The posts below originally appeared on
my political blog at:
The problem of ignoring humanity to allow scope creep
When I was at Uni, one of my lecturers illustrated a point by telling the following story:
Once upon a time (well, no, he didn't start that way), there was an army base. That army base - this was in the far less enlightened mid-20th century - needed a new pit to dump their rubbish in. So, a major told his (see aforementioned comment about less enlightened times- meaning they were sexist) subordinate to take two sticks of dynamite, go out, and blow a hole in the ground to be a new rubbish dump.
The major saluted and snapped out "yes SUH!", decided his superior officer was a nincompoop (remember the era) and told his captain to blow a hole for the rubbish using four sticks of dynamite.
The
captain saluted and snapped out "yes SUH!", decided his superior
officer was a nincompoop, and added more sticks of dynamite - and on it
goes, with each layer adding a bit, until eventually, according to my
lecturer, two boxes of dynamite were used - and blew all the buildings
in the base off their stumps.
I have no idea whether the story was real or not. Given that it was
presented by a Uni lecturer as being real, one would hope so, but . . .
In any case, it raises the issue of scope creep quite nicely.
Where I've been most concerned about this is in how refugees and asylum seekers are treated in detention.
That detention is administrative, not criminal, and yet they are
subjected to abusive conditions including strip and cavity searches -
including
OF CHILDREN.
Where did that "scope creep" come in? Was it political, or in the private company? Was it at the level of the "work face"?
In any case, it breaches the law, and shows a complete and utter
lack of humanity.
What seems to be a decline in humanity has been shown by comparing the distraught coverage of the burning of the airship
"Hindenburg" with the unemotional commentary at the explosion of the space shuttle
"Challenger" just after launch.
What is going wrong that we are losing our humanity and common sense?
Are the people doing a strip search or a cavity search so damaged as human beings that they cannot see the harm, or are they
choosing to ignore the harm, whether out of hate for refugees, a blind Nazi-like devotion to "the rules", or fear of unemployment?
We hear plenty of justification for strip searches, but the discussion is never balanced by hearing of the costs
(or is flawed by stupid decisions such as that which said being strip searched was the same as a team shower environment), so thee has NEVER been proper consideration of the matter.
Lack of human understanding is also an issue here, just as it was years
ago when police and courts were writing domestic violence off as "just a
domestic"
(which still happens in some parts of the world). It
also happens with the harm done by forcing people to give urine samples
in front of another person - possibly of the opposite sex - is equally a
matter of, basically, sexual assault - or at the very least, profound
psychological harm.
The latest manifestation of this lack of humanity is the
forced public partial strip search of a disabled person visiting Parliament.
Were the security guards thinking gaining entry is a matter of
acknowledging or proving submission to their self-perceived authority?
What is
WRONG with people like that?
And there unquestionably
IS something wrong with both the people who do those searches
(incidentally, I consider the USA's TSA agents child abusers) and those who approve them.
Where have we gone so wrong? When did we start putting authority and bureaucracy so far ahead of humanity?
Running multi-employee businesses
I recently wrote a post asking if neoliberal politicians could be
accused of enabling their mates who are third rate managers to abuse
workers to make a profit. Apart from that being a sarcastic, and thus
inherently destructive, question, it is simplistic and not correct - I debunked it myself in that post, which is
here.
That post was split off from this one, which I hadn't got around to completing
(I'm doing a bit of "clear the backlog" today). I now want to finish the rest of that article - and this will be a bit rushed and unpolished.
Neoliberals and others of a
Newtonian mind set
have learned some basic lessons - simple lessons, and are applying
those as best they know, but don't realise the lessons are not
appropriate.
Employees are human beings, not cogs, but to expect them to be self-sacrificing cogs
(this also applies to this point) attacks and damages their humanity, and, apart from the inherent evil
(yes, it meets the definition, as far as I am concerned) of that, that damages their productivity.
To get more out of human beings without damaging them, it is vital to
first learn how to be a genuine human yourself. As an example, when
managers contact employees away on parental leave, they must not make it
about "when can you get back", the manager should be awed at the
privilege they have of being able to share an important part of the life
outside work of the human who is in their employ.
Another key issue here is motivation.
I've heard many neoliberals grumble that pay is an incentive/motivation:
yes, it is, but, when work is invading the privacy and lives of
employees by controlling their social media feed
(much as it used to
try to control what happened in bedrooms through being homophobic;
incidentally, I refuse to mention the company I work for here or even on
my LinkedIn account because of their orders to include a paragraph of
propaganda), the issue of financial compensation becomes utterly inadequate.
Yes, pay is necessary for survival, but to think it should be a primary driver:
(a) ignores the reality of the complexity of human behaviour, and
(b) ignores the development of civilisation, which means that we should be moving beyond basic survival needs.
On the first point, this was realised by the psychological teams running
businesses when they started measuring good and bad perceptions of work
(such as the pay is good, but hours of work are lousy) at the same time -
DECADES ago.
They "get it", but some of the bosses don't.
In truth, I've often suspected that those who make the surly comment
about pay are really complaining because they haven't got the respect
they want - and that disconnect is a measure of a failure to understand
that employees have -or should be able to have - a life.
Humans are not solely cogs in the machinery of a business.
Now, at this point I'm going to quote from my other article:
There are also brilliant, first rate managers - I have a couple now, and had another in the 2000s.
There are two issues here.
Firstly, how do we get more managers to become first rate?
I consider that they need to develop their human competence, stop
focusing exclusively on financial numbers and start to see the bigger
picture
(much as national level politicians should also stop trying
to pretend they have sole control over economies - which are subject to
the vagaries of international events, and have been for centuries) - and stop shoving human interaction issues off to the HR department.
Managers need to be more than a company focused automaton: this is not Japan - and even
there they are slowly realising their willing slavery is
dreadful.
Managers should set examples - for instance, if changing the culture to
one where faults can be admitted, do so. As an illustration of that, if
financial targets for the company are not met, admit that the targets
were unrealistic and apologise
(rather than, perhaps, tell everyone to work extra unpaid overtime to meet the targets).
I sometimes wonder if this problem is unique to Australia. We could
never have had a Google, as we are so focused on grudge, money, and
details. Is that our convict origin? I would hope not, given how many
people have come here since we stopped being a jail for the English, but
that may be offset by the narrative we have stuck to around our convict
start.
We have had employee-owned companies, which I consider a good thing in
principle. However, when the employees have to buy in to the company by
purchasing shares, it becomes an excluding device, rather than an in
including.
(And yes, there are companies - well, at least one - where
shares are allocated to workers automatically without the employee
having to give back money.)
I've also seen things like a Contractor setting one part of a project up
so the workers would get a bonus for completing it early. That wasn't
used on other parts of the project because of technical issues that
required us to proceed slowly and carefully, but in that part of the
project. On the other hand, a couple of decades later I failed to bring a
sub-contractor into the project as an equal partner
(which would have been SO much better), partly because I wanted to try to make a good return, and partly because I wasn't sure
HOW to do so - what would the wording of the agreement be like?
That's actually a pretty good segue into what I suspect is the cure here: education.
However, the education
- which should happen in secondary school - needs to go
beyond the financial nitty gritty and be focused on the human aspect of running a business, including:
- ensuring that employees (workers) are treated well;
- the benefits of treating employees better than the minimum standards of the law; and
- how to set up a visionary / inspiring business, like Google in its
early days, when it really did live by the "don't do the evil thing"
motto.
The second issue is: how do employees, or potential employees, know if a
manager is or could be first or third rate? Well, here are a few
suggestions:
- Do they support safe injecting rooms?
If yes, they are likely to be able to look at the long term outcomes (i.e., keeping people alive long enough to recover), and thus be able to invest in and persist with people, rather than kicking them out quickly.
- If ringing an employee on parental leave, what would they talk about first?
If they first discuss how the child is going, or the employee is finding being a parent, they are likely to
have a realistic perspective on the proper relativities of work and
life - although they will still no doubt expect some overtime and extra
effort.
- If they are involved in their company's IT policies, do they insist on changing passwords every three months? If yes, they may have
a flawed understanding of human behaviour, or problems staying up to
date or accepting evidence. Evidence shows that frequent changes of
passwords is likely to lead to people adopting weaker (easier to
remember) passwords.
- Do they accept climate change is real?
If yes, they may have
a better ability to assess evidence than the deniers, and you are thus
likely to be able to present a case for initiatives, etc and have it
fairly considered - which does mean they will necessarily agree :)
I
consider that neoliberals problems accepting evidence - and this is a
problem found in many, if not all, points of view - is why they both
deny the reality of climate change, and also refuse to admit the
evidence showing that their policies are destructive, not helpful.
(This does not necessarily mean they are scientifically inclined.)
This is all just my perspective, based on four decades of work, and
three decades of fighting neoliberals. You, Dear Reader, may have an
equally valid, but different opinion.
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