The history of humankind is based on myth.  In fact, one of the main distinguishers between our species and others is our ability to make sense of our existence by telling each other stories, as Yuval Noah Harari reminded us in Sapiens.  Money doesn’t exist: we invented it in order to create trade; nation states don’t exist, but we use them for our identity.  Myths and the telling of stories is part of our humanity.  For thousands of years people have lived in societies where actual truth is only a bit-part player.  Religious doctrines, which in nearly all instances began mostly as myth, tend to be full of literal, historical and, of course, scientific contradictions and inaccuracies.  Yet for vast swathes of the world the facts of these religions are the basis of how people live their lives.  Repressive political regimes have, again throughout history, used a wide interpretation of the word truth to keep their people in check.  What constitutes propaganda often depends on which side of the curtain you’re sitting.  And, of course, it was Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud) who was so impressed by the propaganda techniques that he’d seen during the war that he wanted to deploy them in peacetime. He thought, however, that propaganda sounded a rather dirty word; instead, he chose the phrase Public Relations.

The post-truth brigade also miss the lessons of behavioural science.  All our decision-making is post-rationalised.  We choose based on assumptions and emotions and then retrofit a rational explanation. Our free will is constrained by our neuro-chemistry and our social conditioning.  Facts, such as they are, rarely come into it.  Group think, for instance, can place unbearable demands on our understanding of what is true.  There have been numerable psychological experiments where a group of “experts” get together to argue for something they know to be false leaving another in the dark arguing for what (they all know) is right.  In all cases this experiment ends with the lone voice so doubting themselves in the face of such peer pressure that they “change their mind.” Scarily this experiment has been tested with groups such as lawyers, doctors, and airline pilots, each time with the same effect.  It can also be the sheer volume of facts that can be the problem.  Such are the many permutations of options that there can never, for instance, be a factually correct data/phone tariff choice.  Therefore, we either best guess, or use other surrogate decision-making substitutes.   And, of course, there’s our old friend confirmation bias, where we seek out information to support our pre-existing views.  As Orwell said, the best books are those that tell you what you already know.  Quid est veritas, you might say.

Brexit and Trump both provide other good lessons.  There are those who may like to think that facts played a part, especially those incorrect facts deliberately deployed to scare.  There are no facts, only interpretations, as Nietzsche reminded us. But really both these political events probably demonstrate two inter-related points.  Firstly, the power of myth, or story-telling to give it it’s nom du jour. In both cases, one side deployed stories and the other deployed logical facts.  Soft (tall) stories beat hard facts.  Secondly, communication will always be a poor proxy for behaviour.  People listened less to the words and more to the body language. In times of difficulty we seek out people like us.  We are, after all, a highly tribal species.  People looked for those that they thought were on their side.  They listened to them and they believed their myths.  They ignored the others not because of what they said but because how they behaved demonstrated whether they were on their side, sharing values and aspirations.  Fake news, lies, conspiracy theories…all these things were in the margin.  People picked personalities that were part of their tribe, and in both cases it was the left-behind attacking the elite.

So where does this leave us?  Firstly, it does make us question the role of communication to influence. Perhaps we need to focus more on behaviour and attitude and less on words.  Secondly, when we do focus on words we must tell stories rather than try and bludgeon people with facts. And thirdly, despite society’s seemingly endless need for certainty perhaps we should occasionally admit that sometimes we really don’t know the answer.  There often is no black and white. The truth, as Oscar Wilde put it, is rarely pure and never simple.  Seeing things from the other persons point of view and building for consensus rather than difference may be the only way forward, but blaming them for not understanding facts is unlikely to help.

And so it was that two things caught my eye this week. The first was a report, which appeared on Quartz.com, of a Canadian academic study which claimed to have found a proven link that shows that people who buy into pseudo-scientific quotes are less intelligent.  As they say: “Those more receptive to bullshit are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.” (http://bit.ly/1XMAb6W)

The second thing I read was a line someone posted on the benefit of motivational quotes which stated that miserable people produce miserable results.  This point was, I felt, not only devoid of any factual underpinning but completely fatuous.  It certainly scored high on my bullshit barometer. To imply that only happy people can produce good (happy?) work is naïve.  Think of the great artists who have struggled with varying degrees of melancholy and depression: Blake, Conrad, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Gaugin, Van Goth, et al, and not forgetting the self-portraits of Rembrandt, works that seemingly penetrate the very soul of the human condition. Personally I find the PPP leadership model (Perpetual Polyanna Personality) irritating.  Excessive and, often, contrived positivity can be draining. Similarly, I once wrote about the downside of open-plan offices and extrovert-driven brainstorms.  The reality being that it is often the quiet, focused, pragmatic, realistic, introverts who are most effective.  The endlessly positive motivators miss the point of both true leadership and of the human condition.  One of my favourite writers, the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, has written extensively about how foolish the pursuit of happiness is.  He describes it as being wildly unrealistic and unconsciously destructive.  Realism and unhappiness are as important to our sanity as happiness which, he says, should be a side effect.

So where does this leave the workplace happiness industry?  For me happiness in business should be, like employee engagement, a consequence of doing the basics well.  Rather than focus on initiatives to address (un)happiness, the attention should be on what really matters: being well-paid, well-respected, involved (agents of change not objects of change), and with the time and the tools to achieve realistic goals.  In other words, a pragmatic, realistic and grown-up approach to the workplace in place of the ra-ra focus on endlessly uplifting motivation.

And where does this leave motivational quotes? How about this one from AA Milne, creator of that famous curmudgeon Eeyore: “A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself.”

The first thought I had was about the nature of school itself and two issues came to mind.  The first is that we streamline children from an early age in to specialisation, and that specialisation tends to be replicated by a silo mentality in later life.  The second issue is that schools tend to focus less on encouraging children to think and feel, and place more emphasis on teaching them to pass exams.  This has a number of consequences.  Whilst Mr Gradgrind in Hard Times felt that “Facts alone are wanted in life”, most people recognise the value in letting people learn to think for themselves.  Information is not the same as knowledge, any more than knowledge is not the same as wisdom.  Specialising on certain topics and focusing on the information needed to pass exams is not what education is supposed to be about.  Perhaps that is why so many people in later life feel something missing, almost as if the treadmill of their life has led them to the wrong destination. As Paul Merton said: “My school days were the happiest days of my life, which should give you some indication of the misery I’ve endured over the past 25 years.”

A number of books recently made me think about how wide our thinking and behaviour can be were it not for early specialisation. One was Do no harm, a memoir by the neurosurgeon Henry March.  He worked as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital, and took a degree in politics and philosophy before training first as a doctor and then as a neurosurgeon.  His book is a wonderful collection of observations and studies collected over his career. But one feels that the richness of his life puts him at odds with today’s medical intake of straight A students.  Surely it is not only the depth of his experience and skill but the breadth of his knowledge that brings his humanity to his patients.  Think also of the number of our political leaders who have gone straight from university in to political research and activism, and then straight into Westminster politics.

The other book was On the Move, the autobiography of the late, great Oliver Sacks. On the surface, one could say simply that Sacks was a neurologist.  But he was much more than that.  Rather than specialising in only one aspect he was a polymath neurologist, switching his focus from sleeping sickness, to Parkinson’s disease, to migraines, to epilepsy, to music, and countless other neurological conditions and illnesses.  He refused to be pinned down and allowed his professional curiosity to wander at will.

Then there was the book by the Canadian bibliophile Alberto Manguel called, appropriately, Curiosity. It made me think of how many people see education and learning as something they’ve left behind at school and college.  Curiosity is one of the most under-rated human characteristics.  When we stop asking, why we lose much of the connection with our place in the world.  The explored life needs to be one of continuous learning, seeking afresh new ideas and new insights; challenging old thinking and following our nose to find new and rich seams of knowledge. To be fair, our lives and our upbringing are stacked against us.  The academic streamlining that we suffered at school (science and maths on the left, language and history on the right, and music and art in the middle) have morphed into streamlined careers.  At any social function, count how long it takes before someone asks you what it is that you do.  And even at work, we’re often stuck in departmental or functional silos, each with its own KPIs and objectives.

So this September I would recommend taking the opportunity to revisit your own curiosity.  If you feel a sense of being stuck in a rut or of being too comfortable in your surroundings, rather than moan or blame your schooldays, revel in the September back to school feeling and revisit your dreams and aspirations.  It is good to check in with one’s real self to see if one is leading the fulfilled life that one wanted all those years ago before the treadmill took on its own momentum.  Curiosity is a good starting point.  Be curious as to what you really think and feel, and what your true ambitions are.  And then, who knows, perhaps you’ll become curious as to what a leap of faith looks like.

To be ignorant, it seems, is to be outside the circle of movers and shakers. Far better, it seems, to play as amateur diplomats or use one’s personal experience as the basis, for instance, for a radical reformation of the health service. It brings to mind the story Piers Morgan himself tells of how he used his time on the flight over to the US for a job interview with Rupert Murdoch to read, cover to cover, The Economist.  Clearly impressed by the 28-year old’s grasp of global current affairs, Murdoch appointed Morgan editor of the News of the World.  It was George Bernard Shaw who said: “Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”

It is interesting how many people try to assert themselves by what they know.  They still feel that knowledge is power and that it is better to be informed than uninformed.  But two points come to mind.  The first is that, as Will Rogers said, everybody is ignorant only on difference subjects.  The second is the enormous gulf between information, knowledge, and wisdom.  And so please indulge me as I quote, yet again, T S Elliot’s marvellous lines from The Rock:

Where is the life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

 Finding true wisdom can be tricky.  Often it is not to be found hidden under piles of data and in bits of information.  Wisdom tends to emerge from the silence within.  And so rather than try and find the answers by being constantly connected and frantically searching, perhaps it would be more fruitful to take time to switch off. There are an increasing number of organisations who are making mindfulness a core part of their operation, with executives and leaders being trained to invest time in quietening the mind.  Through that silence they often find themselves better able to make considered judgements and ones based not on the superficiality of the cacophony but on the stillness of the quiet.  Likewise, true leaders demonstrate their learning not by trumpeting what they know but by listening and asking good questions.  Frankly, passing on news and views often merely adds to the existing white noise.  It would be much better if more people admitted what they don’t know, and then took time to let their true thoughts materialize.  After all, as Mark Twain said: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

Fast forward to today and the argument is over the funding of political parties.  This, as is often the case, looks at the problem from the wrong end presupposing, as it does, that we need parties.   Some say that the ideological differences between right and left are greater than ever.  They may be at the macro level of big versus small government, but faced with the manifesto commitments of the political parties few electors could, in a blind test, place the right policy with the right party.

Issues today are also far more complex, inter-related, nuanced and global than ever before.  And yet we continue to try and force them into the constraints of the old two party political system.  As Private Willis, guarding the House of Commons in Gilbert & Sullivan’s 1882 operetta Iolanthe, sang it:

“I often find it comical, how nature always does contrive

That ev’ry boy and ev’ry gal that’s born into the world alive

Is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative”.

And then there’s the ping-pong, he said, she said adversarial nature of the debates in the House of Commons cockpit made worse by MPs having to tow the party line. Quoting W.S.Gilbert again, this time in the words of Sir Joseph Porter in HMS Pinafore:

“I always voted at my party’s call

And never thought of thinking for myself at all.”

Sometimes there are free votes, so called as they allow MPs to use their conscience liberated from the dictats of their party whips (although why on earth the Hunting Bill was felt to be a conscience issue no-one seems quite sure).  Then there are referendums on issues too important to be left to our usual legislators. We’ve had two in this country, the first on the original decision to join the EU and the second the ill-judged and ill-timed referendum on PR.  However, such plebiscites do beg the question of what are our politicians for if not to decide, on our behalf, on great matters.  Or if we are to have referendums, why not on other issues, such as the perennial question of the death penalty; or indeed, on issues such as the UK’s membership of the UN or NATO, both of which affect our sovereignty as much as Europe.

People are beginning to question the efficacy of the political system. Many agree that it does need to be modernised.  It is becoming recognised that for many people it is simply irrelevant, and the reality is that the vast majority outside the political bubble have disenfranchised themselves from party politics.  Some want to start the reformation by having open primaries for electing candidates.  It is a good idea but, again, it starts in the wrong place.  We need to properly understand where the decision-making process is best served.  Few, if any, can name their MP (or, indeed, accurately identify senior politicians) and yet the solemn myth of the link between MP and their constituency perpetuates. And much of the work they do in their constituency surgeries involves either trying to solve problems caused by local government and other agencies, or in being the counsellor of last resort.  At the other end of the scale, even Lloyd George would be amazed that reforming the House of Lords remains a work in progress.

So where does one start?  Part of the problem is that the debate is taking place within the confines of the existing system.  Of course change can only come from within, but it requires great maturity to be able to see beyond one’s own position.  The question is not how can we reform the current political process, but what is it actually for and, given what we know and the realities of how we now live, how can we make it as engaging as possible for all citizens to be able to contribute.

But then for some change is always difficult. The Duke of Wellington was reported to have “…never read or heard of any measure up to the present moment which could in any degree satisfy his mind that the state of representation could be improved or rendered more satisfactory to the country at large.” Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose.

Useful work v useless toil was the title of a lecture given in 1884 by William Morris to the Hampstead Liberal Club.  He said that there were two kinds of work – one good, one bad. “One not far removed from a blessing, a lightening of life; the other a mere curse, a burden to life.” (Morris was also pretty handy with a soundbite: “toiling to live that we may live to toil” was rather a good one. )

For nearly all of us work is not an optional extra.  As Morris puts it: “The race of man must either labour or perish.  Nature does not give us our livelihood gratis”. But for many work has become all-embracing.  I often say to US friends that whilst they call themselves the land of the free they are, in fact, slaves to their work – starting ridiculously early, working ridiculously late, and taking fewer holidays than most.  And what is it that they do?  As Parkinson’s law states: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”  Work often becomes unproductive with the focus on a hamster wheel of input, constantly doing things and attending endless meetings.  Occasionally this production line results in output but not often enough to disrupt the raison d’etre of input for its own sake (for if we could achieve this input efficiently then how would we spend our days?).

The decision, taken by a global technology giant, to move all its people back into offices in order to be more effective at “communications and collaboration” is as good a definition of irony as you’ll see for while.  Technology was meant to liberate us, to allow us to work, share, learn, and produce efficiently regardless of location.  Here’s Morris again in 1884: “Our epoch has invented machines which would have appeared wild dreams to the men of past ages, and of those machines we have as yet made no use.”  Work is something you do not a place you go.  Offices can be hot-houses for team-work and collaboration, but they can also be noisy, unproductive, and bureaucratic places full of politics, processes and people.  Being rid of the need to spend the day navigating through what I’ve often described as large company syndrome can be a liberating experience, allowing issues to be seen with a far greater degree of clarity. As always it’s a question of balance but one thing’s for certain, you don’t get collaboration by imposing rules of where and how people work.

One interesting idea I came across recently was of an Australian company which had free Fridays.  For the first four days of the week employees did their jobs, working within their functional areas on the roles on which they were measured and incentivised.  On Fridays, however, they could work on whatever took their fancy across the business; private projects, assignments with other teams, or just offering help.  They found that problem solving soared and creative ideas flourished.  Allowing people to bring their ideas and expertise to a variety of issues is important.  As Morris again said: “To compel a man to do day after day the same task, without any hope of escape or change, means nothing short of turning his life into a prison torment.”   After all, it’s not where you work, it’s how and why.

………

And if you’d like to read more of my thoughts on the nature of work, see my previous posts

https://www.oratoconsulting.co.uk/working-from-home

https://www.oratoconsulting.co.uk/dedicated-followers-of-fashion

I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm’s Cortina.

You ask me what it is I do. Well, actually, you know,

I’m partly a liaison man, and partly P.R.O.

Those marvellous lines from Betjeman stem from a time when PR was a more simple profession.  Then it was loosely about having a relationship with the public and being a representative whose role was to both promote and to smooth things over.  However, today, it seems, there is a growing unease at the inability to define the “profession”.  Every other discipline seems able to do what they say on the tin so why can’t PR.  Here’s a few thoughts.

Firstly, it is, of course, difficult to actually pin PR down.  There are no professional barriers to entry, no entry qualifications, practioners come a variety of backgrounds, there’s no agreed measurement criteria for success or failure, and activities vary from celebrity puffing and product placement to strategic counsel. Secondly, the discipline has spawned countless specialisms from media relations to internal communications to public affairs and social media.  Each often speaks its own language and has distinct networks. Thirdly, each of the component parts is under attack from other disciplines. Social media, for instance, is under threat from its higher paid and better resourced cousins in advertising and marketing.  Internal communications morphs into human relations who come armed with the support of business schools and the global management consultancies.

But it is not just the nebulous foundations upon which PR is based that have led to this crisis of identity.  Two enormous changes have taken place that threaten the fundamentals.  The first is, of course, digital communications.  Not only has content been effectively democratised but also the tools of our trade have opened up to everyone (for instance, anyone with a laptop and energy can run a pretty effective campaign against, say, local development proposals.) Secondly, the decline in trust means that people no longer believe what they hear simply because it comes from someone in a position of “authority”.  Taken together these two societal disruptions have changed the game for PR.  They mark the end of communications as a transactional, top-down, command and control function (see my blogs passim), although it is an end that few in PR have reacted to.

So what to do?  Some see the answer as positioning PR in the arena of reputation management; others like the idea of PR becoming the corporate conscience.  For some an increasing use of (robust) data could solve the problem.  I personally have doubts about many of these avenues.  For me there can never be one-size-fits all definition of PR.  In fact, PR’s very strength ought to be its adaptability and flexibility.

The world has changed.  Businesses are struggling to make sense of relationships in the new digital marketplace.  Indeed, with out-sourcing and co-creation it is sometimes hard to know where a business starts and ends.  And yet many people, especially in the PR world, are continuing to demand the type of professional demarcation of the butcher, baker and candlestick maker.

The old landscape of separate audiences and ring-fenced issues has gone.  The role for PR is to help organisations be comfortable with ambiguity.  We need to help our clients make sense of the changed environment and assist them in understanding the relevance of their audiences and their issues.   We can play a part in helping them to navigate their way through change.  And rather than being focused on channel-specific outputs we should consider the types of outcome and behaviour change that we’re seeking.  And the type of person who will thrive in these puzzling and uncertain surroundings will still most likely be partly a liaison man and partly a P.R.O.

Being sorry, it seems, is an essential part of today’s discourse.  But why is it that someone saying sorry often leaves us feeling no better.  Perhaps it’s because there is more than one type of sorry.  The first type is “I’m sorry [that it happened]”.  In this case it was either a mistake or an error of judgement.  This sort of thing happens all the time and to everyone.  The trick in saying sorry for this sort of thing is to convey the feeling that one genuinely wants to learn from the episode.  After all, without mistakes there can be no progress.

The second form of sorry is the “I’m sorry [that I got caught]”.  In this scenario, the person saying sorry is often not remotely regretful that something happened, only that it got out.  Think of Harry in Vegas or Clinton with Lewinski.  Sorry, perhaps, for the situation that one’s put oneself and others in; less for what actually occurred.

The third type is more akin to what the Psalmist described as a broken and a contrite heart.  Genuine remorse is what we really mean by sorry.  It’s the difference between a heartfelt apology and a pre-scripted press statement.  The difference is authenticity, and authenticity is often the one attribute that seems to be missing from so many figures in public life.  Many people have joked along the lines that the key to success is sincerity, and that if you can fake that you’re made.  But today’s society is far more transparent than ever before; perhaps that’s why there’s been such a significant decline in levels of trust.  Polished performers spouting perfect soundbites tend to reek of insincerity and as a result we think that they’re sorry that it happened, or sorry that they got caught, but rarely that they’re really sorry. Authenticity is one of the key ingredients of true leadership.  It is also something that is difficult to fake.  Without it, the word sorry can never be truly sorry.

Finally, if you’re ever tempted to wheel your bike past the police and through the wrong exit whilst under the influence of a red mist, remember Ambrose Bierce’s wise words: “Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

Increased regulations are unlikely to change behaviour.  Faced with a choice between what we read and what we observe, we will invariably choose the latter.  Just look at the long-running inquiry into media standards.  Sometimes it was exisiting laws that were being broken; and other times it was serial unpleasant behaviour.  But in all cases, like the banks, the behaviour patterns were set at the top not in the words of the code of conduct.  The solution, therefore, is less about rules and regulations and more about values and behaviours.

The question, however, is broader.  How is it that we have reached a point in society where so many institutions seem to be in the wrong place. The truth is that you get what you deserve.  As a society we have come to value the wrong things; for instance, we “teach” our children to pass exams rather than to learn and “success” is all about material wealth and status.  I once heard a senior executive in a consumer goods company say that he could sleep well sure in the knowledge that he produced real goods and played no part in creating the financial crisis.  But the truth, of course, is that he did play a part.  Advertising and marketing create an insatiable desire for things that we often don’t need. The desire to have products that make your hair shinier than before is the same one that leads to taking on a mortgage that you can’t afford.  Of course progress is important but it has to be sustainable not only in resource terms but also in understanding genuine human need.  And yet, across the world the cry is going out that we have to get our economies growing.  What growth means in reality is driving more people into the shopping malls to buy an even bigger HD TV, even though the current one works well enough.

So perhaps it is time to hit the pause button.  Society today is dominated by a left-brain culture that values hierachy, status, and material possessions.  We need less logic and rational thought and more contemplation of what is really important.  Bankers won’t suddenly stop being so motivated by money that they act less badly simply because someone writes a new set of rules.  Bankers are us in a different context.  We all need to take time to reflect on what really matters rather than chasing after bigger and better.  As Tolstoy said of Count Vronsky when he finally got Anna Karenina: “It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that happiness is the realisation of desires.”

The first thing you notice when working from home is how quiet it is.  So many offices today are open plan and noise levels can be extremely distracting.  In addition to the sound of printers and computers, there are loud phone calls and “informal” drop-by pull-up-a-chair meetings .  The second thing you tend to notice is how much time is usually spent being unproductive.  Offices tend to encourage politics, people issues, and mind-numbing processes to such an extent that as much of the working day can be spent managing the environment as actually doing any work.  When you remove the extraneous day-to-day stuff of the office, it is a revelation how productive it is possible to be.  Without distraction one can focus on output (and outcome) rather than input.

On a slight tangent, there are those who rather cynically say that expecting offices to be productive is as naïve as equating schools with education.  In the absence of major wars or pestilence, both institutions are designed to keep large numbers off the streets and “occupied”.  And in the case of office workers, they’re given just enough money to keep the economy turning over and to stop them from rioting.  Money for workers playing the same role that alcohol does for airline passengers, where a little bit of booze provides just enough anaesthetic to divert attention from the fact that you’re 35,000ft above the ground sitting on giant fuel tanks.

But back to the point. Obviously advances in communications technology mean that it is possible to be seamlessly in touch wherever you are, making the need to actually be in the office less of a necessity.  So why don’t more people do it?  The reasons vary: sometimes it is old-fashioned management who believe that they need to see and supervise their workers (as much for the manager’s own status as for perceived reasons of productivity). Other times it could be that the personal circumstances of the employee rule it out.  Nevertheless, the few weeks of the Olympics provide an ideal opportunity to try it out.  And rather than feeling guilty about sitting in the garden with a Wi-Fi’d laptop and a mobile, you can console yourself with the knowledge that you’re being far more productive than those stuck in the office.

Oh, and if it’s social interaction that you miss most, then why not invite the neighbours around for tea.