Command and Control

Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile from Pexels

I've just been to the pharmacy to collect my heart drugs. I wore a face mask in the shop for the first time since Covid19 struck. On my walk home, I was pondering why.

It's not to protect me, it's to protect others from me (in case I've got it and don't know it). 

Having exercised pretty strict social and physical distancing from everyone except Mandy, including our grown-up children, I'm fairly sure that I'm not infectious. But I felt the need to reassure the hard-working - and similarly masked - pharmacy staff, that I was being careful on their behalf; that it mattered to me.

Because it does. In the face of what I see as an unseemly and ill-judged race to lift restrictions, I am genuinely concerned that we will soon experience a second wave of the pandemic in the UK.

And I am fearful (that word again) that many others think that it's worth taking the risk of that possibility, to regain some semblance of 'normal' life and freedom of movement and association. To take back control. 

Sound familiar? I'm not judging (well, I'm trying not to).

In the early days of Lockdown, the Government instruction was unambiguous: Stay Home - Protect the NHS - Save Lives. Who wouldn't want to get behind that? It mattered to everyone. So the instruction was pretty universally followed. And the numbers started to go down.

Now it's all gone a bit wooly, a bit less directive, a bit more discretionary. It's introduced an optional element into how we can behave. And we're seeing people respond according to what matters more to them now than it did initially - social interaction, being physically closer, shopping. Their own needs have superseded their willingness to recognise the continuing greater risks of taking the brakes off.

So I'm sticking with it. I'm continuing to maintain 2 metres distancing, to cross the road when someone comes towards me, to use click and collect for the weekly shop rather than go into the store, to wear a facemask if and when I absolutely have to be in a 'confined' environment, to sanitise and/or wash my hands, to work from home.

In my small way, I'm trying to keep you safe from me, just in case.

Footnote: There's a training analogy that could be made here about one of the reasons why people do or don't buy into different kinds of learning - whether it matters to them, whether there's a benefit for them or for others. Compliance training springs to mind. But that feels a bit contrived, so I won't go there. You could probably write that bit yourself anyway.

Remotely Possible

Photo by me

I've just listened to David James (@DavidInLearning) & Perry Timms (@PerryTimms) on the excellent 'Learning & Development Podcast', discussing Remote Working and was particularly struck by their conversation on Remote Leadership; what are the opportunities and challenges for the permanently or mostly remote worker to develop and/or demonstrate leadership when other colleagues or team members are either centralised or are, indeed, remote workers themselves? Can a leader lead others from a remote location? Can L&D support the development of remote workers and leaders inclusively and effectively?

This got me thinking, because for the last ten years of my corporate working life (which I moved on from nearly four years ago) I was being managed, was managing and was part of different distributed teams. As such I experienced many of the highs and lows that David and Perry discussed. 

In a UK-wide organisation, with regional offices and locations across the country, I started out as a one-man department, living on the South Coast of the UK, but reporting to a Director in Scotland, and was initially based in the South West. I drove down on a Monday and back on a Friday. I travelled quite a lot. Then an office opened up in London and I became a commuter. I made the case for and got the budget for a small team, which I recruited, but who were based at their home locations in Wales and Manchester. Although they were working from local offices, they were remote from me and each other. 

Given that our remit was to upskill staff in IT and digital tools country-wide, we used those tools extensively ourselves. My instant chat was always on. My Blackberry was always at my side. My email hummed. We had weekly conference calls and daily IMs, sometimes just to check in and say hello. Every couple of months, either we would travel to a central location for a catch-up or I would travel to them individually to check in and review performance, plan their development etc.

Then we got hold of the corporate Webex account. We never looked back. Our conference calls and one-to-ones became less hassle, cheaper and more effective. We reduced our travel and carbon impacts to the only necessary and in so doing made sure that we got the maximum value out of any face-to-face meetings. We introduced virtual classrooms into our corporate learning mix via a need to socialise a new data protection strategy (pre-GDPR) and train up new DP Managers and on-the-ground officers. Group Legal liked it so much they asked to be trained up themselves and took over and further developed their own DP training offerings. We moved on. Others in the org liked this approach and we were inundated with people wanting to learn how to host their own meetings and learning events with remote colleagues via Webex.

Meanwhile, I was still flying up to Scotland to attend Senior Management Meetings. Occasionally, I'd get an email from my Director demanding to know where we were on such-and-such, usually sent late in the evening and waiting for me, like an unexploded bomb, in the morning. There never was an organisational policy or strategic direction about remote working. So we proceeded until apprehended - which, paradoxically, never happened. And the team grew; again, all remote from me and from each other.

Sometimes tho', I failed. I'd get an email from one of my team wondering where I'd gone, if they'd done something to upset me, why hadn't I been in touch since last week? Or my IM would be received as terse or impatient. Sometimes it was. Sometimes I'd forget to just pick up the phone because I was too busy. Because I was dealing with other stuff. Like Managers do. The positive point tho' was that the team felt able to call me out on it. Sometimes messages got diluted or misinterpreted. Sometimes, it turned out I didn't know everyone as well as I thought I did, nor they me. Ironically, it usually took a face-to-face chat to resolve any misunderstandings. But the work got done and the wheels kept turning.

Ultimately, this approach to team remote working and my management therof proved itself over four years ago when I was suddenly taken ill and admitted to hospital for heart bypass surgery. In my absence, my team stepped up, got on with the work in hand, indeed, took on more - and more innovative - work in my absence.

In conclusion then, thinking about David and Perry's podcast discussion and the questions raised, my view and experience is that remote working, remote leadership and remote learning are all different carriageways of the same two-way street. They can be empowering and effective if thought about and managed empathically from a top-down AND a bottom-up perspective. Office-based and remotely working colleagues, managers and aspiring managers have to take responsibility for their own and their teams' effectiveness when not everyone is in the same room. Trust is a key element in making this work, transparency, inclusion, commitment and yes, courage, as opposed to command and control and digital presenteeism, with the focus on individual, team and organisational performance and business results, should be the watchwords here.

Are You a User or a Pusher?

Relax! I have no interest in your recreational habits. Let me explain where the question comes from and all will become clear.

I came into training as a novice. Having struggled for 12 years to make a career as an actor, and having spent most of those 12 years doing other work to keep the wolf from the door, my wife Mandy (@MandyRG) and I started an IT Training company with another couple in 1989. I had very limited previous exposure to using a computer, nor had I any formal training experience (although I did manage to last a whole term in post-graduate teacher training after I gained my  Drama Degree in 1976).

But that meant that I came to the IT Training business essentially untainted by a lot of background technical knowledge and expertise. I came in as a user of the technology with, frankly, no interest whatsoever in what was going on inside the box. I just wanted to know how to make the software do the things I needed it to do. And that software was still green screen Lotus 123 and WordPerfect!

It was several months - as we slowly built up our client base - before my colleagues were prepared to unleash me on an unsuspecting group of client  Lotus 123 learners. I had had the benefit of being trained by Mandy and had sat in and witnessed her and them training the course and done several dummy runs myself with their helpful feedback. I managed to hold it together and delivered a successful course - but it was to the letter of the albeit very good lesson plan and, if anyone had asked me any questions for which I had not been prepared (and let's face it, there are a million of those), it could all have gone horribly wrong. I was not entirely comfortable with being in that position.

And so we grew the business and I developed both my application and my trainer skills. But my ethos as a trainer was always the user/learner and the context in which they would be using these tools; to make the software work for them and not them to work for it. So we talked to them (as opposed to talked at them).  We asked them what they wanted to do and why they wanted to do it. And, yes, we did have to cover some basics in those days, but even then it was in the context of their jobs and their productivity - as users. 

This was radical stuff in those days! I'd experienced IT training from other people and it was clear that many of them, whilst technically very good indeed, had no understanding of nor empathy with their trainees. They were pushing their knowledge and information at them, rather than discussing their needs and contextualising the learning accordingly.  I personally never learned anything from the pushers, the show and tellers, who would sail through their 'schtick' without pause or concern for whether or not their learners were actually understanding what they were telling them.

And it's still going on. I still come across and hear about many different instances of trainers pushing information onto trainees. Facts piled upon facts. Bullet point after bullet point on text-heavy, graphically-challenged PowerPoint slides. No questions or discussion. And we wonder why people are turning their backs on traditional, classroom-based training.

So, here's an opportunity to reflect back on my original question. On the trainer/facilitator spectrum - are you a user or a pusher?

Your thoughts and comments are very welcome.