Happiness in Meaning
Last month I
attended a conference in Brighton called Meaning.
Meaning has
become something of an annual pilgrimage for me. The conference describes itself as a
"gathering for people who believe business can and must be a force for
positive change in our dynamic and volatile world." In the face of 2016 this felt like a particularly
important mission.
This year there
were a couple of themes I want to draw out. First was Post Capitalism and the suggestion
of dissociating salaries from work. The idea of a Universal Basic Income was
presented as a
means of getting people off benefits in into jobs they cared about and brought strengths
to.
We need to
remember the history, that corporate hierarchies were a construction of the
19th
century born out
of very different circumstances. Back in the day, the majority of people were
uneducated and
therefore required clear direction as to what was required to make a company operate.
The educated people were the upper classes. It made sense that the uneducated people
had limited ability to add value or operate independently and therefore
received less pay and less status; while the educated leadership received power
and pay to tell others what to do.
The reality now
is very different. The majority of people in work are all educated to the same
level, and the nature of our sharing cultures means that all of us can learn
how to build a car engine, make clothes, complete business process analysis,
sell widgets and everything in between. So
how do organisations differentiate themselves to their customers if everyone
can find out what to do? The difference
is in the how. And if the how comes down to building relationships or lateral
problem solving, there is no longer a barrier meaning that one class of person
is better than another. It's human to human.
If we look at
our own lives, what is the benefit of capitalism? We compete with our peers for
the biggest cars, best houses, most expensive schools for our children. We work
hard to achieve leadership positions and then feel huge pressure to justify why
we are there, creating work masks that are exhausting to maintain. People in
their hundreds of thousands are being signed off work with stress related
ailments. For what? Why do we need a bigger car or house? They don't make us
happy. It's getting for having's sake. It's about status. And in order to
achieve status people find themselves doing things that they don't want to do,
or can't do, or would be arrested for doing, just to achieve status symbols to
impress other people... where's the humanity in that?
The happiest
people are actually those that can be themselves at work. Who can use their
inherent
strengths to contribute to something bigger than themselves. They are free to
try new things and fail without judgement. A pay scale or job title don't
enable any of these things.
This brings me
onto the second theme that I took away from Meaning 2016 which was about
empathy. There
were two speakers in particular this year who focused on the importance of
empathy. Jo
Berry who's father was killed in the IRA bomb in Brighton and who has built a
relationship
with the bomber based entirely on empathy (not forgiveness). And Clare Patey
who is the curator of the empathy museum which has a participatory exhibition
that allows people to "walk a mile in my shoes" and physically
experience another person’s shoes while listening to an audio recording of their
story. The empathy museum has huge potential as seen in its use with the NHS
for policy makers to experience the lives of surgeons, trainee doctors, GP receptionists,
prison rehabilitation officers. I found the idea so awakening that I couldn't
believe it hasn't been done for years. Why
do people who have never been teachers make education policy? Why are nurses
told how to nurse better by old businessmen in suits?
In my mind,
Empathy is the key to better business.
It makes us better line managers (how to motivate), better designers
(how will users experience this content), better business developers (what do
our customers want) and better partners (how will this make the other person
feel). Empathy is the key to unlock
another’s world and thus be better in our own.
So what are my
takeaways from Meaning this year? And what can I practically put in place at ANDigital?
11) Is
there a way that we can reduce the focus on status within the organisation and
think about value contribution to the greater good instead?
22) Building
genuine relationships is as important at work as it is at home. Command and control doesn't work anymore; the
future is about co-creation and you can't achieve that with a closed mindset or
attitude. It’s time to bring empathy to
the office.
33) We
have a genuine responsibility to look after our people. Society is changing and a lot of the support
constructs of the past are no longer around.
We are living through times of emotional stress and financial pressure,
not helped by political upheaval. We
need to put mental health on the business agenda and provide the support for
our people that no longer exists elsewhere.
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