Bring back hanging out

This is written on the back of the longest recreational break I have had since I left school in the 1960’s. It all began with a week on a canal boat, which was followed by a friend’s 60^th birthday party, then two weddings on the Pacific coast of North America a fortnight apart and, after a further week, a cousin’s 40^th wedding anniversary. There was even a sort of symmetry about it all – two celebrations for oldies flanking two celebrations for the up and coming generation with a subconscious subtext that relates to passing on a baton of some sort. We, of the post war, baby boomer generation may not have resolved the political, economic and social issues of our times but we have been able to watch our children emerge into a social network of family and friends. In a sense they seem to be better at it than we were, certainly more active as this particular community of cousins has established a lively ‘in your Facebook’ relationship.

Why is this important? Here follows a digression rather than a direct answer. Though each of these celebrations involved an event on a particular day, they were each the focus of concerted involvement of family and friends for days before and after the event. Circumstances, principally being on holiday, allowed us to be involved in these pre- and after-shock happenings which ranged from a visit to the manicurist (for some reason blokes didn’t get to do this) through meals, cycle rides, walks to simply hanging out together.

Now hanging out is a term that I associate with teenagers with nothing better to do, so the experience of ‘whole family hanging out’, as conceptualised by American friends was a novelty to me. It needed to be approached with all sorts of British caution and reserve -‘we don’t want to intrude’, ‘they will need family time’ and so on. We were a little slow to allow our friends to know their own minds and to accept their invitation as an invitation.

Why was the experience something of a revelation to me? Perhaps because in recent years I have been far more willing and able to allocate time to a purpose than purpose to a time. By that I mean that the purposes I espoused were largely limited and specific, with some measurable outcome in prospect. This is not to say that I am not aware of the larger purposes in life and that I do not pay lip service to them; however, my behaviour strongly suggests that I prioritise the specific: reading a book, cutting the grass, even writing a blog. This is strange when the outcome I count as most rewarding is that each of our children not only has an established network of friends but that they are firmly established in their community of cousins.

Returning to the question, why is this important? a couple of words that reflect past experience in the pharmaceutical industry come to mind: verification and validation. Verification confirms my identity, that I am who I am and verification has the greatest authority when it is provided by the family from which I come. As a parent it is reassuring to know that your children’s identity will be verified for them long after I am gone by as wide a community as is possible. Verification is important to us all but is often overlooked. Validation on the other hand is more immediately recognised as a need; it affirms our value and can come from any community of friends or family.

Communities are created by building relationships; relationships are built over time and it seems to me that hanging out is all about allocating the purpose of building relationships to a time, whether it be an hour or an afternoon or a week. If this is something we did in our teens, my message to myself is, “Bring back hanging out”.

Does piece work have a future?

Octinver is a new business and in this early phase of its existence, I have been spending some time thinking about business models. I guess what I do is best described as independent consultancy though I am not entirely happy with that description. One very persuasive approach for the independent consultant, strongly advocated by Alan Weiss, is to use perceived value as the basis for establishing fees and to avoid like the plague using ‘day rates’. He highlights with this guidance the contrast between valuing input as measured by effort multiplied by time as opposed to valuing output directly. On reflection I am convinced that valuing output directly brings obvious benefits for the knowledge worker and for his or her clients; it involves a process of establishing value, a responsibility to provide value and a considerable degree of freedom in how the value is delivered.

It led me to consider how our current pattern of ‘9 to 5’ work has evolved as it appears to a classic example of the ‘effort multiplied by time’ formula. Apart from the obvious fact that the availability daylight probably had something to do with it but I suspect that organised labour began with slavery which then provided the model for patterns of industrial employment. No doubt there is extensive literature on this, ranging from the philosophical through the political to the biographical and one need look no further than Wikipedia to confirm this.

What managers like is control; slavery provided complete control over all aspects of life, wage employment provided pretty extensive control, sanctified through the concept of employment for life which for all its altruism is solidified around the belief that the employer knew best. If managers have control of input then they can manage their resources to generate the output they require.

Given that we have managed to survive and prosper in the developed world without slavery for nearly 200 years, is it possible to envisage a modern society that can flourish without deference to the ticking clock in most if not all instances of what is called work? Is it possible to imagine a more equal society, perhaps not in wealth but in the freedom to decide how to spend time and the confidence to negotiate a value on the output of labour. To keep managers happy the point of control would need to be transferred from input to output; this brings to mind the comparison between ‘push’ and ‘pull’ which is a subject that Hagel and Seely Brown have written about quite extensively. If I am not mistaken it also has something of the ‘kaizen’ approach about it so it is not totally out of sync with recent business thinking.

While it is possible to imagine at least partial manifestations of the ‘pull’ in manufacturing, it requires of me little more determination to see how the ‘pull’ model might work in some service areas of our economy – apart from consultancy that is. Consider for instance security (including the police and fire services), welfare, health care as well as commercial services such as banking. I guess that one of the best examples of a ‘pull’ service might be the lifeboat service in UK which is largely resourced by volunteers. What is also of interest is the increasing prevalence of ‘patient led care’ in the treatment provided by the UK National Health Service. There is experience, then, on which to call for reference when contemplating alternative models of work.

What is really interesting here is that once you get below the surface there is scope for quite radical redesign of working patterns that could be healthier for the individuals and corporations alike.