Lessons from Sandcastles

Back from a relaxing family holiday in beautiful Brittany, which was slightly warmer than here and apart from the odd heavy shower, rained mainly at night.
The first day, we went down to the beach at Carantec to find a man (I’ll call him Pierre) finishing a giant sand sculpture. You can see the very impressive finished product in the left hand photo, surrounded by protective barriers.
Although he was nearly finished, he still spent another four days working on the sculpture. It was fascinating to see him at work and there was always a crowd watching him. He would rework areas so many times. If he was not happy with the goblins nose he would reshape it using water and differently shaped smoothing planes. Every so often he would step back, look at his work and then decide to tweak another piece. He was obviously an Artist who enjoyed his work and we thought it must be nice job being paid to “play with sand”.

Great care was taken to place spotlights, with the cables being buried in a trench in the sand. We all thought this lovely piece would last for ages until the wind and rain wore it away.

Then when we returned on the 15th of July, (the day after the Bastille national holiday) we found just a big mound of sand with children playing on it. The protective barriers and spotlights had been removed. See the top right hand photo. (I could not take a photo without children as they were always playing, so their faces have been blacked out)

I was unpleasantly surprised to see so much lovely work ruined overnight. Pierre obviously did know the sculpture would only last till the 14th. Despite this he still gave 100% to his work, knowing it would be immediately destroyed. The writer Susan Jeffers, believes what ever job you’re in, you should still give it 100%, because that way you’re making the best of your situation and your own mental attitude and thus job satisfaction is likely to improve.

I’ve often found myself in jobs where I know my best efforts are unlikely to result in what I would define as “success”. In these situations it’s important to concentrate on what you can control, not what you can’t. For example, I was brought in to manage a situation when a specific division was failing badly. My role was to resolve the immediate crisis. I quickly found some employees had been very badly treated and there appeared to be limited understanding or commitment to rectifying these issues. This was a huge contributory factor to the general under performance of this particular organisation. I did not have the power or authority to resolve many of these issues.
I thought about walking away as it appeared unlikely I could solve the division’s problems. I felt however I could make some improvement and from a career perspective did want to gain experience in this particular sector

So I detached, from the individual employee issues, and concentrated on the process. This meant my work effort went into developing processes and procedures that supported better treatment of employees, which in turn supported better performance.
Ultimately, the situation did improve, not to the extent I would have liked, but I did obtain valuable experience and the organisation was satisfied.

Being able to detach, but stay focused and not try to control every situation is important in so many walks of life. Whether you’re dealing with relationship difficulties, your children, trying to get a new job, or studying for exams.
For example, You can’t control whether you’ll get your ideal job, but you can control how you present your CV, how much company research you do, whether you practice potential interview questions, how you dress, whether you arrive for the interview on time. etc

Pierre could not control what happened to his beautiful sand sculpture, but he really seemed to enjoy putting it together. Perhaps he also got job satisfaction from the obvious appreciation of the watching chrowd.
So focusing on the job rather than the end result will enable increased job satisfaction.




Note
If you find yourself constantly worrying about how to control or manage events and people in your life, you might find Melodie Beattie’s book, “Beyond co-dependency” gives useful insights. The Americanisms can be irritating but it’s still well worthwhile.


Key words
career builder
career advice dublin
career guidance ireland
detaching from work

Bravery and your own path

I’m off on holidays today, so there will be no blog entries for 2 weeks as I take my own advice, that I give to clients. An occasional break from work is important. Ryan has an alternative view, but I don’t agree with this, despite loving the work I do with clients. The office is still open as Fionnuala is continues to work.

Here’s a web site link to a short video from Monday9am films which produce films to provoke reflection on life.
This one, on the bravery needed to follow your own path, is well worth watching and it's only 6 minutes long.

You will need broadband for this and a PC less than than 2 years old.

Hope you enjoy the film.

What’s gets measured gets managed

In the business world, it can seem that every thing gets measured. Customer service times, speed of response, employee performance, etc. However, in the not for profit sector it’s argued that “what we do” is beyond measurement. However, a few measurements in the Neary case case would have identified a serious problem at a much earlier stage with action taken to manage the problem of unnecessary surgical operation.


I believe a balance between the two extremes is important, not just for organisations but for individuals.
For example, a client was feeling guilty because she was never available for additional work hours, due to other commitments. We suggested she look at how she was performing on her section’s customer service targets. Turns out she was the top performer in her area. One guilt issue that was quickly solved!

Any one interested in their career and work should constantly measure how they are performing. In Quo Vadis Solutions we do this by either a short written survey or verbal review after a number of sessions. So just because we cannot quantify “hard” results we can measure client satisfaction.
You should always be aware of what the key measurements for your area of work are. For example, you’re unlikely to get too much credit for dealing with your customer complaints effectively, if the key performance measure is zero customer complaints.

In the not for profit world, useful measurements are more difficult to establish.
Teachers have complained long and hard about school league tables as an ineffective measure of performance. They have a point, but in the absence of other information, people are going to use school league tables.
Research has indicated the relationship between teacher and pupil is key to good learning outcomes. It’s now possible to objectively assess this even with younger pupils by getting the children to draw a picture of themselves and the teacher. See BPS Blog for more details. So this measurement could provide useful information for teachers and parents.

A friend gave up volunteer work with a drug rehab centre. The centre officially opened at 9:30. Often however it never actually opened until around 9:45, with queues of marginalised people waiting outside. He felt this was very disrespectful and undermined the centre’s ethos of supporting their clients. The centre lost a talented volunteer, because they did not measure or manage the times the centre actually opened, and were not receptive to feedback on this issue.

Headway, one of my favourite charities, works with people with acquired brain injuries (Road traffic accidents, stroke etc). Some of their clients have very limited abilities, with speech mumbled and perhaps paralysis from the neck down. Difficult to establish measurements in these cases. What Headway do however, is painstakingly agree with every client a personal written goal plan. This identifies what the client wants to achieve. It can be as small as learning to shave again, or bigger, perhaps learning how to use a computer. The service provided is then measured against this plan and updated as necessary. The key measurement here is feedback from the client, which drives the management of the service provided.

Can there be an over emphasis on measurements?
Definitely, yes, just look at the , Inspector Gadget blog for an example of too much focus on one measurement. The accountancy world has also been guilty of too much focus on a single profit figure, with the psychometrics people focusing on the conscientiousness factor as a key indicator of success in matching people to jobs. This assumes high conscientiousness means people will perform well, but ignores how interested or motivated they may be in the particular job. All factors which also impact job performance.

So, if you’re serious about managing your career, make sure you’re measuring a number of different angles on your work performance such as customers, cost, service, people relationships, quality, job satisfaction, etc, as this will enable you to develop your own self awareness and thus career happiness.



Related entries
When hard work is not enough

Why Feedback is good for you


career builder
career advice dublin
career guidance ireland
job satisfaction ireland

Mental Health is a workplace issue

The Taoiseach made some off the cuff remarks about suicide, this week. He has apologised for these. There’s been substantial media coverage indicating mental health is still a “delicate” issue in Ireland.

The World Health Organisation (2001) describes mental health as follows:

“It is a state of well-being, which the individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.

So good mental health enables a good quality of life and allows people to participate in life.

A recent survey of 30,000 employees by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development in England found mental health illness, is second only to musculoskeletal conditions as a cause of employee absence.
No directly comparable figures are available for Ireland, but various groups have estimated one in 4 people will experience a mental health problem at some point in their lives. This means most families in Ireland are affected. If you’re reading this in the office, look up, because if there’s four or more people in the office around you, one of you is statistically likely to experience mental health problems.

Uunder the Health and Safety Act 1989, all employers are required to identify and safeguard against all health and safety risks. Stress is a contributory factor to mental health problems so employers have a responsibility in this respect.
See Mental Health Ireland for more information on this area.

Not feeling appreciated, work overload, or not enjoying your work can be a key cause of stress which can lead to depression.
Feeling sad or down is a normal part of life. If however these feelings have affected your ability to function at work or home and have lasted more than two weeks, you may be suffering from depression. Black Dog is a good Australian web site which has an reliable online questionnaire for checking if you have depression. It is not, however intended to be a substitute for clinical advice and you should check in with your GP, if doubts remain.

In Ireland, unfortunately, there is still a huge stigma about mental health problems, as the reaction to the Taoiseach’s comments shows. Saying you have a back problem is socially acceptable, but mention depression and it could impact your career.
Unless you work in an organisation which demonstrates and acts with strong values of respect and integrity, I reluctantly don’t recommend disclosing mental health issues such as depression if you can avoid it.

Part of this ongoing stigma is down to the woefully inadequate mental health services, which punishes people by making services difficult to obtain and treats service users in a totally disrespectful way. Strong words I know, but backed up by plenty of evidence. See the Government’s own Mental Health Report for the facts.

So don’t feel you’re abnormal, if you do have mental health issues, and don’t suffer in silence. If the first person you approach can’t or won’t help, keep trying.



Other articles of interest
How to stay stressed
how to choose a counsellor