The military goes back to school
As we continue our strand of military strategy coming back into the boardroom (it wasn’t intentional but we obviously tapped into something in the management air). Our colleagues on the business education beat have picked up on a reverse trend – how retiring military officers are getting commercial business nous from an executive programmes at Manchester Business School.
Why a good job is hard to find
For those looking for work in these troubled times, there is good and bad news. On the positive side, there are at last “British jobs for British workers” as migrant labour heads home. The bad news? The vacancies include meat packing, sorting potatoes, grating carrots, cleaning, and – the least bad options – working as a retail assistant or in a fast-food restaurant. In Spain, strawberries are being harvested by Spaniards for the first time in years. “Picking strawberries is the last resort, but it’s all there is,” said Jose Maria Gomez, a 29-year-old former construction worker, in The New York Times last month.
As one employment agency manager told this newspaper recently, a new type of job-seeker has emerged. “It’s what I’d call older, middle-aged people who have been in work for 10, 15, 20 years in one place,” she explained, “and now with the climate as it is, they are made redundant and are willing to take on anything. It is heartbreaking.” It is sad seeing highly skilled people being forced to take on semi or unskilled jobs. But while such work may be back-breaking, is it really “heartbreaking” as well? Having a good job – that is, interesting work in civilised conditions – is clearly preferable to having a bad one. But better a miserable job than no job at all.
So with unemployment rising just about everywhere, it might seem an odd time to start a debate on “good work”: what it is and to how create more of it. That is what the Smith Institute, a London think-tank, has done, launching a pamphlet* on the subject at a seminar last week.
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In the workplace, green issues used to be the preserve of activists. Now they are drawing in careerists too.
By factoring sustainability into their day-to-day decision making, managers can gain plaudits from their bosses. Reducing waste, for instance, is a great way to cut costs in a recession. Many companies are also looking to profit from green-tinged government spending plans.
In a new FT Management podcast, Andrew Shapiro of GreenOrder, a sustainability consultancy that helped GE craft its ‘Ecomagination’ strategy, explains why middle managers can profit from a policy of enlightened self-interest when it comes to the environment.
You can listen through the FT’s podcast player or through iTunes.
Harvard Business School runs a week-long course that helps mothers return to paid employment after taking time out to look after a child or children. It’s called ‘A New Path: Setting New Professional Directions’ and costs $5,000.
On behalf of those mothers whose budgets won’t stretch that far, I asked Professor Tim Butler, the course leader, for some free advice in a new FT Management podcast.
Declaring that active parenting is “project management with a capital P and a capital M”, Prof Butler nonetheless suggests that it can be useful for stay-at-home mothers to do voluntary work in order to keep their CV or resumé relevant.
Among other pieces of advice: keep networking. Yes, that’s easier said than done given the time constraints faced by full-time parents, but it can make professional re-entry a lot less daunting.
You can listen to our conversation through the FT’s podcast player, through iTunes or by just clicking this direct link to the MP3 audio file.
Productivity boost… or just snowed under?
Today I have conducted a fascinating experiment. London is covered in up to a foot of snow. Buses have stopped running. The underground train system has been disrupted. Since my physical presence was not really required in the office, I have worked from home.
Here are my findings. On the plus side:
You don’t have to shave.
You can wear unbelievably awful clothes (bad even by the standards colleagues have come to expect from me).
You can have lunch with your spouse and children.
On the negative side:
You are constantly available “just for a minute” to help out on household chores, childcare etc.
You have to suspend office brusqueness and engage other people in civilised conversation.
You can daydream and delay without the shame of getting caught doing it.
Conclusion: Working from home? Not always quite what it is cracked up to be.
It’s a disconcerting feeling. The reassuring noises your bosses used to make about your project have stopped.
You struggle to decode the silence: does it mean that the whole thing will be shut down or is it just that head office has other preoccupations right now?
The horrible deterioration in economic conditions in many countries means that there is no shortage of managers in this situation today. On their behalf, I asked Colin Gautrey, an executive coach and author, for advice.
He recommends following four strategies that mix scenario planning, intelligence gathering and networking. It beats waiting passively for the axe to fall.
You can watch the video here.
Bob Sutton is singing hymns to a 1984 study of peripatetic Methodist ministers.
The Stanford Graduate School of Business professor and author of The No Asshole Rule says it still shows how good leaders have the most impact on teams and small organisations, not vast companies.
Elsewhere:
Welcome back
I am writing this brief note in an unsurprisingly quiet FT office on Monday morning. The world moves on and there is a newspaper to get out, but on December 29 there is a certain unreality to it all. (Not if you live in Gaza, of course. Life is all too real there just now.)
Some colleagues may be grateful for the chance to get out of the house and renew their relationship with their computer screens. After a few days at home during the intense carousing of Christmas, the office may seem pleasingly calm and ordered.
So welcome back to work, those of you who have made it.
You may now agree with my friend Richard Herring, who has observed that there ought to be a Second Law of Relativity: “Time passes more slowly if you spend it with your relatives”.
Stefan Stern writes a column on Tuesdays on management. He is winner of the 2010 Towers Watson award for excellence in HR journalism, and has previously won awards from the Work Foundation and the Management Consultancies Association.
Ravi Mattu is the editor of Business Life, the FT's management features
section, and a former editor of the Mastering Management series. He joined the FT in 2000 from Prospect magazine
Lucy Kellaway writes a column on Mondays on work , poking fun at management fads and jargon and celebrating the ups and downs of office life. She is also the FT's Agony Aunt.
Luke Johnson writes an FT column on Wednesdays on entrepreneurship. He runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and is chairman of the Royal Society of Arts.
Lucy Kellaway, FT columnist and associate editor, offers her solution to your workplace problems in a column in the Financial Times. In the online edition of her Dear Lucy 'agony aunt' column, readers are invited to have a say too.
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