The Office Jungle

What if I held a gun to your head and told you to give me your wallet? You still have a choice. In a flash you will consider the options:

• Hand over the wallet = possibly not get shot.

• Keep the wallet = possibly be killed.

• Duck or run away = could end up with wallet and life, but could lose both if not quick enough.

Now, take a good long look at your surmountable barriers. How many are you going to bother taking a pop at? And how much effort are you willing to put in? Be realistic.

Be positive too, though. Don’t listen to that voice in your head that’s always telling you it’s not worth the hassle. Changes do get made and things do get achieved. ‘Why bother – it’ll never do any good’ is the war-cry of the defeatist. You’re basing this pattern of thinking on unrealistic evaluations. Assess and re-assess situations, but do it logically, not emotionally. Don’t second-guess other peoples’ reactions to your ideas or suggestions in a negative way.

Draw up written, step-by-step plans for dealing with each of your barriers. They can be long-term or short-term and should consist of as many alternative steps as you can list, so that you have different methods if your first strategy fails.

For instance, imagine you’ve decided to tackle the problem about working for a manager who can’t manage. One line of action might be to book an appointment for a long meeting with him or her to discuss the problem in an assertive, non-emotional way.

Or – you can plan a transfer to another boss.

Or – how about planning to replace them yourself?

Or – maybe change jobs?

This is of course simplification – but it gives an idea of the shape your plans might take.

ACTION PLAN:

1 Make a list of all the things you feel are preventing you from achieving what you want to achieve. Decide which of these things you plan to overcome and write out a realistic blueprint of action. Make time limits, too, if you feel brave enough.

2 Identify and dispose of the emotional carrier bags you’re lugging around at work. They will only work against you.

6 The Skills of Fuzzy Logic

Three of your biggest time-wasters and problem-creators in the culture of office work are:

1 Pointless and ineffectual moaning and whingeing.

2 Constant criticism for mistakes made.

3 Looking around to cast the blame when something goes wrong.

Banish these from your shagpile – they are counter-productive and outdated working methods.

Moaning

Is the following an accurate description of you? You are a compulsive serial victim with an extremely unpleasant passive/aggressive sado-masochistic streak. To put it another way, you are hooked on the pity of others but lack the guts to tackle the problems you’re moaning about.

You are invariably boring and depressing, using your own personal Tannoy of a mouth to tell everyone within a ten-mile radius how bad your lot is; everyone, that is, but the one person it might be useful to tell – the one who’s caused your problem in the first place.

Long-suffering colleagues waste lungfuls of air offering advice and making suggestions about positive action to you, but then they haven’t got the hang of the ‘role’ you’re demanding they play, have they? The role of a Greek chorus, wailing along in sympathy – an ear without a voice.

Did you not notice how their eyes glazed over when you approached their desks for the first good moan of the day? Did you ever wonder whether perhaps you weren’t enjoying your long-term martyrdom? But then you feel guilty for thinking like that.

The trouble is, whingeing makes you feel better, doesn’t it? But it’s only short term. Wouldn’t it be healthier to crave respect and admiration in the workplace, rather than pity?

When you – the Moaner – do finally decide to act do you go off like a geyser? Instead of tackling a problem while it’s relatively bite-size, do you wait until it’s choking you, until out bursts all the bile, anger and resentment that’s been brewing up for months, or even years?

‘I never said anything about this before, but …’ is the introductory catchphrase to your annual verbal Vesuvius – and then you wonder why your colleagues all turn and run for the exits.

Don’t Moan – Act

Moaning is bad for your self-esteem.

It lacks any sense of loyalty.

It bores people rigid – if your only way of being entertaining is via moaning you are a very sad type of person indeed. Moaning makes you an object of pity.

It uses up energy and time for no discernible purpose. Moans often get related back through a third party. Complaining by proxy is never a good career move.

The Culture of the Negative

You may be a boss who relishes pointing out other people’s mistakes. Maybe you think it’s what you’re there for – to make sure your staff turn out immaculate work as a result of your own gimlet-eyed surveillance?

Did it ever occur to you that you could be the cause of many of those mistakes your staff are making by your own flawed behaviour, though?

The trouble is, our brain has difficulty processing the word – Don’t. It only receives the command. Try this little experiment.

Sit eating lunch or having a quiet coffee with a colleague whose back is facing the office door. Look up and then say to them in confidential tones: ‘Don’t look round now, but …’ You won’t even get any further because their head will be spinning on an axis like the priest’s in The Exorcist. They’ll look round so fast they won’t even catch your last words. All their brain received was the suggestion, not the negative. If you told them to keep looking at you they would have found it easier to obey because the command was positive.

This is why constant criticism can be the antithesis to productive, accurate work. Tell a colleague to be sure not to make a mistake on some work you’ve given them and their brain will only hear the suggestion to make a mistake. If you constantly point out mistakes you only tell staff what they’re doing wrong, not what to do that is right.

People who only get told what they’ve done wrong form an edgy and insecure workforce. Staff who get praised when they get things right will blossom because they know when they’re on the right track.

It’s not just directors and managers who need to remember this. You will happily have a moan at colleagues now and again – but when did you last remember to thank or praise them? Remember, you’re looking at objectives here. Yelling at someone when they screw up may make you feel good in the short-term but it’s not guaranteed to ensure they do better next time – in fact, often the opposite. Genuine praise and thanks are incentives towards improved behaviour.

Thanks a Million

Watch out for insincere-sounding praise, though. Some bosses thank their team too profusely for doing well – when the team know their work was only average. This type of phoneyness will only lose you respect, rather than gain it.

Casting the Nets

The British love apportioning blame. When any misfortune is announced on the news, hours are spent casting blame around in a series of denials and counter-denials that lead to all sides getting so entrenched in self-righteous refutation that nobody remembers to pick up the tab for the problem – making the victim’s suffering worse.

Similar shenanigans will go on in business. As soon as there’s a blunder of any size the cry will go up: ‘Who’s fault was that?’

Again, the message here should be to prioritize your objectives.

Blaming others is like throwing a hot brick about that nobody will want to catch. Accusations lead to denials and arguments. Arguments rarely reach a peaceful solution.

Imagine you lived beneath a dam. One day you notice the dam is leaking. Where is your immediate action best employed:

1 Plugging the hole?

2 Going round screaming ‘Who did that?’ until you all drown?

ACTION PLAN:

1 Act, don’t moan.

2 Give ‘Do’ rather than ‘Don’t’ commands in business. ‘Do this job well’ is a more positive stimulus to the brain than: ‘Don’t make any mistakes’.

3 Avoid spending non-productive time attempting to find out who’s to blame when a job goes wrong – sort it out first, instead. Then sort out how to prevent it happening again. Only then start getting needly if you feel you must.

7 My Company Does … What Exactly?

It is an amazing and sad fact of modern corporate life that many members of an office’s staff will possess only a meagre knowledge of the very company that employs them. Always avoid being one of them.

As corporations expand merge and get taken over by larger firms, a feeling of disinterest and disorientation may grow. The company becomes departmentalized, with often minimal co-operation between those departments. Sometimes rivalry, or even hostility, arises between one department and another. Competition grows internally and staff feel played off against one another.

Knowledge Equals Power

To succeed in your job, whatever your role, you should aim to understand as much as you can about the company itself. Knowledge equals empowerment. The more you know, the better your chances of advancing in your chosen career. (This is not the same thing as knowing your job.)

EXERCISE:

Try answering the following questions:

1 What is the full official name of the company you work for? If there are initials in the title what do those initials stand for?

2 What is the exact address of its headquarters.

3 How many branches does it have overseas and where are they?

4 Who is the owner of the company or who are the directors?

5 What exactly does your company do?

6 What is your company’s main product/service?

7 How is that product/service marketed?

8 Who buys it?

9 In what sort of numbers do they buy it?

10 Do clients buy your products/services because they have to or because they are persuaded to?

11 How good is your product/service – what sort of reputation does it have in the market?

12 Name your company’s main rivals.

13 How do their products/services differ from your own?

14 What image would you say your company would like to present to its clients/customers?

15 Can you describe the prime objectives of your company?

16 How long has your company existed?

17 What role does your department play within your company?

18 If your department were to be surgically removed from your company would the place close down?

19 If your company were to close down tomorrow, would its clients/customers be any worse off for no longer having your product/service available?

20 Is your company running at a profit or loss?

It’s important for your own career that you identify your role in the company as a whole.

The success of your job relies on the success of your company.

Everyone in a business should be pulling in the same direction – but that very rarely happens when the business is large and unwieldy and communication channels faulty. So how much can you do to ensure this doesn’t happen, or repair any damage that has already occurred?

When communications in a company break down, the first thing everyone does is ignore it and the second is to start casting the hot brick of blame once it has been brought to their attention.

Staff blame their managers for never telling them what’s going on. Managers claim they call weekly meetings or issue magazines or handouts but nobody ever attends those meetings or reads the literature. Anyway, we decided to lose the blame culture, didn’t we?

So – before you start saying it’s out of your hands, take time to make a list of anything you could do to improve matters …

The Facts of Life

You need to understand the culture of your own company and the changes that are going on within it.

Change can be frightening and stressful, but your stress will be lessened if you take any opportunity offered to attend open discussions. Without a formal communication process you will end up relying on rumours and office gossip – which is like learning the facts of life from a classmate.

Whenever possible become involved in your company as well as your job. Such involvement will act as a good base when raising your profile, too. If the communication lines are not in place treat this as a barrier to your objectives and see whether it is a surmountable hurdle. Could you ask for the information? Could you set up the meetings?

Baffling though the concept may be, a lot of people will do things if they are asked properly. If someone has information you need or want you could try asking them to tell you. If this sounds simple, it’s because it is – though you may still tend to prefer to go via the round-about system of muttering and complaining.

One – and possibly the easiest – way to find out more about your company is to ask. Saying: ‘I would like to learn more about this company, do you have any literature or information, please?’ is showing an attitude that would rarely get discouraged. This will be perceived by the more aware manager as: ‘A member of staff showing an interest’. At best they will settle down, dewy-eyed, to light up that favourite old briar pipe while you squat breathless at their knees to hear: ‘The History of Flemming and Potts PLC’. Or at worst they’ll accuse you of spying and have you escorted from the premises. It’s worth the risk, though, and there’s usually a video or brochure kicking around somewhere which they can toss in your direction for starters.

Most reception areas are littered with company publications for the perusal of their clients and customers. It’s an interesting concept that in five minutes a visitor to the company can often discover more about a firm than an employee who has worked there for five years.

Read

Most large companies command a high-profile position in the press these days. Study the financial section of your newspaper on a regular basis and look for any mention of not only your own company, but of your main competitors, too. If your company is listed on the stock market, keep a weather eye on the state of the share price – this can often be a strong indicator of the current mood of your firm.

Even smaller companies should have literature they produce for clients. Have a browse some time – most brochures are very good at stating clearly the aims of the company and describing its particular product or service.

Ensure you read bulletin boards and any company literature which is circulated, such as the in-house magazines. Don’t just skim these for any articles you feel are relevant to your department or job, read through the entire material to gain an insight into all aspects of your company’s news.

If you become departmentalized you will be so bogged down with your own job that you will lose track of the way your company does business, and your prioritizing will become illogical. You could find yourself becoming irritated with clients who hold you up from your daily chores. When you answer an outside phone line you may sound offhand and unhelpful, even before you’ve discovered the identity of the caller.

Meetings Without Tears

If informative meetings for staff are called do your best to attend them. If you can’t go because you have other commitments, ask someone who is going to take notes for you. Always show an interest – it encourages managers out of their little hidey-holes.

Never view these get-togethers as an opportunity for a grumble, either. Bosses are like tortoises – the first whiff of aggro and they’ll retreat back into their shells. Many managers will actually avoid calling staff meetings because they tend to degenerate into unruly mud-slinging sessions.

To give the right impression, it’s important that positive noises are made by staff at these meetings. Instead of arriving with a long list of grievances and complaints under your arm, try taking some positive ideas and suggestions along, too.

If you are a manager never underestimate the power of effective communications within your own company. Staff will do a job just because they are told to, but they will do that job much better if they understand why they are doing it and what the overall objectives are.

Making Yourself Visible

Raising your profile within your company is essential for promotion. It’s easy for you to become faceless. Often when you deal with colleagues they’re just a voice on a phone. It’s human nature to distrust what you can’t see, so if they take a long time answering your query or don’t give priority to your requests you may begin to view them as deliberately obstructive.

It is vital, then, that you make time to meet one another – especially if you work in a large firm. Encouraging all-staff seminars where a representative from each department explains their group’s job, objectives and problems, leads to more regular co-operation as well as a sense of unity. Otherwise, you wait till the office Christmas party and, upon seeing that ‘invisible’ colleague in a state of merry drunkenness, have your worst fears confirmed that they’re a wastrel and a layabout.

Socialize

Many firms use social events as useful team-building occasions. Whereas you would probably balk at the idea of attending a boringly presented company seminar outside office hours, you might be keener to join in organized sporting events or outings.

Team sports against rival companies aren’t only a method of letting off steam, they are also a valuable way to get various departments galvanized into co-operative gangs. Seeing colleagues outside the office environment forces you to view them in a fresher, less stereotypical light, too.

ACTION PLAN:

1 Make time to find out more about the company you work for. Information-gather, attend meetings and read company literature.

2 Plan ways to improve communications between colleagues and departments.

3 Raise your profile within your company.

8 Handling Stress

In the fifties you’d have suffered with your nerves and got told to pull yourself together. In the sixties you’d have seen your doctor and been given Valium. In the seventies you were told you were uptight and the cure was to become more laid-back. In the eighties we were diagnosed as suffering from stress and executive burn-out and marinated in aromatherapy oils while we cogitated in our flotation tanks.

Stress is still very much the buzzword of the nineties workplace. Its symptoms are so comfortingly diverse it lends itself to effortless self-diagnosis. You lose your temper? Stress. Forget to do something important? Stress. Have a headache? Stress. Hair-loss, over-eating, spots, gross stupidity, sweating, screaming, weeping or impotence can all nestle beneath the banner of stress-induced symptoms.

Strung Up and Stressed Out

If you think it’s your job causing the stress remember that unemployment is generally considered to be far more stressful. So is spending all that horrible money if you win the lottery. In fact, our brains seem capable of producing adequate stress secretions in virtually any situation.

Holidays are great stress inducers – all that packing and planning combined with those delayed flights and hotels built around sewage farms. Alternatively, if you decide to stay at home and do nothing you can get hit by delayed stress. Haven’t you heard of people who only get ill at weekends or during the week’s holiday they took? Maybe they’d been managing their stress too well on a daily basis and it decided to go on a little holiday too.

Triggers

There is no one trigger for stress, just as there is no one cure.

For really ideal stress-inducing conditions, though, look no further than the average office. The office is the perfect place to succumb to stress – and to moan about it, too. There’s the ‘too-much-work’ stress, the ‘boss-or-colleague-from-hell’ stress, the ‘juggling-home-and-business-life’ stress, and of course the general stress malaise of being cooped up in an unhealthy atmosphere with little in the way of exercise for long periods of time.

Culture Vulture

Are offices healthy places to work? Not particularly – but then, where is? Get a job in a gym and you’ll probably suffer sprains and strains from all the equipment, plus respiratory problems after years of breathing the exhaust fumes from too many pairs of sweaty trainers.

Stress can also make you more susceptible to any illnesses that are doing the rounds. Feeling generally unwell can induce stress.

Don’t despair, though – the good news is there’s a lot you can do to fight back. You can overcome this obstacle just like all the other problems of office life. All it needs is a little fine tuning and the same businesslike planning you apply to the rest of your job. For a start, look at the practical things that cause stress.

Eight Top Tips for a Healthier Office

Caroline Blaazer is a senior consultant at The Industrial Society, and an expert in health and safety at work. Here are her top tips for keeping your own work area as healthy as possible:

1 Adjust the screen of your VDU. The angle and direction of your screen are important to good posture. Remember you should be looking slightly down on it.

Also adjust the colour, definition and contrast. A screen that is too bright can be harsh on the eyes. Then use screen wipes to clean dust off your screen. Static on screens causes dust build-up.

2 Adjust your chair. The right height of chair is also vital to your posture. Remember to move about after forty-five minutes or so, and avoid letting your feet dangle as it is bad for the circulation of the legs.

3 Avoid Repetitive Strain Injury. Take the strain from your upper arms when you type and don’t rest your wrists on the desk. Caroline says the muscles in the upper arms are far better developed for coping with the strain of typing. Laptops are difficult, though, because it’s hard not to hunch over them.

Take a break every forty-five minutes and have a coffee or a walk around. Caroline advises clenching your fists, rotating your shoulders and looking into the distance as a vital muscle-reliever. ‘The musculo-skeletal system is not designed to take static loading,’ according to Caroline, ‘and you need to avoid the chance of it seizing up.’

A good tip would be to have a timer on your desk, set to bleep at each forty-five minute interval, in case you become too entrenched in your work.