MC79 Context is Everything!

You have to think about the situation that the person's in, the company, the leader, the team, the task, your own capacity and if you vary those things then everything can change. I remember you were talking about how you've been delivering training and you had a bad group and you said I didn't go so well and then you spoke to a manager or someone and they said oh you know trying to decide to think you had another group and it went really well and they were like no no no I was the same group as the group. Yes I think it's very important even the last conversation we had about the burnout managing helping other people manage situation repetitive situations that could lead to burnout and the beginning of that you were saying well we've got to look at why some of these situations are happening as well like if you're constantly having to fire people or whatever and of course that is context for most of the time and I think everyone knows this but we forget is that whatever is happening you have not looked at it in isolation if someone is under performing or if a team is going through burnout or all managers are struggling with XY and Z if you continuously just try to fix them it's probably not going to help because there's probably something in the wider context either what's happening in the world in society around then or what's happening in the organization or culture or so I think that I think you're right a lot of our conversations is about yeah but you've got to look at what the context is. I wonder if you could be sort of liberating as a manager to realize that because there are times where you know it's not working for you know you don't feel connected to your team or you're struggling with a project or a situation and you can feel like you're meant to be able to cope with anything but the realization that this context is not one that suits me this context is not one that I'm going to be successful and all that I'm going to be my best in I think can be liberating because it might be that you go you know I'm used to delivering at this high level or or or functioning at this high level feeling a certain way and I'm not feeling that I'm not functioning at that level and if you can step back and say okay well yeah normally I get more support from a manager and I don't know you know normally I'm dealing with an experienced team and this is an experience or whatever the case is if you can understand that there is context that is playing into the situation I think it can help us as managers because it can help us forgive ourselves or be gentle with ourselves to say okay so maybe 75% is the best I'm going to get in this scenario and that's okay you know that's that's the context yeah I've got something to add to that but before we do that let's welcome our listeners around the table who are there ready with a couple of coffee welcome welcome to management cafe we're going to be talking here for about between 20 and 30 minutes lately it's more like a 30 minute mark maybe so we're gonna have to stay from 30 to 40 minutes my name is Pilar or T and with me as always is co-host team Burgess something I would add oh and today we're going to be talking about context at the importance of context as you've probably already gathered something I would add to that is one it helps us to acknowledge that we might not get to where we wanted to because we don't have that context the context is not right but it can also open the door to changing our strategy whatever it is we're doing because if we're trying to do something and we're not getting anywhere but we're focusing on what we and our team are doing and suddenly we realize look this is not working because ABNC then we can try to influence ABRC if that's possible so yeah it's this reminder that organizations are ecosystems and sometimes we forget and ecosystems are complex and affected by all kinds of things yeah and also you know sometimes it's it's good to to just say that this isn't going to work for me because there's what I might need to be affected but there's also what I might want what I how where I want to be where I like to operate and yeah I've got through the situation recently with one of the boards that I was on where one of the board members just said look I've just come to realize that this organization is not a good fit for me and because the structure that she wanted the way she wanted the organization to run and it's sort of efficient to this stuff the organization was incapable of doing it and so it's far better in that scenario to say I'm not going to be happy in this context uh in this situation and so I'd rather spend my time in this situation where I'd be happier better for everyone and I just wish that there was more of that rhetoric and acceptance in organizations that leaving your job is not that you failed it's that you're not a good fit for whatever reason because it's so much around it because then we can yeah then we can acknowledge that we because not everyone will thrive everywhere I think I've I might have been enough definitely talk about the book work rules by Les Leboc who used to be people something at Google and I might have even told you about this this as well I'm sure which is that how when he was there when someone was underperforming in a team instead of going well of course we try and get them to be better but actually one of the options was what can we move you around in the organization until you find your context where you can thrive a bit more and if we can't do that maybe you need to be in another organization to thrive it's so I think that is so refreshing it's not well you don't like it here you can go it's actually look maybe the way which we're operating it's not helping you to be your best and like that that's a really interesting example I think because one of the ways that organizations fail us and that we fail ourselves and and organizations is in that hiring process organizations don't always properly represent what the context is going to be like you know they don't they don't air all their dirty laundry when you're when you're interviewing with them and by the same thing we just want to so so so we might be like well you know this person seems a bit like manager seems a bit micromanaging that project sounds like a bad project of before but you know I want to pay my rent so so I'll take your job and then you know it's a valid decision you got to do what you're going to do but that's something that I think we could all do better at is understanding what environments work best for us and trying to mindfully you know go more towards those environments and list the ones that don't work for us something's coming to mind and it might be relevant or not I was just reading a piece of research the way they looked at employee voice in the call it an alternative organization and by that the way they meant is it was a very flat organization almost all organized but where a place where employees had a lot of say in decision making and there was a lot of autonomy around that so a flat organization so one of the things I took from that study is that in that organization actually some people were struggling to have their voices heard because the different hierarchies that emerged so once you don't have an official hierarchy then you have hierarchies depending on some people might have more information than others we always know that as people hierarchies will emerge and that was actually reducing employee voice in a digital setting this was a distributed organization but again context super specific maybe if this was the same kind of organization it was co-located maybe the experience would be different one of the things they needed they thought that they were saying we need more structure that the more structure you have the stronger the employee voice can be for because there's more structure for them to know where to go to express themselves and everything and again that is so important because sometimes we make assumptions also and think well if it's a if it's an alternative organization that that means everyone can express themselves freely and I would be able to be much more autonomous and be more involved but actually these are the other things that are happening that I need to adapt myself into so it's just come to mind because of that because it's it's not just the hierarchy in the organization it's the fact that they were distributed it was the fact the founder was still around and probably was quite strong on that you know there was all these things that affect our day today actually yeah absolutely absolutely oh and I'm very tempted to go down a whole rabbit hole around let's go for it around and search for work as a bit on projects around the management and one of the things that came to mind that is I remember when people would leave like we'd be higher in terms of uni or even talking to people like undergrads when they're at uni and often they would be like oh you know you said what do you think about doing when you finish it often they'd be like I don't really know I don't know and something that I used to say to them is you know we don't necessarily have to know what you want to do you're making progress even if you just work out what you don't want to do you know so even if it's a process of elimination to say I did some work with spreadsheets like that so I definitely don't want to be doing something work I'll do that all the time like because I think if you say to somebody oh you need to work out what environment best suits you you know organization what type of manager what type of team like it's a huge thing right and maybe you've been working for 40 years you work it out exactly trial and error of that but then amount of time eventually you work your way through the maze but even if it's just pain of words even if it's just saying oh you know I had a manager who was very uncaring and I really struggled with that right so that just that that becomes avoiding that is is progress it helps you work towards a context that's going to work well for you and I think it's really difficult to do in the moment but oftentimes when we've been you know we know when something doesn't feel right and then afterwards you know you should go back and think about it those lessons are really important to be able to come back and and try and think back through what was working what wasn't working what was it that you think was particularly influential in that situation and those then become sort of your guiding points do you know I mean because I was talking to some people about that I met up with some of the some of my former colleagues today and oftentimes when things were at their best we don't actually recognize it yeah you know some every now and then you do and it's magic you know you look around and you think oh I'm gonna remember this moment this was a really great thing that happens but oftentimes you just sort of you know just having good time things going well and then like three years later you look back and go oh there was that six month period you know where everything was magical or everything worked out really well but now it's three years later you know it's it's a long gone yeah and looking back as well and seeing well what was happening for that to be so good and what could I recreate and what what can't I recreate as well if I if you wanted to build on it for example that I think we we often we often forget and it's interesting because sometimes I remember when I was delivering training sometimes the employees were very aware of their context and their culture of course these things come together and it was a question of yeah this this will never work in my organization which you know you can take that out you want but at least there was someone thinking well I'm thinking it's not just about me going to do this but what else is going to happen and then I have to tell you an anecdote of some I mean this is going a little bit I'll tell you this anecdote it's from a very very long time ago that someone told me so an organization had gone through some productivity training and had been told you know one of the things that you can do with your email is say at the bottom of your email I only pick up emails at this time and this time and this time and after the training a week later somebody had gone and sent and put this in their signature and they got so much grief for it because it's just wasn't something that you did there so I mean I know I'm stepping away from context and into culture a little bit but again this is this is important to understand that that depending on where you are things have happened or not yeah it's a bit of a weak example but no no it's a terrific example it's a terrific example because that's one of the signs that it's not right you know if you think oh here's a positive change that I could make that would make this this scenario this situation better for me I think it would really improve it and if you get you know smashed for that if it gets rejected because one of the big dangers with this is that you can think oh for my context I just need you know I just need people to be a little bit more caring and so you can think well okay I'm going to create that environment here and maybe it works right or maybe you spend four years burning yourself out trying to introduce caring into an environment that systematically set up to never care and so I think it's really important that you're able to recognize it's your example is this something that's never going to work here like if the greater organization fully rejects it or if you know if it comes down from on high that's a that's a mass violation and it's really important to you then you know get on the job sites and stuff look into your next job but as opposed to trying to fight it and I'm also thinking that going just going back to this that whoever organized that training because this was external training coming in again how much how much where they aware of what was really going on because I think this happens and this is one of the reasons why I've moved away from training is that I feel a lot of the time sometimes it's just because it's normal to have silos in organizations so sometimes sometimes the training departments seem very cut off from the rest of the organization and and this that same some aren't some aren't but this happens yeah and I realize now how much I've ignored the context and and and what and culture of organizations and what was going on just came in did the thing and and get goed out and yeah oh anyway so yeah I thought I understood the culture and I thought that I was in an environment that worked really well for me and then I my manager left I'm sure I've talked about this before I managed to left and I was like oh we should do this we should do that and I think six weeks later I was out that was out of the shop and I realized that that context my manager had created a little bubble and I was so happy in that bubble you know and then as soon as he left like the bubble the bubble was gone and and then I couldn't survive in there and so that training example I was talking last night to um Nini Fritz who usually talks she has a wonderful business called the Happiness Work Project trying to help remote companies build happier cultures and I talked to her about this like how do you when you're going into an organization and trying to introduce happiness I worry about someone doing that you know if the organization is not up for it you know you can't just sprinkle happiness and have it magically tap root it has to be in fertile ground and what was interesting was she was talking about how when she was engaged the clients that she would typically work with their issue wasn't do we want to be happy or not it was I want this group to be happy I need help in terms of improving on it if you know I mean like the problem was more around implementation than around creation and so I think that's a really in terms of conflict in terms of something succeeding it's much more likely to do it when people like look we know we want to be more like this we're just struggling to actually get there yeah yeah right well I think that um I'm done with my coffee yeah I think that's a good place to live it yes I think we will remember this I think you're right we do we didn't need to talk about it separately because it just comes in all the time so now whenever we think it's coming just listen to that episode if I'm contact with the environment listeners but we'd love to hear whether this is something that you've had to confront because sometimes we only think about these things when we are confronted by them and you'd be really nice to hear some of your anecdotes we share a lot of anecdotes here but if you don't want us to share yours then just let us know if you want to that so managementcafepodcast at gmail.com or over managementcafepodcast.com is a contact form anything else you want to say to the listeners team well look I'd love to get some examples of you know some people of how they know they're in the right context and how they know if it's not right you know like what are the warning signs oh well then coffee's over for us now it's over to you thank you for joining us for this episode of Management Cafe you've been listening to Team Burgess and PRRT remember to subscribe to the show on whatever podcast not to use and if you want to get in touch you can do so over at managementcafepodcast.com coffee's over for us now it's over to you thank you for listening