We had reached the bit where you were extolling the virtues of grinding it out, keeping a stiff upper lip and behaving like a professional when I was stuck in a job and life I didn't like. I should spare everyone my feelings and get out, leaving behind such a huge pink cloud of goodwill that people will wonder why I left.
That would be called “denial” and it is very definitely a Bad Thing.
You see, for those of you who haven't been there and don't know – it's not like having a headache or a cold or a cough. It's like having a permanently bad knee, or tinnitus, or air bubbles in your retina which cause blank patches, or an ache that won't go away because the bones didn't quite heal right. When something happens to you, gentle reader, you get upset, you get angry or down in the dumps: that's the emotional equivalent of a cold. You can “move on” from that – if you can find somewhere to go - or you can adjust, behave professionally, take it in your stride. What happened to us is for life. We can learn some tricks – they teach you to “manage” tinnitus, which means they can't cure it, and you can “manage” it, but it doesn't go away – we can manage our behaviour and reactions, but the underlying emotions are still there and if the trigger is too strong, blooey – we're off. Would you say to someone born with a dodgy heart “so you have a dodgy heart, get over it”? Maybe if you're that insensitive. What we have is like a dodgy heart – no, metaphorically, it is a dodgy heart. If you're a normal person, you have no idea what I'm talking about, and if you do know you might not believe that your emotional stuff is as permanent as a physical condition, but it is. The deep emotional stuff is as debilitating, hampering, disabling, disadvantaging, irritating, upsetting and painful as any serious physical injury.
So when you say words to the effect of “grind it out”, “get over it”, “you need to move on”, ask yourself what you're really asking us to do. It's okay to ask that we stop moaning around you – if done with some firm kindness, that's not insensitive. Are you asking that? Or are you honestly suggesting that we leave behind emotions we can barely name caused by incidents we can't even remember in the same way you left behind the carpets when you moved house?
That's one of the things you don't get. We often don't know where it hurts, what hurts and what effect that hurt is having on us. Get an abscess on your foot and you will soon wind up with pains all through your back as you adjust how you walk and hold yourself. If you don't know what's happening, are you going to connect the neck pain with the foot problem? We know something wasn't right, but we don't know what because we don't know how it was supposed to be. That's another of the things you don't get. You can, in the end, look at your foot and you know you're not supposed to have an abscess there – we don't know what's right and wrong, what was us and what was them.
Does this stuff really last as long as this? We really can go into our late middle age with it? Doesn't it fade away? Like the colour of the spines of books exposed to sunlight? Wrong analogy. It's cracks in walls, too much sand in the cement, trees drying out the soil in your foundations; it's the way your face changes as you get older and you did nothing to make it look like that, it just happened; it's the way your body just decided it would not recover from that collision in the rugby match so quickly. The soul might be immortal, but it is not ageless. It wears and tears and cracks and you have to go round fixing it.
Call no-one normal until they are dead. And then call them lucky. Lucky that nothing happened in their whole lives that hit one of the weaknesses in their morale, identity, character or emotional make-up. Lucky that if it did, they had friends, relatives or colleagues who could help them, people to tell them how to handle it, that it isn't their fault, that, yes, actually that boss / girlfriend / boyfriend / relative / whoever is a Bad Person / degenerate addict / thief / psycho and you are best off away from them. What you don't get is that we never had anyone like that.
The question is: what can we change, what do we have to live with and what won't we give up?
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Monday, 20 July 2009
Employment Update
The Manager called on Saturday morning (!) to tell me that I hadn't got any of the jobs I had applied for – which, given that he had told me that he would oppose me getting any of them, wasn't such a surprise. I agreed to dodge the process whereby I got the “at risk” letter and had to look for another job in the company, and go straight for a role a grade lower. (I keep the same money and conditions.) Which was what I was expecting (2:1 on; 2:1 against, compulsory redundancy).
Now what I have to do is focus on the positive side. I started the year assuming I would be out of work by now. I have a job. Now I can get on with the house, have a holiday, buy some toys... Work will still suck, but I can live with that if a chunk of the rest of my life is making progress.
Now what I have to do is focus on the positive side. I started the year assuming I would be out of work by now. I have a job. Now I can get on with the house, have a holiday, buy some toys... Work will still suck, but I can live with that if a chunk of the rest of my life is making progress.
Friday, 17 July 2009
The Metaphysics of Juries
I'm on Jury Service this week. The first trial was stopped short when the main witness for the prosecution – a twenty-year-old girl whose boyfriend, the Crown were about to allege, had put a knife in her back during a drunken argument – maintained in contradiction to her statement to the police that it was an accident. The Crown dropped the charges, though frankly I think they would have had a good run at it despite her testimony – and we returned a verdict of Not Guilty on the judge's direction. At least we were sworn in. The second case plead out at the last minute, so we never even entered the Court. The third one is on-going, so I can't comment.
The thing is this. Down in the waiting room, the usher calls out fifteen or sixteen names. You sing out when you hear yours and line up, to be taken to the Court. At this point, you are not a Jury, because there's fifteen of you and you haven't been sworn, but you are more than a bunch of guys following someone in a black cloak. You're a Jury-In-Waiting. Not a Jury, and yet one. In-Waiting, a sort of limbo, each juror in an incoherent state of being and not-being a juror, only fixed in one eigenstate or the other by being called by the Clerk and swearing-in. In a state of Waiting, ready to do what's needed, excluding all other things, but yet no acting either. It's an old phrase from a more expressive time.
It's my third time, but they changed the rules a couple of years ago. Once you were done after the third time. Now they can call you every two years. If they do call you, don't try to get out of it – do your duty. It's mostly sitting around, but juries are so important that every Labour and the odd Conservative government tries to get rid of them, or restrict the cases they can hear. When you speak as a Jury, no-one can ignore you, gainsay you or contradict you, you are forbidden by law from explaining your decision and they can't ask. Only God-like senior judges in courts of appeal can over-rule the twelve of you.
The thing is this. Down in the waiting room, the usher calls out fifteen or sixteen names. You sing out when you hear yours and line up, to be taken to the Court. At this point, you are not a Jury, because there's fifteen of you and you haven't been sworn, but you are more than a bunch of guys following someone in a black cloak. You're a Jury-In-Waiting. Not a Jury, and yet one. In-Waiting, a sort of limbo, each juror in an incoherent state of being and not-being a juror, only fixed in one eigenstate or the other by being called by the Clerk and swearing-in. In a state of Waiting, ready to do what's needed, excluding all other things, but yet no acting either. It's an old phrase from a more expressive time.
It's my third time, but they changed the rules a couple of years ago. Once you were done after the third time. Now they can call you every two years. If they do call you, don't try to get out of it – do your duty. It's mostly sitting around, but juries are so important that every Labour and the odd Conservative government tries to get rid of them, or restrict the cases they can hear. When you speak as a Jury, no-one can ignore you, gainsay you or contradict you, you are forbidden by law from explaining your decision and they can't ask. Only God-like senior judges in courts of appeal can over-rule the twelve of you.
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
The History Boys
I'd been wondering if I should watch The History Boys for some time, any reluctance caused by the trailers which suggested that it was Stand and Deliver in an idyllic Yorkshire setting. A friend told me I really should see it, so I did. Stand and Deliver it sure ain't. It's probably the most cynical exercise in... I have no idea in what. Pandering to everything bad about the English. Where the hell do I start?
It's set in 1983. It has to be. In 1985 British teachers started a campaign of strikes that ended in 1987 with the Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act. In 1986 the two-tier syllabuses and examinations at sixteen – GCE's for brighter pupil's and CSE's for the rest – were replaced with a two-tier examination called the GCSE based on a common syllabus. In 1985, Britain was the only country in the world that taught elementary calculus to under-sixteens: after the GCSE, it became possible to get an A-level without knowing the derivative of sin(x). 1983 is British education Before The Fall. It's Britain before the Fall of the 1984/5 Miner's Strike, after which the Left had no moral centre.
The History Boys themselves have astounding confidence, memories like fly-paper, the concentration of astronauts and a security about their sexual identity that means they no hang-ups whatsoever about the well-meaning but gently gay Fat Teacher feeling them up as he gives them rides home on his motorbike, despite the fact that only one of them has a girlfriend (the school secretary, this being the only school in the world where the secretary isn't about a hundred years old.) They are what big, well-financed sixth-formers look like from the outside – but not on the inside. They are introduced to us as the best the school has ever had.
The History Boys says it's about education, the idealism of the Richard Griffiths character versus the cynical tricks of the Stephen Campbell Moore character. Griffiths will educate them – as well as make them learn poetry by heart (they quote Stevie Smith – Stevie Smith!) and the endings of camp films and plays by heart – but Moore and his tricks will get them into Oxbridge. It says it's a feel-good movie, but a feel-good movie has to have something at stake for our heroes, and there is no chance in hell these History Boys are going to fail. Not one. They have no weaknesses, their families don't exist and the whole thing takes place in an idyllic valley somewhere near Sheffield. Sheffield was one of the most prosperous town in the country, but by 1983 it was closed for business. The Full Monty was set in Sheffield in 1972 and it didn't get any better afterwards.
My friend gets very cross with me when I criticise a film for being “unrealistic”. He thinks I mean that the clothes were wrong or that the bus was the wrong type. I can live with that. Except when the story depends on it. Teenage boys are not relaxed about sixty-year old teachers groping them and they would not have the relationship they have with the character if he did – but then, if they did, and he didn't, the whole ending would disappear in smoke. And that's what the whole thing is – a smoke-and-mirrors magic trick written for people who want to be deceived. The lie is that it's all painless: that excellent A-level results (especially in 1983) could be gained while learning the ending of Brief Encounter, whereas that much work leaves people changed for life. It was A-levels and the university interviews that was the rite-of-passage. University and a degree was the reward for A-levels well done. The myth of pain-free life. Any time you can put that in a movie, you will find a willing audience in Britain.
If I'd been given the script? Well, the Sexually Confident One would have had three girlfriends in the course of the film. His mate would have been pining for some unattainable beauty and caught having a shag with an all-too-attainable one. No homosexuality and the Campbell Moore character would have gone to Jesus College, Oxford. We would have seen how good Rudge was at Rugby – that would have been my opening scene. We would have seen a Saturday afternoon in Sheffield so we understood why they wanted to leave. If they really cared about history, they would know where the best courses for their periods were – that discussion would have been in there and I would have sub-contracted it to a History teacher at a top public school. We would understand why they want to go to Oxford or Cambridge – contacts, CV, Footlights (one of them is a demon pianist and the other sings), whatever. Why were they interested in History? A few hi-jinks involving drink, soft drugs and someone else's girlfriend. Edited highlights of a real Oxbridge interview. But mostly we have to care that they get in – and not just because, well, they would, wouldn't they, because how could you not want to go there? Each one of them has to have a failing they need to overcome if they are to get in, and since there's eight of them that's enough story for anyone. And that's why you're going to care – because you want them to overcome their faults. Oh, and one little thing: at some point we the viewer get to see how much a conscientious A-level and Oxbridge History student has to read. The sheer pile of books, lingered over for one minute of it and we're sold on these guys being serious.
It's set in 1983. It has to be. In 1985 British teachers started a campaign of strikes that ended in 1987 with the Teachers' Pay and Conditions Act. In 1986 the two-tier syllabuses and examinations at sixteen – GCE's for brighter pupil's and CSE's for the rest – were replaced with a two-tier examination called the GCSE based on a common syllabus. In 1985, Britain was the only country in the world that taught elementary calculus to under-sixteens: after the GCSE, it became possible to get an A-level without knowing the derivative of sin(x). 1983 is British education Before The Fall. It's Britain before the Fall of the 1984/5 Miner's Strike, after which the Left had no moral centre.
The History Boys themselves have astounding confidence, memories like fly-paper, the concentration of astronauts and a security about their sexual identity that means they no hang-ups whatsoever about the well-meaning but gently gay Fat Teacher feeling them up as he gives them rides home on his motorbike, despite the fact that only one of them has a girlfriend (the school secretary, this being the only school in the world where the secretary isn't about a hundred years old.) They are what big, well-financed sixth-formers look like from the outside – but not on the inside. They are introduced to us as the best the school has ever had.
The History Boys says it's about education, the idealism of the Richard Griffiths character versus the cynical tricks of the Stephen Campbell Moore character. Griffiths will educate them – as well as make them learn poetry by heart (they quote Stevie Smith – Stevie Smith!) and the endings of camp films and plays by heart – but Moore and his tricks will get them into Oxbridge. It says it's a feel-good movie, but a feel-good movie has to have something at stake for our heroes, and there is no chance in hell these History Boys are going to fail. Not one. They have no weaknesses, their families don't exist and the whole thing takes place in an idyllic valley somewhere near Sheffield. Sheffield was one of the most prosperous town in the country, but by 1983 it was closed for business. The Full Monty was set in Sheffield in 1972 and it didn't get any better afterwards.
My friend gets very cross with me when I criticise a film for being “unrealistic”. He thinks I mean that the clothes were wrong or that the bus was the wrong type. I can live with that. Except when the story depends on it. Teenage boys are not relaxed about sixty-year old teachers groping them and they would not have the relationship they have with the character if he did – but then, if they did, and he didn't, the whole ending would disappear in smoke. And that's what the whole thing is – a smoke-and-mirrors magic trick written for people who want to be deceived. The lie is that it's all painless: that excellent A-level results (especially in 1983) could be gained while learning the ending of Brief Encounter, whereas that much work leaves people changed for life. It was A-levels and the university interviews that was the rite-of-passage. University and a degree was the reward for A-levels well done. The myth of pain-free life. Any time you can put that in a movie, you will find a willing audience in Britain.
If I'd been given the script? Well, the Sexually Confident One would have had three girlfriends in the course of the film. His mate would have been pining for some unattainable beauty and caught having a shag with an all-too-attainable one. No homosexuality and the Campbell Moore character would have gone to Jesus College, Oxford. We would have seen how good Rudge was at Rugby – that would have been my opening scene. We would have seen a Saturday afternoon in Sheffield so we understood why they wanted to leave. If they really cared about history, they would know where the best courses for their periods were – that discussion would have been in there and I would have sub-contracted it to a History teacher at a top public school. We would understand why they want to go to Oxford or Cambridge – contacts, CV, Footlights (one of them is a demon pianist and the other sings), whatever. Why were they interested in History? A few hi-jinks involving drink, soft drugs and someone else's girlfriend. Edited highlights of a real Oxbridge interview. But mostly we have to care that they get in – and not just because, well, they would, wouldn't they, because how could you not want to go there? Each one of them has to have a failing they need to overcome if they are to get in, and since there's eight of them that's enough story for anyone. And that's why you're going to care – because you want them to overcome their faults. Oh, and one little thing: at some point we the viewer get to see how much a conscientious A-level and Oxbridge History student has to read. The sheer pile of books, lingered over for one minute of it and we're sold on these guys being serious.
Monday, 13 July 2009
Living With Yourself: Part Four
The therapeutic idea of normality is one thing, the common idea, found in counselling and every twelve-step meeting in the world, is something else entirely. This is normality as fitting-in, being able to make the right noises and gestures at the right time, feeling part of where you live and work, recovering quickly from life's upsets, and somehow being able to live without any one person's approval and brush of any one person's disapproval, gliding through the world in a haze of well-balanced equanimity. This is the goal of many people who have had chaotic emotional lives that led to substance abuse. I understand why, but it's not something I'd hold up as an ideal. It's a little too Buddhist for me.
Some things about ourselves we can change at any point in our lives – which is why there is almost no excuse for dressing badly, not being able to cook and being badly-groomed after the age of thirty. The only acceptable excuse is that you will be ostracised by the only peer group you have for not wearing a track suit and white trainers.
Other things are a little more difficult. We can learn to change the way we react to events that happen more frequently than events that happen infrequently: commuters eventually don't even notice that the train is ten minutes late – unless they have been standing since entering Zone 6. No-one ever learns to react with resignation or equanimity to being made redundant, and nor should they (though some people are overjoyed because it's what they want). And some things pass straight through some people while upsetting others deeply.
In common with many people from my background, I don't do bonding and I don't do fun. No fancy dress, fairground rides and paper hats at Christmas. No pub crawls, treasure hunts or bungee-jumping. I went paint-balling once and I'd like to give it another go when most of the others aren't all ex-South African Army Rangers (no, I'm not kidding, some of those guys could vanish into the ground right in front of your eyes.) I don't do mentors, father-figures or authority either - I respect your expertise and ability, but not your position. I don't believe in compliments much either: managers use them because they have been told to and women use them because they think it will make up for saying no. I can take collegial comments on my work, but those biannual appraisals? Any criticism of my work or behaviour threatens my very survival. Because you're plotting to sack me and I'll be without an income. Because you're going to pass on the pay rise and I'l be five percent or more less well-off next year than this. Because you've stored this up for five months and not done anything to help, because all you do is look for faults, because you have nothing constructive to say or do.
Get the idea? You may be unfazed by appraisals, being told no, by fake compliments from your manager, and be able to go happily on the company bonding outings while listening to the most crass motivational codswallop. I can't. It hits all sorts of primeval stuff.
Is it “who I am”? No, it's “how I behave when you do stuff that hits my nerve”. My having nerves there may make me a little hard to work or live with, given you think it's acceptable to behave like that. (If you don't think it is, but you do anyway because that's the game, that's what “lacking integrity” means. If you were wondering.) My having nerves there may mean I'm going to have a hard time finding somewhere I can settle, but that doesn't mean I'm “wrong”. If I wanted to stay in the employment environment I'm in, I would have to work on this stuff. I would have to play the game. One of the reasons they play the games is that the work they do is marginal at best and redundant at worst. They could vanish overnight and no-one would notice the difference for months. I'd prefer to do some real work.
We fit into our environments more or less well. We are under no obligation to fit in, but then the environment is under no obligation to support us if we don't. Sometimes the answer is not to change ourselves but to change our environment. Get another job, another partner, another neighbourhood, move your son to another school, change the gym you work out in. Sometimes we can do this, and sometimes the economy sucks and we're stuck for a while. How are we supposed to behave when we are stuck somewhere we really can't function?
I know what you're going to say: grit your teeth, grind it out and stop complaining. How's that working out for you? How much do you drink? How well are you sleeping? How much weight have you put on? How's your libido these days? How did you feel when you saw the office after that holiday? Just how much did your guts twist?
Some things about ourselves we can change at any point in our lives – which is why there is almost no excuse for dressing badly, not being able to cook and being badly-groomed after the age of thirty. The only acceptable excuse is that you will be ostracised by the only peer group you have for not wearing a track suit and white trainers.
Other things are a little more difficult. We can learn to change the way we react to events that happen more frequently than events that happen infrequently: commuters eventually don't even notice that the train is ten minutes late – unless they have been standing since entering Zone 6. No-one ever learns to react with resignation or equanimity to being made redundant, and nor should they (though some people are overjoyed because it's what they want). And some things pass straight through some people while upsetting others deeply.
In common with many people from my background, I don't do bonding and I don't do fun. No fancy dress, fairground rides and paper hats at Christmas. No pub crawls, treasure hunts or bungee-jumping. I went paint-balling once and I'd like to give it another go when most of the others aren't all ex-South African Army Rangers (no, I'm not kidding, some of those guys could vanish into the ground right in front of your eyes.) I don't do mentors, father-figures or authority either - I respect your expertise and ability, but not your position. I don't believe in compliments much either: managers use them because they have been told to and women use them because they think it will make up for saying no. I can take collegial comments on my work, but those biannual appraisals? Any criticism of my work or behaviour threatens my very survival. Because you're plotting to sack me and I'll be without an income. Because you're going to pass on the pay rise and I'l be five percent or more less well-off next year than this. Because you've stored this up for five months and not done anything to help, because all you do is look for faults, because you have nothing constructive to say or do.
Get the idea? You may be unfazed by appraisals, being told no, by fake compliments from your manager, and be able to go happily on the company bonding outings while listening to the most crass motivational codswallop. I can't. It hits all sorts of primeval stuff.
Is it “who I am”? No, it's “how I behave when you do stuff that hits my nerve”. My having nerves there may make me a little hard to work or live with, given you think it's acceptable to behave like that. (If you don't think it is, but you do anyway because that's the game, that's what “lacking integrity” means. If you were wondering.) My having nerves there may mean I'm going to have a hard time finding somewhere I can settle, but that doesn't mean I'm “wrong”. If I wanted to stay in the employment environment I'm in, I would have to work on this stuff. I would have to play the game. One of the reasons they play the games is that the work they do is marginal at best and redundant at worst. They could vanish overnight and no-one would notice the difference for months. I'd prefer to do some real work.
We fit into our environments more or less well. We are under no obligation to fit in, but then the environment is under no obligation to support us if we don't. Sometimes the answer is not to change ourselves but to change our environment. Get another job, another partner, another neighbourhood, move your son to another school, change the gym you work out in. Sometimes we can do this, and sometimes the economy sucks and we're stuck for a while. How are we supposed to behave when we are stuck somewhere we really can't function?
I know what you're going to say: grit your teeth, grind it out and stop complaining. How's that working out for you? How much do you drink? How well are you sleeping? How much weight have you put on? How's your libido these days? How did you feel when you saw the office after that holiday? Just how much did your guts twist?
Saturday, 11 July 2009
If It's This Bad At Cadbury's, It's Way Worse Than We Think
I received a job description via an agent recently with gems like this in it – this is for Cadbury's, a famous blue-chip company, not some dodgy fly-by-night outfit...
Create time to develop yourself and others, look to keep your functional and professional skills up to date. Translation: there's no formal training programme, there's not even an informal one and unless you book the days out, you could get swamped. Leave it to Cadbury's HR and your manager and you could work there a decade and never see a bar of chocolate. That isn't how it was back in the day.
Be resilient and tenacious when faced with difficulty, courageous and tough minded to overcome obstacles, promote change and act quickly, persuade and engage others, project yourself with impact and presence, gain support for and commitment to a course of action, build and maintain effective team relationships, understand how the organisation works, think and act beyond borders and functions, deal with conflict and criticism constructively - trust me that's about a quarter of the job description. Translation: your department has no clout, so you'll be brushed off with all sorts of excuses (“Project Moonshine is our top priority and we have no spare resource until H2 next year”), plus there are processes and procedures that will make you tear your hair out with their pointlessness, furthermore you'll have to figure out how things work for yourself because your manager doesn't know and if you don't go along, man are you ever not going to get along, because it's that kind of a place.
Exercise sound judgement of inputs to arrive at a balanced viewpoint, think in a rigorously analytical way, think differently about the future and how to get things done, anticipate events and possible alternatives. They have to ask for this? Why? Because so few people there do this?
This kind of HR job description twaddle was unknown thirty years ago. Companies accepted that no-one would do things the Cadbury way and took pride in training people to do it the Cadbury way – now they don't because no-one knows what the Cadbury way is anymore. A company would never have expected people to work against its own informal culture as this role is being expected to do. Because it would never have destroyed its traditions, networks and experience in twenty years of downsizing, sales, mergers, reorganisations and redundancies. Companies are a mess, so it becomes the role of the most junior of managers to do what the company once would have done automatically but now can no longer even describe in plain English.
You don't believe me? Here's the job: "to understand the role of price and promotion in driving growth and efficiency; using all data sources available and working closely with the Insights team to determine the role and context of price and promotion in the in store decision making process; develop market tracking reports to monitor price realisation for Cadbury UK and competitors; develop market place tracking for Cadbury UK & competitor pricing and format changes (standard and seasonal) by channel to inform how we price our products to deliver an improved revenue realisation; develop tracking reports to monitor and understand retailer, competitor and adjacent market promotional programmes and strategies to help inform promotional guidelines; develop and implement methods that combine market, customer, financial, and forecasting data in order that we can establish ongoing promotional evaluations, and therefore create future promotional guidelines; provide market data and selling rationale to support the price increase process; develop an agreed methodology to establish the link between Price and volume (price elasticity)".
Huh? Cadbury's don't have a price elasticity model? It's the end of the Oughties, they've been in business how long and they don't have a price elasticity model? They don't have an understanding of the role of price and promotion in the “store decision making process”? And they're in fmcg? What the heck have they been doing for the last thirty years? What act of corporate amnesia lost all the work on those things from the 80's and 90's? They would have had such models back then because I was reading ads like this for jobs like that back then. Do they really mean that no-one is tracking what the competition get up to now? Wouldn't that be something you'd do as natural as breathing? What the heck are the “Insights” team doing if they don't have an understanding of how shoppers make decisions? (By the way, the moment you see a company has an “Insight” team, you can safely assume they have no idea about their customers and never will. In the modern corporation, “insight” means “data dredging”.) How much trouble are they in? And what do you think happened to the previous guy?
Create time to develop yourself and others, look to keep your functional and professional skills up to date. Translation: there's no formal training programme, there's not even an informal one and unless you book the days out, you could get swamped. Leave it to Cadbury's HR and your manager and you could work there a decade and never see a bar of chocolate. That isn't how it was back in the day.
Be resilient and tenacious when faced with difficulty, courageous and tough minded to overcome obstacles, promote change and act quickly, persuade and engage others, project yourself with impact and presence, gain support for and commitment to a course of action, build and maintain effective team relationships, understand how the organisation works, think and act beyond borders and functions, deal with conflict and criticism constructively - trust me that's about a quarter of the job description. Translation: your department has no clout, so you'll be brushed off with all sorts of excuses (“Project Moonshine is our top priority and we have no spare resource until H2 next year”), plus there are processes and procedures that will make you tear your hair out with their pointlessness, furthermore you'll have to figure out how things work for yourself because your manager doesn't know and if you don't go along, man are you ever not going to get along, because it's that kind of a place.
Exercise sound judgement of inputs to arrive at a balanced viewpoint, think in a rigorously analytical way, think differently about the future and how to get things done, anticipate events and possible alternatives. They have to ask for this? Why? Because so few people there do this?
This kind of HR job description twaddle was unknown thirty years ago. Companies accepted that no-one would do things the Cadbury way and took pride in training people to do it the Cadbury way – now they don't because no-one knows what the Cadbury way is anymore. A company would never have expected people to work against its own informal culture as this role is being expected to do. Because it would never have destroyed its traditions, networks and experience in twenty years of downsizing, sales, mergers, reorganisations and redundancies. Companies are a mess, so it becomes the role of the most junior of managers to do what the company once would have done automatically but now can no longer even describe in plain English.
You don't believe me? Here's the job: "to understand the role of price and promotion in driving growth and efficiency; using all data sources available and working closely with the Insights team to determine the role and context of price and promotion in the in store decision making process; develop market tracking reports to monitor price realisation for Cadbury UK and competitors; develop market place tracking for Cadbury UK & competitor pricing and format changes (standard and seasonal) by channel to inform how we price our products to deliver an improved revenue realisation; develop tracking reports to monitor and understand retailer, competitor and adjacent market promotional programmes and strategies to help inform promotional guidelines; develop and implement methods that combine market, customer, financial, and forecasting data in order that we can establish ongoing promotional evaluations, and therefore create future promotional guidelines; provide market data and selling rationale to support the price increase process; develop an agreed methodology to establish the link between Price and volume (price elasticity)".
Huh? Cadbury's don't have a price elasticity model? It's the end of the Oughties, they've been in business how long and they don't have a price elasticity model? They don't have an understanding of the role of price and promotion in the “store decision making process”? And they're in fmcg? What the heck have they been doing for the last thirty years? What act of corporate amnesia lost all the work on those things from the 80's and 90's? They would have had such models back then because I was reading ads like this for jobs like that back then. Do they really mean that no-one is tracking what the competition get up to now? Wouldn't that be something you'd do as natural as breathing? What the heck are the “Insights” team doing if they don't have an understanding of how shoppers make decisions? (By the way, the moment you see a company has an “Insight” team, you can safely assume they have no idea about their customers and never will. In the modern corporation, “insight” means “data dredging”.) How much trouble are they in? And what do you think happened to the previous guy?
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Living With Yourself: Part Three
Psychological personality types are always fun. It's a respectable version of “what star sign are you”? There was a huge fad for the Belbin Team Roles in the Seventies – does anyone use them now? Completer-Finishers, Specialists and Team Players? It's tempting to use a typology and then explain yourself with it: you do that because you're an ISTJ.
It doesn't work like that. Typologies are not explanations.
A personality typology is an attempt at an equivalence relation: two people are equivalent modulo the typology if they satisfy the same characteristics. Any bunches of characteristics will do as long as they are mutually exclusive and comprehensive, in other words, you can't be two types and you must be one of them. Most typologies suffer from four faults: politeness, vagueness, ambiguity and optimism. They are polite, so there's no type(s) for jerks, screw-ups and substance-abusing degenerates; they are vague, so that you wind up identifying with two or more of the types; and they are optimistic, in that the criteria chosen are drawn from the lighter, positive side of human nature. The questionnaires are not going to ask you anything about how often you have thought about making your quietus with a bare bodkin. Finally the questions are ambiguous. As an example from an online survey, You rapidly get involved in social life at a new workplace. Well, you did at the last one, but this lot are a bunch of stiffs and frankly the less you see of them the better – you're going to be making a lot of phone calls and visits to old haunts until you can find another job. And which social life? The sports-and-social club life or the serious gossipy-drinkers? Different people will have different interpretations. If you raise these questions while you're doing a typology quiz, you'll be told to interpret it how you understand it, which is not the right answer, but does get you to finish the exercise. They need you to finish or they can't work their ju-ju.
Until the twentieth century, the most developed typologies came from the various forms of astrology. The more academically-serious the typology, the more it scores you along various axes or characteristics, rather than putting you into one of a small-ish number of pigeon-holes: an equivalence relation based on a continuous parameter is still an equivalence relation.
The real problem with typologies is that their reading of you may be of the person you are pretending to be, have learned to be, have compromised as or are for want of any ideas of your own. Anyone who works in business will pay lip service to meeting deadlines, having objectives, being professional, punctual and all those other good things, even if it they don't do it very well and would not if they had the choice. People can spot the “right answers” a mile off and can be guaranteed to provide them.
According to the Chinese, I'm a Yang Wood Horse; to Western Astrology, a Taurus with Venus and Jupiter in Mercury, Mars in Capricorn and Aries rising (I think); my Enneatype for a long while was a Romantic; and to Myers-Briggs, I'm all over the INxy's. Does this help me any?
Not much. The real questions are: how did I get to be an INTP? Am I happy being one? Is it a good fit with where I work? With my partner? With my ambitions and dreams? Am I stuck with being the wrong “type” for my hopes or have you got to change your hopes to fit my “type”?
The most a typology quiz can do is help you think about yourself, how you behave, react and feel. And about the differences between how you do those things and how you would like to do them. It's the space between what we do and what we would like to do that measures how far we are from ourselves – or how much of a fantasist we are.
It doesn't work like that. Typologies are not explanations.
A personality typology is an attempt at an equivalence relation: two people are equivalent modulo the typology if they satisfy the same characteristics. Any bunches of characteristics will do as long as they are mutually exclusive and comprehensive, in other words, you can't be two types and you must be one of them. Most typologies suffer from four faults: politeness, vagueness, ambiguity and optimism. They are polite, so there's no type(s) for jerks, screw-ups and substance-abusing degenerates; they are vague, so that you wind up identifying with two or more of the types; and they are optimistic, in that the criteria chosen are drawn from the lighter, positive side of human nature. The questionnaires are not going to ask you anything about how often you have thought about making your quietus with a bare bodkin. Finally the questions are ambiguous. As an example from an online survey, You rapidly get involved in social life at a new workplace. Well, you did at the last one, but this lot are a bunch of stiffs and frankly the less you see of them the better – you're going to be making a lot of phone calls and visits to old haunts until you can find another job. And which social life? The sports-and-social club life or the serious gossipy-drinkers? Different people will have different interpretations. If you raise these questions while you're doing a typology quiz, you'll be told to interpret it how you understand it, which is not the right answer, but does get you to finish the exercise. They need you to finish or they can't work their ju-ju.
Until the twentieth century, the most developed typologies came from the various forms of astrology. The more academically-serious the typology, the more it scores you along various axes or characteristics, rather than putting you into one of a small-ish number of pigeon-holes: an equivalence relation based on a continuous parameter is still an equivalence relation.
The real problem with typologies is that their reading of you may be of the person you are pretending to be, have learned to be, have compromised as or are for want of any ideas of your own. Anyone who works in business will pay lip service to meeting deadlines, having objectives, being professional, punctual and all those other good things, even if it they don't do it very well and would not if they had the choice. People can spot the “right answers” a mile off and can be guaranteed to provide them.
According to the Chinese, I'm a Yang Wood Horse; to Western Astrology, a Taurus with Venus and Jupiter in Mercury, Mars in Capricorn and Aries rising (I think); my Enneatype for a long while was a Romantic; and to Myers-Briggs, I'm all over the INxy's. Does this help me any?
Not much. The real questions are: how did I get to be an INTP? Am I happy being one? Is it a good fit with where I work? With my partner? With my ambitions and dreams? Am I stuck with being the wrong “type” for my hopes or have you got to change your hopes to fit my “type”?
The most a typology quiz can do is help you think about yourself, how you behave, react and feel. And about the differences between how you do those things and how you would like to do them. It's the space between what we do and what we would like to do that measures how far we are from ourselves – or how much of a fantasist we are.
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