Random Riffs
Confessions of a Commuting Eavesdropper
February
18
2010
For T.S. Eliot, April’s the cruellest month. I don’t like March. And because it’s my wasteland, I’ve decided to serve up something light this month.
Once upon a time I had what my mother called a “real job.” A salary that got deposited into my bank account at regular intervals, a pension plan to see me through my dotage, a startling array of benefits designed to look after things I didn’t know could happen to me (my teeth now have to fend for themselves), six weeks of holidays, someone to manage my expenses and keep me out of serious trouble, a company car, tax advice, and an allotment of company shares. The other feature of this “real job” was that I kept relatively regular work hours and was able, for this reason, to travel from my home in Oakville to my downtown Toronto office by GO train – a service well-suited to regular people with real jobs keeping regular hours. Not, in other words, well-suited to self-employed consultants − unfortunates without real jobs.
I loved the GO train because rush-hour driving can bring out the worst in me and other parts of my life provided enough of those opportunities. The other reason I loved it was because, as an inveterate eavesdropper, I was able to listen in on the conversations of others as they talked about the craziness of corporate life. (If you’re a regular reader of Random Riffs, you’ll know how instructive I find informal conversations from the edges of organizations can be.) Here are three such overheard conversations that I offer for reflection and contemplation.
Conversation No. 1
I’m calling these guys Tom and Harry – their colleague Dick took an earlier train.
Tom: “Did you hear that we have a new corporate strategy? The president’s taking it to the board next week.”
Harry: “No I didn’t. What is it?”
Tom: “We’re going to become fast followers.”
Harry: “What does that mean?”
Tom: “It means we’re no longer going to do research and new product development but simply keep a close eye on our competitors and quickly follow their lead.”
Harry: “I guess that makes sense. I suppose we can save a lot of money that way.”
Tom: “We can – but that’s not the reason we’re having to go in that direction.”
Harry: “Really? What’s the real reason?”
Tom: “The real reason is that the president has pissed off quite a few of the really creative people and they’ve left the company.” (Tom then went on to run through the list.)
Harry: “Does he know that that’s why they left?”
Tom: “He should … he had fierce fights with every one of them.”
Harry: “I wondered what had happened to those guys. Geeez … I’ll bet the old man doesn’t tell the board that that’s his reason for the fast follower thing. He’ll probably go with the cost saving thing. The board will like that.”
Tom: “Count on it!”
What this exchange suggested to me is that many strategies, although billed as prospective activities, are really retrospective rationalizations.
Conversation No. 2
Again two guys − let’s call them Bill and Fred.
Bill: “Have you been to any of the briefing sessions they’re running on the new HR management and career planning system?”
Fred: “No … have you?”
Bill: “Yes … I went to the one they ran for our department yesterday. It’s very impressive. It’ll incorporate information from the job competency profile and those psychometric tests they had us do a while back, 360 performance evaluations and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember at the moment. They have hand-outs that tell you all that. And from that they’ll know what your potential is … and it will also determine what pay action will be taken. And the final thing – which is really cool – you’ll know what your ranking is within the corporation and in your own department.”
Fred: “Ranking?”
Bill: “Yeah. You’ll know, for example, that you’re, say, 86th in the corporation and, say, 7th in your department. Cool, huh?”
Fred: (After a long pause) “I suppose.” (And after a longer pause.) “Will I know what I have to do to get from, say, 86th to, say, 78th? Or, say, from 7th, to, say, 3rd?”
Bill: “They didn’t say anything about that.”
Fred: “And you didn’t ask?”
Bill: “No.”
Fred: “Well, it seems an obvious question. Otherwise, what’s the point of the ranking?”
Bill: “Yeah … I suppose … good question.”
Conversation No. 3
A foursome this time – three gals and a guy. They’re talking about a new policy that’s just come down. It appears unpopular. I missed the details because I didn’t start eavesdropping early enough but it had something to do with the HR department.
“I’ve often wondered where the human resources thing came from. It used to be called personnel, didn’t it?”
“That’s right, it did.”
“So why did they change? I don’t like the term human resources.”
“I think they thought it sounded grander … more important somehow.”
“Yeah … I can see that. I think they just got tired of always being put down by the financial guys. You know how the company’s always going on about its financial resources. This was their way of saying that people are important too. ”
“Well, changing the name doesn’t make us more important. I still don’t like it. At least calling it personnel recognized that I was a person. You know, person … personnel. I don’t like being thought of as a human resource.”
I wonder what my fellow commuters would have made of an article I recently came across as I was Googling. "Intellectual Capital ROI: A Causal Map of Human Capital Antecedents and Consequents." I kid you not. Not well pleased I suspect. Almost certainly a lot less like persons.
I’ve always thought the notion of a social science as being something of an oxymoron and having the effect of creating an identity crisis for its practitioners − a kind of schizophrenia where one has to choose between being sociable or scientific; being loved or being respected. I become uneasy when we begin to shift towards the scientific side and move into increasing degrees of abstraction and complexity in the ways we think about and treat the world – the slippery slope from persons to human resources to human capital ROI.Riding public transportation and eavesdropping is a wonderful antidote to flights of scientific fancy. What about trying it?
