Why I bother to write about modern workplaces

I doubt that my workplace and my reactions to it will change much before I leave it behind for good. I wish I could just let it all go--the stupidity, rude behavior, narcissism, ego trips, lack of common sense--just put all of these things behind me. Just do it. Be the better person. Take the higher road. But if I do that all the time, what then? When is enough enough? When is it ok to stand up for yourself so that you don't get stepped on all the time by the 'system'? When do you need to stand up for yourself? When it means that if you don't, others, including yourself, get hurt? I see the word 'system' used so many times when people complain about things in their workplace. We employees are a part of the system, ergo, we must stand up and be counted, otherwise we are just stupid sheep who have no right to complain that things are not as they should be.

I so enjoy the intellectual aspects of my work; unfortunately the reality of my workplace is something other than enjoyable since it does its best to destroy that joy coupled to the accomplishment of real work. The bureaucracy does not understand that it exists to serve the employees, not the other way around. Additionally, everything boils down to money. Daily work life is an endless conversation about money to do research or to pay the salaries of hard-working people--the desperate hunt for it, the lack of it and the stress (bordering on desperation) of not having it, the envy of others who have it, the lack of 'smarts' about how to use it when one gets it--and so on ad nauseam. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually miss the 1990s because there was less emphasis on money, budgets and bureaucracy, and more on actually getting some good research done, whether or not you were a small research group or whether or not you had a lot of grant money. You did the best you could with what  you had, and you were no less a good researcher if you didn't manage to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. Now you're simply no good if you don't. It was understood in the 1990s that some few (as is always the case) would be the best (at getting grants and international acclaim), but there was room for the others--the next best. There was room for 'good enough'. Not anymore.

There are and always will be conflicts about who gets what, whose ranking is higher than others, who 'deserves' this or that, etc. But it's out of control now. I realize about myself that I really am not a person who is good at tackling conflicts. But sometimes it's necessary to take on the system when it is defined by conflicts, especially if they border on stupid. As I've gotten older, I see that I am simply not interested in being talked down to, treated like a child, controlled/measured/evaluated at all turns, treated rudely by arrogant people, etc. I don't treat others this way, so I don't want to be treated this way. Leaders have simply not learned how to treat their employees with respect. Each day that passes is a new exercise in being treated like a child. When I say this is in my workplace, my words fall on deaf ears. That is my workplace's way of dealing with things it doesn't want to hear. It ignores emails, direct confrontations, attempts at compromise, etc. When they want things their way, that's law, and employees must just accede.  

The contradictions are many:

1. You are asked why you don't take on responsibility for this or that task, but when you do, you are not given the authority to change anything, to spend any money, or to ask for help from others. You are not given control over the task you have assumed responsibility for. You are like a child told to wash the dishes. You are not to question any aspect of what you have been told to do. It's fine for a child, but not for an adult. 
2. Alternatively, you find out that the reason they asked you to do 1) was that the bureaucrats could 'check off' that point on their list. She said yes to doing this or that, great. It doesn't actually really matter that it's just responsibility on paper. In other words, they don't care whether you do a good job or not. 
3. You are forced to listen to the endless rhetoric about how 'we are going to be the best', when being the best entails allowing employees to function as adults in their workplace--letting competent employees decide the best way to do this or that, especially if they have the expertise and you as a leader do not. Leave competent people alone to do their jobs. But the bureaucrats/leaders don't understand this or don't want to in 2017.
4. Leaders in our research system say that everyone can be 'the best', but what they don't acknowledge is that if everyone becomes the best, then no one is best anymore. It is circular stupid logic.

You may wonder why I bother writing about this at all anymore. For those of you who have read this blog from its start, you know that I am quite critical of modern workplaces that let themselves be run by bureaucrats (most of the public sector workplaces) who enjoy incorporating the trendy business philosophies of the moment into their workplaces. It doesn't matter that they don't fit there (think LEAN in a research environment. We are not a factory). My public sector workplace has spent a decade or more trying to perfect New Public Management, and now they've moved on to LEAN. Why, we'll never know. Private sector workplaces do not permit this idiocy. I don't know if they are any better in the long run. But I prefer to think and hope that they are. 

Gobbledygook or Newspeak in Modern Workplaces

From time to time I write about the modern workplace; the well will never run dry when it comes to finding ideas to write about when it comes to such workplaces. I am especially interested in public sector workplaces, since they seem to embody (or aim to embody by design) the worst business philosophies and ideas that crawl out from under the slimy rocks where they’ve sprouted. Modern workplaces in Norway and elsewhere often adopt such philosophies and ideas uncritically and put them into operation without much discussion or rational consideration. I’ve written about them before, e.g. New Public Management, which is (fortunately for us) on its way out after its decade of tyranny. Ask most employees if they’ve been comfortable in their workplaces that uncritically adopted this philosophy, and their answers will be a chorus of No’s. 

The uncritical adoption of bad business philosophies into modern public sector workplaces goes hand in hand with the language of gobbledygook to support and defend them. If company leaders don’t want their employees to know what it is they are being subjected to, then gobbledygook is the language they use. Let’s call it Newspeak for modern workplaces (with apologies to George Orwell). It can be defined as a language that makes no sense whatsoever, either to its users or to its unfortunate listeners. Its aim is to create a smokescreen so that employees become confused or left in the dark about what is really going on. If you have ever been the recipient of emails that make no sense whatsoever, if you’ve asked a question and gotten a ‘non-answer’ that passes for an answer, then you have experienced gobbledygook. If you attempt to make sense of the enormous bureaucratic system around you, e.g. how to deal with the billing department, you will be met with a wall of people, all of whom are cc-ing each other in the myriad of emails sent back and forth to answer one tiny question—how do I bill so-and-so for the service performed for them. One tiny question is ‘non-answered’ by at least six or more people, none of whom can or will take responsibility for providing a substantive answer. This is cowardice by design, inbuilt into a system that is itself designed to dilute out responsibility so that no one can be taken for any wrongdoing that could arise down the road. How would anyone be able to track the countless email paths, conversations, etc. that are attached to one miniscule billing situation?

In this vein, it was interesting to read the remarks of a Norwegian leader (of a public sector workplace that deals out money to researchers) concerning his organization’s philosophy, translated here from Norwegian:

When the sectoral principle so strongly influences Norwegian research funding, it is all the more important that XXX has a real opportunity to create synergies of funds given with different logics, then we can create win-win situations where we can deliver both on goal A and Goal B for the same money.

For God’s sake, what does this mean? And it’s not the translation; it was just as difficult to understand the meaning in Norwegian. This is how we are ‘talked to’ on a daily basis, from leader’s commentaries to emails that makes no sense or that provide no answers whatsoever. This is what we face at every turn. Meaningless pronouncements with bloated language that create a world of nonsense. Nonsense—literally, non-sense. Lewis Carroll would be proud (the author of Alice in Wonderland for those of you who wonder, whose Alice fell down the rabbit hole into a world that made no sense). It would be alarming if it wasn’t comical. It is no longer comical in my opinion. This is how many public sector workplaces operate on a daily basis. I pity those employees who prize speaking clearly and getting the job done as their goals. It is nearly impossible to cut through the jungle of gobbledygook on the way toward those goals.