Good Work Guild: inspiring the future of work

I read your Good Work Guild Journal and was deeply disappointed. At the risk of turning this into a rant, here are some of my concerns: 

•Language: who exactly was this document aimed at? I now regard myself as a defrocked Six Sigma Black Belt, but still remember a key learning: make sure one has operational definitions that are clearly understood by everyone involved. The first two paragraphs on Page 6 are just a collection of terms (e.g., sensemaking, shared advocacy, gamification, etc.) with which I am unfamiliar. I suspect many others might be too, but what it seems to suggest is that the vast majority of people will have difficulty engaging with actual workers who will think you are speaking in Sanskrit. This smack of an academic document by academics aimed exclusively at academics. 

•Taylorism: (a.k.a. Scientific Management). Looking at the age profile of the people involved, I’m not sure many will remember Tennessee Ernie Ford’s global hit in the 1950s, Sixteen Tons. Please look at the lyrics which remind me of F W Taylor who promoted the division between Thinkers (perhaps you guys?) and Doers, the Doers not allowed to, or encouraged to think. Can any of you remember that guy in the white coat standing just out of vision watching you work because he was an Industrial Engineer, was an expert in how you worked and his analysis would tell you how to improve without engaging you? I may be a tad unfair but your paper smacked of this approach. Did you engage with people who actually worked producing things in order to get their thoughts? 

•Leadership: I may have missed it, but you seem to have ignored the critical role leadership plays in the well-being and education of the workforce. Can you do this without taking a very hard look at current leadership thinking and how it impacts lifelong learning in the workplace? This might be a very biased view, but in my experience, the vast majority of current leaders point their prayer mats in the direction of Milton Friedman and his edict of maximising shareholder value: nothing else matters. I don’t believe this is compatible with growing the capabilities of the workforce to ensure the long-term health of the company: you can see many examples of once giant companies, now shadows of their former selves because of Nobel Laureate Friedman. 

•Lean: A small minority of organisations have tried to emulate Toyota’s leadership philosophy with varying degrees of failure (because of the Friedmanites). Toyota focuses on growing the capabilities of the people through an obsession with kaizen from the CEO down. Toyota grows managers who are great coaches (the most critical consideration for promotion). You may want to look at Toyota’s A3, which looks like and quacks like a form but is a way of guiding a productive coaching dialogue between the person who wants to make a change, an improvement, and his coach, usually his or her direct supervisor. CEOs also use the A3 to help them with their challenges, often seeking the help and advice of their subordinates. You talk about intergenerational dialogue being a problem. Please look at Toyota’s Skills Matrices, and then ask who helps train the people requiring training in a team. I could bang on and on, but what struck me about your paper was that it was looking for new solutions without looking at existing good practices. 

•Leadership Education: I taught Lean to MBA students in India for nearly a decade. Again, I may be biased, but the degree tends to produce young Friedmanites who continue to perpetuate what I see as inhuman practice. The degree is strong in data analysis and weak in people development or morality and ethics. Why have you not examined this “gold standard” of management education? 

•The RSA Website: My problem as a Fellow is that there seems to be very little cohesion in the Fellowship. I did apply to join your guild a while back but answer came there none. Instead, I wrote a comment piece, Life-long learning, sustainability and work (https://www.thersa.org/comment/2021/08/life-long-learning-sustainability-and-work). I am not suggesting this is a seminal piece, but only three people seem to have read it, one a friend who is not a Fellow. What does that say for our sharing of ideas? Have any in your guild reads it? By the way, I believe you need a good editor, and I can recommend Rachel O’Brien who helped me with my piece.