The Ox who dragged his Ferrari

MONDAY morning. You are full of coffee, plans and targets. You enter the office with a strong stride. You summon everyone in the team for a the-week-to-be meeting even before you switch on the computer. “In the conference room in next 20 mts,” you holler with a purposeful energy.

Then you decide to sit down and check your emails. But, changing your mind, or knowing the yawning duration that the system will take to boot, you decide for a quick walk around the office. 

How smart of you? Nothing like taking a hands-on drill. The way they do in military camps. Hopping from one desk to another, swishing in from one cubicle to the next, you take a quick review of what everyone’s up to. If they are caught red-handed checking Facebook, Ah! Mission accomplished!

If not, at least, you get a sense of the progress or delay that is dancing atop every project you have assigned them. You can also sing your own list of ‘hows’ and ‘dos’  as you confront your employees. After all, they need direction. That’s what you are here for, being paid for, will be promoted for. Right?

Wrong.

Jason Fried, Founder, 37 Signals and the maverick thinker frequenting many conferences and Ted Talks will call you the antithesis of a good boss even before blinking an eye. In fact, he might thank you for providing him as the best example of ‘the boss you should not be’ for his next talk.

Because, as per a new school of thought and wave that challenges some ruts of work and workplaces; bosses who work like this, actually harm productivity.

Huh!

Yes, you just shrugged off your shoulders and decided to exit this page. After all, who wants to listen to some crap that looks good for rebels, advertising agencies or music studios? As glamorous as it may sound to your employees, it doesn’t fit in the nine-to-five workplace you inhabit, as you must have already argued.

You could have a cogent point as always, being a boss, as usual.

But chew some of the following arguments, before you push off for the meeting you ordered in next 20 minutes. It will take only five minutes anyways.

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What Fried, or some of his contemporary HR practitioners will tell you is that meetings, too-much-update-taking, calls, anytime-walk-in talks and other office conversations actually de-accelerate work rather than the purported goal of speeding up work.

In fact, Fried in one of his keynotes, advised to have silent Thursdays, like casual Fridays.

Where employees can concentrate on the work they are supposed to do, without the distractions of voice and unsolicited noise.

When you call an ad-hoc meeting, it distracts them. They have to stop whatever they were thinking, writing, emailing, planning, creating, connecting- all of it, just because the boss wants to discuss something on a lark.

The thread of thoughts they were up to has snapped. It will take another sitting, mugs of coffee and the oh-so-rare period of silence altogether before they are back on the elusive track they were chasing before the phone rang. That is why, most people nowadays get more work done by coming before 9 am at a not-so-crowded office or at the airport lounge or in the evening when they are back in the comfy spaces of their homes.

Silence is elusive. Distractions are pervasive. Welcome to the modern workplace. 

Phones, casual conversations, serious-looking meetings, walk-ins, water cooler huddles; everything symbolizes the paradox. A workplace is supposed to be a place where people can concentrate on work. Where ideas, props, colleagues etc galvanize good work.

But what happens, and the irony is that it happens deliberately, is that, work is constantly being interrupted.

If only an employee could have a stretch of uninterrupted time, where s/he can focus on work, without the danger of anyone, anytime walking in and jeopardizing his think-tank! That sounds almost atavistic. Unless some rituals are given a farewell. Something that’s not entirely infeasible.

Collaboration or mentoring can happen through other ways also, thanks to the blessings of technology. Online tools, texts, email threads and well-planned meetings, the list is huge. Where the employee can voluntarily choose when is a good time to be interrupted.

If this still sounds frivolous and too ambitious for the bourgeois class that employees belong to, check what others have to say.

Michael Bungay Stainer is a maverick HR expert and advocate of better, fun-workplaces, where great work happens instead of mediocre assembly lines. As an author of books that are adored by many for his breakthrough ideas in a cookie-cutter world, and as the Senior Partner, Box of Crayons, he expectedly harbours a strong and not-so-grey opinion on this subject.

His rainbow view tells that one of the biggest challenges is not so much of the things going badly wrong — the meetings or dysfunctional bosses, but the amount of ‘OK’ stuff that is required.

“In our hyper-connected world, the amount of work that one can do is now infinite. It’s like digging a hole in the beach by the ocean. You think that if you just dig a little faster, you can stop the water from the ocean from filling it up. But the ocean keeps coming.”

So he underlines the importance of understanding your choices and that what you give your attention to is critical. In short, it means- saying NO. To some people, projects and expectations. It’s the fear of ‘No’ that can keep people stuck in overwhelm and mediocrity. 

‘Welcome to advertising. Now get lost’ is a delicious book peppered with humour but something that marinates the irony of modern workplaces brilliantly enough.

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In his ingenious nonchalant-yet-edifying style, author Omkar Sane captures the paradox of an advertising agency- a place that is apparently a creative minefield but one that is blighted with energy-drainers and work-curdling machines walking around in form of managers and bosses.

What his hilarious sketch very subtly etches is the undeniable fact that many agencies are now mired in needless pools of hierarchy and struggling with processes, protocols, and bosses that sap away creative energy rather than nourishing it.

That explains the exodus of talents now and again, and why some well-perched-on-their-career-ladders-creative-minds chuck big networks and start small but creatively-fired boutiques of their own.

Earlier, in a conversation about beer at workplaces, Sane, who is also a communications Professor, and writer of award-winning film 'Greater Elephant'; made a remarkably simple comment: Creativity can not happen in a typical, linear fashion. Thoughts have to ramble. They can go in any direction. They have to be amoebic. It’s not mathematics as is usually seen in offices. It’s a very organic process. Professions like Advertising, where divergent thinking is more important than convergent thinking, hence, need to have a different method. 

Convergence Vs. Divergence.

That’s a new argument and one that is still in the undercurrents.

Working through emails, instead of conference-calls? Flexi-hours, instead of nine-to-six tick-tock? Allowing social-networking-sites instead of peeping in every five minutes to check on your employee? Giving them the freedom, trust and more importantly, the silence that can help them deliver great work? 

Or being ok with mediocre yarns that anyone can un-passionately spin out?

Because you think these ideas are too bold, unconventional and offensive for their times?

They might be. In any case, there are still fifteen minutes left for that meeting. Hurry!