Untypical Thoughts

A long time ago, I trained as a Physics teacher and, in doing so, came to appreciate that, to be a good physicist, I believe you must also be a good philosopher. In fact, much of what used to be called natural philosophy is now regarded as physics.

One physicist who is regularly quoted as a philosopher is Albert Einstein – if you don’t believe me, enter “Albert Einstein quotations” into your favourite search engine. One of his most quoted (and, often, misquoted) statements relates to his definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But I prefer to use a variation on the same theme, that is – if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. In other words, unless you do something different today, tomorrow will be exactly the same.

Consider a log cabin with three solid walls and a fourth wall with a single window. That window is perfectly square – from top to bottom, the window measures exactly 1 metre. From left to right, the window measures exactly 1 metre.

Can you picture it?

One the great catchphrases of the management consulting movement of the 80’s and 90’s was “think outside of the box”. Most agree that this slogan had its genesis in the “nine dots puzzle” where you are asked to connect nine dots, arranged in a 3 x 3 configuration, with four straight lines … but without lifting the pencil off the paper.

How many emails do you get each day? For most people, the answer is “too many”. And, of the emails you get, what proportion are written in black 11pt Calibri font? 80%? 90%?

Of the emails that you receive, what proportion of them do you read, digest and act upon? 10%? 20%?

It seems to me that email is becoming (has become?) another form of “white noise”. Sure, every now and again, you’ll see an email from your boss or an important client which will grab your attention – you might even have a rule set up within your email program to highlight those ones. But how much critical information is just getting lost in the flood?

Last week, I spoke about the equality of importance within an organisation or team and I was surprised by the level of feedback I received. It seems that there are many businesses where the implied (if not, stated) importance seems to be directly proportional to how close someone is to the top of a organisational diagram.

Sure, the level of responsibility associated with roles tends to increase the further you travel up that diagram but, typically, so does the remuneration. They sort of balance each other out, don’t they?

Unfortunately, the workplace is often like a human pyramid.

A client was telling me about a conversation he overheard in his workplace the other day which brought back a memory of the first day of my second year of teaching – in February 1985.

Firstly, the recent conversation as told by my client …

“A new employee was being introduced to some of the people she was going to be working with and after providing the name of each person, the introducer told her that they were the senior, the officer and the assistant. Nothing more was said. No mention of what each of these people did. No mention of how the new employee might interact with each person … just a statement of rank and implied importance”.

There’s a phrase that gets me fired up. Closely related to “same s**t, different day” (tidied up for family viewing), no one ever uses either phrase to inspire themselves or anyone around them, do they?

You ask someone how they are and there it is … same old, same old. Ask them how their day is going … same s**t, different day.

To me, both phrases translate to much the same thing – a statement of acceptance of mediocre circumstances. It says to me “I am just going through the motions and can’t be bothered doing anything to change it“.

Last week, I spoke about lazy recruiters and given the response I have received, I felt that a follow-up post was warranted.

I have noticed that many organisations have started using an even more automated process for their acceptance of resumes and cover letters using application systems (e.g. Taleo) . Typically, these are used by the big corporates in the market who have seemingly ditched the recruitment companies and started advertising directly through job boards and other networks like LinkedIn.

Here’s something that annoys me and I don’t think it’s just me.

And before I go any further, my apologies to the few recruiters who I think do a great job – you know who you are.

As you would know if you were to visit my LinkedIn profile, I have what could be best described as an eclectic background when it comes to employment history and skill set. I clearly don’t fit the traditional model of accountant, personal assistant, project manager, school teacher (I was once), mechanic, etc, etc.

What a great word – brilliant!

There are two quite distinct meanings (probably more) of the word – one to do with intelligence and ability and the other to do with glittering, sparkling, shining brightly.