Figuring out the Norwegian workplace

The job section of this past Sunday’s Aftenposten had an interesting article about Norwegian workplace culture entitled ‘How does the Norwegian boss think’? Foreigners who work in Norway often find themselves at a loss when it comes to figuring out how their bosses think and how to interpret what they say to you—what do they really mean by their comments and remarks, and have you understood the context of what was said? The importance of understanding your workplace and the signals given you by your bosses and colleagues cannot be overemphasized, especially where career advancement and salary are concerned. The article interviewed three Norwegian company directors/leaders who are Norwegian and who had worked internationally; they were asked to comment on what makes Norwegian workplaces different from workplaces in the rest of the world, since Norway’s workplace culture is quite unique (of course, why is this not surprising to me). Here are their thoughts:

• Leader #1 meant that Norwegian workplaces are ‘process-oriented’, not ‘solution-oriented’, and that a problem or an issue could be discussed ad nauseum before a decision is made
• Leader #2 had a similar opinion to leader #1, stating that many foreigners are simply not used to having the entire organization get involved before a decision can be made about a particular issue
• Leader #3 meant that Norwegian workplaces are relatively ‘flat structures’ where each individual employee has a high degree of authority to make his or her own decisions without having to consult a boss

Whenever I read such articles, they trigger some interesting feelings and thoughts, so that I ‘feel a blog post coming on’. I can relate to the first two leader comments; specific issues are discussed over and over in multiple meetings over many months, perhaps years, before decisions are reached. Frustrating? Yes. My question is why this has to be the norm. However, and this is the crux of the matter, someone ultimately has to make the final decision. Whether it is a committee at the top of an organization, or one person, someone has to take the ultimate responsibility. An organization of several hundred individuals is not responsible for a final decision; some of them may come with input and advice toward a decision, but the responsibility lies ultimately with company leaders. Who makes the ultimate decision can often be a mystery, and whether or not employees are informed about a final decision rests with those who are responsible for communicating it. Information flow downwards can be a true exercise in frustration. There is no transparency at the top of huge public sector workplaces, in any case. And I disagree entirely with the third leader; it has not been my experience in my public sector workplace that each individual employee has a say concerning a decision to be made that will affect them. Simply not true. The third leader has simply not visited my workplace recently; the six or more levels of (administrative) leadership between the individual employee and the top echelons ensure that you as an individual employee have little to no authority to make decisions that affect your daily work life. You can individually be the most ‘solution-oriented’ employee in the world; it won’t matter. You are forced to deal with the top-heavy administrative levels above you. Take ordering a lab reagent or small piece of equipment, for example; before a necessary item can be ordered, at least six to eight people need to be involved in the process of ordering—the person who needs the product and who informs the relevant department person who then registers the order and passes it along in the system to the person (or persons) who actually order the product on the computer. But we’re not done yet. They may order or they may pass the order along to yet another office that will do the ordering. It all depends, on what I’m not sure. Project funds have to be checked to make sure there is enough money to order the product; that can involve the accounting department. And if the item is actually ordered, it is shipped to a central receiving department that then delivers the item to the person who registered the order, not to the person who needed the item. This means that the secretarial consultants who register the orders receive on average ten packages a day. They must check their files to find out who needed the product ordered and then chase down the relevant person who requested the item. The actual invoice goes to an unknown place; no one is really sure where it ends up or how it gets paid. If this was truly my call (if I had any real authority), I'd call, fax, or email the company myself with my order, cutting out the multiple middlemen, and have the item delivered directly to me. The current ordering process reminds me of the excellent film Brazil, about the tentacles of bureaucracy and how when they find you, they can destroy your life and peace of mind. My question is—why do we need all these people involved? This was not my decision, to make it so complicated. And perhaps more importantly—is there any one person who understands the system well enough to explain it to others? No one seems to have thought of that. 

My conclusion is that these three leaders espouse a politically-correct rhetoric. It makes employees feel good to read that they have some autonomy and can influence the decision process; in truth they have little autonomy and little influence, at least in the public sector. We may have had more of both back in the 1990s, but no more. 

According to the article, a number of companies have started to offer courses about understanding Norwegian workplace culture, to employees who come from other countries/cultures with a different way of doing things. Such courses, along with formal career guidance, were non-existent when I arrived in Norway. I don’t know if they would have helped or not, since I work in the public, not the private sector, and most of these newspaper job articles seem to deal with the private sector. But one thing is certain; communication with bosses in the public or private sector can be muddled, messages from them unclear, ditto for job tasks and definitions. How can you know for sure if your recent efforts on a particular project are praiseworthy or not? Are you being considered for advancement in your organization? Should you actively seek out career advancement, mentors and advocates? Will you be considered too aggressive if you do, or will it be considered appropriately professional to do so? No one really tells you what to do or how to behave, at least not directly to your face. You have to figure out most of these kinds of things on your own, because communication is often very indirect, and suggestions to employees as to how to go about doing things may be presented in a rather offhand informal manner. This is the art of thinking like a Norwegian in your workplace—figuring it all out for yourself, except that if you are Norwegian, you have understood this from the get-go. As a foreigner, you will miss the signals that tell you that what you’ve just been told is important, you will make a fair amount of mistakes before you understand how to respond or react, how to deal with your bosses, and how to understand their dealings and communication with you, and you will waste a fair amount of time trying to understand a system that cannot be understood (my impression). In that sense, I miss the directness and assertiveness of American workplaces; communication between boss and employee is often much clearer and easier to understand, perhaps more formal and professional, yes, but I prefer that to ambiguity and vague promises and suggestions.  

How some companies go from good to great--a book by Jim Collins

I am reading the bestselling book ’Good To Great’ (published in 2001) by Jim Collins, who is the author of ‘Built To Last’, also a bestseller. I emphasize “bestselling” because they are books about the business world, and it surprises me that there is enough interest in the business world to guarantee a bestselling book. But apparently there is, and given the state of the economy during the past ten years, perhaps interest in these types of books is not that surprising. I for one find such books fascinating; I never get tired of reading about companies, their employees or leadership issues. Both books deal with companies, workplace leadership, greatness and longevity. ‘Good To Great’ discusses why some companies manage to become great companies starting from the level of good companies, but it also discusses mediocre and even bad companies and the likelihood of their achieving a ‘great’ status. I like the book so far because Collins is not just presenting his subjective opinions; he and his research team have done extensive research on what are considered to be great American companies, and have come up with some ideas as to why they became that way. They uncovered the qualities and characteristics of greatness—why some companies manage to become great while others don’t.

Here is his opening paragraph in Chapter 1: “Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good—and that is their main problem”. The opening paragraph draws you into the book and makes you want to explore the topic further. His premise is interesting. But what is a great company? How does Collins define ‘great’? His book is not a primer on how to get to greatness. It is more of a scientific treatise that describes the qualities of companies and of CEOs that have achieved greatness and maintained those results for at least fifteen years. And that by itself makes it an exceptionally interesting book, because it is steeped in objective research about the issue.

Here are some of the ideas that Collins brings up and discusses:

·         “In a good-to-great transformation, people are not your most important asset. The right people are”.

·         Who are the right people?  Collins writes: “The good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience. Not that specific knowledge or skills are unimportant, but they viewed these traits as more teachable (or at least learnable), whereas they believed dimensions like character, work ethic, basic intelligence, dedication to fulfilling commitments, and values are more ingrained (sounds like integrity and emotional intelligence are prized highly in both leaders and the right employees)

·         He argues for rigorousness in finding and keeping the right people and in letting go of the wrong people or shifting them to positions where they may be able to blossom.  It’s not about mass layoffs and ruthless treatment of employees. He says: “To let people languish in uncertainty for months or years, stealing precious time in their lives that they could use to move on to something else, when in the end they aren’t going to make it anyway—that would be ruthless. To deal with it right up front and let people get on with their lives—that is rigorous”.  He doesn’t argue against laying off specific people but he also discusses the possibility of shifting them to other positions to give them a chance to develop their true potential. This takes emotional intelligence and common sense on the part of company leaders in order to figure this out.

Collins also discusses ‘Level 5 leadership’, which he describes as a “paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. Level 5 leaders are “ambitious….., but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves”. They are “modest, self-effacing, understated, fanatically-driven, diligent, take responsibility for failures and give others the credit for success”. In my book, this is the definition of people with integrity and emotional intelligence. He is quite clear on one thing—that “every good-to-great company had Level 5 leadership during the pivotal transition years”; this conclusion is unequivocally supported by his team’s research data.

My questions are—why is there so little emotional intelligence in workplace leaders? Ditto for integrity and ethical character? Why aren’t they reading these kinds of books, or if they are, why aren’t they learning from them and putting their newfound knowledge into action? And why aren’t more potential Level 5 leaders being tapped for such positions? Why is it that there is so much mediocrity in workplace leaders at present? Potential Level 5 leaders are stifled into silence, bypassed, ignored, encouraged to leave or simply fired. Strange behavior on the part of companies whose visions are to be ‘the best (company, university, hospital, etc.) within the next few years’. I’m hoping for a renaissance of sorts—a new focus on integrity and emotional intelligence in workplace leaders.

The Emperor's New Clothes--New Public Management

I attended a breakfast seminar yesterday morning sponsored by Forskerforbundet--my union. Yes, scientists here are unionized (you don’t have to join a union but it is encouraged and smart to do so for a lot of reasons), and Forskerforbundet is definitely one of the largest unions. It is quite an active group and keeps its members well-informed about what is happening on the scientific, political and economic fronts in this country and internationally. The topic of the seminar—‘Have current government politics led to a better everyday life for employees in academia?’--was the reason I decided to attend. The resounding answer for most of the attendees was no. There were four speakers who had brief presentations and then the floor was open for debate. One of the lectures was entitled—‘Accounting as Politics’; it was very enlightening. It was essentially a presentation of New Public Management (NPM), how this management style is defined, and its impact on the public sector when it is implemented. Afterwards it was interesting to hear university and college employees—scientists, teachers and educational administrators—talk about how bad the current situation has become under NPM. NPM in the public sector is the big topic of discussion these days. I found the seminar interesting because the speakers managed to crystallize, explain and confirm the feelings I have had about the changes in my workplace during the past few years. Things just don’t feel right anymore, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what is wrong either. What I do know is that finances and budgets are the only things that interest upper-level management these days; also that scientists are expected to understand complicated accounting practices and are reprimanded if they do not make an effort to understand them. A few years ago I remember telling an accountant in my workplace who called me about some mistake he thought I had made that if he wanted me to spend a lot of time learning his job, then he needed to come into my lab and learn how to do my job while I was busy learning his, because someone had to fill in the gap. There was silence on the other end of the phone and then a click as he hung up on me. I am certain that he made a note somewhere that ‘this woman is difficult’ or something similar. I am difficult—I question authority. I ask-- ‘who made these (new) rules’. We are expected to drop whatever we are doing on a moment’s notice to focus on some monetary or budget issue that is suddenly of prime importance today, but of course we know that tomorrow it will be something else again. It surprises me that no one in upper management has made the connection that the lack of focus on the actual job that a scientist was hired to do (research) due to constant administrative distractions and paper-pushing leads to a fragmented work approach that in turn leads to loss of productivity and reduced efficiency. This never seems to get discussed.

What is NPM, you may ask. A few years ago none of us knew what it was, let alone its impact on our daily work lives. NPM is a management theory that has already seen its day, as far as I can ascertain from the little I have read about it. It is already considered passé in other countries that fell willingly into its snares and then managed to free themselves from it. But Norway appears to have welcomed it with open arms, putting its unique twist on it as only socialist democrats can do. In theory, its tenet is that optimal management of the public budget results in better economic outcomes and increased efficiency (due to competition). It is rather utopian in its quest for perfect efficiency and a perfectly-balanced budget. We all know that in the real world, and especially in the health care system, perfect efficiency and a perfectly-balanced budget are impossible to achieve as long as patients are involved. But this system treats patients as commodities. And it treats the employees in these systems as commodities as well. It’s a cold management style. You are only as valuable to your workplace as your productivity deems you to be. In other words, you are measured by what you produce. The problem with this way of looking at things in the healthcare system and in academia/education is the following—what are doctors and nurses ‘producing’? Hospitals are not factories. Cancer research institutes are not factories. Colleges and universities are not factories. What are academicians, researchers and educators ‘producing’? Looked at in the NPM way, researchers are producing articles about their work. They are being measured by their output. The production of more articles and the production of more PhD and Masters students means more money for the institution one works for and for the individual researcher. The scientists and academicians who survive and who are rewarded in the current environment are those who are well-funded with large research groups. If you are a small research group, the idea of real competition with a large research group is a joke. How can large and small research groups compete on equal playing ground? They are not well-matched from the start point. But this is what we deal with now. We are told that ‘we are good, but not good enough’, and if we only do so-and-so, that we will suddenly get more money and more students. We are encouraged to ‘compete’ and to live up to our ‘potential’ even though most of us realize that the world is such that only a few people ever reach the top or become the best. Those of us who come from non-socialist systems understand this from the start point. But understanding this does not mean that you cannot do good work and find your niche in the system. Accepting that you are not the best in a particular field does not mean that you cannot work in and do good work in that field. But there is little room for that sort of thinking in NPM.

So what is a ‘good employee’ in an NPM system? As far as I can determine, a good employee is obedient, subservient to the goals of a balanced budget and perfect efficiency, and one that does not combat the system in any way. A good employee does not make waves, does not stick his or her head up, and does not state his or her opinion about particular issues. Conflict resolution and negotiation are key words in how to deal with employee problems if you are a leader, and as far as I can see, it mostly means sweeping those problems under the rug and forgetting about them. The rewards for this obedience are many—promotions to higher administrative positions with emphasis on leadership qualities (that promote the further spread of NPM), an automatic network of NPM supporters, and the feeling that you are part of something much bigger than yourself—that you are promoting change and helping your employees ‘reach their potential’ and become more efficient producers. If it wasn’t that this system has been unreservedly and unabashedly adopted as important to the future of public sector workplaces, I would dismiss it as more ‘new age’ thinking like EST and all those self-help philosophies that made their founders unbelievably wealthy. Don’t get me wrong, I can accept that some of those philosophies have helped some people. But by and large, I tend to be suspicious of ‘the emperor’s new clothes’ way of thinking. I don’t hop on the bandwagon just because a million other people are doing so. I like to think for myself and to be able to observe and judge for myself whether something works or not. I am inherently suspicious of anything that promotes utopian thinking. We are imperfect humans. We are not machines or robots. We will never ever manage to achieve perfect efficiency and perfect productivity on this earth. If NPM supporters start by accepting that tenet, we can work from there. It would mean that they would have to reverse their current approaches. That would be best. And then you’ll possibly have me on your side. 

In defense of good leaders

I have been interested in the topic of good leadership for some time, and will be writing more about it in the months to come. I want to write about it because I think it is something that is sorely lacking in most workplaces these days. And the few good leaders who are left are having a tough time of it. It is interesting that there appears to be no correlation between good leadership and the number of management courses one can take to help one become a good leader, but nevertheless, these types of courses are increasing in frequency and workplaces are becoming more insistent that their leaders take these courses. I am open to the idea that people can become good leaders, but I think it has more to do with the type of workplace environment one finds oneself in as a leader plus the type of values a potential leader has. Is the potential leader an ethical person who believes in fairness and in rewarding hard work? Or is the potential leader only interested in promoting himself or herself at the expense of his or her employees, and what type of behavior does the workplace support and reward? These are all relevant questions for discussion. The conclusion may be that good leaders are born that way, not made, but I don’t necessarily believe this either. I don’t pretend to have the answers, but that fact does not diminish my interest in the subject.

I bring up the subject of good leadership because I have been witness to, and experienced myself, poor leadership or lack of leadership in the workplace. I have also experienced good leadership and the differences are viscerally clear to me. I have written a book about passive-aggressive leadership in the workplace and how demoralizing that can be for employees http://www.amazon.com/Blindsided-Recognizing-Dealing-Passive-Aggressive-Leadership-Workplace/dp/1442159200. My feeling is that many workplaces these days promote and support passive-aggressive leadership--that it is a management strategy for systemic procrastination and effective employee control because most of this kind of behavior is always right on the edge of what can be considered ethical, correct or true. In other words, management cannot be taken for this type of behavior toward employees and they get away with quite a lot in this way. Employees suffer, but leaders who are trying to be good effective and empathic leaders also suffer because the system does not support their efficiency, honesty or empathy. Leaders who do not side with the passive-aggressive approach will find themselves at the mercy of bureaucrats and administrators higher up in the system that will make their work lives miserable for not conforming to the current system.

There are many ways to bring down (or at least attempt do so) good leaders in a passive-aggressive work environment. In my book about passive-aggressive workplace leaders, I did not discuss this particular aspect in any detail, but rather focused on the effects this type of environment has on its employees. But much of what I brought up in that book in terms of how to keep ordinary employees (not in management positions) down can also be applied to keeping good leaders down. If passive-aggressive management identifies one or two good leaders (by my definition—ethical, honest, empathetic—and not very adept at playing political games) as ‘problem-people’ in the system, it won’t be too long before those people are ‘silenced’ in some way because they represent a threat. They may find themselves ‘frozen out’ of the popular clique, may be demoted, may be ignored or overlooked for new projects or promotions, or may be the recipients of a new type of behavior that I find quite disturbing. This type of behavior utilizes the employees who work for good leaders who for many reasons may be dissatisfied with that person’s structured approach or expectations or demands on them. If these employees feel stressed or put-upon, or if they feel that the demands of the job are too great or overwhelming, they can now accuse their leader(s) of harassment, which puts the burden of proof not on the employee making the accusation but immediately on the leader (and eventually the workplace) to refute the accusation. The accusation of harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature. In fact, in the instances I have been witness to, with one exception, the accusations have had to do with that the leader(s) were perceived as too tough, too demanding or too strict. In other words, the leaders could say no to these women if it was deemed necessary and this didn’t sit well with them. Why would employees do this to their boss, one might ask? I asked the same question. I have now seen this happen several times in the past few years, and I asked the same question each time. Young women have been the instigators in all of these situations—they have charged middle-aged male leaders with harassment because they have not been able to measure up to the demands of the jobs they were asked to do by these men. Or they were denied something they wanted and instead of waiting to see if the answer could in fact be yes the next time they asked, they took matters into their own hands. Who informed these women that this was a potential strategy for dealing with their situation? The only answer I could come up with was that the bureaucrats and administrators higher-up in the system who did not like these leaders suggested this to these women as a way of causing trouble for those leaders. And these women followed that advice. The result? Management informed these leaders that so-and-so had filed harassment charges against them, resulting in the women being moved into another department or group, which is what they wanted in the first place. The accused leader had no choice but to accept this outcome, and if he or she wished to ‘fight’ to refute the accusation, was informed that one was of course free to do so. But it is common knowledge that this involves using a lot of time to ‘clear’ one’s name and possibly getting a hold of a lawyer or a union representative or both to take the case or look at the situation, which could cause the workplace some grief. If the accused leaders do not have the support of their own leaders, then the likelihood of clearing their good names is very slight. For all intents and purposes this means that these leaders will have unfounded ‘harassment’ charges against them that will remain on their records indefinitely. As long as these leaders do not fight back or raise a ruckus, the passive-aggressive strategy of systemic procrastination levels the conflict to a status quo situation—the women get what they want, which was to get out from under that particular leader and to prevent that leader from having any contact with them whatsoever, and passive-aggressive management gets what it wants—the silencing of what they consider to be a problematic leader. This is what has happened in all the instances I have been witness to. The accused leader is caught between a rock and a hard place; fight the accusing employee or fight management. It is mostly a lose-lose situation. Over time, rumors travel and reputations can be destroyed. It is horrendous that such things can happen in 2010 without repercussions for either the accuser or for management that support them blindly. Things just continue as before at the workplace. But what about those who are unjustly accused? What happens to them? Why is this fair? What about the families of the accused? Have these women doing the accusing taken into account the stress that such situations cause the families of these men? Do these women ever realize that their false accusations cause problems for women who really have been harassed? I doubt it, and this makes them disloyal employees in my book, because if they can do it to one leader they can do it again to another, and in this way they always get what they want in an already tainted workplace. I have to wonder how they live with themselves. It might be worthwhile for the accused leaders to pursue the situations to their ends, because if no one ever does then injustice will always win out.

Bye Bye Work Ethic

I’m always trying to make sense of my incredibly passive-aggressive workplace, a national hospital (which is a recent huge conglomerate of four Oslo hospitals) that has continually stated for the past several years that it wants to be the primo research hospital, but somehow never quite manages to get to that exalted position because it can never settle on one good philosophy for getting there. Trying to decipher the philosophies behind the decisions made over the past few years has preoccupied me for quite some time. The current philosophy is that in addition to being scientists, we should be accountants, bookkeepers, secretaries, technicians, group leaders, lecturers, teachers, inventors, patent holders and administrative geniuses. This should all be accomplished during the work day which consists of reading and answering a lot of useless emails describing the latest change or new regulation. Ok, before I hear the collective moan from my American friends who tell me how awful the job situation is in America right now, and I know it is, let me just say that the USA may be going through an economic crisis, but the ‘land of the oil money’ is also going through some kind of economic crisis as well. They are also going through a true existential crisis. I really don’t think the politicians know what they want anymore. And it really is no better here in social-democratic Norway than in the good ol’ USA, despite the NY Times articles that are always presenting Norway as such a wonderful country—the land of milk and honey. The milk and honey wells are drying up. There is major downsizing afoot here in the public sector, New Public Management (NPM) is taking over (even though there is ample data showing that this business philosophy does not work), and the emphasis is on efficiency, productivity and on marketing your work and yourself as a product. It’s all about the patents, baby—the more the better. It’s about competition and flying high over the radar. NPM is supposed to increase efficiency but as far as I can see the only thing that has increased is the number of bureaucrats needed to direct the few remaining workers who truly want to work, who still have their work ethic.

A good example of the new complexity associated with NPM is the division of leadership into administrative and professional leadership. A worker now reports to an administrative leader and a professional leader (in essence your real boss because this is the person who has the professional competence to function as a mentor for you). If one is lucky there are just two leaders to report to these days. Some workers now have four administrative bosses (who again all report up-over in the system to each other) whereas one year ago it was sufficient with one leader who tackled the administrative and professional tasks. The logistical problems associated with this are huge and the practical consequences are just confusing. Here’s a good example—a researcher talks to one administrative leader about his or her future and is advised to proceed in one way, however the other administrative leaders each have their takes on the situation and have not talked to the others, so the result is a huge mess. You can get told that you should not seek a research group leader position by one leader, whereas the other one comes into your office asking you if you want to be a group leader. And yet another one is advising you to build up your group this month but half a year ago the same person was telling you to wait a few years to do so and to rather focus on collaboration and teamwork with your current group leader. Is this crazy-making behavior? Yes, it is. Are these leaders aware of their inconsistent behaviors? I don’t think that they are. That’s the tragedy.

Thus, the goals are always moving targets. A few years ago, it was easier to take aim and to hit the target than it is now. My question now is more along the lines of—what are the goals really? At least a few years ago it seemed as though the goals were still to work hard and to produce good research work. Now I don’t know anymore.

I think reality TV thinking has invaded the mindsets of the public sector. Everyone is expected to be a star and to perform on cue. The problem of course is that this way of thinking IS the problem. There can only be a few stars, and the rest of us simply have to make do with the meager talents we have. Unfortunately, the biggest proponents of NPM are researchers who were never very good at research but who got promoted to cushy administrative positions, learning economy and management along the way in their endless leadership courses, and directing the productive researchers on how research should be done, all the while cutting the number of research positions available. The problem is one of envy if you ask me—the non-productive researchers who are now the administrators are envious of the researchers who actually DO the job they were hired to do—research, guiding students, writing articles, and publishing. I have a small problem believing that you can be a research hospital without doing research. What’s next—research outsourcing? That’s going to cost the country a pretty penny.

Jimmy Carter once used the word malaise to describe the feeling in America at the time he was president, if I remember correctly. That is what is happening to many researchers I know here—they are experiencing a malaise that is leading to a lethargy that will eventually be impossible to reverse. The desire to work hard and to do your best is disintegrating at a rapid rate. I understand why.