996: Dialling disaster

Most countries have emergency dialling codes, but these are inconsistencies across boundaries, where most cases feature separate numbers for the Police, Ambulance or Fire Brigade. If you, are in Greece it is 100, 166 and 199 respectively (but if it’s a forest fire you need 1591). If you’re in Chad your three numbers are 17, 2251-4242 and 18 (I don’t know. It just is!). While in Switzerland you have 117, 144 and 118 with an overall emergency number (112) used differently in different cantons with separate numbers for Poison control and psychological support.

“Seen a rat in Zurich, then call, er…112? No? Erm should I ring FIFA’s HQ?”

?So that’s all nice and clear should emergency strike when you are abroad. 999 is pretty common across the globe, 911 less so, with 112 just about the most frequently used emergency number.

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666 is not the devil’s number

But then we have 996, which isn’t one of the emergency ‘phone numbers but can lead to their use.?996 is the working system adopted by some companies in China. Start work at nine in the morning, finish at nine at night, and do that, six days a week. This is endemic practice within China’s IT industry encompassing companies such as ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company), the Chinese Social media platform Youzan, telecoms giant Huawei and many others.

And it is 996 that seems to have caught Elon Musk’s eye as the basis of his Twitter revolution. Musk called for fellow Tweeps to pledge to hardcore work or resign.

? “Long hours at high intensity will be needed for success” said the man who regularly works 80-100 hours a week, dividing his time between his four businesses (with Tesla and SpaceX taking 40 hours each).

? Ben Wigart, Director at Gallup, called Musk’s approach “Tone deaf.” But looking for people to work 996, is so much worse than that.

? It was Ronald Reagan who said, “It’s true, hard work never killed anybody, but I figure why take the chance?” But he was wrong. 996 will kill you. A 2013 study by China’s own state media showed that 98.8% of the country’s IT workers had health problems. Consistent overwork brings with it work-related fatigue, sleep and eating disorders, fertility problems, anxiety, stress, work-life imbalance; oh yes and suicide.

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Shakespeare and industry

It is not just that Elon Musk is acting like Shylock in the workplace, it is that others will ape him. The world has been in thrall to the toxic concepts of management driven, factory style, systems that were popularized by Frederick Taylor in the 1800s and passed on – via Toyota and Motorola – to our workplaces today. In business we tend to think we know best, we think that governments should listen to us, that business is the real world where people have their feet on the ground. These arguments have strength of currency, and resolute self-belief of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

All we need to do is look at the evidence and examine the science. If we do that almost every bad working practice would stop immediately, Lean/Six Sigma would be thrown in the septic tank. NLP would be laughed out of the back door. Almost every survey could be shredded. And recruitment methods?

Just as one example, did you know that standard recruitment interviews have little chance beyond fluke of identifying talent? Yet they are outstanding at spotting corporate fit. Hence, we are always recruiting people who seemed great at interview, but who are moderate to useless at the job. So if anybody you know is planning to run job interviews, advise them to just stick a pin the list of candidates as a better strategy. Given impartiality, a pin has slightly more chance of success than current methods and is a far more efficient route to failure.

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Science, always science

But above all, above all, if we listened to science, we would stop cranking people as though they were cogs in the machine. The donkeys on Blackpool Beach, have lunch breaks, days off and regulated working hours, what in the name of phallic space vehicles are Mr Musk and Mr Bezos (remember Amazon’s charming working practices) encouraging dull-brained business to do?

Slaving to 996 principles, will kill well-being, relationships, quality of lives and the people who live them.?996 will also kill businesses.

Yet we can make everything better. How many Tweeps are thoroughly loving their jobs rights now. Hands up you deliriously happy Amazon warehouse operatives, or the DPD delivery drivers monitored more closely than isotopes. Big companies, bad management.

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Decision time

Right then. So who are you going to listen to??Super-charged businesspeople who have built up multi-billion dollar empires, employ enough people to rebuild the pyramids, and could lend Croesus a few bob? Or there’s me; CEO and teaboy, currently typing this in a garden shed while being menaced by a thrush for mealworms. Take the beam out of your own eye, Craig.

Except it isn’t me, it’s the science. Over one hundred years of it. I’ve added to it a bit and understand its application well enough. If you like, I am running the line in the big match, my flag pointing for offside, while the whole stadium and eleven millionaires on the pitch shout me down and question my parentage. But I’m right, or more precisely the science is.

? Twitter, Amazon, DPD, and most other businesses can all run much better. Musk and Bezos could have more billions than they do. Meanwhile, in the UK, the trains could run again, and we could all have our post on Christmas Eve.

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The solution

The answer isn’t ‘be kind’, or ‘look after your people’ or any other frankly wringing wet, occasionally passive aggressive, virtue signalling remark that usually comes free with a quotation about finding yourself (beware all posters of snow-capped mountains.

The answer is, apply the science.

·??????Treat your people like grown-ups

·??????Share responsibilities

·??????Share resources

·??????Share decision making

·??????Share information (all your information not just their information)

·??????Treat your staff like experts in their job

·??????Be on the same side

If all this is difficult, bring in an external arbiter. One who is truly impartial and properly qualified. Then you are being properly kind. And you will dial up nothing but success.