Have to be at work cause the boss is there right?
We know this is laughable and bears no correlation to performance but it is one of those misconceptions which just won’t go away. Why? Cause we are social beings who are influenced by our environment and social status within an organisation.
Typically the higher the climate of fear and power vs merit and outcome the more these type of measures pervade, holding back further improvements. Not to mention the difficulty in changing individuals anchors and status quo (explored in an earlier post here)
I have a sneaking suspicion that when a difficult question needs answering, such as, how do I measure the performance of knowledge workers with many variables, we often revert to asking an easier question with a known answer, which normally has little if any correlation to the initial outcome you are looking for.
For example, to devise a reliable method to measure performance in a diverse knowledge worker, service delivery firm, with multiple and tightly connected roles the energy to devise an equitable measure may be unable to be completed with the current thinking within that organisation. So we say, meh, let’s apply a simple heuristic that sounds plausible, let’s have mandatory office hours.
Simple in principle, yet at cross purposes to our real intent in relation to the driver of the firm’s purpose. I am yet to see an organisation state that their purpose is to reliably spend a certain amount of hours at work. It would be as ludicrous as an organisation aiming for the breakeven point rather than ‘maximising shareholder value‘.
Had a thoroughly ruminating conversation with Dr Sarah Colley (Pockets of Brilliance) yesterday around the issue of what is holding H&S back and why are we seeing only incremental improvements in serious injury rates across the industry. A wide-ranging conversation but did focus on asking a better question and in a frame where the metric correlates to the purpose we want to achieve (isn’t always obvious). There were tangents to medicine which has the same issues around longevity of life vs quality of life when people come to the end of their days. Also why the general public view medicine and doctors like smash repairers rather than preemptive performance enhancers.
Until we can break the shackles of our former time periods thinking (whilst respectfully acknowledging the gains it made and that we all stand on the shoulders of giants and are not self made in any sense of the word) around loss aversion and binary hurt / not hurt states (think Plus 1) we will continue to maintain the status quo and perpetuate the sunk cost.
Time to reduce the dogma, time for connection and time to leave work on time.
Reframe my Safety Brain 