Every so often two of my old school friends and I get together for drinks and dinner. We eat unhealthy food and drink overpriced whiskey. We catch up on each other’s families and complain about being middle-aged. We raise a glass to our wives and reminisce about how everything was better in the 90s (apart from bucket hats, they’ve always been wrong).
We also make each other laugh. A lot. I laugh most when I’m with those two guys. Often the laughter comes from in-jokes that have carried on through the decades. Often, we can’t remember what started the joke or even what it refers to now – but they have become the catchphrases of our relationship.
One of these friends works in the advertising industry. He has to marshal the needs of a client, the talent of his creative team, and the logistics of production. He told me about how sometimes an advert can often start with a clear concept, but as it’s bounced around layers of ideas get layered on top of it and slowly the concept becomes less clear. Everyone involved, as they were there at inception knows what they mean, but to the external observer the response is
“Eh?”
Sometimes, even the original concept is lost to those within the telephone game of retelling. It stops being one thing – a well-thought-out concept, or the other, an in-joke that bonds the group, but something else entirely – it has become a mantra everyone is repeating without knowing what it means or why it is there.
https://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Telephone-Game
At work, we also have stories and ideas that have been slowly warped and forgotten in the retelling. At best, they are our in-jokes and interpersonal banter. At worst, they become “rules” hoary canards that people cling to, and transgressors are told:
“That’s not the way it’s done around here”.
In 2017 an employment tribunal ruled against Gloucestershire Police Service for indirect discrimination. The case centred on a recruitment aptitude test. The test had aimed to examine a candidate’s physical fitness, but the test had become something far more onerous than was required. The point of the test had been lost.
At Aspire we hear about recruitment examples like this again and again. Sometimes questions asked in interviews seem unrelated to the competencies needed for the job, or sometimes they seem to be showcasing the interviewer’s desire to pose a tricky or esoteric question rather than genuinely probe a candidate’s ability.
I was reminded of another example recently. I was led by a client to our meeting room through a floor of people working in cubicles, in silence.
Later the client expressed that while the company have a hybrid working policy he makes his team come in because face-to-face working is “better”.
This is like making everyone in the team wear a bucket hat, regardless of the situation, regardless of what they are doing.
The question I asked the client was “What is it that’s better when working face-to-face”
I’d argue it’s an opportunity to socialise, collaborate, and build relationships. The chance to have in-depth conversations in a way that feels limited via video chat.
If someone is asked to come into the office to spend their day working solo on a computer, communicating by Slack, and fulfilling tasks on their own. The point of face-to-face working has been lost and replaced with a rule that no one understands.
So, as leaders, it might be an idea, every now and then, to take a step back and examine our workplace cultures and the rules spoken and implied that underpin them.
Do people understand the concept behind workplace practices, or have they become a selection of bucket hats that everyone is wearing, and no one knows why?
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