’s greats: Edward Larabee Barnes, Eero Saarinen and Walter Gropius. She is well known for her houses in the Tucson desert which were described as an American modernism bred of the desert. When I was studying with her she refused to participate in a show of women architects because she wanted to be recognized for her architecture, not for being a woman.

After Judith’s death Chris Macdonald British Columbia Architecture chair said “to have made such fine work in the face of such a powerful cultural force (as Postmodernism) and this in an environment where a forthright and passionate woman would be patronized as a matter of course – represents an accomplishment of singular determination”. I like that quote, but there was another I like better from Professor Robert Nevins, who also taught me and went to Yale with Judith. He said “she was fu%$&ing scary, but even drunk she was smarter than anyone I’ve ever known”. Being a hard drinker and chain smoker, she had mannerisms and a forthright style that frightened many.

She taught me a lot, and I must say I did want to be like her, but have only managed the hard drinking part. There were others like Professor Ellery Green who made this statement to all of the fifth year architecture students in the Ethics and Practice class he taught. “None of you women (there were about five of us) will really make it in business because you don’t play football, and to really understand business you need to understand football”. Yep, it was with those words I began my career in architecture.

Of course today there are plenty of women at the top ranks of organizations around the world: Carly, Martha, Theresa Gattung (ok I’m being cheeky they are all no longer in the job). There are also many women who occupy the top job in the country. In fact there are 8 female presidents in the world at this time: Chile, Finland, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Liberia, The Philippines and Switzerland and 5 women in the world that occupy a Prime Minister position: Germany, Jamaica, New Zealand, Mozambique and the Netherland Antilles. Who knows over the top of many a republican’s dead body there might be a woman or black president in the United States?

Today women are making in roads in a number of fields that have been traditionally male dominated. Drew Faust is the first president of Harvard University; she succeeds the previous president Lawrence Summers who suggested there was a biological explanation for women failing to excel in the field of maths and science. He said this was not his own view and that he was being deliberately controversial. Never the less, it is interesting that following his appointment in 2001 the number of women offered tenured jobs declined dramatically. Out of 32 four were women.

In Australia women represent 17.2% of professors in Australian universities. According to Judith Bessant who has completed a study on gender in academia, the higher up the career ladder you go in Australian Universities the worse the situation gets. So much so that the University of NSW has launched a leadership program for women in academics.

Of course if we think academia is bad, imagine mining? Interestingly the number of women in this profession is increasing, mainly due to the number of women studying geology. As a matter of fact the head of technology at BHP Billiton is a woman, Dr Megan Clark. Megan did have to do a few hard yards; she got in some hot water for entering a mine in 1982. At that time she worked for WMC resources and was the mine geologist, the law at that time said that a woman could not work underground which made doing her job a bit difficult. After dodging the mine inspectors she finally said stuff it, and went through the mine with one of the inspectors. The inspector had her prosecuted for it. Clark appealed to the then governor-general Sir Zelman Cowan and in 1982 won a waver directly from the Queen which ended centuries of prejudice against women in mining.

Statistics are quite alarming for a number of other professions. In law firms the percentage of women partners 15.6% compares to 84.4% men, corporate officers in Fortune 500 companies have 15.7% women in the top jobs compared to 84.3% men. The worst profession is doctors where the top earning doctors are only 6.6% women compared to 93.4% men.

So why is it that there are so few women at the top? In Paths to Power: How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership written by Harvard Business School’s Anthony J Mayo, Nitin Nohria and Laura
G. Singleton the authors claim that in all cultures there is a sense that some have won the “ovarian lottery” because they have been born to the right parents, get the right education, have the right skin colour, the right gender and belong to the right social institutions. It is true that in twentieth century America it was the wealthy, white, Protestant (especially Episcopalian or Presbyterian) men from the industrialized centres of the Northeast that had the greatest advantages and opportunities.

According to the authors there has been a gradual opening of access, with education being the greatest contributor. Unfortunately, they believe that there are still are three areas that will place a person on the outside path rather than the inside and those are: social class, gender and race. Like Ann Sherry at Westpac the authors of this book also believe that “the businesses that will succeed in the 21st century will be those that embrace the diversity of their workforce, that can compete in a global, competitive landscape and can differentiate their products and services for a more discriminating customer base.” Leaders of the future, men and women, will need a global perspective, managing this level of complexity will require a broader view.

There is another view as to why so few women are at the top, this view is shared by women and men alike, and that is that they simply don’t care to be. While there are many who will say that women don’t work as hard as men and it is true that the aggregate, statistics show, women work less. They also don’t compete as hard as most men (I guess Professor Green was right). I prefer to align with Charles A. O’Reilly III, professor of behaviour at Stanford Graduate School of Business, who has done studies to isolate the qualities that lead to a corner office. His conclusion: Success in a corporation is less a function of gender discrimination than of how hard a person chooses to compete and the folks that tend to compete the hardest are the stereotypical manly men.

In The Myth of Male Power author Warren Farrell says that “When a woman gets near the top, she starts asking herself the most intelligent questions” He goes on to say that the fact that women don’t make it to the top is a measure of their power and not their powerlessness. “They’ve learned they can get respect and love in a variety of different ways – from being a good parent, from being a top executive, or combination of both” Free from the ego that drives many males, women are more likely to consider the trade offs and opt for the saner path. According to Mary Lou Quinlan who stepped down as CEO of advertising agency N. W. Ayer says “ The reason a lot of women aren’t shooting for the corner office is that they’ve seen it up close, and its not a pretty scene … It’s about talent, dedication, experience or the ability to take heat. “

So I guess my mother was right when she would say “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”

Sources:

“Where Are the Women?”
Fast Company
By Linda Tischler
February 2004

“Women’s Role Receives Greater Recognition”
By Damien Lynch
The Australian Financial Review
January 16, 2007

“Who Rises to Power in American Business?”
By Sean Silverthorne
Harvard Business School
Working Knowledge
January 8, 2007

“Faust Track: Harvard Shows the Way”
By Catherine Fox
The Australian Financial Review
January 2007

“Women Strike the Mother Lode”
By Tim Treadgold
Australian Financial Review – BRW magazine
January 11 – 17 2007

“Stayers Make Their Working Life Work for Them”
By Catherine Fox
The Australian Financial Review
February 13, 2007

Wikipedia and Google for stats on countries and bio of Judith Chafee

Distractions Part Two – February 9, 2007

Distractions part two

Future’s Ramblings – Issue 27 – February 9, 2007

In response to the last Future’s Ramblings I received an e mail from a colleague who pointed out that iPods are the least of our worries when it comes to workplace distraction. Of course he is right, and he would have been right even if he wasn’t from the Melbourne office; that as you all know, has been living through an office renovation that took longer than anyone imagined. Who could keep focused with loud saws, paint fumes and construction workers in shorts? Never mind poor guys like Lorenzo who has been skipping lunch for the past six months out of fear he might gain a few pounds and not be able to squeeze through the one foot aisle leading to his desk.

We are all rejoicing because the Melbourne office renovation is complete and it looks great!  Now we can get back to normal, a relief not only to the occupants of the Melbourne office, but also for those of us that talk to them on the phone. Working without distraction is necessary in the workplace. The Journal of Facilities Management  conducted a study in the US in 2002 and found that the workplace attribute found to be most effective was the “ability to do distraction – free solo work” followed second by “support for impromptu interactions (both in one’s workspace and elsewhere)”. Now with the construction complete all we need to do is worry about all of the other distractions.

When it comes to distractions the most explored subject area is around acoustical privacy. In studies done by ASID 70% of the respondents claimed they could be more productive if the workplace was less noisy. Noise level is something that can be easily measured in the workplace but it is not the noise that is the issue as much as how annoying that noise is. Annoyance levels fluctuate with sound level, but also are impacted by predictability and variability. Spikes in variable noise can be annoying but less so when they are expected. This is why the guy that presses the button on the printer does not get as annoyed with the sound as the guy sitting next to him who didn’t anticipate it.

Visual privacy is also important in work environments but visual distractions are different from auditory distractions because they elicit a different response from the brain. It is more difficult to return to ones thoughts after a visual distraction than an auditory one because the mechanism that helps re-orient task relevant information in the brain does not engage; making visual distractions more harmful to our productivity. Boy there are so many visual distractions that confront us each day! In the futures pod alone we can lose a good thirty minutes of work if someone has a new outfit or haircut.

Clothing or the lack there of, can be quite a distraction in the workplace. This is why I will share with you David M Kruk’s feelings on what people wear to work. In his article “The Corporate Dress Code” he identifies the clothing that is not suitable for the corporate environment because it is too distracting.

  • Sweat suites of any type – Sorry Sean I know you wanted to wear your orange track suit and diamond necklace from the Christmas Party again.
  • Clothes that are transparent or any part of an undergarment
  • Lack of proper undergarments
  • Unsafe footwear and flip – flops
  • Halter tops, bare midriffs, crop tops, tank tops – There goes my plan of wearing my Christmas Party outfit too, $20 down the drain! Good news for all of you that appeared in a wig at the party, they’re not on the list.
  • Low-cut clothing, thin shoulder straps, sundresses

Mr. Kruck makes exceptions if you are good looking, which is of course subjective. He also suggests that many of theses outfits should not even be worn outside of the workplace, particularly if you weigh more than 150 pounds. I should point out the source for this is Red Tractor USA touted as The Best News Satire in the Field. David has apparently not heard that the world is changing and that people wear jeans to the theater and camisoles to church. Jamie Oliver did not wear a tie when he visited The Queen and the NorthwesternUniversity women’s lacrosse team went to the White House in flip – flops.

Sorry I got distracted; there are so many interesting things you can find on the internet!

Draught is rated as the most annoying climatic factor in a work environment. This is characterized by varying air velocity and turbulence intensity. One third of employees in large offices complain about draught, this can reach 60% in a cold workplace. Environmental quality has been linked to productivity in offices, studies done by The University of Sydney measured occupant satisfaction with seven comfort factors and found that these had a direct  impact on performance at work – they measured: thermal comfort, air quality, activity related noise, spatial comfort, privacy, lighting and building related external noise.

So big deal, we all know that noise, visual and climatic factors can be distracting, we experience this daily, but why and what do we do about it?

To perform well at work, or in anything else, we need three things; first the knowledge, skills or abilities, second the motivation or desire, and third positive psychological factors. It is the psychological factors that give us a tough time because these impact our ability to concentrate and focus. There is no doubt that some people are able to control their attention, even in times of great stress, while others like Leyton Hewett cannot. This is psychological factors at play.

According to Robin Pratt from Performance Equations, Inc. our focus or concentration works in channels which range from external to internal and broad to narrow. There are three attentional channels that each of us moves through at any point in any given day.  The first channel is External and broad – which is about environmental awareness, concentration on the things happening around you. The second channel is broad and internal – a more analytical, conceptual style. Focusing on process, this style connects past information with the future and is good for planning and strategy. The final channel is narrow and external – this channel will focus on follow through and execution of tasks.

We use all three channels as needed; the catch is that we cannot be in two channels at the same time. Each of us has a different pattern of attentional strength and weaknesses and we differ in how quickly we are able to switch styles. The higher your distraction level, the more difficulty you have of switching channels and it is the ability to switch quickly that makes you productive. For example if I am happily concentrating in Channel two, perhaps  working on a spread sheet or reading something and suddenly an ambulance goes by my brain sifts to Channel one, external broad awareness. My effectiveness and the level of my productivity will depend on my ability to quickly shift back to Channel two. Some people are just faster channel shifters than others.

We each have a dominant attention style and if we are lucky we will choose professions that align with that style, I think we can all agree that we want an air traffic controller or brain surgeon to maintain a strong internal – narrow focus. Each of these dominant attention styles will have a different reaction to stress or distraction; therefore, a person’s attention style can be influenced by the type of environment they are in. As a result when someone says they cannot possibly do their job in an open office environment; depending on which attention channel is dominant for them, it may be true.

Someone like me has broad – internal focus this is good because it allows me to analyses and synthesizes input from various sources. I am able to conceptualize relationships among events, so I can easily develop strategies or plans and anticipate the consequences. My approach is conceptual and I like solving problems. On the other hand because I am broad, I have difficulty with focused concentration. Staying on topic long enough to take care of the details and finish something is a challenge for me. I am seduced by a new idea or project more than finishing the old one. Unfortunately I also have high external distractibility.

External distractibility falls into three types: the first is due to boredom, you would rather pay attention to things you find more interesting than the task at hand. The second is due to irritation, you get distracted because you’re irritated at someone talking or the phone is ringing. Finally the third type of external distraction is from feeling rushed; you’re so distracted by all the things you have to do that you cannot pay attention to what you are doing at the moment.

We can’t change who we are, but we can learn to deal better with our weaknesses by altering our environment and surrounding ourselves with a team of people with complementary skills. If you have a high level of external distractibility you may need to put yourself in an environment where there are fewer distractions, like the quiet room for certain tasks. If you have a high level of internal distractibility, you get lost in your own head, it may be best to team with others who can help you to see a broader perspective. If your dominant channel is broad you may need to learn to slow down, learn to not overload your agenda, keep notes to maintain focus and team with more focused individuals who will keep you on target to get the job done.

Finally, at a business level here are a few thing employers can do to help:

  • Be more flexible – allow time outside of work for people to deal with their family issues
  • Provide an employee assistance program – to resolve personal problems relating to health, financial situation or family
  • Install acoustic products that absorb office noise – sound masking
  • Institute a work – safety program – disaster plans, fire safety procedures
  • Control the rumor mill – be honest with employees about the company, its financial situation and their future.

 

Sources:

“Removing Employee Distractions”

Business Toolbox – A library of business management info.

By Vicki Gerson

October 2, 2004

Paper – “Environmental Quality and Productivity in Offices: Some Local Research”

David Rowe – School of Architecture, Design Science and Planning

The University of Sydney.

Paper – “Auditory, visual, and physical distractions in the workplace.”

Justin Mardex – CornellUniversity, Department of Design and Environmental Analysis

2004

“The Corporate Dress Code”

By David M. Kruk

Red Tractor USA – June 13, 2006

“Going toe-to-toe on office etiquette”

By Olivia Barker and Sarah Bailey

USA Today

August 14, 2005

Paper – “The Psychology of Distributed Workers”

Robin Pratt

July 2003

Future of Work Executive Roundtable

The Attentional & Interpersonal Style Inventory

TAIS Business Report for Laurie Aznavoorian

October 2, 2003

Enhanced Performance Systems Inc

 

 

 

iPods at Work – January 10, 2007

iPods at work

Future’s Ramblings – Issue 26 – January 10, 2007

 

Happy 2007!  I wanted to get this to you before Christmas because I am sure some of you had an iPod on your Christmas list – but it wasn’t meant to be.

My son’s grades arrived in the mail about a week ago, they were by no means bad, but I must admit that I expected them to be a bit better. After all this kid has been scoring top marks since he was six years old and even skipped ahead a year in school when we moved to Australia. If a person does not do as well at something as you know they can, you cannot help but wonder why. I suppose it is human nature to want to point the finger at something as a catalyst to the change and in this particular situation I am pointing my finger straight at the Sony Corporation. Why, because it is Sony who developed the iPod that is permanently attached to my son’s ear.

Soon to be 17, my son is quintessential Netgen – he blissfully multi-tasks, IMs, e –mails, reads and does all of this while he talks on the phone and listens to his iPod. Prior to this set of grades, it appeared he was quite capable of doing this all at the same time. I think extension English was what upset the apple cart, they made him read Dostoyevsky. Doing that and listening to the iPod appears to have tested the limit of his multi- tasking brain. Call me old fashioned, but being from a generation that believed it  risky to light a cigarette while holding an open beer for fear of spillage, it is difficult to comprehend how effective work can be done with so many distractions. Especially reading, even I miss important information when I try to read New Idea while watching Australia’s Biggest Loser, just imagine Dostoyevsky.

You can’t grow up surrounded by gadgets and not expect to bring some of your toys to work with you when you grow up.  Looking around the office I see I am pretty much alone, being one of the only people in my immediate area that is not supporting the Sony Corporation by listening to an iPod. The reality is that one in five workers is listing to iPods or similar listening devices at their desks. Obviously, the type of work that one does has an impact on whether they can listen to music:  80% of technical and creative workers listen to music more than 20% of their working hours, while at management level the proportion of workers listening to music drops to 20%. Clerical workers spend 40% of their working day listening to music.

With over 40 million people worldwide using iPods, there is bound to be an impact in the workplace. Determining the distraction level of these devices, and weighing their risks and benefits will be a challenge for many employers. Companies will struggle with drawing the line because many employees will argue that using a personal music player helps them concentrate and therefore improves productivity. It is true that in today’s ‘always on’ culture people find it difficult to concentrate. No wonder, a report from New Scientist noted that petty distractions: e mails, phone calls, people coming to your desk and computer generated reminders take up on average more than two hours of our working days. Another study by London’s Institute of Psychiatry found constant disruption had a greater effect on IQ than smoking marijuana.

Years ago while doing work for Netscape I was told that if a computer programmer was interrupted while writing code it would take him or her 30 minutes to get back to the same place. According to a University of California study, if you’re interrupted while trying to remember what it is you were doing you might as well go home. The study showed more than 20 percent of interrupted tasks were not resumed the same day. The same study found that most distractions in a typical work day are self- inflicted: sending e mails, playing with things on your desk, bothering your busy colleagues, getting 37 cups of tea.

Tuning out distraction is only one of the reasons people listen to music at work. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (and you thought Aznavoorian was a mouthful) who directs the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University’s School of Management says workers are turning to music as a form of distraction from otherwise boring work. The implications here are far greater. If employees are so uninvolved in what they’re doing that their minds need to be distracted, at the least there will be losses in productivity, in the worst case scenario there may be safety risks. If our people, particularly the younger ones, are listening to music because they are bored what hope do we have of keeping them in the workplace?

Some of the problems with iPods at work are the real or perceived message wearing headphones sends of being inaccessible or not wanting to be bothered. Some believe that this is creating a wedge between older and younger workers due to the fact that it is predominantly younger people donning the headphones, making the older ones feel alienated. There can also be risks to the company’s network when employees connect MP3 players to their computer to download and store songs; those same players could be used to download other information making it possible to infect a network with a virus. In the event that you have not thought of this, MP3 players that have the video capability may be used to watch pornography or other inappropriate material on the job! Of course you would have to be pretty dumb to do that, the screen is too tiny and you would strain your eyes.

The more obvious issues are with not being able to hear people talking to you, or the phone ringing, which puts a real damper on the type of collaboration we are trying to encourage in many of the workplaces we design. In some industries not being able to hear can be a source of broader safety issues; particularly if it is critical to hear warning alarms and bells, warnings shouted by co workers or other workplace sounds such as moving forklifts. Some claim there are also problems with inaccuracies and mistakes on the job due to people being more mentally engaged in the music than the task at hand. If the TV dramas are accurate, this is not true because doctors always have rock music pumped up to the highest volume in the theater during surgery.

In the event an employee is tuned out a co workers may be forced to get their attention by other means. As an example when I want Josh I just throw one of my old imperial scale rules or an adjustable triangle at his head, it is good to put this obsolete drafting equipment to use. However, employees with poor aim may be required to get up to touch their co worker to get their attention. This can scare or startle the person, or in extreme cases (like if you live in the USA where suing others is as common as birth and death) the touching could be misconstrued as harassment. The lesson here is that if you want to get a co workers attention it is better to tap their shoulder and not their behind, breast or crotch area.

In some instances listening to music can be a distraction to others. Surely you have had the experience of being next to someone listening to music with the volume on so loud that it is clearly audible right through the earplugs. The only thing worse than this is those people who like to sing along, dance or drum on their desk.  Also not everyone likes the same music – Adam Weissman from DBA Public Relations says “Sometimes in those random occasions when someone is having an extremely bad day, there is nothing quite like scrolling through my iPod and cranking the Muppets theme song” Yep I bet there is nothing quite like that, thank goodness Adam does not work here. When you add  visual distraction to auditory, environmental distractions such as thermal comfort and air quality and the internal distractions we all have: your hungry, your sleepy, your feet hurt  –  there are so many distractions encountered in the typical work environment you wonder how we get anything done.

So what is an employer to do – ban the iPod?  Cary Cooper a professor of organizational psychology and health at LancasterUniversity said “It’s crucial to give workers autonomy and bans of any sort can alienate them. Bosses shouldn’t care about how employees accomplish their objectives as long as the job gets done” (sounds like something the late Kenneth Lay would have said). Others believe that if people spend time listening to music instead of working it is a firms right to ban MP3 players. In the end it is up to employers to establish protocol for personal electronic devices and enforce them.

Some companies are being quite innovative when it comes to iPods and are using them to their advantage. Capital One uses iPods as a part of an audio training program for employees. Pod casting enables companies to put training programs on files or shows, which enable employees to listen to them when it suits such as while riding to work. Other companies like Homestead Technologies in Menlo ParkCA have used iPods as a perk when they gave all 77 employees engraved devices as 10-year anniversary gifts.

Clearly office cultures vary, a technology company in the Silicon Valley will be different to a law firm. Either way the atmosphere in the workplace is changing by becoming more informal, more gadgetized, and more employee centric. The demands and expectations of the next generation of worker we hope to attract are having an impact on the work environment, and the rules are shifting for everyone.  As these shifts take place grey areas in workplace decorum will emerge, in sorting through those many employers will be put in the uncomfortable position many of us with children find ourselves in – determining whether something is really bad or just different to the way you did it.

Whether to allow flip flops to work, strappy tank tops, encourage properly punctuating e mails, allowing the use of  emoticons and acronyms in office correspondence, as well as when and how you can use your iPod all be a parts of the new work landscape companies will need to navigate their way through. As for me, my son can keep the iPod. After a summer working for Hoyts sweeping up popcorn off the floor he now understands the importance of getting better grades. He now recognizes that without a formal education the best he can hope for is being elevated to the Hoyts candy counter, and if he is really stellar, some day ticket sales.

Sources

“The Disrupting Influence of Technology”

By Tim Dowling

The Sydney Morning Herald

August 21, 2006

“MP3s Banned as Workers Switch on and Switch Off”

By Ben Quinn

The New Zealand Herald

November 2, 2006

“Going toe-to-toe in office etiquette”

By Olivia Barker and Sarah Bailey

USA Today

August 14, 2005

“iPod use in the workplace”

Employment Law Bits

August  28, 2006

“Are iPods Good for the Workplace?”

The Chicago Tribune

February 13, 2006

“Music Hath Charms for Some Workers – Others it Annoys”

By Stephanie Armour

USA Today

March 23, 2006

“iPod @ Work”

By Matt Krumrie

Star Tribune – Minneapolis – St. Paul Minnesota

October 30, 2006

Auditory, visual and physical distractions in the workplace

By Justin Mardex

Cornell University, Department of Design and Environmental Analysis

2004