Workplace culture

Every so often, when I meet friends for dinner, we inevitably end up talking about work and workplaces in general. Nearly every person I know who is around my age has a story or two to tell about unpleasant occurrences that they've experienced in their respective workplaces. That includes me too. We don't focus on just them--most of us also have good memories of our work projects/results as researchers, but the less than pleasant occurrences are used to illustrate some of the more negative aspects of Norwegian workplace culture, which I am not a huge fan of in general.

Academic research settings in the public sector, where most of my colleagues/friends and I have worked for the past thirty or more years, are strange work environments in which to find oneself, for Norwegians and non-Norwegians alike. I've always assumed that my Norwegian friends understood 'the rules' better than I did; I'm finding out that this is not the case, and that they were not necessarily treated any better (or worse) than I was when I was working. As always, how one was treated came down to politics--who you knew was more important than what you knew--at least if you wanted to get ahead. The Norwegians talk a good game about all employees being treated equally (the same) and that the same opportunities exist for all, but it's not true. Most academic research settings at present are quite hierarchical with many levels of leadership; this was not the case during the 1990s when I started working at my university hospital. At that time the organizational structure was flatter, with fewer levels of leadership. The disadvantages of a flat structure are that there are fewer possibilities to rise in the system (fewer management positions) and that the managers have a more intense workload compared to hierarchical organizations. The advantages of a flat structure (in my opinion) are that each employee has more autonomy and more freedom to be creative, to speak out, and to be heard. Nowadays there is too much micromanagement, too much administration, too much reporting to managers, too much detail-oriented nonsense. It's smothering, claustrophobic and ultimately fatal for innovation and creativity. There were more of the latter during the 1990s in my humble opinion. No matter. Organizational structures became very hierarchical during the early 2000s; in some departments at present, it is not unusual to be confronted with five or more levels of leadership. Dealing with your own leader/manager is one thing, but then he or she must deal with his or her manager who must deal with his or her manager above them in the system, and so forth. Suffice it to say that it is a cumbersome organizational structure with which to deal. I don't like it and didn't like it when I was working. Middle managers have little or no power to decide how something should go, and many of them become frustrated with such a system. Thus, the focus for many of them becomes micromanagement of their employees, many of whom are trying their best to do their best in a system that is not designed to reward them. Because even though one can 'aspire' to a higher position in a hierarchical organization, in practice there is little to no chance of being promoted or being considered for promotion based on your expertise, because it mostly comes down to 'who you know, not what you know'. Neither flat nor hierarchical organizational structures really reward their employees, at least not in huge public sector workplaces. It's stifling to work in them and to work for managers who can do little to help the departments they lead because they must always 'check' with the managers above them before they do anything. Who would want those positions? Apparently, there are those who do want them, because they are well-paid jobs. But what then happens is that a lot of money that could have been appropriated for solving the real problems that exist goes to pay the salaries of (in my opinion again) useless managers. Thus, the system is loaded with powerless managers with bloated salaries. 

If employees don't like this type of work environment, and most of my colleagues/friends and I do (did) not, employees have a real problem. Because their attempts at independent thinking, innovative thinking, critical thinking, creativity, and not wanting to work in team settings will be met with resistance from managers who expect compliance. Employees should not 'buck the system', should not butt heads (however respectfully) with managers, should not criticize, should not attempt to 'go rogue (be a loner)'. The strange thing is that some people do manage to navigate this system that is designed to keep employees down; some probably get ahead because they are well-liked even though they are resistant to the system. Others are given a helping hand by friends in high places (politics). Neither of these occurrences happens to most employees. Most employees who are competent and have a lot of expertise end up having to comply and to swallow rules they don't agree with in order to have a tolerable work environment within which to work. Those who are not compliant suffer the consequences, which boil down to being frozen out, ignored, overlooked for interesting projects, or criticized. Since employees can rarely be fired from a public sector workplace, managers hope that by creating an unpleasant work environment for resistant employees, that it will force them to seek work other places. For smart and competent employees who love their work but not the organizational system, this creates anxiety and problems with self-confidence. Which in turn leads to poorer production and lack of motivation/enthusiasm. This has happened to more people I know than I care to count, both non-Norwegian and Norwegian. 

Who benefits from such a system? Those at the top who enjoy perks and salaries that are largely unjustifiable, and those who have always been lazy, who have always not wanted to expend any more energy at work than they have to. The latter are true drains on the system. And unfortunately, many have learned to manipulate the system, especially when it comes to the aspect of not being able to fire them. These employees invest little energy in their jobs (and in many cases don't show up to work), and if they are criticized by their managers for not doing a good job or for not doing the job they were hired to do, they are allowed by the system to accuse those managers of harassment. The stigma of being unfairly accused of harassment sticks to a manager. Work environments are small enough so that word gets around that this or that person has been accused of harassing an employee. Unpleasant. What then follows is that the 'harassed' employee generally gets a new manager to report to, who has heard the story of what happened to the previous manager and decides that he or she will not make the same mistake as the previous manager. He or she leaves the 'harassed' employee alone to do what he or she wants; in that way, such an employee, often quite lazy and incompetent, remains on the payroll doing little to nothing in the way of work, because no one dares to cross such an employee. If you could fire such an employee from a public sector workplace, it would be a good thing. But it will never happen here. And from what I've seen of the system that does exist, such employees have a lot of power, whereas those who are truly harassed by their managers don't choose that route--to claim being harassed--because they would rather do their jobs well and not be a bother. Competent and hard-working employees often end up doing more than their share of work to compensate for the lack of work done by the lazy and incompetent employees. Unfortunately, a good number of managers leave the incompetent employees alone and instead focus on making life miserable for the competent and hard-working employees. Go figure. 

So again, I ask. What is there to miss about such workplaces? Just during the past two weeks, I've listened to colleagues/friends tell me about their experiences in their workplaces. Overall, they are leaving their jobs with their heads held high; they know they've done good jobs and are satisfied, even if they rarely hear that from their managers. They know they've done the best they could do and have invested a lot of time and energy in their jobs. They may have been treated poorly at times, but they've let those experiences go. Probably best for all concerned. But nonetheless, they do talk about the unpleasant times when we are together because they were hurt by them, as I was. They were blindsided by them. It's understandable. No one expects to be treated poorly when one does a good or excellent job, invests a lot of time and energy in interesting projects, shares ideas and demonstrates independent thinking. But that's exactly what happened to some of them, while they watched the lazy incompetent employees be treated fairly, and in some cases 'promoted'. It makes no sense. But in some way, perhaps it does. Lazy, incompetent employees are no real threat to management. They don't challenge their authority, they are compliant, they do what they are told. But they don't do the work required of them, and management can't do a thing about it, at least in public sector workplaces. Private sector workplaces are another story. Such employees eventually drain the life out of a department. The rest of the staff pick up the slack and will never be rewarded for it. That's how workplaces function here, at least in my experience during the last twenty years. When good employees reach the point where they understand that they could have invested half the amount of time and energy compared to what they actually invested for the same (or no) result, that's when they understand that it's time to leave their workplaces and a workplace culture that is mostly illogical. 

Real change in the workplace

I got the chance recently to tell a former leader what I thought about my former workplace when it came to attitudes toward research and the politics it practiced. We were together at a garden party hosted by another former colleague who seems to have managed the workplace politics better than I did. It's not that I didn't try; it's just that at some point I refused (inside myself) to compromise my beliefs and how I view dealing with employees and the jobs they do. I am totally uninterested in micromanaging employees or in forcing them to accept change just for the sake of change. I am interested in engaging them in useful and productive work and in listening to what they have to say and to teach me. The latter is important, and more leaders should try to listen better and to learn from their employees, rather than preaching to them that they are 'resistant to change', ineffective at their jobs, or treating them as though they are little more than a budget post on an accounting sheet. 

The interesting thing was that my former leader agreed with mostly everything I said, which was not the case when I was still working, and said further that attempts have been made to get current leadership to see new points of view when it comes to research policies, to no avail. Current research leadership thinks it knows best, and has thought that way for the past fifteen years. And they talk about resistance to change. My opinion--start at the top and work downward. Get rid of the heavy weight of too many leaders at the top (six levels of leadership) and focus on using the salary money saved to employ truly professional individuals who actually do useful and productive work. I reiterate, as I've done so many times in this blog before--leadership is not a career in and of itself. Being a leader in one specific area does not necessarily qualify you for all leadership positions. Current management in many places seems to think it does, and it is one of the biggest mistakes ever made during the past twenty years. How one could believe that being a top-level company executive entitles you to run a hospital department with no prior medical experience is beyond me. But tell that to the politicians who leave office and are appointed leaders of boards and companies. What experience do they have that qualifies them for these positions? The worst thing that ever happened to academic research science was giving these bureaucrats the power that they now have to wield over ordinary scientists, many of whom have simply given up and left for the greener pastures of industry. The same is true for many of the pathologists I know, who simply cannot abide the understaffing (a perpetual shortage of necessary professionals) and inefficiency of many public hospital workplaces. 

Things need to change, and if that change entails admitting that current leadership trends are simply 'the emperor's new clothes', then so be it. Admit it. Just do it. Get rid of the dead weight at the top. Hire the people needed to do the necessary jobs, who actually do the work. Stop micromanaging. In short, listen to your employees and respect their expertise. You hired them for a reason. 

What is there to miss?

There is nothing that I miss about the work world I left behind. There are however several people who seem to be 'waiting' for me to say that I miss working and miss my former workplace. Every time I'm together with them they ask me if I miss working. The answer is always no. I reassure them that I made the right decision since they seem to be worried that I made the wrong decision. They seem to think that they know me better than I know myself. I tell them that wild horses could not drag me back to what was. I've learned (finally) to let go and to live in the present. My workplace belongs to the past. I don't worry about the past and I cannot predict nor do anything about the future, so the best place to live is in the present. I jokingly say that I retired to spend more time in my garden. But it's really the truth. My garden is my happy place. 

I was speaking with one former colleague yesterday since we still socialize from time to time. She had just gotten off the phone with another former colleague who updated her on all the doings at my former workplace. Summa summarum--nothing has changed. Nothing will change. The big egos are still running the show, rude as ever to the researchers they deem worthless (those who don't drag in a ton of money). Rude also to the clinicians who are doing research (or trying to) in addition to their clinical duties. What is there to miss about this type of workplace? Egotistical arrogant superficial uninteresting people (the majority of whom are men). They think they are going to live forever and carry on as though they will. And they can do so for my sake. I don't care a whit about them. 

I also grew weary of the bureaucratic systems that were built up around the practice of science. There are forms to fill out and online systems to learn at every turn. Work life in the public healthcare system is simply about having your every move tracked by one or another system. As my husband says, they exist because there is no longer any trust between employers and employees. He's right. I suppose there are any number of employees who are scoundrels, who cheat the system if they can get away with it, who abuse it and thereby abuse fellow colleagues (in my experience it has been top leadership that has abused the system but that is another story). So the systems grew out of that mistrust. However, the systems now exist by and for themselves. It is very important as a researcher to know how the accounting and ordering departments work in detail, something that has never particularly interested me. I grew up professionally at a time when these departments were support systems for us. Now they dominate the work lives of most researchers, who already use a large amount of time reporting to the granting agencies that give them money to do research. Updating the latter is important, I grant that, but it is not necessary to update them several times a year. Once a year is enough. 

Many pathologists with whom I used to work are leaving the public healthcare system for private labs. I can totally understand this. I wish I had left the public healthcare system years ago. Thankfully there are more private research labs to choose among at present, so that younger researchers don't have to tolerate what we older researchers had to tolerate. The private labs are efficient; they don't waste time on endless meetings and they let their employees do their jobs. A friend of mine, who is now retired, put it this way; he said that all he wanted to do was go to work and do the job he was paid to do. But he couldn't, because he had a boss who insisted that he go to useless meetings and learn administrative systems for which he had little use. What is the point of all of this? He told me that this emphasis on administrative systems is now called New Office Management. Whoopee. I suppose it replaces New Public Management? Who the heck knows, and who the heck cares?

Life has different stages, different chapters. Best to start a new chapter when you have the health and presence of mind to do so. Best to start anew with a sense of anticipation, of fun, of adventure. So no, I don't regret retiring. I transitioned into a new life, one that I'm grateful for and one that makes me happy. If other people don't accept that, that's their problem, not mine. 

Reflections on workism

I learned a new word from an article I read yesterday in The New York Times. I'll get to the article in a moment. The new word is 'workism'; it is defined as follows: 

What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one's identity and life's purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work........(https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/)

The article itself was the transcript of an interview between Rogé Karma, the staff editor for The Ezra Klein Show, and Sarah Jaffe, an author who has written a book called Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (Transcript: Rogé Karma Interviews Sarah Jaffe for ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com). I sent the link to a few of my friends whom I know will enjoy reading it, because we have discussed several aspects of this topic earlier. The interview provides food for thought and discussion but not concrete solutions for how to deal with the problem, and it clearly is a problem (Workism Is Making Americans Miserable - Marcellus). There are a lot of research studies being conducted about the effects of workism on the lives of Americans. 

Americans have been overworking for years and the word workaholism was often used to describe the almost addictive behavior that many workers exhibited. They had to be at the office no matter what, and it was not uncommon for them to announce that whenever you ran into some of them. They wore their workaholism like a badge of honor, even though it affected their physical and mental health. They worked overtime, on weekends, during their free time. They lived, breathed and ate work at the expense of their family and social lives. I personally know a woman (in New York) who had a high-powered job for which she sacrificed her social life. That meant rarely getting together with good friends; her husband worked at an equally high-powered job so apart from their jobs and raising two children with the help of a live-in nanny, their lives were quite socially isolated. I'm not sure how she feels about her choices today as a sixty-five year old woman, but back in the 1980s 'marrying your job' was almost encouraged for women. Women had to get ahead, make inroads, compete with and in the same way as men. Women's magazines (e.g. Ms. magazine) encouraged this way of thinking. It was hard not to be affected by it all, because the allure of work was already strong without the hype surrounding it. Remember, we grew up in an America where the work ethic was alpha and omega. It was drummed into us that having a strong work ethic was important, that getting a good job (well-paying) was important. A college education would make the latter possible. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Nose to the grindstone, whether it meant studying hard or working hard or both. I remember it well. I started working part-time jobs when I was fourteen, and each summer I got agitated if I couldn't find a summer job. In my twenties, I worked at my first lab job and finished my biology master's degree at night. I switched jobs (another lab job) and began an MBA program after work. When my father died I realized that I couldn't do it all and quit the MBA program in order to focus on my work and on having free time to be together with friends (not always easy when your commute to and from Manhattan was about two hours long). When I moved abroad I worked sixty-hour weeks, as did my husband. We were scientists working in the lab and we loved what we did. I spent six years doing my PhD alongside my job. I don't think we worried about whether our jobs loved us back. But a certain amount of our identity came from our work. We were concerned with doing good research and publishing the results of that work, and we did that well until the way of doing research changed drastically around 2005. I'll come back to that. But suffice it to say that we overworked ourselves for many years. Do I regret it? No, I don't. We were not real workaholics because we did not sacrifice our personal lives for our work. We got together often with friends and family, raised a child, pursued our hobbies, took vacations, and did all those things that make for a good life outside of work. Now that I'm retired, I do wonder if one of the reasons I retired early is because I literally ran out of steam, physically. I was tired. Perhaps no wonder. Having retired, I don't miss work nor do I miss the workplace atmosphere of competition and politics. 

When I moved to Norway in my thirties, it took me quite a while to get used to having four weeks of summer vacation. In the States, I hardly used my summer vacation so that it accumulated and my workplace had to remind me to take my two weeks each year. I remember sitting by the pool at the apartment complex where I lived on a few of those vacation days during the hot New Jersey summers, wondering what I was going to do and how I would use the time. I spent one vacation visiting a friend in Kentucky; another time I visited another friend who had moved to Michigan. But by and large I really didn't know what to do with 'all that free time'. The same was true for several years after I moved to Norway. And then it changed. Slowly I began to look forward to summer vacations. My husband and I traveled around Europe. I traveled back to New York for a week or two at a time to visit family and friends, and still do that each summer. I began to relish having free time. The only time I had ever had so much time off (four weeks) was when I was still working in Manhattan and had a major operation that forced me to recover at home for six to eight weeks. I couldn't do much physically so I had to learn to lie on the sofa and take it easy, read, listen to music, write, do photography, and play with my cats. I wasn't married then so I spent that time by myself. It was an eye-opener and quite valuable, as the forced time off showed me that I had an identity apart from 'employee'. 

'Workism' has apparently taken over American work life. Work has become an all-consuming activity and the sole source of a person's identity according to the articles I've been reading. Companies want more and more from their employees without paying them more. At the same time they want them to be motivated and happy workers. Companies are interested in efficiency and production and have developed all sorts of novel ways to measure both. Control of employees is paramount. Smart phones have made it possible for work to invade all aspects of life at all times of the day. Employees feel obligated to answer emails at all hours of the day. Leadership courses promote the idea of motivation as being paramount for a good workplace environment; the idea of transactional work, going to work to get a paycheck and doing just what you need in order to get that paycheck, is discouraged. Nowadays you go to work to get motivated, to enhance your life and your identity. Work provides your identity and the main purpose of your life. Nowadays your work should feed your soul, heart, body and mind. But what if work doesn't do that? The majority of employees don't experience work in this way, yet they are told the opposite. It is a recipe for misery, yes. 

Has workism taken hold in Norway? Yes, it has to a large degree. I can only speak for the scientific community, but my impression is that many scientists derive their identity and life's purpose from their work and that they have bought into the workism hype. The workism hype includes all the tricks that workplaces (university hospitals and universities) use to maintain control over their employees, to keep them efficient and productive. Around 2005, the way of doing science in Norway changed. Policies surrounding the way that science was organized and conducted changed, determined by the government. First came the large centers of excellence (idea adapted from the USA and England), where one or two group leaders received huge amounts of funding to organize research centers devoted to one specific field of research, e.g. molecular cancer or personalized medicine. These centers created extensive networks with other centers, nationally and internationally. The emphasis was on creating large research groups at the expense of small ones; the latter were left to their own devices, most of them without further funding, so many of them ceased to exist after a time. Those who carried on did so knowing they would not get funding and knowing too that they would be harassed, mocked or ignored. At the same time, researchers were told that their output was to be controlled and measured continually via progress reports, internal reports, impact factors and H-indices. All of these determined your worth and identity as a scientist. The greater the output (publications in high-impact factor journals, PhD students, book chapters, courses, etc.) and the higher your H-index, the greater your chances of getting funding and the better you were as a scientist. I've written about this many times before. Scientists with funding in Norway are considered to be 'good' scientists; those without are considered to be 'bad' ones. Black and white, no in-between. Think big and dream big (and throw in the buzzword innovation) and you're a 'good' scientist, think small and you're not. Scientists without funding don't 'work hard enough' in the view of the 'good' scientists. The 'good' scientists are those who find a way to constantly remind others (the bad scientists) that they're the best--they work the hardest, they're at work all the time, they get the most funding, they live/breathe/sleep science, and they have the most students (translated, they're popular). Their identity is totally wrapped up in their work. They have no insight into themselves or others and possess little empathy for others. They complain a lot. They complain that they work too hard but they wear their overwork like a badge of honor. They complain that they have hundreds of emails to answer, too many meetings to attend, but they would never trade away the irritations for the 'boring' lives of the scientists they label as 'bad'. They like to complain because that's part of their identity. They have little else in their lives that motivates or drives them, and in some cases they resort to borderline ethical behavior in order to keep what money they've gotten, e.g. trying to intimidate granting agencies into giving them money they mean is rightfully due them as the great scientists they are. They can't wait for the 'bad' scientists to quit or retire, because that frees up more money for them or their cronies. The hype surrounding them is that they are important; the reality is something else again. The undercurrent in Norway at present is that you should be working, always, and that extends even to retirees. Whenever I bring up volunteer work as a possible activity for retirees, people get quiet. They don't know what to say. You should be working and getting paid for it. After all, we're talking identity, we're talking prestige, status, importance. Retirement is not looked upon favorably here as it is in America. It rankles several people in their seventies whom I know here that they 'had to retire' because they had reached retirement age. They resent being made to feel old; the truth is that they derive their identities from their jobs. They resent the loss of their identities. That does not describe me. 

Social interactions, faith/religion, and extracurricular activities outside of work used to contribute to a healthy self-image and identity. The idea that work will be the sole contributor to creating our identities is a very misguided one. When things are going well at work, we don't think about our vulnerability in the workplace. It is not until we are threatened with the loss of our jobs that we 'wake up' and realize that we may be spending too much time at the office and that the rest of our lives deserve as much if not more attention and focus. It is not until we burn out or hit the wall that we realize that we can actually lose our motivation for a job and that sometimes it is nearly impossible to get it back. That forces us to rethink things. I think it's healthy to hit the wall, even though it's painful and uncomfortable. It's our minds and bodies telling us that they have had enough, that they cannot continue doing what they've been doing anymore. 

I am flying in the face of every leadership and motivational course I have attended during the past ten years when I say that we should return to or adopt a transactional approach to work, as in, I the worker will do the work stipulated in the contract I sign with my workplace for a set salary. If I do more work than stipulated then I will receive overtime for it. If the workplace wants me to be available after hours and on weekends, then they must pay for that. White collar workers, e.g., academic research scientists, typically are not unionized (in Norway they are) and the idea of transactional work would not appeal to most of them. They are used to giving their all and working long hours to make it in order to obtain permanent jobs and tenure. Most don't obtain these things; the hype in Norway is that you will after four years in one position and it's one big lie. Scientific academia is an elite profession populated by elitists who have no interest in opening up the field to all. It is not a profession populated by truly great visionary scientists, teachers and writers, although you do find them. So therefore I think that a transactional approach to the profession is warranted. Some of the younger scientists here are starting to think in that way; science is a job, like any other. They want a 9 to 5 life with weekends and evenings free and time for family and friends. Why shouldn't they have that? Just because the reigning powers that be say otherwise?

You find out how much you are worth to your workplace when you are sick, need time off for personal issues, or when management has to get rid of a certain percentage of its workforce. If the company needs to fire you, they will, no questions asked, no mercy. Firing is transactional; there is nothing motivational about it, as in, we need to fire you, you need to leave, you will get unemployment etc. until you get a new job. No emotions involved, just pure efficiency. That's how it should be when an employee decides to quit his or her job. No emotions, just do it. The reality is something else again because workers grow attached to their co-workers. But if we had a less work-centered approach to life, we could leave workplaces behind much easier, and that would contribute to changing how workplaces deal with employees. My recent reading has indicated that up to the pandemic year, most power was centered in workplace management. Post-pandemic, much less so. Employees simply don't want to return to 'what was' and many have quit their jobs. The pendulum swung too far in the wrong direction, where employees were little more than pieces on a chessboard, moved around at the whims of their employers. Told to accept any and all changes at a moment's notice (don't be resistant to change--that's anathema to management). Told to be available at all hours in order to increase efficiency and productivity, regardless of what that does to employees' personal lives. Time will tell in terms of what develops, but I hope that younger employees especially retain their newfound power and that necessary changes in policies are made so that Americans (and others) can get their lives back. 

The demise of workplace loyalty

Modern leadership courses emphasize many things, but loyalty to one’s workplace is not one of them. Loyalty (my definition of it) is considered to be old-fashioned; what’s important is being able to navigate the many and continual changes that come your way as an employee. Don't become too attached to anything because it could all change tomorrow. Don't become too attached or loyal to a project, a job, or a good leader. Be ready to let go of all of it immediately, because you may very well be asked to do that. Be ready for change at all times. That is the modern workplace mantra.  

As long as employees do not resist the many changes that are foisted upon them, they are considered 'loyal' in the way that management likes. That is the modern definition of workplace loyalty. If management decides that an employee should move to a new location and start anew, it is expected that the employee do that without questioning the wisdom of their decision. Modern workplace loyalty is doing and saying what workplace leadership wants you to do and say; it is not doing and saying what is often the truth and what is often best for oneself and one’s workplace, because the truth is generally not appreciated, or rather, management does not often wish to be reminded of it, especially when it comes into conflict with the plans and strategies that management wishes to implement. Most managers are not interested in hearing your thoughts/opinions about their decisions, whether they are about your job or the workplace at large. If management decides that a merger is the best course of action for a workplace, they effectuate it even if most employees are opposed to it. That has been my experience in huge public sector workplaces. Employees must simply find a way to deal with the outcome, even if it is an obvious failure on many levels. If management decides that personnel budget cuts are the way to reduce operating costs, they effectuate them, despite the protests and complaints by the employees affected directly by them. If management decides that the remaining employees are to do the work of the employees who have been let go, they will put a spin on that decision and foist it upon the remaining employees. If productivity decreases as a result of this decision, management will not allow employees to remind them that this is a direct result of the budget cuts. Management refuses to face the truth--that it is not possible for two people to do the work of five. Modern workplaces are all about saving money ad nauseam but making sure that top leaders get the generous salaries they feel they deserve. And so on. 

Leaders would rather not have to deal with such a tiresome virtue as loyalty, with employees who want what's best for their workplace, who like their workplace, their colleagues, the camaraderie, the shared history, and the interesting projects. It's difficult for most employees to live up to the version of modern worker that most modern workplaces want. The same idea applies when discussions of open office landscapes come up; management will push through that idea despite protests from employees who know from the start how the noise and chaos of open landscapes will affect their productivity. They are not listened to. They are expected to be sheep; just follow management's lead and accept the consequences. If the decision proves to be a huge mistake, they'll find a way to gloss over it so that it is never defined as a mistake. Ergo, it will not be possible to learn from mistakes because there aren't any. 

I don’t understand workplaces that refuse to listen to the good advice and ideas of their employees who have worked there for many years, who know the history of their workplaces and the risks involved in going down a particular path. It’s almost as though the longer you work in one place, the more risk you pose to the implementation of the plans and strategies of management, because they know that long-term employees perhaps cannot adapt or might not want to adapt as readily as short-term employees. They are too loyal to the old way of doing things. I can understand this from management’s point of view, but it’s disconcerting to realize that history, experience, and general knowledge are not valued in the same way as they once were. It’s disconcerting to watch a workplace under new management make the same mistakes as were made ten years ago under an older management. It’s disconcerting to know that they did this because they did not want to listen to the long-term employees. It's disconcerting to watch how long-term employees are pushed aside or frozen out in favor of the younger ones who are more malleable. Eventually, the longer you stay in one workplace out of a misguided sense of loyalty, the less valuable you are to that workplace. That is the definition of a modern workplace. It is no wonder that younger people are less ‘loyal’ in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Why hang around when your ideas and advice are not valued? Many of them shift jobs without compunction after five or seven years. I’ve come to see that as a good thing. I started my career with that attitude, because I felt that at the seven-year mark, one perhaps needed a change of venue. It was important to move on in order to grow and develop. But that was a different era when loyalty between employer and employee was a two-way street. Employers may not have wanted you to leave, and they did their utmost to keep you. That is no longer true. But then I moved to a small country with considerably less career opportunities, and suddenly I had to face the reality that it wouldn’t be easy to shift jobs the way I might have been able to do had I stayed in my own country. So I stayed in one place, in one department, at one hospital. I pursued a doctoral degree, did a postdoc, and became a scientist, all at the same workplace. Many of my colleagues have been the same people for the past thirty years. I grew to like that for the most part—the sense of familiarity and shared history. Thirty years went by. But during the past ten to fifteen years, much has changed, perhaps not unexpectedly. The sense of familiarity and shared history are gone. They have been replaced by a feeling that the sands are constantly shifting under one’s feet. Employees come and go. Decisions are made, work groups established to implement them, and then they are abandoned for reasons that are unclear. Few people seem to complain about the waste of time and effort involved in this type of decision-making, not to mention the huge costs involved. Everything has become very fluid and relative. It often feels like the foundations are no longer strong, or that they are now being built upon shifting sands rather than on solid ground. Many long-term employees have adapted to multiple and continuous changes, but it took time, probably much longer than management preferred. The result however is that long-term employees stand alone. They feel alone and perhaps abandoned. They feel devalued and useless to some extent. The sense of shared history is gone. The sense of pulling together for a real and important goal is gone. It’s a strange feeling. I haven’t decided yet whether I like it, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that management likes this way of doing things.

One long scream

Some people will assume that this is a Covid-19 post because of the title, but it’s not. The pandemic is a part of what I write about, but it’s not the sole focus. One long scream has been building for years in many workplaces, not just mine. But during the past decade, life in my workplace changed irrevocably for many. As in, there was no going back to what was, only moving forward to what could be. The focus became the future. The past was never talked about; the history of my department, how it came to be the way it was, was unimportant. Those of us old enough to remember the past, or who had worked there long enough to know about it, were told that it wasn’t important; no one wanted to hear about it. The present was just ignored in favor of the future. But the present was what needed to be dealt with, except that no one knew how to deal with it or wanted to deal with it because the problems were too many. So it was ignored in favor of all the fancy buzzwords, slogans and catch phrases that would create the future that ‘everyone wanted’ or said was important to have for the sake of productivity and effectiveness. When we were children that was called ‘let’s pretend’.

I don’t mind playing let’s pretend. It’s just that let’s pretend has gone on for many years, and has worn down those employees who tried as hard as they could to implement the many changes and trends that were laid on the table and prioritized. The problem was that there were too many changes and trends, and one could never be certain which change or trend was the one to be prioritized, since priorities shifted on a monthly basis. Courses in how to lead were important, but they didn’t produce better leaders. They produced leaders who were only interested in forcing their employees to adapt to change for change’s sake. There were never good explanations for why this or that change or trend was important. Employees who were resistant or critical were pushed aside, and are still pushed aside, in favor of those who are receptive to every change or trend that gets suggested. It doesn’t matter if the changes or trends cause a lot of upheaval, waste time, are ineffective, or lead to demotivated employees. The leaders and their loyal employees continue on, while those who are critical find it harder and harder with each change to start over and plod on, dreading the next major change, the next trend to attack the workplace that its leaders will embrace warmly and force down the throats of their employees. The pandemic has brought to light how stupid some of these trends that workplaces adopted without question actually are. One of them is packing as many employees as possible into tiny offices, with little room to move or to spread out. Another stupid trend is open office landscapes—placing an entire workforce into one large room, no individual offices, no dividers, no cubicles, no privacy, no quiet time, constant distractions, and a lot of noise. The party line was that open office landscapes were conducive to interaction, communication and collaboration. Employees should embrace them without question. The reality was something else entirely. Most employees want and need some private time, some quiet time, at work. That’s the purpose of offices—one can close a door and shut out the noise if one needs time to think. But that was no longer ‘allowed’. The reason for open office landscapes, as we all know if we cut through the piles of bullshit that have built up, is to save money. Workplaces save money by forcing their employees to sit in one large room together. The pandemic however, has shown just how stupid this trend is. Suddenly the hunt is on to find new solutions for dealing with this problem—the spread of Covid-19 (or any virus for that matter)—in an open office landscape setting. So the solution has been to tell employees to work from home if they can. That must really rub some leaders the wrong way; after all, they lose the ability to totally control their employees. I’ve seen other solutions that have to do with erecting Plexiglas dividers between adjacent desks, or enclosing individual desks in Plexiglas cubicles. It seems to be a return to some kind of individual office thinking. Dare one hope? Can one dream?

I’ve come to the conclusion that leaders and employees who can shift from one change to the next, from one trend to the next, without problems, are surface skaters. They are not interested in depth; it’s unclear what they are really interested in except control. They should be interested in depth; they should be listening to their employees. Because not to do so is simply to invite trouble. Some few do at present. But most do not. They have their visions and preferred ways of doing things, and they simply expect employees to fall in line. After a decade of multiple leaders, multiple leadership styles, fragmentary visions, shifting priorities, stupid changes, stupid trends, wasted time, wasted breath, useless meetings, endless budget cuts (to no avail), poor strategies, poor planning, yet more meetings to undo what was decided upon two or three years ago that took up valuable employee time—some employees experience only one feeling—the desire to scream into the wind, into the boundless future that was promised them, the golden land of promise and opportunity, the utopian landscape, where all workplaces are effective and productive, where all work output can be measured and controlled, where all employees can be controlled. It’s one long scream, a primal scream, a plea really for a return to sanity and to peace, a plea for a return to a time when freedom from control was still to be found in a workplace.

The importance of good leadership

I’ve written about good and bad leadership many times over the past ten years, mostly as relates to a workplace setting. It’s clear to me that bad leadership has a major impact on how employees view their jobs and their career prospects. Bad leadership is narcissistic leadership; leaders who are most concerned about what their employees can do for them, rather than the other way around. Narcissistic leaders are not interested in serving their company or their employees; they are interested in serving themselves. That can define a lot of modern workplaces; one need only take a look at the hefty bonuses given to crappy leaders at the expense of loyal hard-working employees who will never in their lifetime see a fraction of the amount of money that some of the bad leaders rake in. Many of the bad leaders make a mess of one workplace, only to then move on to the next one that is waiting to welcome them with open arms. They are not or cannot be held accountable for the chaos they leave behind, which I think is wrong, especially in public sector workplaces but also in private ones. Your reputation as a destroyer should follow you and hinder you from getting a new leadership position.

Most employees who have been treated poorly do not want to stay in their jobs; unfortunately many do, either because they cannot afford to quit without another job waiting for them (not always the case) or because they have lost the necessary confidence to seek other positions. The latter is not talked about very often, but it is important and an absolutely decisive factor in whether or not an employee actually gets a new position. Nowadays you have to market yourself to the nth degree, and if you don’t have the confidence to do that due to constant harassment or badmouthing by bad leaders, you’ve lost the battle before you even started fighting.

Bad leaders should be fired, pushed aside, frozen out, or ignored. However it happens, they should have their power stripped from them. Unfortunately this rarely happens. But if you work in a workplace long enough, you can be witness to the karma effect, as in, karma is a bitch. Time heals all wounds, as is often said, and it does. What doesn’t kill you does make you stronger. But time often wounds all heels, and that is a good thing for the heels and for those who have been mistreated by them to see, even though it involves the downhill slide of once-deemed-important leaders into a deserved oblivion. No one will miss them or care about them, and in fact, workplaces can begin to really thrive again once they are gone.

And that brings me to the presidential transition in the USA. A transition from a bad leader to a (hopefully) better one. Biden is at least a decent human being, something that cannot honestly be said about Trump. Decency is a good start in my book. If Trump is at all decent, I haven’t seen evidence of it, and I would need to see the evidence before I can change my opinion of him. But he is absolutely not a good leader. I have said it many times before; he squandered the wonderful opportunity he had as a non-politician to really lead the country into a different future, to implement policies and ways of doing things that could have had good effects and lasting change. Instead he chose to dabble with the alt-right, with white supremacists, with haters and bigots, with conspiracy theorists, with the fringe elements that were enabled by him to slither out from under their rocks into prime time. America got a good look at what lives in its underbelly, and it is none too pretty. If you think it’s cool that the underbelly exists, then you must be prepared to live with the consequences. I for one do not think it’s cool that an American president sanctions racism and white supremacy, yells at reporters, makes fun of the disabled, or acts like a spoiled brat on the world stage. I am praying that the era of narcissistic leaders is coming to an end; it has reigned in politics and modern workplaces for far too long. We need a long era of leaders who are willing to serve their constituents (the whole USA when it comes to politics) and their employees when it comes to workplaces. I cannot see how the world will move in a better direction without such leaders to guide us. We must demand good behaviour of our leaders, and they must listen and act accordingly. And if they don’t, we must get rid of them until we find leaders who fit that bill. Anything else is to choose destruction of the values that most of us cherish.  

Some reflections on a Saturday morning.

Every now and then I reflect on my work career, and what it has been like/is like to be a woman in a mostly male-dominated profession (at least when I started out). When I started out in science, it was not unusual to find a preponderance of men in the top positions (professor, research leader, department leader, group leader), whereas the majority of women were research technicians, junior scientists, or assistant professors. Very few were department heads or group leaders. There are more women in science now, and more women in top positions, but that has been a gradual development, and the profession still struggles with the loss of women once they reach the critical points in their careers where they have to decide if they want to be research or group leaders. The demands on their time are intense, and it's often hard to combine that with family life. So that is one problem that I see still exists, almost forty years after I started out in science. The married women I knew who had top positions when I was starting out had husbands who chose less demanding professions, or both had help from nannies when raising their children. However it worked out, women struggled to balance it all, and they are still struggling. Even here in Norway, a lot of the recent surveys have concluded that women still hesitate to invest the time in top leader positions because of the inevitable conflicts with family life. I don't have an answer; I think there will always be a conflict, because it is a question of prioritizing. If we prioritize family life, then our work lives can suffer, and if we prioritize our work lives, our family lives can suffer. Finding the balance is not an easy task. I never had my own children, so I was never faced with that conflict. But of course I was faced with the challenge of not devoting all my waking hours to my work at the expense of my family life. Having a husband who works in the same profession and who understands the demands it makes on our time, has been a godsend. When we were struggling to build careers, we invested a lot of time in our work. I don't regret it, because I am sure that I would have done the same thing no matter what profession I chose. I was raised to work hard and do my best. That meant hard work and long hours in order to become good at something. And I am good at what I do.

The latter is something I think about often now as I approach retirement. Have I done the best job I could do? Have I been a good mentor and leader for the younger women and men coming after me? The answer to the first question is yes, I have done the best job I could do given the talents I have. I have become a good scientist, albeit not a great one, and that is fine with me. I found my niche and did my best. I can honestly say that. I've published nearly one hundred articles, have had the chance to lead a small team of researchers, managed to get funding to support my position until I was hired permanently by my hospital, and have mentored Master and PhD students. I have believed in myself even when the odds were against me. I did not give up on myself, and that is thanks to my early bosses. I had bosses early on (in New York) who pushed me and challenged me to take on new opportunities, some of which I feared. But I did. They saw potential in me and were not afraid to push me to do something with it. But they did it in a respectful way. When I moved to Norway, I confronted new challenges, but without the same level of personal interest from my bosses. They were more interested in their own careers than in mine. I have discovered that this was often the case in academic science (that I grew up with), which is highly competitive. If a senior researcher showed a professional interest in you, it mostly had to do with what you could do for them. The outcome in any case was that both won in a sense--the senior researcher got the necessary lab work done by others, but the junior researchers got publications that helped them in their own careers. So even if the latter felt like slaves at times, it often ended well once they moved up the ladder and started research groups of their own. That is the way it used to be well into the early 2000s. And then it all changed. Younger people no longer had the chance to start their own research groups; they were suddenly expected to work for a senior group leader until they were well into their late 40s/early 50s. A lot of young people simply cannot accept this and leave academia for greener pastures that give them the chances that my husband and I were given in the 1990s. We had an intellectual independence and freedom that is no longer encouraged; now it is expected that you work in a large research group for one senior research leader and that you simply accept your role passively. You are not encouraged to start your own research group, and the (natural) desire to do so is frowned upon--you are looked upon as a troublemaker if you go around stating that you would like more intellectual freedom and independence so that you can start your own research group. I do not support this new way of doing science; it does nothing but create frustration and disappointment in young people in their professional prime. But that's the way it is now. When I talk to young people, I tell them what it was like for my husband and me; I don't want them to think that it was always as restrictive and demotivating as it is now. But it doesn't always register, because young people often think that the present is the only thing that counts. We were like that too, I guess.

The answer to the second question is also yes, with reservations. I had to grow into the role of mentor, and I did make some mistakes early on, especially when a student was stubborn or narcissistic. Nevertheless, I think I have done the best job I could do under sometimes difficult circumstances. I have reflected upon the psychological costs involved in pursuing an academic scientific career. The daily assaults on your self confidence, your expertise, your way of treating students--are many. I realize that I have a healthy self confidence; if I think I am right, it is because I have reflected on a particular situation and come to a conclusion that reflects that investment of time and reflection. It will then be difficult to sway me. I operate using principles that I grew up with--I believe in fair play, respect, and justice, and I behave accordingly. I treat others as I would like to be treated. I have tried to encourage my students to think for themselves, to have their own ideas and opinions, to think creatively. I have tried to get women to stop feeling guilty for saying no when it is their right to do so. So many women still think that saying no, as in--I cannot do this or that for you right now, I have no time, or I have other priorities--is a wrong way to behave. It is not. In my experience, saying no is what gets you noticed (and I am not talking about saying no in a rude way to your boss or about being difficult for the sake of being difficult). Saying no prevents you from becoming someone else's doormat. Saying yes all the time may work out well for some people, but it does not work out well for women. Saying no when necessary may get you labeled as difficult, but that most women can live with, in my opinion, or should get used to living with. Because whatever profession you choose, there will come a time when saying no is what will get you noticed. Saying no says--I am doing the best job I can, and if you want me to do more, then you need to sit down with me and negotiate that. You need to negotiate a reciprocal relationship that is win-win for all, not just for the senior leaders. Women often fall back on the service aspect--serving others, and that is fine, but it is also about taking care of yourself and what you want. Women should not be doormats at work, nor at home, and a workplace culture that pushes women to aspire to being doormats is not a workplace you want to work in. Do you want to take on that extra project for no extra pay and no recognition, at the expense of your free time or your family time, just because your boss asks you to because he or she knows it will get done well if you do it rather than giving it to the shirker in the department? Do you want to be available 24/7 to a workplace that won't think twice about laying you off in times of budget crises?

The word 'professional' has taken on a new meaning for me now after many years in the workforce. I define it as behavior that involves doing the best job you can, in an expert way, without becoming too emotionally involved or too loyal to your workplace. It means being aware of your valuable skills at all junctures. It means visualizing how valuable you are to your present company but also to other workplaces. It means never forgetting that. It means standing up for yourself. It means being able to negotiate with senior leaders about how those skills are to be used. It means being rational, logical, objective, rather than emotional, illogical, and subjective. It means seeing both sides and keeping a cool head in situations where others might become irrational (playing it cool). It means remaining centered in yourself; it means not letting other people push you off balance. Women need to learn more of this, and to learn the value of their own worth. Women also need to give up the idea that they need to be ‘rescuers’. Where you would rush in to save a sinking project that is the result of someone else's negligence (too many women I know), you should hold back and let it sink. You should let the chips fall where they may. You should let the shirkers face the negative feedback; let them face being exposed for the shirkers they are. You should let the bullies and harassers sink and not make excuses for them. You should not defend the demotivators or try to explain away their behavior. You should hold other people accountable for their bad behavior and not keep your mouth shut when you see injustice. You should not just blindly follow the crowd. You should stand apart, express your ideas and opinions, and keep on expressing them, in a professional and respectful way. You should remind yourself that 'being respectful and nice does not define you as a weak person', and that 'saying no does not define you as a bad person'. This is what I say to women now--be professional, have a healthy self-confidence, think for yourselves, and don't become workplace doormats. It's the only way to grow into the best versions of yourselves.

Failure to respond to emails in the workplace--a growing problem

I read this article in today's New York Times:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/opinion/sunday/email-etiquette.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

and it got me to thinking about my own experiences with sending and receiving emails in the workplace. I find myself getting increasingly irritated by the number of people who do not respond to the emails I send them. And I am not a person who sends unnecessary emails. But I am a person who tries to respect the five levels of hierarchical leadership in my workplace, and the multiple managers that I must relate to and communicate with about one issue. I formally report to two leaders, but if I need to send an email to the leaders under them in the hierarchy (four people, all middle-level managers), then I must also cc: the two top leaders. If I send an email to the leaders under the four middle-level managers, then I must cc: the four middle-level managers and the two top leaders, and so on, ad nauseam. Of course this means that the two top leaders get an immense amount of emails that they may not always need to get or respond to. And if there was trust in the workplace, if leaders trusted the managers under them, then they wouldn't need to be copied onto all emails at all times. But the standard m.o. is 'cover your ass'. Employees know this, and also that they will be called onto the carpet if they do anything that their managers are not informed about. And they do get called onto the carpet for daring to do something that a leader or manager has not approved. And so on.

Leaders and managers have no business complaining about the volume of email they receive, especially if they are responsible for and support a system as outlined in the first paragraph. Their jobs require them to respond to emails from their employees, most of whom end up completely stymied and unable to do their jobs properly if they don't get the necessary responses from their managers and leaders.

Failure to respond to emails is rude. Plain rude. I don't mean by this that you as a leader/manager need to respond immediately to an email. But when two weeks go by without a response, that is unacceptable for employees working on a project who require a response from above in order for them to progress with the project. They are stymied, the project is stymied, and the people who depend upon their progress down the line are stymied. This leads to inefficiency and inertia in the workplace.

I also think that failure to respond to emails can be a deliberate tactic to stymie employees who are creative and who have good solutions to problems. It is a way of telling them that their ideas don't matter. I see that very often in my workplace; my co-workers complain about this often. They end up feeling disrespected and unappreciated.

So, as a manager or leader, don't complain that your workplace is inefficient and that your employees are not motivated, when you have not responded properly to their emails that are required by you in order to get approval or permission to do their jobs. No one wants to hear how busy you are, because we are all busy. Stop complaining, stop wasting your time going to endless and useless meetings, and make it a priority to answer your employees' emails. Chances are that if you treat your employees with respect, they will respond in kind. Answer those emails. And maybe, just maybe, efficiency in the workplace will make a comeback.

Navigating workplace politics--some tips

I think so many of the articles on this blog are very good. This is one of them. The tone of most of the articles is realistic, yet optimistic at the same time, and the presentations of the different themes are balanced. The writing is neither artificial nor cloying. Check out some of the other articles--well worth your time.

https://clicktime.com/blog/5-ways-to-tactfully-navigate-workplace-politics/

The goal of workplace harassment

When my book Blindsided--Recognizing and Dealing with Passive Aggressive Leadership in the Workplace was first published in 2008, I was contacted by a woman who worked in conflict resolution. She had read the first edition of my book and wrote to me to tell me that she liked it, but that she wished I had provided more tips and advice on how to deal with such behavior in the workplace.

At the time she contacted me, I found it hard to envision a day when I would be 'free' of the passive aggressive workplace environment in which I found myself (nearly a decade ago). I myself was stuck in a place that caused me to question my capabilities and my sanity. I dealt with leaders at that time who 'knew' my weaknesses and exploited them. They may not have had that as their initial goal, but over time, it moved in that direction because they knew they could 'get to me'. I was subject to their whims and harassment for about a year, during which time I learned (the hard way) how to deal with them. Essentially I learned to 'go around' them. It is a tactic that served me well in grammar and high school with the (very few) teachers I didn't like (or who may not have liked me). I could sit and look directly at them, in rapt attention (or so it seemed), but in reality I was miles away, planning my next move or how I was going to pursue what I wanted to pursue, no matter what. I forgot that tactic over the years, or suppressed it for one reason or another. But I tried this tactic on some of these leaders, and found that it worked. I did not have to overtly fight them; there would have been no point since they 'ruled' and complaining to management above me would not have led to a satisfactory resolution. Sometimes in this life you're on your own and you've got to figure it out for yourself. I did. Through writing and many discussions with other long-suffering colleagues, I learned about workplace behaviors to which I and many colleagues were subjected unwillingly.

When I published the second edition of Blindsided in 2009, I included a chapter called Fighting Back--Survive and Thrive by Being More Assertive, the title of which was suggested to me by the woman who worked in conflict resolution. Her suggestion about including more tips and advice was a good one, and when I re-read them now from this vantage point, I am surprised that I had the presence of mind to expand on some of them. However, I still disagree with her on one major point. She felt that all conflicts could eventually be resolved through listening and good communication. I do not agree. There are some conflicts that cannot be resolved. If all conflicts could be resolved, we would live in a perfect world, and we do not. I felt that way in 2009, and I still feel that way. This doesn't mean that we cannot try to resolve conflicts, just that we should not be overly-disappointed if resolutions are not forthcoming. This applies to conflicts in both our personal lives and our work lives. Sometimes the other party does not want to extend the olive branch, other times it may be us who do not want to do that. Sometimes we just have to walk away from conflicts, or wait until we've become savvy enough to deal with them. I have chosen a new tactic for myself the past year or so. It comes down to this--I do my job and I do it well. I dig deep and find the motivation I need to get the job done. I don't take things personally anymore, and if the goals shift and new priorities overtake the old, I've gotten better about letting go of the old goals and priorities faster. I've learned to let go without suffering the grief that used to accompany having to give up a beloved project to focus on something else. But as luck and fate would have it, I now work for good leaders who respect their employees. A win-win situation, because I work for people who support rather than harass others. That makes it easier to find motivation again.

What I didn't discuss in my book was the goal of the harassers, at least not in detail. After watching the video about trolling, I realized that their behavior had a distinct purpose, and that was to disrupt my focus on my research work. By blindsiding me, they riled me up, slowed me down, distracted me, and pushed me off course. They, and my reaction (taking their behavior personally) cost me at least two years of productive research work. They took away the possibility for me to be the best self I could be at that time. And that was the point. They were/are narcissists, only interested in themselves and their research work. Perhaps they considered me a competitor, or perhaps they were envious of my good relationships with my students. By dismantling the self-confidence of others, they could reduce the number of competitors on the playing field, because competition for research funding is tight. There's something to be said for keeping a cool head when those about you are not doing so. It gives you the power to make informed and common-sense decisions. The fear and anxiety of a decade ago are long gone. A new confidence has taken their place, and it is firmly rooted in a strong belief in self. I am grateful for the lesson learned, and for the fact that I did indeed learn it.

An excellent article about identifying the next generation of leaders for your company

Leadership is a topic that I've written a lot about during the past decade, in this blog but also in several books that I've published. I've written a lot about the poor leadership I've seen and experienced personally, but also about the good (and even great) leaders for whom I've had the privilege of working. What characterizes the latter is their generosity, expansiveness, visionary abilities, and their emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence involves knowing your employees' strengths and weaknesses and acting on that knowledge when trying to find the right person for the job. In order to know this as a leader, you have to be able to talk to your employees.

It's a pleasure to come across an article that makes a lot of excellent points about how to identify leadership potential. More specifically, this article focuses on identifying the next generation of leaders in your company:
https://www.clicktime.com/blog/identify-your-companys-next-generation-of-leaders/

It also makes the point that extroverts don't necessarily make the best leaders. I couldn't agree more. So many 'introverts' have been ignored or passed over when it came time for promotions to leadership positions. During the past decade, the focus on extroversion has been intense. I have no idea why. I've participated in countless numbers of meetings, many of them dominated by extroverts. There was little exchange of ideas; the outcome was often that the introverts declined to participate in future meetings or found ways to get out of them if they could. Not a win-win situation for a company.

Modern workplaces during the past fifteen years or so have often been dominated by extroverts, by Newspeak, by trendy business philosophies, and by a dilution of responsibility that serves no one. Let's hope that the next generation of leaders gets back to business and to an understanding that "your company is only as good as the employees who work for you, and your employees are only as good as the leaders who lead them".

A good article: Ten jobs with the best work-life balance

Back in 2011, I wrote a post about the work-life balance in Norway  (https://paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no/2011/06/work-life-balance-in-norway.html). I made the point that the work-life balance in Norway, and in Scandinavia generally, is better than in the States, for so many reasons, and that is documented in numerous research articles that have studied the topic in depth. I grew up thinking that hard work got you to your goal, and I still think it does. But hard work is not the same as working overtime or working yourself to death. I see that I did not make that point completely clear in my original post. Hard work is not the same as being available to your employer at all hours, on weekends, and on holidays. My point is that it is possible to give what you need to give to your employer and still have a life outside of work. It is possible to work in a focused way for the seven to eight hours you work each day, and then to go home and close the door behind work. It should not make you feel important when your employer contacts you routinely late in the evening with questions and requests for meetings and such things. There may be periods in life when you need to work overtime or on weekends, but this should not be the norm, nor should employers expect this of their employees. Why Americans continue to believe that giving their all to employers is an admirable thing is confounding. Because when the time comes for companies to get rid of employees due to budget cuts, they don't discriminate nor do they waste time, and will do what they need to do regardless of how loyal employees have been or how much time employees have given to their employers. We've seen it time and again.

In that context, I found the following article quite interesting, and wanted to share it with you. It is a list of the ten jobs (US employers) with the best work-life balance. For young people looking to have a balance between work and life outside of work, I urge you to check it out.

https://www.clicktime.com/blog/10-jobs-with-the-best-work-life-balance/

Systemic organizational dishonesty

Modern workplaces are often characterized by their runaway bureaucracy and obsessive need for control and micromanagement of employees by the bureaucrats who have been given an immense amount of power. I don’t think it’s ever been as bad as it is now. We work for the bureaucrats, not the other way around. They were once there to serve us in capacities ranging from secretary to administrative assistant to middle-manager to accountant. They were once there to support their organization's important professional activities. Now it is the regular employees who serve the bureaucrats and who use massive amounts of time and effort trying to coddle them and their whims. Another reorganization for the umpteenth time during the past five years? No problem, we’re on it. We’re adjusting, changing, and evolving—all the time, 24/7. We’re flexible and adaptable. Our budgets are non-existent but hey, we’re smiling. We try our best to accommodate the administrative gurus over us in the system—the ones you never get to know until they decide to get to know you. And usually when they notice you, it won’t be a pleasant experience.

The more nameless and faceless bureaucrats there are, the more systemic dishonesty permeates a workplace. It's that nameless and faceless aspect that allows for it and even encourages it. When you know that you can never be taken for your bad behavior, procedures and routines, you help to construct and defend systemic dishonesty. It goes something like this--take a research institute as a typical example. A scientist receives funding from an external foundation for a project that he has designed, written and applied for. He receives said funding from this foundation. He is informed by email and letter that he has received this funding, and he contacts the accounting department to inform them that it needs to set up an account for him so that the money can be transferred from the foundation to this account so that he can use it to buy consumables for his research project. The money from the foundation is transferred into this newly-created account in mid-November. He looks forward to being able to use it once the new fiscal year starts. January arrives, and he starts to buy needed items for his research project. The orders are processed and he receives the items. April arrives and he suddenly receives a rude and aggressive email from the accounting department saying that his account is in the red and that he needs to cover the deficit with other funds (of which there are none because this is one of those scientists that modern workplaces consider to be non-existent and unimportant because they don’t drag in tons of funding). In other words, he owes his institute money. He checks this new account to make sure that he hasn’t overspent, and he hasn’t. He calls the accounting department, and finds out the following. The accounting department did set up an account for this money; but it was an account that couldn't be transferred into 2018, so as of January 1st, the money just 'disappeared'. The account was in other words zeroed out, and there was no way to find out what happened to the money (no possibility to track it). His institute used it for something else and will not inform the scientist what became of the money. Neither the foundation that granted the money nor the scientist whose money was taken from him understands this accounting practice. It is explained to the scientist in glowing terms—that this is something the accounting department must do to balance the budget. Of course the institute hasn’t stolen the money—it just got placed in another account, one that cannot be accessed by the scientist in question. The scientist continues to insist that this is an unethical practice—that this is stealing money from scientists. But the accounting department does not listen, nor does it care. These types of practices are built into an organization, and they facilitate the systemic dishonesty that I am talking about.

Every time a department or departments within an organization explain away bad behavior, unethical routines and processes, mobbing, harassment, and abuse of employees, they further systemic dishonesty. It grows like a vine, insinuating itself into all aspects of an organization. It is defended by the nameless and faceless bureaucrats who are unable to stand up to an unethical system, to call a spade a spade, and to fight to abolish this system. Such a system will destroy those who try to destroy it. That is almost a given.

But this scientist did not back down. He continued to call what the accounting department did, stealing. He told other scientists in his organization about what had happened. They called it stealing too. He threatened to report the entire incident to the foundation that had granted him the money. And then the accounting department woke up. They became alarmed. A rebel in their system. A resister. A potential destroyer of their carefully-built systemic dishonesty. A rabble-rouser who was going to force them to take responsibility, to be accountable for their behavior. That couldn’t be allowed. So they told this scientist that he couldn’t and shouldn’t contact this foundation, that it would have an unfortunate signal effect. They’re true diplomats when they need to be. The scientist replied that unless they gave him back his money, that he would make the report. And within a few hours, the accounting department caved. And suddenly they were pleasant and accommodating to this scientist. Willing to help him in whatever way they could when he needed to order items for his research. The scientist won this round, and systemic dishonesty lost one round. But the latter continues in the form of banal corruption, unethical practices, cushy seminars for administrative leaders, useless leadership courses, and a host of other useless and non-science related activities that don’t benefit ordinary employees in the least.

Systemically dishonest organizations are full of sycophants, liars, cheats, and unethical individuals. Their boardrooms contain cowards, blowhards, aggressors, harassers, and morally-relative individuals. These systemically-dishonest people envy others who are intellectually inspired by their work (because they themselves are not). They envy scientists who believe in putting their research first and themselves second, who believe in something good in this world. Systemically-dishonest people must destroy that which they cannot embrace or understand. They are the moral nihilists of this world.

Check out the book What Employees Want

I am promoting this new book--What Employees Want and Why Employers Should Make Sure They Get It--because I believe strongly in its message. My hope for modern workplaces is that they begin to foster a culture of respect for all employees, and that workplaces will no longer be tainted by harassment, bullying, disrespect and lack of concern for employees. There is an expression that I like a lot--'Happy wife, happy life'. Well, the same can apply to the workplace--'Happy employee, happy workplace', or 'Respected employee, productive workplace'. Any way you slice it, it comes down to this--if you have people working for you and you want them to be productive and successful, you've got to treat them well and with the respect they deserve. It's a no-brainer in my book, but you wouldn't believe the stubbornness and stupidity that abounds in modern workplaces concerning this issue. Many employers still think that the domineering hard-handed approach works well when trying to motivate employees. In 2017, if you think that, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution, and time will pass you by.

http://tinyurl.com/yd6erksr

Obfuscation as a bureaucratic tactic

My current goal is to simplify my life; it’s really a continuation of a process that started five or six years ago when my workplace decided to make the lives of its employees difficult by making the workplace a more complicated place to be. Simplification, simplification, simplification. Employees are best served by understanding the infrastructure and systems around them, because in so doing, they can do their work efficiently without much fuss and bother. In other words, those systems and infrastructure should be understandable to most. Bureaucracies are best served when employees do not understand the infrastructure and systems around them. Bureaucracies ensure their own existence in this way. They also ensure that employees hit a wall at every turn; the bureaucrats must thus step in to help the employees cope with their new and complicated workplaces. Why are they complicated? Because as sure as tomorrow comes, most modern workplaces have been through one or several reorganizations or mergers that have wreaked havoc on the lives of the employees involved. Bureaucrats to the rescue! They can guide us through the difficult processes by coming up with new and innovative routines and measuring systems, new business philosophies and trends, and increased expectations of employee productivity. Because such expectations always accompany major reorganizations and mergers.  

Obfuscation has become a large part of what drives bureaucracies forward and of what makes them larger. To obfuscate is to confuse; to make obscure or unclear. It is my contention that obfuscation is a strategic tactic to increase the number of administrators such that the ratio of administrators to other types of employees grows ever greater. I don’t have a problem with the existence of bureaucracies; I realize they are there to help us and they do in fact help us. However, I have a problem with them when they become too big. When they lumber forward without any concern for the employees they serve. My goal at work now is to seek out those administrators whom I know will help me (translated—explain things to me in an understandable way), and I have found at least two that take the time to do that, and they are worth their weight in gold to me. Otherwise, we find ourselves at the mercy of a system that does not and will not bother to explain to us why external funds that we have brought in via our grant applications are suddenly no longer ours to use—they go into a ‘big departmental pot’ that exists for general use. We are not told why accounting systems will not permit the transfer of usable funds to the next year if we have not managed to use up the funds we have at our disposal this year (in other words, we are not allowed to determine for ourselves when we want to spend the little money we are granted). We are not told why deficits suddenly appear as surpluses in some monthly accounting reports. There is no sensible (in my book) explanation for why income that is generated this year cannot be included as income in the month of December. The language that is used in some information letters to employees is deliberately vague or confusing. Even some middle-level leaders I know have a hard time understanding the mandates that are handed down to them from high-level bureaucrats/managers. Worse still, the number of forms we have to fill out to get help to fix small problems that could be solved via a telephone call, to order lab consumables, to update on the progress of PhD students, and to update on the progress of a particular project to a funding agency has become overwhelming. Work life is dictated by an endless stream of forms and reports that someone writes, others fill out, and others file away unread. These forms are necessary in the sense that a bureaucrat decided that they were necessary, and as long as they are filled out, the bureaucrat's job is done. It doesn’t matter that we use an inordinate amount of time on such things that are forced upon us. And no matter what type of event occurs at work (with the exception of a Christmas lunch or dinner), we are asked to fill out evaluation reports that are worded in such a way that you are often forced to agree to a way of thinking with which you do not agree.

But that is not the main issue. The main issue is that everything in modern workplaces, at least in the public sector, has become complicated and difficult. Just the idea of applying for research funding from the European Union would stop you dead in your tracks. You need one or two people on your staff who can work full-time on this, something most small research groups do not have. The paper trail is enormous, ditto the amount of time spent on submitting a proposal and writing an application that is likely to be denied funding on the basis of some minute mistake somewhere in the application. It can take several years to apply and to receive a response. In short, it is not worth sending an application because if you are a small research group, you will spend your valuable time on minutiae and not on much else. Real work goes out the window. If you are smart, you avoid these things. But they are examples of systems that are obscure, difficult, confusing and ultimately unclear. The goal becomes unclear. Why am I doing this? Why am I wasting my time? Why don’t I understand? And finally, why does my workplace not want me to understand how it’s run and what is going on? The answer? Knowledge is power. The less employees know about how their workplaces run, the better. Those in power can keep their power and can pretty much do as they like. They can order others about with impunity because no one understands the system enough to know how to fight back. A strange new world, one I do not like and one I do not feel comfortable in. If that makes me a negative employee, then so be it. I want a return to ‘small is beautiful’. I think small is best now because small is understandable, small is transparent, small is clear. I would prefer to work in a small workplace now. It won’t happen, but it is definitely my preference.

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. 

What's wrong with this picture?

I thought I was pretty much finished with writing posts about the stupidity that goes on generally in the workplace and more specifically in my workplace. I was wrong. I doubt I’ll ever be finished, because my workplace continually gives me something to write about.

Believe it or not, the researcher network that is available to scientists (non-MDs) at my hospital is so outdated that it is still using Windows XP to run the computers that were provided to us well over eight or nine years ago. Ditto for the screen, but at least it provides good resolution for the most part. Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft for starters; this is the message that Microsoft has posted on their website: “After 12 years, support for Windows XP ended April 8, 2014. Microsoft will no longer provide security updates or technical support for the Windows XP operating system. It is very important that customers and partners migrate to a modern operating system such as Windows 10”.

It’s got to be at least three years ago that the IT department at my hospital informed us that hospital network users (mostly MDs and a few researchers, myself included) would be getting new computers with the Windows 7 operating system. When I asked at that time what the IT department was planning to do concerning the researcher network that is used by research staff (mostly non-MDs) employed by external grant organizations and not the hospital, the answer was that they were working on a solution but were not there yet. They’re still not there. Most hospital network users received their new computers three years ago; I was not one of them. This past spring, I finally got a hospital computer, but I can understand why most researchers do not want one. The restrictions on what programs can be used/downloaded are major, even if one is only going to use PubMed to search for medical research articles. Permission from the IT department is needed for any software that they have not pre-approved for download. This makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to install any kind of demo software or to upgrade instrument software via the internet (the latter is an annual occurrence for most laboratory instruments). This means that each time we need upgraded software, an applications specialist has to come from whatever company sold us the instrumentation, and that person will charge for the time to travel as well as the time spent in our laboratory to install and test the upgrade. Is this saving the hospital money? The hospital IT department does not want the hospital network users to access the internet in ways that the department cannot control. While I can understand this approach to some degree, it makes it impossible to do extensive literature searches or to download upgrades to existing instrument software, etc.

Sadly, the researcher network hobbles along, but there will come a day (very soon) when it will all come crashing down around us. I am still running the CS2 version of Adobe Acrobat software (it reached version C6 and then Adobe moved to another platform). The CS2 version still works, but my hospital’s researcher network has ceased to provide the latest upgrades/licenses for Adobe software and other software packages highly-discounted/free to its employees as it did ten years ago. So those of us without research funding don’t have the possibility to upgrade any software. The researcher network was a good idea while it lasted; it provided the most useful software free to researchers, or sometimes for a nominal fee. I hardly remember those days; they’re gone forever. What we could count on were the network printers; they functioned well for the most part. Today we were informed that the network printers that most of our Windows XP computers use were moved to a new server. That meant that we lost the printer connections on the old server, where at least the connections worked (we were able to print articles, etc.). The move to the new server has crippled the researcher network since most of the computers are still running Windows XP and cannot seem to ‘see’ the connections to the new server. Translated that means that we cannot print articles, our manuscripts, work plans, etc. I ask you—why are we at work? At home, I have a relatively cheap Acer laptop that is running Windows 10 and all new Microsoft Office programs. It functions very well. I have a printer at home that I can connect to my laptop if I need to print anything. In short, I have a well-functioning home office. Is it any wonder that I prefer working at home?

What irritates me is the following: we hear all the time that the department/hospital doesn’t have the money to do this or that or that the priority is to save money at all costs. In my book, providing a well-functioning infrastructure to your employees is a no-brainer. It should be priority number one on the priority list. In 2017, computers and printers should work, not hang or freeze, and operating systems/software should be up-to-date. If the hospital doesn’t want to support the researcher network anymore, they should just say so and be done with it. This gradual wasting away/starvation project isn’t fooling anyone. But meanwhile, the leaders are still meeting at cushy hotels for two-day meetings/seminars that drain the existing meager budget even further. Apparently these meetings are very important, important enough that the leaders have to travel quite a distance in order to meet up. Bus transportation, hotel room costs, three-course dinners, etc.—my, my, there’s always money for those kinds of things. My question is: why can’t these meetings be held at the hospital for a total of one to two hours, where pressing issues are discussed and dealt with. Save the money it costs to house and feed a group of leaders for more important events such as increasing the salaries of the research staff or bettering the IT infrastructure of the research staff. Drop the annual department seminar for the same reason, and use the money to improve the IT infrastructure in the department. This is an obvious solution but it never seems to be chosen by the department leaders. I have to ask, why not?