90% of your workforce doesn't give a crap

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile podcast where Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hi Dave, how are you doing today?

Peter, great to catch up once more and have a bit of a conversation. What are we uh actually we know what we're up to today because we've both been having some conversations this week, um, either conferences, meetups, and so on. And uh it's really interesting when you get some of the it's sort of that question from the audience that comes in. When we're talking about agile, we're talking about DevOps, some of the transformations that we all deal with. And somebody puts their hands up and says, Yeah, that's all well and good, but 90% of the workforce here just doesn't care. They don't give a crap. Why are we doing this?

Exactly. And I and I I love the I love the question. And this this came up in a in a talk about ownership and uh the voice from the audience that said, that's all well and good, but like nobody cares.

So it's a powerful one because it's sometimes you can get blinded by it, right? We know what we're trying to achieve. We're you know, everything's roses, if you like, rose tinted glasses going in. And and I think this is something that uh is actually part of it, is this is what we're trying to work to resolve. You know, on those days when we sit and think about our purpose and what it is that we want to change in the organizations that we work with, so much of it is about how do we make that working environment one where people can walk in with a smile and energy and enthusiasm to tackle the problems which can be significant, complex, unknown, uncertain problems? How do we get that to be rewarding experience?

And and I think that's the a large part of it. It's that uh is the reason that the your workforce doesn't give a crap related to the environment that they're working in and the people that they're turning up and having to spend time with and what it is that they're having to do, like what's driving that and understanding that. Like, why are people disengaged from the workforce? Why are they not wanting to be there and do the work or feel like ownership? And uh, and as leaders, do we have to care?

Well, I mean, you know the answer to that. As leaders, do we have to care? Of course we do. And one of the things I I think we want to bring to the table here is that that is a symptom. It is not a cause. It's not the reason that you're not able to do X, Y, and Z. It's and it's a very worrying symptom. I mean, it's a symptom that says, and we whether you look at employee engagement conversations or happiness, and um how do we measure happiness in the workplace or mental health and well-being, there's lots of different sort of nuances or sides to this conversation. But the reality is most of the people that you and I know spend the majority of their time working somewhere. They work for an organization, they maybe work as individual contributors, but they're they're working somewhere, and you better enjoy it. You'd better have a reason to go into work every day.

Yeah. Uh otherwise it becomes very hard to get up in the morning and and go in and to to do that work. I mean there I mean, there are also we're we're not talking here about, hey, because you enjoy it so much, that means you're going to work longer hours or whatever that that side of it. We're just talking about the the time that you spend at work should be something that you enjoy and you you feel engaged in, and that it is a it because you are spending so much of your time there, then if you don't, there has to be a reason. Like what's driving that?

What are the underlying pieces that potentially are causing you to not want to be there as much and and leave at the end of the day so I think it's a very real problem as well, because um certainly when I talk to yourself, to other people in this industry where we're doing these things, and we kind of get to that conversation about what is why do we do what we do. I think in many, many cases, the reason we're doing the things that we do is we have very uh and I I can just think of all many conversations where people will talk about exact scenarios where they've walked into an organization, they've worked with leaders, with teams, with people who were in one place, and once they've gone through some change, they were in a very different place. They had an energy. Um, and I certainly can think, you know, that that enthusiasm and level of commitment and engagement. I mean, this is what we're looking for on agile teams, and this is what we're talking about within the workforce as a whole. So those things really stand out. They stand out because they're rare, and they I think we're incredibly fortunate to work in an environment where we see that transformation happen in many situations or many cases. But the downside of that is it means that in many organizations that is the case. The workforce are not at 100%, they're not where they would like to perhaps be if they could define where that would be.

Yeah, and I and I'd agree. I mean, I count myself very lucky. I get to work with some fantastic leaders at all levels of different organizations who are uh very often very highly engaged, very interested in uh in changing and doing the best that they possibly can to help the organization and introduce new ideas and new concepts. And that's that's great. It's very energizing for me to and and especially as I get to help these people and watch them go through those changes and introduce these things.

But the you also become aware that not everybody necessarily who's working there is feeling that same way about I mean there's this this sort of theory that um there's sort of one theory that people are motivated and the reason that they're not performing at a fantastic level is because the environment brings them down or or constrains them in some way. The other theory is that people are basically not motivated, and the hard bit is generating, getting them to commit and contribute in some way. Where do you stand on that?

Oh, that's uh it's interesting. I think you in I think there's this element of the larger the organization, the more of this you'll have, but you're gonna have some of both. I think that there's there's bits of if you've had somebody who's gone through a few organizations where they've uh they've been in bad situations, they've experienced uh either leadership which has not set them up for success, or they've been they've had their trust betrayed in one form or another, they can quite often uh come into a next uh role and say, okay, I'm not gonna put any more of my effort in than I have to. I bet this isn't I I'm not I'm not really ever gonna engage. I'm not gonna commit to this relationship as much as I might have done because I've been burnt in the previous relationships. And so as much as you do in any kind of relationship, right?

I'm not gonna follow that line of question. But no, I I think just on the one hand, I think one of the key takeaways is I I'm not even sure that there's no absolutes, right? There's no one or the other 100%. But I believe that um given the opportunity, people want to be engaged and committed and deliver things and and be involved in something that succeeds. I think that's something that they want to be involved with. I don't think people generally wake up going, you know, I don't want to be engaged with the people that I'm working with. I just want to kind of plod through it. Now, not to say that there are many reasons why people may feel that way, but I think we want to be in an environment where we're we're um delivering something, we're achieving something meaningful.

And it's it's interesting as well when you've got um people demonstrating leadership, and I and I put it that way as an I'm not saying leadership in a hierarchical perspective, but people who are within your organization and the teams who are demonstrating leadership and bringing a high level of energy uh and positivity to the situation. Even if you have more people who are more negative potentially in that group, you'll find the ones with the positive energy will often win out and people will feel more engaged and start to want to work in. This has been shown. I mean, there's uh as a one of my favorite books actually, um The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle's got uh one of the first examples he gives is of a social experiment that they ran exactly along those lines where they they showed this that by with with actors, but also bringing those actors in to intentionally disrupt the group, is into intentionally bring the group up. And they they managed to demonstrate this uh as a set of behaviors that we are very impacted uh culturally by the social interactions with the uh people around us in the group.

Well, and I think that reinforces if if our argument is basically, or I'd like to suggest our argument is is the environment that we work in, the people that we surround ourselves with, the work that we're asked to do and the constraint within which we work, how easy or hard it is to achieve that, drives our level of commitment and engagement and you know the happiness or enjoyment of the work. And I think from a leadership perspective, if we we want to recognize that, we want to recognize that we manage the work, we manage the work environment, but we lead the people, and leading the people involves getting that environment right so that people can form and excel in that environment.

Yes, so that they can they can feel committed to it. And I I think some of the there are elements that need to be in place in order to make that happen, of course. It's that you need that leadership that is helping support that and helping the when problems do occur, that there's leadership there to help support people um through those problems. And this so that there needs to be that in place and because that's that environment, that's what helps create that environment that uh will help um people commit to whatever the the message or the mission is that you're trying to achieve.

Well, and what you're what I find interesting, because we work in that space where servant leadership or agile leadership is is is held up as being the place to be, but without any clear definition around it. And um and I think any of us who've worked in this space have either experienced it ourselves in our own leadership journey or seen it in those around us, which is servant leadership, or if I call it agile leadership, that sort of leadership in an agile context, uh, does not mean weak, sort of uh weak leadership where accommodating leadership where anything goes. And I I think that's that's one of those lessons that any of us who've gone through this journey, we go through quite quickly. However, an accommodating leadership style feels like we're being supportive and allowing the team to do whatever they need to do. The reality is there are times when we have to step in and say that behavior is not acceptable, or we have to step in and say the direction, this is the result we need to get, and we need to move towards that and make sure we're measuring our progress towards that, or some other quite uh directive or affirming, firm communication and direction that we might provide as a leader. And that's something that we want to recognize. It's not simply soft leadership the whole time.

Yeah, I think there's probably lessons from appeasement and uh other things that you could probably go into there.

But uh again, maybe a topic for another day and a different channel, but uh well, and and now if we talk about the environment, like if we recognize it's not the people, it's the environment that they're working in. Let's let's carry that forward. And we know that as a leader we're responsible for that environment, and we want to make sure that environment, whether it's risk, you know, the the safety, psychological safety from a communication and positioning perspective, whether it's I mean the other part of the environment is the classic the all of the processes, the decision-making criteria, and the the, you know, I need you to do this, but it feels like everything in the organization is stopping you getting to where you need to be, that part of the environment. Um, what else do you want to see as a leader? What else can they do to overcome this sort of why do I need to care about what's going on around?

I think I think there's um there's many pieces. One part of it is that building out the the trust with the individuals and the people that you're working with. So you're creating an environment where when those barriers come up and when they run into them and you're looking to resolve those, that you're actually taking action to do so. So that when they because one of the problems is that they if you are constantly hitting all of those barriers, you will become demoralized. But and if you then go say, okay, I need to go talk with leadership about how we resolve these, and you're basically getting nowhere fast and nothing seems to be happening or changing, then that's becomes very demoralizing. You so there's there needs to be a response from the system of some kind, something that can show you that uh we we are making progress, we are going to move forward, that there are there are things happening. And if you if from a leadership perspective you make promises about uh removing those barriers and then don't manage to follow through on those, that's another way that uh that trust can quickly get eroded.

Yeah, and I think that's so so that sort of there's a there's a a commitment level from the leaders that you're describing there, which is you know how if if we as leaders say we're going to remove something or change something or investigate some particular impediment, obstacle, whatever it is, and we don't, then we're now not role modeling the sort of behaviors that we are expecting from those. And I think that role modeling, that uh that own ownership ourselves of our responsibilities and the commitments that we make is is very definitely it's a tough one because there are obstacles to our own commitments that make those things difficult to achieve.

Yeah. I think the other one that we were talking about uh before as well was around incentives, of course, the like what drives and what drives behavior. So incentives drive behavior, and that drives you is what creates the culture. And the so having the right incentives and having clear incentives and aligned incentives. We were the example I was giving when we were talking earlier is that the what seems like a good incentive to one may not be a good incentive to another when it's somebody sitting, even if they're sitting right next to each other, right? It's that you you might offer two people the same incentive and they'll have two totally different reactions to that. So the understanding um what is rewarding to different people is um and what uh as you're looking at how you drive behavior, that's important too.

Yeah, well, the the ins so it's in interesting. The conference that I was at, one of the sessions was talking about um change change management and the book Nudge, Richard Thaler and uh uh his co-author in the book Nudge, which introduces this idea of the elephant and the rider, right? The the rider in our, you know, when we're going through change, the rider is the rational piece. We're the ones who say, I'm going to watch the number of calories I eat or do a certain amount of exercise. We make all those rational decisions, and then the elephant is the one that that's our emotional side, which is motivated in a different way or behaves in a different way. It's really tough for us without being aware of it to control that. And the interesting thing on the rider side, that rational piece is they're very attuned to instructions, to those instructions. And so those incentives can't simply be a generic, we need to be in a position one or two in the marketplace. The incentive has to be something that we can directly connect with and act on. And it's tough to get that right. So if I remember rightly, one of the examples was, you know, an advertising campaign that talked about eating healthily. And, you know, eating healthy means eating healthy food sounds pretty clear, except for the instruction isn't clear enough about what healthy food looks like. And that's actually an that's a nuance that as leaders we have to recognize that to your point. The way we say an incentive doesn't mean it's heard in the same way. And the way we use those incentives, how that actually gets picked up and interpreted and acted on is leadership's responsibility.

Yeah, very much so. So I think we should wrap this up here, um, because I think we've been rabbiting on about it for a while. And to our uh for our listeners, um, I think I think we had three main points um that we were bringing up. Uh the first being around uh understand the system and and don't blame the people. So understand the system that you're operating in. And so that if you're starting to see these sorts of behaviors, what about the system is causing it to uh don't immediately start to call people out for their behavior because that'll probably just make matters worse. Uh see the next is um the environment that is what determines commitment, and that's driven by the leadership behaviors. So as we look at the environment and how that's being created, when we want to make change, we need to understand the look at the leadership and and how that change is occurring. Uh, and then would you like to introduce the last one?

Yeah, and I think that the the last one that we talked touched on, which is what you just introduced around incentives, is that idea that incentives drive behavior, right? They're reinforced by the environment, the structure that they're working in. But as leaders, and this is that little bit about not being too accommodating, we have to give clear direction, clear incentives towards which people can work towards and they can measure their performance, their progress towards that. That's that driving the rider or motivating, guiding the rider piece of change. As always, Peter, it's I I think an interesting topic, maybe a topic for another day is scaling this, because I think we're still talking of that individual one-for-one type of or small groups apart. So we may want to touch on scaling next time we get together. But again, as always, a real pleasure, insightful comments and and information. I just find the conversations interesting. So thanks again.

Yeah, thank you. So I always enjoy these. And uh don't forget to subscribe if you enjoy this. Uh, subscribe to this and listen to all our other episodes because I'm sure they'll be just as riveting. So until next time. You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts are Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and device.