Category: Blog

Ode to the Bird of Courage

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

Today is Thanksgiving, and as an American in London, I’ve had lots of people saying “Happy Thanksgiving!”, followed by “Is that what I’m supposed to say?”

Yes, that’ll do fine. And I’m pleased people are at least vaguely aware of the holiday, because it’s one of my favourites. It conjures lots of great memories of food and family, from the times as a young child when I thought it was a good idea to stoke family arguments about President Clinton, to the last couple of years when I’ve made massive feasts in tiny London flats for friends who’ve never experienced Thanksgiving before but seemed to ‘get it’ immediately.

All holidays are, to some extent, stories – the story of Jesus being born, the story of a guy who tried to blow up Parliament, the story of rebirth and renewal. But Thanksgiving offers two more selling points. First, it’s completely secular, and open to absolutely anyone. And second, as someone who likes stories, I find that it particularly encourages storytelling.

Lots of cultures have some kind of holiday based on the harvest feast. In America, legend has it that 150 pilgrims and Native Americans celebrated the harvest of 1621 by sitting down together for a feast. The historical accuracy of this is highly dubious, not least because of the unneighbourly way early settlers began to treat Native Americans shortly afterwards.

But in the modern version of Thanksgiving, which originates with Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation of a day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father”, it’s not uncommon to go around the table before diving into the meal, each person mentioning what they’re thankful for. It’s a natural invitation to tell a story, invariably one with a happy ending.

Then, there’s the turkey, which – dry, bland, and beige as it is – is certainly the least exciting part of the meal. Hence the glorious side dishes: Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, carrots, mashed potatoes, cornbread, biscuits, pumpkin pie, pecan pie… You get the idea.

But the turkey has had at least one prominent supporter. In a letter to his daughter, Benjamin Franklin bemoaned the choice of the bald eagle as the national bird of the US. “He is a Bird of bad moral Character”, he wrote. “He does not get his Living honestly”.

“The turkey, by contrast, is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

Now, let’s go watch some football.

Feeling like a number?

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

There seem to be many consultancies and operational experts who take the view that businesses function purely as systems. To improve the business, the logic goes, you must make the system more efficient. Cut out waste, grease the cogs, make everything more predictable.

Efficiency certainly has its place, but I wonder whether the days when businesses could get a clear competitive edge through operational improvements alone are behind us.

Take the example of Ford Motor Company. It made radical innovations in vehicle assembly, which put it far ahead of its competitors. But businesses now operate on a much more level playing field – with similar rules, market access, products and methodologies.

These shifts that have taken place allow us to see the roles of people and the roles of business systems as separate but complementary. Systems and technology have freed people from tasks related to implementing the system, allowing them instead to refocus their efforts on creating valuable experiences for customers. The question shouldn’t be ‘How can humans compete with robots?’ but rather ‘How can we quit trying to make humans and robots share the same roles?’ What seems to allow a business to distinguish itself from competitors today is its degree of human engagement – the extent to which people apply their own discretionary effort to the needs of the business.

For most companies in the globalised economy of the 21st century, drawing out the ingenuity held within their people should be a core leadership priority. The clients whom we’ve helped to achieve the greatest success in fostering behaviour change have been those who understand this approach, and who are willing to invest in their people in order to stimulate their discretionary effort and willingness to change. This cannot happen when employees feel their jobs are just one technological advance away from redundancy. We are approached by many organisations facing acute change challenges that they know revolve around the engagement of their people in strategic change – and not just in improving systems.

Philae needs a hero

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

The news that we have landed a probe called Philae on a comet called 67P is breathtaking. And the probe was launched, on its 4-billion mile journey, a full 10 years ago. (The office-wall list of “things we forgot to pack” must have been fascinating and long.)

But scientific exploits always lack the attention they truly deserve. And there is one very good reason for that – they just don’t mean anything…

Hear me out. As an engineer myself, I am confident in arguing that the world we enjoy today is built to an overwhelming degree on the back of humanity’s accumulated scientific knowledge – structures, laws of motion, hygiene and, you know, computers. But why aren’t people generally a little more moved by news of events that may further enhance the lives we live?

The answer lies in the way the stories are told. Stories of scientific breakthroughs suffer by their very nature – they contain facts that we probably can’t yet relate to.

To help us make sense of them, great stories put a protagonist at the heart of the matter, and we judge the protagonist’s reactions and experiences in order to understand the story on our own terms.

So, next time you put a satellite on a comet and you want people to pay attention, think about sending someone up there too. And give the mission an objective we can relate to. Say, the comet contains some natural resource that’s running low back on Earth. And our hero is the only man who can tap that resource. Also, bring in a bit of everyday human drama… say, the hero’s protégé is making a move on his daughter. You could make the whole thing into a film and get the daughter’s dad’s band to do the soundtrack.

I think that would get people’s attention.

“Showing our guests that we care”

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

It’s no great revelation to say that storytelling forms an essential part of who we are, but the role stories play in an institutional setting is only beginning to be understood. Stories are not just a form of communication. As important as such issues as strategy, performance and market placement are, human engagement – the stories of change, empathy, human endeavour and success – plays a vital role in fortunes of the business. These are the stories that engage, motivate and inspire people, and will help create a powerful emotional connection to the business and the journey it’s on. And with emotional connection comes fertile ground for improvement and change.

A great example of this emotional connection played out at a leadership conference we once organised for a global hotel brand. To illustrate one of its strategic priorities — “showing our guests that we care” — one of the delegates, the general manager of a hotel branch, stood up and shared a story. He recalled a time when a father and his sick son were visiting his hotel. They were popular regulars, as the medical centre treating his son was nearby. The night before the son’s chemotherapy began, his father explained to the restaurant staff that his son had decided to shave his head from the outset. And to support him, his father had decided to follow suit.

His request to the head waiter was that when they appeared the following morning for breakfast, that the wait staff didn’t pass comment or react openly to their shaved heads, for fear of embarrassing his son at what was to be the start of a very challenging period of his life.

When they arrived for breakfast, nobody in the room batted an eyelid nor said a word. Four of the waiters, however, had shaved their heads too. Needless to say, many people in that conference were reduced to tears of both pride and empathy as the story was told, and the story is still being told in the organisation to reinforce the fact that they care. And that’s what caring for guests looks and feels like.

The beauty of restrictions

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

Professor Brian Cox, in his latest enthusiastic TV series The Human Universe, used an analogy for rules which really resonated with me in my galaxy of design.

He starts off by illustrating that the rules we currently know of the universe, and of Einstein’s theory of relativity—despite being highly complex—can be written on a single side of an A4 sheet of paper. He then goes on to use the wonderfully sedate world of cricket to show that despite the sport’s having a massive rule book, the game can still have infinitely different outcomes in each match. The rules allow for different outcomes depending on weather, energy levels of the bowler, the length of grass, etc. — all before even considering team strategy.

This got me excited and reminded me of why design is one of a myriad number of professions where restrictions don’t necessarily inhibit progressions. In other words, the existence of rules and complexity allows for greater flexibility and uniqueness. The more restrictions you have, the more you are pushed into thinking more creatively, and the outcome can be incredibly invigorating.

Tony Brook from Spin writes in the book Type Plus that “creativity always has and always will evolve, each era finding its own archetypal visual language. For me the most interesting aspect of such developments historically is when they are first being formed and the clichés, or accepted norms haven’t yet set in.”

After hundreds of years of using the same 26 letters, we are still experimenting with them and eking out more and more ways of working with these letter forms — which can still excite a seasoned world-leading designer in the form of Tony Brook.

Later in the book, esteemed graphic designer and typography writer Yves Peters reminds me of a story I once came across about Dutch typeface designer Gerard Unger. He once proclaimed that “a word is worth a thousand images”. By way of example, he said that you could describe the entire canine subspecies – including all the hundreds of distinctive breeds – with three letters: D, O and G. This is such an incredibly succinct and more efficient way to evoke all these images than, say, setting up a photo shoot with the entire cast of Crufts or commissioning an illustrator to draw fur upon fur for days on end.

When you look at world of type design, reminding yourself of the restrictions of 26 letters, this is where each and every typeface can really revel in its own identity and form its own personality. An effective typeface contributes to the context in which it sits and creates a really exciting and relevant piece of communication.

 

Welcome to Uravan

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

Welcome to Uravan, Colorado, population zero.

No one lives here anymore. It’s not because they’ve slowly moved away. There used to be hundreds, maybe thousands of people here, a school, a post office, a baseball diamond, and – the linchpin of it all – a mine. But the mine closed, and with it, the town.

A wire fence lined with sun-faded biohazard warning signs is the only clue to the historical importance of this place. For decades, miners drew uranium and vanadium out of the ground, hence the town’s name. Its first use was as a yellow pigment. But when Manhattan Project scientists were developing the world’s first atomic weapons, the ones that would later be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, this is where they got their uranium.
Amidst the sound of crickets and wind through the grass, and the very occasional car winding through this sun-baked Rocky Mountain canyon, it’s tough to imagine the destructive power wrought from the ground beneath your feet.

Though I grew up just an hour down the highway, I first learned about this place from an article in the New Yorker, which article points out the powerful irony of how Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been completely rebuilt – and that it’s Uravan that’s now destroyed, fenced off, unsuitable for human habitation.

After World War II, Uravan continued to produce uranium through the Cold War, and then for the nuclear power boom in the 60s and 70s. But by the late 70s, the uranium market had slowed down and shifted largely to Canada, and the adverse health effects of uranium exposure started coming to light. The cleanup began in 1986, bulldozing all the buildings, removing mine tailings, and burying the remains of the town with thick layers of dirt.

The region’s history and mineral richness has come under new consideration lately as the rare earths market heats up again and companies have explored re-opening the mines. Predictably, this prospect has pitted NIMBYs against those who for decades have been victims of the region’s limited economic development. Mining companies claim that their operations have improved massively, mitigating the human and environmental threats of decades past, and that may well be true. But the degree of nostalgia among those in the region for a time when cancer and early death decimated the local population has come as a surprise to many. As a new documentary, Uranium Drive-In, illustrates, many locals seem proud of the region’s past, and eager to see the next chapter of the same story.

Why? I’m not so sure. I suspect part of it has to do with regaining a sense of regional identity, even a unique and historically important one, albeit one that has been so distinctly dangerous. A community that accepts, even prizes, such an inherently hazardous activity as uranium mining takes on a unique regional version of American exceptionalism.

The other lesson here, perhaps, is the crucial importance – and difficulty of attaining – empathy for the other side. Those who want to protect the landscape and those who want to regain economic vitality and regional identity hardly understand each other’s points of view. In conflict, we look for common ground. But here, it’s as if the common ground itself were poisonous.

Who wants a vacation?

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

You may have heard Richard Branson’s announcement that employees at Virgin will no longer face any restrictions on the amount of holiday time they take each year. As long as the work is being done, employees there can now decide for themselves when, how, and for how long they’d like to spend on the beach sipping piña coladas.

Virgin isn’t quite the first to do something like this; IBM, for example, allows employees to buy and sell their holiday allotments in an internal marketplace. But it sounds, at least at first, like a dream holiday policy. And it sounds like a rational response to the changing ways we work in the 21st century.

First of all, employees demand more and more sense of meaning at work; they want to want to be there. In the older perspective, that of workers as wage-earners and clock-watchers, annually allotted holiday time feels like something akin to prison furlough. If work is something we enjoy doing, there’s no reason to think anyone would abuse the freedom to step away for a bit.

Secondly, there’s a growing trend, of course, towards flexible working. Approaches such as working from home, job sharing, flexible hours, etc. – together with constant connectivity – blur the line between ‘working’ and ‘not working’. Vacation, then, could be seen as just another method by which employees figure out for themselves the best combination of approaches to getting stuff done. Employees would determine just how much time away from work they need to keep themselves from burning out.

That said, things could go wrong. My guess would be that most Virgin employees will probably hew to the 25 or so days per year that most UK office workers get* – simply because that’s what they’re used to, and what they probably feel is expected. I recently returned from two weeks away; it was a great way to recharge my energy and sense of perspective, and when I got back, I found that projects I’d been working on had been perfectly well looked after by my colleagues. Employees help cover for vacationing office-mates because they do the same for them; there’s rarely a sense of being put upon to do a bunch of extra work. But this only works because everyone knows it’s fair at the end of the year, that no one’s slagging off any more than anyone else.

This kind of trust could easily break down if the length and frequency of holidays taken by team members begins to vary greatly. Employees could grow to resent covering for their colleagues, which would result in a toxic atmosphere of passive aggression and mistrust. Or, perhaps worst of all, the policy could result in taking significantly fewer holidays, not more; the supposed badges of honour will go to those who take the fewest holidays, not the most. In working cultures under constant threat of workaholism, the open vacation policy could end up having adverse effects on productivity and morale.

As revolutionary as the open vacation policy may sound, I wouldn’t bet on it having much effect on the total time employees take annually. But it could end up being the next big ‘perk’ that forward-looking employers begin to advertise – hollow as it may be.

* In my first job, in the US, I got 10 days of holiday per year, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. This fact strikes my UK colleagues as wondrously nightmarish.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck… it may well be outsourced

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

A recent US court ruling in favour of FedEx drivers in California has highlighted a trend in modern business that has been growing for a long time, but now seems to manifest itself in more and more surprising ways: outsourcing.

Not so long ago, the word conjured images of factories in the far East churning out fast-moving consumer products. But more and more core aspects of business, particularly in customer-facing roles, are handled by other companies on contract, either in the same city or on the other side of the world.

In the FedEx case, the drivers in question had been considered independent contractors by FedEx, even as they wore FedEx uniforms, drove FedEx trucks, and delivered FedEx packages all day long. A judge found that under California law, due to the extent to which the drivers’ actions were directed by FedEx, they were effectively FedEx employees, and were therefore entitled to wages and benefit claims going back several years.

This kind of issue has cropped up with some of our clients, because occasionally the employees in closest contact with customers are actually employees of another company altogether. The person checking you into your flight at the Virgin or BA or United counter, for example, may actually draw a paycheque from Swissport. The person writing this blog might work for one of many marketing agencies peddling content generation and SEO. (Happily, I do in fact work for The Storytellers)

Most of the time, these practices probably make business sense, but can pose a challenge when it comes to cultivating a sense of brand identity for those people who perform core services for the company but are kept, in some sense, at an arm’s length from the business. It’s one thing to get customer service agents to wear the company uniform and use all the right taglines, but it’s quite another thing for them to feel a genuine connection to the culture and fortunes of the business.

The first thing businesses who use outsourced services should do is simply to remember the importance of those roles, and therefore of those people, to the product or service on offer. Make sure corporate communications and events aren’t limited just to those with a company badge or email address. And make sure to approach provider relationships as genuine partnerships, not just service delivery contracts. We’re all scattered enough as it is; maintaining as much organisational cohesiveness as possible will pay dividends for everyone – no matter who they’re working for.

‘We’ve always done it this way…’

Posted on by Nailia Tasseel

In honour of the World War I remembrances going on, this story seems particularly appropriate.

A very meticulous management consultant was visiting a small and somewhat antiquated English manufacturing company to advise on improving general operating efficiency.

She began by reviewing a particular daily report which dealt with aspects of productivity, absentee rates, machine failure, down time, etc. It was completed by hand on a form that seemed to have been photocopied hundreds of times, so several headings and descriptions were no longer legible.

The advisor noticed that a zero had been written in a box in the corner of every daily report for the past year – but the employees filling in the form, many of whose parents and grandparents had worked in the same factory, didn’t actually know what it signified.

Intrigued, the consultant visited the archives to see if she could find a clearer, earlier version of the form. She found reports going back at least 30 years, all with the zero filled in, but none with the heading any more readable.

As she turned to leave the room, frustrated, something caught her eye, a box with a faded yellow label reading ‘master forms’. Sure enough, inside it she found the original daily report in decent condition. In the top right corner was the mysterious box, with the heading clearly shown.

‘No. of air raids today’, it read.