Editor’s Comment: Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin …

Annie Hayes

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Editor’s Comment: Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin …

By Annie Hayes

If only I could find the box I would try and think outside it; Editor’s Comment looks at why theorists are now asking us to turn the concept of the everyday receptacle and academics’ play toy on its head.

Writing in Fast Company Douglas Rushkoff of New York University said: “In their endless rush to embrace the next big thing, too many businesses have forgotten what they are and what they really do.”

He says companies would benefit from refocusing their efforts on core products rather than product spin-offs and wacky advertising campaigns.

“Get back in the box. You may find it difficult to remember why you were trying to get out of it,” he adds.

And it’s not just Rushkoff that has taken a disliking to anything outside the comfort zone. Speaking at the recent Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development conference, leading author and academic Charles Handy referred to a personal experience and remembered the time when he turned to his employer and said: “I would think out of the box if only I could find it.”

While organisations are in perpetual pursuit of an attempt to compartmentalise workers, many it would seem are still reluctant to embrace the idea that their workers have portfolio personalities. A banker might be a father and husband first and a businessman second.

Yet time and time again we see surveys which demonstrate that employers are finding it difficult to latch onto the concepts of flexible working that will allow a more equitable balance to be attached to these different but very important facets of our workers personalities.

And while they’re busy compartmentalising us they’re more than happy to ask us to think outside our remit. Even when that first stepping stone hasn’t been properly paved in the first place.

And Rushkoff it would seem does have a point. Getting the basics right is really what is important. From these foundations success can surely foster.

The CIPD’s keynote speaker pointed to this. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor told delegates that in turbulent times, the only way to succeed is controlling the circumstances.

“What happens is that people throw out the discipline, the professionalism and start doing things that don’t help them. They start to panic.”

Her message, based on her book: Confidence: how winning streaks and losing streaks begin and end, is that successful turnaround leaders invariably rely on three key ingredients: accountability, collaboration and initiative.

In these organisations, the truth is given a top billing and open government practised. Initiative and team working is also encouraged.

An approach that re-invigorates confidence among the workforce and importantly customers and investors.

And getting back to basics was the magic formula which secured the apparent, miraculous recoveries Moss Kanter talked about at the Garanti Bank in Turkey, Gillette and Continental Airlines. In all these cases the ‘basics’ involved boosting confidence which in turn encouraged people to make more effort.

It’s a message that the government often bang on about but rarely get right. Getting back to basics, being the theme tune of many a political campaign. In practice as they have shown this can be much harder when distractions come along. And those little interruptions like the war in Iraq for Blair just as side-stepping is for business leaders can be the start of a downward spiral.

And don’t get me wrong, innovation is a good thing but what these academics are trying to encourage is a focus on the core products first and the all singing and dancing ideas and innovations second.

I would have done well to remember this when I reflected on the experience of guzzling some mountain berry oxygen at TMP’s CIPD stand this year.

Overcome with nausea rather than the promised refreshment and cleansing experience the O2 bar promised I’d clean forgot (excuse the pun) why I’d visited the stand and could barely remember that it was TMP that were putting on the show.

A fun crowd puller but what was the message? If only I could have found a cardboard comforter ….

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