What shouldn't exist

Roadblocks

When I was growing up in 1970s Melbourne, you could still see these.

Look closely. Can you see the roadway in the middle made of wooden blocks? They were laid in their millions in the late 19th century, not just in Melbourne, but in London, Berlin and Vienna.

Up to WW1, 400-year-old jarrah and karri trees were Western Australia’s biggest export. In 1898, the?Jarrah Timber and Wood Paving Company?was set up with the specific purpose of buying up forests in Western Australia and shipping the timber back to London for use as paving blocks.

Of over five million hectares (that’s 20,000 square miles for US readers), about half remains today (and is still under threat incidentally, not from logging, but from clearing for mining).

These forests were seen at the time as limitless, and therefore infinitely exploitable. Like the bison of the North American plains, whales of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and furred mammals of the Arctic, they were ruthlessly cut down and used in ways that were, at best, ephemeral (fur coats from mink, sable and fox), and at worst, low value (cheap leather jackets from bison hide).

But, all these industries came to an end, and not just because they were depleted.

Whaling was once the fifth largest economic sector in the US, but chemical and manufacturing innovations replaced the use of ambergris (for perfume), whale oil (for illumination) and baleen (whalebone used for umbrellas and corsets).

Question: What unsustainable resources does your business use today that will be replaced by technological innovations?

Weight

A very busy Chief Operating Officer told me this week she receives literally hundreds of emails?per day.

Then, she said this, which made me laugh: “You know, Andrew, about half are ballast”.

I said, “Ballast?”

She replied, “You know, in sailing ships, they added something of low value to the hold to give it weight. That’s like when I get cc’d into an email. It’s a signal to the recipient that I’m aware of the sender’s message. It’s my weight that’s being added, but it’s ultimately of low value”.

It got me thinking of the myriad of ways in which authority, or ‘weight’, is signalled in organisations, and I could think of several I’ve observed:

a) In one company, female executives use chairs in meeting rooms to place their (expensive) handbags on.

b) At a hospital, doctors are given the parking spaces nearest the front door. You might think, “Oh, that’s for emergencies”, but no, these are for all doctors, most of whom never go near the ED.

c) In a government department, the most senior people are on one floor of the building, which requires separate security passes, so virtually nobody has ever been up there, apart from their immediate staff.

Question: How is ‘weight’ signalled in your organisation?

Contradictions

When I was a kid and heard the phrase, “deafening silence” it totally flummoxed me. How can silence deafen? And, then, when I went to the US for the first time as a 20-year-old, I met a similarly bizarre menu item: “jumbo shrimp”.

But, such paradoxical concepts can be powerfully used to describe less-than-ideal situations in organisational life.

One of my clients this week introduced me to ‘pathological altruism’, where particular job roles (in this case, school principals) are susceptible to doing too much for others, at their own expense (time and stress). She explained it’s not just built into the role expectations, but into the very identity of principals as ‘sole sources of truth’ and ‘ultimate problem solvers’.

And, another contradiction I met recently was ‘coercive persuasion’, where people are compelled to agree with a proposition through an implied threat.

In this case, a reorganisation was suggested and it was implied that any who objected demonstrated their lack of commitment simply by voicing a concern. At the end of the (short) discussion, the leader said, “Well, that’s unanimous. I wasn’t expecting it to go quite so smoothly”.

Question: What paradoxical labels could you apply to features of your work that would help ‘call out’ less than ideal practice?

I always enjoy hearing that you’ve enjoyed reading, so please click the like below. And, drop me a line as well and comment.

I’ll be back with you next Friday so, until then, notice the ballast around you.

Andrew