WORK ETHOS & PRINCIPLES: BEHAVIOURS ASSOCIATED

A Story: The Work Ethic of Albert Einstein

Einstein’s most famous contribution to science, the general theory of relativity, was published in 1915. He won the Nobel Prize in 1921. Yet, rather than assume he was a finished product, Einstein continued to work and contribute to the field for 40 more years. Up until the moment of his death, Albert Einstein continued to squeeze every ounce of greatness out of himself. He never rested on his laurels. He continued to work even through severe physical pain and in the face of death.

Einstein died of internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. One physician familiar with Einstein’s case wrote, “For a number of years he had suffered from attacks of upper abdominal pain, which usually lasted for 2-3 days and were often accompanied by vomiting. These attacks usually occurred about every 3 or 4 months.” Einstein continued to work despite the pain. He published papers well into the 1950s. Even on the day of his death in 1955, he was working on a speech he was scheduled to give on Israeli television, and he brought the draft of it with him to the hospital. The speech draft was never finished.

When Ralph Morse (a photographer for LIFE Magazine) walked into Einstein’s office, he snapped a photo of the desk where Albert Einstein had been working just hours before. Nobody knew it yet, but Einstein’s body would be cremated before anyone could capture a final photo of him. As a result, Morse’s photo of Einstein’s desk would soon become the final iconic image of the great scientist’s career.

Everyone has a gift to share with the world, something that both lights us on fire internally and serves the world externally, and this thing–this calling–should be something we pursue until our final breath. Whatever it is for us, our lives were meant to be spent making our contribution to the world, not merely consuming the world that others create.

Hours before his death, Einstein’s doctors proposed trying a new and unproven surgery as a final option for extending his life. Einstein simply replied, “I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.” We cannot predict the value our work will provide to the world. That is fine. It is not our job to judge our own work. It is our job to create it, to pour ourselves into it, and to master our craft as best we can. We all have the opportunity to squeeze every ounce of greatness out of ourselves that we can. We all have the chance to do our share.

How Do Prisoners of War Stay Alive?

Prisoners of war who have managed to survive the most brutal conditions will often claim one of the most important factors in survival is not food or water, but a sense of dignity and self–worth. In other words, the only thing that keeps some men alive in the direst of circumstances is the belief that they are worthy of being alive. Applying this to our daily lives, it makes sense that longevity would be prevalent in cultures where contribution is baked into everyday life.

For example, let’s take a culture where it’s common to go to the neighbour’s house and talk each night. During a face–to–face conversation, we have to either contribute or sit silently in the corner like a weirdo. The act of contributing to a conversation, no matter how simple it seems, allows us to derive a small sense of self–worth. Being a meaningful part of a conversation makes us feel like were a worthwhile part of the neighbour’s life. When we add up all of the small contributions to the many conversations over the years, it’s easy to see how we can develop a strong sense of self–worth when we live in a culture where contribution is typical.

Contributing vs. Consuming

We alter the course of other’s lives by what we create and contribute. When we speak or write or act, we influence the people around us. When we contribute something to the world, we matter. And thus the act of creating enhances our feelings of self–worth.

That is often lost online as it is becoming increasingly easy to spend our time consuming rather than contributing. Most of the time on those devices and networks is spent consuming what someone else has created rather than contributing our own ideas and work. The result, I believe, is that our sense of self–worth slowly dwindles.

These contributions don’t have to be major endeavours. Cooking a meal instead of buying one. Playing a game instead of watching one. Writing a paragraph instead of reading one. We do not have to create big contributions, but just need to live out small ones each day.

Too often we spend our lives visiting the world instead of shaping it. We can be an adventurer, an inventor, an entrepreneur, an artist. Contributing and creating doesn’t just make us feel alive, it keeps us alive.

Elements of A Strong Work Ethic

But when can we describe our work ethic to be good and strong? Some elements that serve as a solid foundation for a strong work ethic are:

Integrity: . . . . . . . . Its greatest impact is seen in our relationships with the people around us, which is why integrity is seen as one of the most important ingredients of Trust. According to Robert Shaw, you can earn a certain level of trust if you are able to achieve results while demonstrating concern for others and acting with integrity the whole time. Hence, the formula:

Acting with integrity, in this context, also means behaving in a consistent manner. For example, if we are part of a team, our behaviour should be in tune with everyone, in accordance with a clear set of guidelines in working together toward a clear purpose.

Emphasis on Quality of Work: . . . . . . . . If we show dedication and commitment to coming up with very good results in our work, then our work ethic will definitely shine.

While some employees do only the barest minimum, or what is expected of them, there are those who go beyond that. They do more, they perform better, and they definitely go the extra mile to come up with results that surpass expectations. Clearly, these employees are those who belong to the group with a solid work ethic.

Professionalism: . . . . . . . . The word “professionalism” is often perceived as something that is too broad or wide in scope, covering everything from our appearance to how we conduct ourselves in the presence of other people. It is so broad and seemingly all-encompassing that many even go so far as to say that professionalism equates having a solid work ethic.

Discipline: . . . . . . . .Work ethic is something that emanates from within. We can tell someone to do this and that, be like this and like that, over and over, but if they do not have enough discipline to adhere to the rules and follow through with their performance, then there is no way that they can become the productive employees that the company wants.

Sense of Responsibility: . . . . . . . . The moment we became part of the organization and were assigned tasks and duties, we have a responsibility that we must fulfil. If we have a strong work ethic, we will be concerned with ensuring that we are able to fulfil our duties and responsibilities. We will also feel inclined to do our best if we want to get the best results.

Sense of Teamwork: . . . . . . . . As an employee, we are part of an organization. We are simply one part of a whole, which means we have to work with other people. If we are unable to do so, this will put our work ethic into question. Work ethic is also continuously shaped by relationships, specifically on how we are able to handle them in achieving goals, whether shared or individual.

Other traits of good work ethics include:

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

INVERSION AS A CRITICAL THINKING APPROACH: BEHAVIOURS ASSOCIATED

The ancient Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus regularly conducted an exercise known as a premeditatio malorum, which translates to a “premeditation of evils.” The goal of this exercise was to envision the negative things that could happen in life. For example, the Stoics would imagine what it would be like to lose their job and become homeless or to suffer an injury and become paralyzed or to have their reputation ruined and lose their status in society.

The Stoics believed that by imagining the worst-case scenario ahead of time, they could overcome their fears of negative experiences and make better plans to prevent them. While most people were focused on how they could achieve success, the Stoics also considered how they would manage failure. This way of thinking, in which we consider the opposite of what we want, is known as inversion. It is a rare and crucial skill that nearly all great thinkers use to their advantage.

How Great Thinkers Shatter the Status Quo with Inversion

The German mathematician Carl Jacobi made a number of important contributions to different scientific fields during his career. In particular, he was known for his ability to solve hard problems by following a strategy of man muss immer umkehren or, loosely translated, “invert, always invert.” Jacobi believed that one of the best ways to clarify our thinking was to restate math problems in inverse form. He would write down the opposite of the problem he was trying to solve and found that the solution often came to him more easily.

Inversion Vs Reverse Engineering

The Inversion Thinking concept finds its roots in how mathematicians solve complex problems. Look at any problem backward and turn the situation upside down to find the solution. Also, it is not to be confused with reverse engineering.

In reverse engineering we work backward from an achieved solution. For example, if we want to achieve a target of 10 customers, we need to submit 30 proposals, then to give 30 proposals we have to prospect 100 customers and for that every day we should meet 5 customers. This is simple reverse engineering, reversing from a positive result. But in Inversion Thinking, we consider the opposite of what we want. What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation?

Inversion is a powerful thinking tool because it puts a spotlight on errors and roadblocks that are not obvious at first glance. What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation? Instead of asking how to do something, we ask how to not do it. Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. Occasionally, they drive their brain in reverse.

This way of thinking can reveal compelling opportunities for innovation. Art provides a good example. One of the biggest musical shifts in the last several decades came from Nirvana, a band that legitimized a whole new genre of music—alternative rock—and whose Nevermind album is memorialized in the Library of Congress as one of the most “culturally, historically or aesthetically important” sound recordings of the 20th century. Nirvana turned the conventions of mainstream rock and pop music completely upside down. Where hair metal was flashy, Nirvana was stripped-down and raw. Inversion is often at the core of great art.

At any given time there is a status quo in society and the artists and innovators who stand out are often the ones who overturn the standard in a compelling way. In a way, the secret to unconventional thinking is just inverting the status quo. This strategy works equally well for other creative pursuits like writing. Many great headlines and titles use the power of inversion to up-end common assumptions.

Success is Overvalued. Avoiding Failure Matters More. This type of inverse logic can be extended to many areas of life. Avoiding mistakes is an under-appreciated way to improve. In most jobs, you can enjoy some degree of success simply by being proactive and reliable—even if you are not particularly smart, fast, or talented in a given area. Sometimes it is more important to consider why people fail in life than why they succeed.

The Benefits of Thinking Forward and Backward

Inversion can be particularly useful in the workplace. Leaders can ask themselves, “What would someone do each day if they were a terrible manager?” Good leaders would likely avoid those things. Similarly, if innovation is a core piece of the business model, we can ask, “How could we make this company less innovative?” Eliminating those barriers and obstacles might help creative ideas arise more quickly. And every marketing department wants to attract new business, but it might be useful to ask, “What would alienate our core customer?” A different point of view can reveal surprising insights. We can learn just as much from identifying what doesn’t work as we can from spotting what does. What are the mistakes, errors, and flubs that we want to avoid? Inversion is not about finding good advice, but rather about finding anti-advice. It teaches us what to avoid.

Some more ways in which inversion can come into play in work and life:

Project Management: . . . . . Failure Premortem. Imagine the most important goal or project we are working on right now. Now fast forward six months and assume the project or goal has failed. Tell the story of how it happened. What went wrong? What mistakes did we make? How did it fail? In other words, think of the main goal and ask, “What could cause this to go horribly wrong?” This strategy is sometimes called the “kill the company” exercise in organizations because the goal is to spell out the exact ways the company could fail. Just like a Premeditation of Evils, the idea is to identify challenges and points of failure so you can develop a plan to prevent them ahead of time.

Productivity: . . . . .. . Most people want to get more done in less time. Applying inversion to productivity we could ask, “What if I wanted to decrease my focus? How do I end up distracted?” The answer to that question may help us discover interruptions we can eliminate to free up more time and energy each day. This strategy is not only effective, but often safer than chasing success. This insight reveals a more general principle: Blindly chasing success can have severe consequences, but preventing failure usually carries very little risk.

Decluttering: . . . . . . . . Marie Kondo, author of the blockbuster best-seller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, uses inversion to help people declutter their homes. Her famous line is, “We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.” In other words, the default should be to give anything away that does not “spark joy” in our life. This shift in mindset inverts decluttering by focusing on what you want to keep rather than what you want to discard.

Relationships: . . . . . . . . .. . . . . What behaviors might ruin a marriage? Lack of trust. Not respecting the other person. Not letting each person have time to be an individual. Spending all of the time on kids and not investing in the relationship together. Not having open communication about money and spending habits. Inverting a good marriage can show us how to avoid a bad one.

Personal Finance: . . . . . . . . .. . . . .Everyone wants to make more money. But what if you inverted the problem? How could you destroy your financial health? Spending more than we earn is a proven path to financial failure. It doesn’t matter how much money we have, the math will never work out over time. Similarly, accumulating debt is a hair-on-fire emergency to be resolved as quickly as possible. And gradually creeping into unchecked shopping and spending habits can lead to self-inflicted financial stress.

Consider the Opposite

Inversion is counterintuitive. It is not obvious to spend time thinking about the opposite of what you want. And yet inversion is a key tool of many great thinkers. Stoic practitioners visualize negative outcomes. Ground-breaking artists invert the status quo. Effective leaders avoid the mistakes that prevent success just as much as they chase the skills that accelerate it.

Inversion can be particularly useful for challenging our own beliefs. It forces us to treat our decisions like a court of law. In court, the jury has to listen to both sides of the argument before making up their mind. Inversion helps to do something similar. What if the evidence disconfirmed what we believe? What if we tried to destroy the views that we cherish? Inversion prevents us from making up our mind after our first conclusion. Some more examples of Inversion Thinking Questions may be:

It is a way to counteract the gravitational pull of confirmation bias. Inversion is an essential skill for leading a logical and rational life. It allows us to step outside our normal patterns of thought and see situations from a different angle. Inversion is different than working backward or “beginning with the end in mind.” Those strategies keep the same goal and approach it from a different direction. Meanwhile, inversion asks you to consider the opposite of your desired result.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

FLEXIBLE WORKING: COUNTERBALANCING BEHAVIOURS

The Benefits of Work-Life Balance

Flexible working is more than just a trend. It represents a huge change in the way that organizations manage their work and their people. Even before the coronavirus lockdown, many organizations were exploring new ways of operating that allow people to have a better work-life balance. Ways that increase their engagement with, and control over, their work. The lockdown has forced us to adapt to new working patterns quickly. And now, as the restrictions start to ease, we’re thinking about adopting some of these new practices in the longer term.

What Is Flexible Working?
Flexible working is any work pattern that differs significantly from the traditional, office-based, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. standard. It can involve working from home, working flexible hours, job sharing, or a mixture of all of these. The different kinds of flexible working are:

A) Working from Home

Working from home is exactly what it says: work carried out by employees in their own homes. Research shows that a large number of the workforce were already spending a quarter or more of their work time at home even before the COVID-19 lockdown. The same research suggests that the number of regular homeworkers has risen by 173 percent since 2005. Home working is most widespread in industry sectors that are not tied to a specific location. Professional, technical, financial, and information-based organizations will likely be able to offer home working as an option. Those in the manufacturing, construction or logistics sectors will likely not.

B) Job Sharing
Job sharing means that two (or more) people share the duties of one full-time job, each working part-time. Each job-sharer must have access to the same systems and information, and have the skills to carry out the job on their own if necessary. Good communication and trust between the job sharers is vital.

C) Flexible Hours
A flexible-hours scheme allows staff to work different hours than the normal company start and finish times. For example, in an office where most people work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., some might be able to work 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Flexible hours are particularly suitable for people who have care responsibilities at particular times of day, and for those who regularly work with team members, vendors or clients based in different time zones.

D) Compressed Hours
A compressed hours schedule involves working the usual number of hours in the working week, but in fewer days. For example, an employee contracted to work a 40-hour week might work four 10-hour days with a fifth day off, rather than five eight-hour days.

E) Results Only Work Environment (ROWE)
ROWE workplaces delegate responsibility for targets entirely to team members. In a ROWE , you’re measured by your performance, results or output, not by the hours you’re in the office. You have a high degree of autonomy over your projects, and the freedom to choose when and how you’ll meet your goals.

All of these formal arrangements can run alongside a flexible working policy – a set of principles or promises to be adhered to, for the mutual benefit of employee and employer. Such arrangements are based on good communication, trust, and a few absolutes.

Note: Flexible working is not the same as working flexibly , which is the ability to adjust to short-term change quickly and calmly. This should be possible – and desirable – in any working arrangement.

What Are the Benefits of Flexible Working?
Flexible working can benefit both employees and their organizations, so long as it is considered carefully in advance.

How Flexible Working Benefits Employees
For an employee, flexible working has many benefits:

1. It can help you to balance your work with your other responsibilities, like caring for children or an older family member.
2. It can also create a sense of autonomy over your work, which can increase engagement and job satisfaction.
3. Being able to schedule work to suit you can help with time management, and to combat stress.
4. Having control over where and when you work allows you to play to your strengths, particularly if you work better at certain times of day .
5. It enables you to build self-care into your daily routine, making it easier to incorporate exercise into your day, for instance.
6. Financial benefits can include being able to schedule travel on public transport at cheaper times, traveling less, or not having to commute at all.

How Flexible Working Benefits Organizations

1. In recent years, flexible working has become a key factor in the ability of organizations to attract and retain talented staff. Research has found that employees believe they would change jobs for one that offered flexible working.
2. The preference for flexible working was particularly marked in younger employees, who increasingly expect variable hours and home working to be part of any employment offer.
3. Also, since engaged employees are more likely to stay with an organization, a flexible working policy can improve staff retention and reduce hiring costs.
4. Employers can also recruit from a wider pool, as potential employees do not necessarily have to live within commuting distance.
5. Flexible working arrangements can also reduce office operating costs, as not everyone is in the office all of the time.

Benefits to Society.

1. In the Covid-19 era, traveling off-peak and working from home helps with social distancing.
2. In the longer term, flexible working may help to reduce pollution, due to a reduction in travel.
3. In addition, more people can take on a wider range of jobs, in different locations.
4. Flexible working also supports the inclusion of careers, older people, and people with disabilities or chronic illnesses in the workforce.

The Pitfalls of Flexible Working

1. Flexible working needs careful implementation and management to be successful. Although it has many benefits, it has potential problems, too.
2. Communication can be a problem when people are working in different places, or when their office hours don’t overlap.
3. It’s essential to have the right systems in place for tracking tasks and building relationships with your co-workers.
4. It’s easy for misunderstandings to happen on team calls or in virtual meetings, so make sure that you know how to run remote meetings effectively .
5. When you’re working from home, it’s vital to minimize distractions. It can be all too easy for the line between family time and work time to become blurred, for example.
6. When you’re away from co-workers and managers, it can be easy to fall into bad behaviours such as procrastination. Make sure you have a routine and a daily To-Do List to keep you on track.
7. Employers need to consider how they will fulfil their duty of care to their remote workers. For example, ensuring that they have a safe work environment and are given the appropriate training.

How to Implement Flexible Working
Regulations on flexible working will vary according to your location. Employers don’t have to grant the request but do have to show that they’ve considered it fairly. If you are managing a team or an organization, flexible working arrangements that you agree with staff members must be fair to them and to other team members. If you make flexible working available to one team member, in most cases it should be available to all.

This may cause difficulties if some teams within your organization (for example, sales and marketing) would suit flexible working but others (a production line, for instance) would not. So, it needs to be handled sensitively. Consult senior managers or your HR or People team before you make any promises or commitments. When a team member proposes a flexible working arrangement, or you think that it would benefit the way your team works, begin with an informal conversation. This should cover:

When you have a good general idea of how the flexible arrangement could work, you can hold a formal meeting to focus on specific issues, requirements, and contractual changes. Aim to nail down the details of how the arrangement will benefit the business, and how you will manage it. Put the outcomes of this meeting in writing, with explicit and measurable standards, so that everyone is clear on their responsibilities and the actions that need to be taken. Ideally, a commitment to flexible working should be rolled out across the whole organization. Even if the precise terms of the flexible working vary between teams or individuals, there should be a clear policy available for all staff to consult.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa