Restoring craft to work

strategy+business, August 4, 2020

by Theodore Kinni



Photograph by RubberBall Productions

You’ve probably heard these stories before. There’s the proud janitor at NASA who tells President Kennedy that he isn’t just sweeping up; he is helping put a man on the moon. And the gung-ho stonemason who tells architect Christopher Wren that he isn’t just hammering rock; he is building a cathedral to God’s glory. The stories are popular, even though they probably never happened. And they get told and retold to support the power of purpose. It’s the subtext that bothers me.

Invariably, the moral of these stories is that employers (a label that literally defines the rest of us as something to be used) need to provide employees with a purpose. This suggests that many jobs are, in and of themselves, meaningless. It also implies that people don’t care about the work they do — that they are wastrels.

I don’t know if the relationship between meaningless work and aimless wastrels is one of correlation or causation (or in which direction it might run). But a high-flown and inevitably vague corporate purpose — don’t be evil! — isn’t the solution to either problem. It’s more likely the solution lies in the concept of craft, which Richard Sennett, senior fellow at the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University, described in his erudite and engaging 2008 book The Craftsman.

“Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake” [italics added], wrote Sennett. “Craftsmanship cuts a far wider swath than skilled manual labor; it serves the computer programmer, the doctor, and the artist; parenting improves when it is practiced as a skilled craft, as does citizenship. In all of these domains, craftsmanship focuses on objective standards, on the thing in itself.”

Craft resonates for me in a way that corporate purpose never does. One reason is the fact that I’m a self-employed business writer and editor, who needs to be good at a craft to make a living. Another reason is plain orneriness: Why should I internalize a company’s purpose? Especially when I may only work there for a few years. That’s somebody else’s business (and profit), not mine. Read the rest here.

Too much work, too little time

strategy+business, April 15, 2020

by Theodore Kinni



Photograph by John Lamb


Someday soon, when the economic engines of the world are running again, leaders will reflect on what the COVID-19 pandemic revealed about the ways and means of work in their companies. As they do, they should read Overload, by Erin L. Kelly, a professor of work and organization studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Phyllis Moen, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota.

Overload details the results of a rigorous five-year study conducted within the IT division of TOMO, an alias for an unidentified Fortune 500 company. The randomized field experiment included nearly 1,000 tech professionals and managers in 56 teams — half of whom redesigned their work and half of whom served as a control group, and didn’t.

The impetus behind TOMO’s unusual openness to participating in this experiment was management’s recognition of a pervasive feeling of, as the authors frame it, overload among the division’s employees. Kelly and Moen, whose team operated under the auspices of Work, Family & Health Network, an interdisciplinary research group focused on workplace interventions, define overload as “the sense that work demands are unrealistic, given limited resources.” Their initial survey of the division’s employees revealed that 41 percent of workers and 61 percent of managers agreed or strongly agreed that there was not enough time to get their jobs done.

These are people, who, in addition to long days on the job, were routinely taking calls and working at home, at night, and on weekends. In fact, at least one of the managers had been demanding advance notification anytime the people she supervised weren’t going to be available outside of working hours. This supervisor told the authors that she expected her direct reports to “be accessible 24/7, 365 days a year.” The pernicious consequences of this work intensity? Repeated surveys and more than 400 individual interviews at TOMO revealed high levels of chronic stress and ill health, feelings of powerlessness, work–family conflict, and burnout — all of which negatively affect employee performance, of course. Read the rest here.

A Noble Purpose Alone Won’t Transform Your Company

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

MIT Sloan Management Review, December 10, 2019

by Rob Cross, Amy Edmondson, and Wendy Murphy

Consider these two companies: The first is a retail chain with hundreds of locations globally — innovative, but basically a sales platform. The second is a hospital that treats the world’s most devastating cancers. Which do you think has a more engaged workforce?

If you chose the latter, in light of its quest to save lives, you wouldn’t be alone. Yet, when we spent time with both organizations, we discovered that the working environment in the hospital was rife with fear, workforce morale was low, and employee turnover was high. At the retail chain, on the other hand, there was a palpable spirit of camaraderie, employees were energetic and enthusiastic, and customers were very pleased with the service. The retailer had the more engaged workforce by a long shot.

It’s a common misconception, both in businesses and in management articles and books, that a sense of purpose is what matters most when it comes to engaging employees. Many leaders concerned with attracting and retaining top talent believe that nothing motivates people as much as the larger good they might be doing or the chance to change the world. Accordingly, they extol the higher virtues of their companies’ missions and the meaning of the work they offer.

But our work with more than 300 companies over the past 20 years, particularly our research using organizational network analysis (ONA) and our interviews with executives, reveals that purpose is only one contributing factor; the level and quality of interpersonal collaboration actually has the greatest impact on employee engagement. In this article, we’ll explore why collaboration has that effect and which behaviors you can adopt and practice to nurture it. Read the rest here.

Need to Work Differently? Learn Differently

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Boss Magazine, October 2019

by Michael Griffiths


Digitization requires a new set of skills and a new set of training for employees

The next time your company holds an all-hands meeting, look around the room — or the arena — and consider this: It’s likely that more than half the people present will need reskilling or upskilling in the next three years.

This probably doesn’t come as a complete surprise to you. The forces of change are transforming every aspect of work, including what is done, who does it, and where it is done.

For example, emerging technologies — especially AI and machine learning — are among the most disruptive of these forces. In fact, 81 percent of respondents to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends survey indicated they expect the use of AI to increase or increase significantly over the next three years. Unlike some, we don’t believe that AI will eliminate the need for a workforce. Instead, we anticipate the rise of hybrid jobs, which are enabled by digitization, technology, and the emergence of a new kind of job, which we call the superjob. A superjob combines work and responsibilities from multiple traditional jobs, using technology to both augment and broaden the scope of the work performed and involving a more complex set of digital, technical, and human skills.

Hybrid jobs and superjobs can enable your company to be more responsive to customers and adaptable to change. But it requires a more deliberate and agile approach to capability development. Already, many companies are responding to this need: Our research finds that 83 percent of organizations are increasing their investments in reskilling programs, and more than half (53 percent) increased their learning and development budgets by 6 percent or more in 2018.

But will more learning be enough at your company? It’s doubtful. To Work Differently we think your company should first Learn Differently. Read the rest here.

Are meaning & purpose missing for your workforce?

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Capital H Blog, May 24, 2016

by Matthew Deruntz and Christina Rasieleski


Organizations are increasingly offering lavish perks to attract and retain talent, and then tracking their success with annual engagement surveys. But what if they’re missing the point?

Despite a laser-like organizational focus on what is traditionally called employee engagement, most people remain less than satisfied with their jobs. Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends survey points to what may be really missing. Many workers lack autonomy and access to the tools and information they need; moreover, they aren’t satisfied with the design of their jobs or the day-to-day flow of work. In fact, most survey respondents rated their organizations only “somewhat effective” or “not effective” on a number of factors related to experience: positive work environment, meaningful work, growth opportunities, trust in leadership, and supportive management. These aren’t issues that organizations can address with free doggie daycare or on-site CrossFit. Instead, they need to reevaluate the fundamental human needs of their workforce.

For better or worse, work holds such a dominant place in many people’s lives that when it fails to meet their innate need for meaning and purpose, their entire lives can become less satisfying and fulfilling. To address this issue and recognize that everyone who contributes to the organization—whether as a full-time employee, contractor, or gig worker—is an individual with intrinsic human needs, organizations need to pivot from thinking about an “employee experience” to thinking about a “human experience” for their workforce. Read the rest here.

Unlocking growth in the B2B telecom segment

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC, January 2019

by Wilson Chow, Rolf Meakin, Mike Lawley, and Joseph Tagliaferro  

In the past five years, telecom operators have recorded an average compound annual growth rate of -0.4% for their B2B activity. The industry’s cash cows are in decline. These include legacy wireline offerings, such as multiprotocol label switching, plain old telephone service and digital subscriber line services. The catch rates on newer internet-based products have not been high enough to pick up the slack. Moreover, the complexity of the industry’s legacy technology, business and operations support systems has stymied efforts to both reduce costs and bring innovations to market. 

Buyers of B2B telecom services are also frustrated with what they perceive as a lack of responsiveness within the industry — a condition that has resulted in a high level of customer churn. Their dissatisfaction is exacerbated by a demographic changing of the guard: more and more buyers have service expectations set by a lifetime of dealing with digitally native consumer companies such as Amazon and Netflix. They expect service requests and delivery to be fulfilled on demand, and they don’t want to do business with telcos that can’t meet their expectations.

The new competitors, attracted by this combination of industry sluggishness and customer unrest, fall into two broad categories. The first includes companies such as Cisco, Juniper and Brocade; they seek to establish direct relationships with enterprise customers. They expect to do this by building a broad base of customers in the B2B market and selling services that overlap with telcos’ offerings, such as software-based VPNs and firewalls. The second group of competitors, which includes companies such as Amazon and Masergy, is seeking to disrupt the industry in a more fundamental way, less bound to established offerings. These companies are leveraging their agility and digital savvy to create new kinds of customer-centric solutions, test them with early adopters and bring them to market at an unprecedented pace — a pace that telcos struggle to match.

Telecom operators know they have advantages, particularly in their networks and long-established relationships with enterprise customers. They know that to better serve existing customers, win over new ones, reverse declining revenues and stymie competitors, they will need a major shift in their capabilities and outward-facing identity. This requires transformation. But knowing the effort and investment involved in transformations, and the high rates of failure, how can telecom leaders improve the odds for success? Read the rest here.

The Ambient Future of HR

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Boss Magazine, December 2018

by David Mallon

HR has come a long way from its functional roots in control and compliance. Nowadays, HR is a business partner — aligning and integrating its services with the business to help employees achieve corporate goals. That sounds great, but it isn’t enough. Not by a long shot.

HR’s current paradigm of alignment and integration is going to fall short in the coming years. Anything that distracts employees from their work and reduces their productivity will fall short. And that includes far too many HR processes, including performance management, learning and development, rewards, etc., that currently run separately from or even, in parallel with work.

Tomorrow, HR processes will need to be like the electricity that runs through your office and the online networks that connect your employees to each other and the rest of the world. No matter how complex the process and no matter where your people are, HR needs to be relocated to the point of work. In short, HR must become ambient.

The fundamental premise of ambient HR is that it’s intrinsic to work and employee performance. (If it isn’t, why are you bothering?) The ideal guiding principle of ambient HR is that anything being done to support performance, whether at the organizational, team, or individual levels, should be within a few keystrokes’ reach of the people that need it. Ambient HR goes to employees, not vice versa. It doesn’t distract or divert people; it doesn’t require them to step away from their work or learn systems and vocabularies that are not part and parcel of their jobs.

For the first time, the technology needed to embed HR in work at scale is available. The digital transformation of our companies — indeed, our world — is solving that problem. What’s needed now is an ambitious and prodigious design effort; an employee-centric, data-driven rethinking of HR processes and service delivery.

Where might the application of design thinking to the challenge of ambient HR yield the greatest returns? Here are some of the HR processes that are ready for a thorough rethinking. Read the rest here.

Three Principles for Managing Technology's Productivity Paradox

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Boss Magazine, October 2018

by David Mallon

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Big data and advanced analytics. Collaboration platforms and instant messaging. The workplace is becoming a technological wonderland, in which a company can place virtually every resource that its employees need to work more effectively and efficiently at their fingertips. Nevertheless, growth in workforce productivity is hovering around its lowest rate in almost two decades.

We saw this paradoxical situation echoed across the findings of Deloitte’s 2108 Human Capital Trends survey. For example, 71 percent of the respondents to our survey said they are already using personal productivity technologies like collaboration platforms, work-based social media, and instant messaging, and 60 to 70 percent of them said that they believe workers will soon be using these technologies more frequently. Yet, nearly half (47 percent) of the respondents are also worried that these tools will notenhance workforce productivity.

Are their worries justified? Is it possible that, for all their promise and potential, new and emerging workforce technologies could actually drive down productivity?

It can happen. After all, technology is not a productivity panacea in and of itself. Surely, by now, we all know that the next text that pops up on our smartphones could interrupt us and distract us from our work just as readily as it could focus and facilitate our efforts.

The fundamental difference between the two outcomes lies in how you put productivity technologies to work in your company. Here are three principles that can go a long way to ensuring that technology enhances the productivity and well-being of your company’s employees and avoids becoming one of the greatest sources of cognitive overload in their work and lives. Read the rest here.