Working with Apprentices (Part I)

When I tell people about that we recruit people with no IT experience and teach them to be IT consultants, they frequently ask what it's like working with people without experience. After doing it for a couple of years, I can honestly say, it's no different than working with anybody else. This is frequently a surprise to people who think people without experience won't know how to behave or how to do anything. They think we'll have to be firm, or 'cruel to be kind,' to get results and to keep them from dropping off the apprenticeship.

We understand this view, but don't subscribe to it. We don't want to be the same as other companies, so we don't treat them the same as other companies. Ours is a company where we value autonomy, mastery, and purpose. We use a cardwall to ensure everything that needs to be done is visible to the whole company; break things into pieces to give us a chance to iterate and constantly improve; don't judge other's behaviour; and ensure we always focus on the area that needs our attention the most.^*

This changes things. In an organisation that keeps information hidden, people can't learn how to behave, or what to do, without making mistakes, or being told (which frequently takes the form of 'behaviour management'). By opening up the needs of the organisation so everybody can see them and can choose what to work on, we ensure that even people with no experience can find something to do that needs to get done, and which they're willing to take on. This appeals to their desire to achieve mastery, and their autonomy, and we do it for everybody.

Our process comes with risks. Sometimes people get lost. They don't know what to do, or they don't know how to structure their work so it's achievable. Our job (regardless of experience level) is to help people figure out what needs to be done, and how to make it possible. Sometimes that's me asking apprentices questions, and sometimes it's them asking me questions. It's a give and take based on equality and respect, where experience and length of service mean less than empathy and learning, and the more you know, the more likely you are to spend your time helping people who know less.

Sometimes people make mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable, if you're learning, and pushing boundaries. For us, the important thing is to learn from those mistakes - to reflect on the process that lead to the mistake, rather than who is responsible for making it - so we can do things differently in the future. We approach every project, every task, every need as the current step in an iteration. Learning is an ongoing process which never ends. Our apprentices start out shadowing more experienced consultants and working on a service desk. Over time (6-9 months), they pick up enough experience to run their own small, supervised projects. In the next 9 months, they start running projects on their own and mentoring new apprentices. Within 18 months, they go from knowing nothing about IT to running their own projects and taking responsibility for the results, challenges, and learning.

It is my sincere privilege to watch them grow and change, learn and improve, and to embrace and unleash their own potential. They learn to look within themselves for their self-worth, and I couldn't be prouder of them for it.


^*How we do these will (probably) be explored in later posts. As with everything else, this is an ongoing work in progress.

You can read my follow-up post here.

Strategic Learning

I saw a really good talk this week, at a London Funders meeting, about strategic learning. It was defined thus:

Strategic learning is the use of data and insights from a variety of information-gathering approaches—including evaluation—to inform decision making about strategy. 

It occurs when organizations or groups integrate data and evaluative thinking into their work, and then adapt their strategies in response to what they learn.

This is a fabulous definition. It encapsulates what's needed, what's done with it, and how you can tell you're doing it. I think the biggest risk is with the words being defined. Use of the word "strategic" risks making learning loftier and more exclusive than it needs to be.

Learning isn't reserved for the SMT; it's something that is at everybody's fingertips. If you look around your organisation and ask yourself who knows the beneficiary's needs best, it's more likely to be the front line than it is to be the SMT. The SMT has a number of responsibilities, but day-to-day operations with program beneficiaries isn't usually one of them. This makes them well placed to identify overall trends in their sector, upcoming organisational challenges, and opportunities. It doesn't make the SMT particularly well suited to make decisions about how to best serve program beneficiaries. Therefore, anything which helps the front line to learn, share that learning, and propagate those things throughout the organisation is to be embraced, while things which do the opposite are to be avoided.

Doesn't moving learning to the front line risk moving strategy out of the hands of the SMT and result in chaos? Realistically, no. Embracing learning as an organisation means changing the role of the SMT from that of decision-maker and policy-setter to that of enabler; from enforcement of a strategy to facilitation of thinking, learning, and experimentation. Learning and improvement become the strategy, and as beneficiary progress is the only true measure of progress, beneficiaries become the real heart of the organisation - not just in words and thoughts, but also in measurement (and what gets measured is what gets done).

In a system where learning is embraced, the SMT's primary responsibility is to help people figure out how to learn, how to interpret what they've learned, and how to continually find new ways to learn, grow, and challenge themselves, in service to program beneficiaries. When I ask myself which I'd rather have - one person responsible for strategy who is removed from day-to-day operations, or 50 people who know what impact the organisation's decisions are having on beneficiaries, the decision seems clear to me.

(This post is loosely linked to The Outsider's Experience)

Why do charities need IT help?

I'm sitting on a train, traveling to Manchester, reflecting on what I do. I spend my time split between two roles at the same company. I work with young people, teaching them IT, and ensuring they have the knowledge necessary to be outstanding IT consultants. My other role is why I'm traveling today. I'm on my way to visit a company that's expanding. They're based in Manchester and have just opened an office in Liverpool, with plans to open a few more around the country. There are a few challenges inherent in expansion, and the one I'm concerned with is IT.
I work with charities. Charities work with the vulnerable and the needy. They're started by people with passion, and a burning drive to do something good. They're rarely started by people who understand IT, let alone how IT can facilitate or inhibit organisational growth, change, and improvement. That's where I come in. My role is to help charities understand what IT means. Not necessarily in the day-to-day infrastructure sense of the word (servers, support, etc), but in the sense of IT being a fundamental part of how the organisation works. Like fundraising, management, or finance, organisations can run without IT for only so long before they become unwieldy. This is what I thought when I first started working with charities - that if I could help them understand IT, things would all work out.
It turns out, I was wrong. My role as originally envisaged doesn't work. If the focus remains on IT, then there is rarely any openness to the idea that what needs to change is how the organisation thinks (about IT, about systems, about itself). What does seem to work is going through a process, which is the same between charities but which plays out in very different ways, of mutual learning and growth. Through my understanding of IT, systems, and management, and their understanding of how their organisations work, we learn how to make changes, and test them, in ways that ensure the continual improvement of the charity, long after I'm gone.
The end result of successful consulting, is not a delivered project, or a report, but a changed system, where it seems obvious that the new way is an improvement, and nobody is interested, or capable, of going back to the way things were before. IT plays a part in this story, but it's not the hero. The hero is the charity. And like any hero, each charity goes through its own hero's quest, first encountering challenges, and then slowly learning how to overcome them, until at some point, it looks back and is astounded by how far it's come, and how much better things are now than they were.

Teaching and Corporate Responsibilities

I've heard a lot, over the last few years, that students are leaving school unprepared for the world of work, and the solution is to teach work-specific skills to students before they graduate. On the surface this makes sense, particularly if we only look at the last 20 years of employment. However, if we go a bit further back, we'll find that this argument doesn't make any sense.

60 years ago, even 40 years ago, work-ready meant something else. When my parents were starting work, their companies took them on, fresh from university, expecting to have to train them. That was how businesses got employees that knew what to do - they taught them. This was true whether someone was hired for management or the mailroom. The new person was always taught by someone with more experience. What they were taught, and how intense the training was depended on the company and the position, but the basic fact of training was a part of the job.

Sometime between about 1975 and 1990 we seemed to lose sight of the fact that employee training is an employer's responsibility. This was fairly predictable, as a new generation of management graduates had been taught that shareholder value was the most important thing to consider, and training seemed like an undesirable expense. This is the same school of thought that brought about the end of pensions, and the end of employee/employer loyalty.

Employers are really good at convincing governments of their perspectives (Adam Smith warned against allowing them to do this as far back as 1776). It's even easier when they own the newspapers and are allowed to sway public opinion in their favour. It didn't take long for government to start talking about how schools are failing our children, by not getting them ready for the world of work. It's rhetoric that took 20 years to stick, but has a growing base of support among government, people, and business, despite there being no evidence that educational quality has declined since employers stopped taking responsibility for training.

Like the banking crisis, making people 'work-ready' is another way of making costs and losses the responsibility of the taxpayer, while diverting ever-increasing profits to a smaller and smaller number of people. Allowing businesses to frame the conversation will always result in the public losing out, and will over time, result in the public not knowing there was anything to ever lose.

Our education system isn't failing our children, we are. We allowed it to start, we have allowed it to continue, and at the end of the day, we are the only ones who can stop it, thereby leaving a better world to our children.

Does working more hours always equal more work being completed?

Adam Smith, father of modern economics, says no:
"We do not reckon our soldiers the most industrious set of people among us; yet when soldiers have been employed in some particular sorts of work, and liberally paid by the piece, their officers have frequently been obliged to stipulate with the undertaker, that they should not be allowed to earn above a certain sum every day, according to the rate at which they were paid. Till this stipulation was made, mutual emulation, and the desire of greater gain, frequently prompted them to overwork themselves, and to hurt their health by excessive labour. Excessive application, during four days of the week, is frequently the real cause of the idleness of the other three, so much and so loudly complained of. Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes too of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, bring on the peculiar infirmity of the trade. If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate, than to animate the application of many of their workmen. It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work.

In cheap years it is pretended, workmen are generally more idle, and in dear times more industrious than ordinary. A plentiful subsistence, therefore, it has been concluded, relaxes, and a scanty one quickens their industry. That a little more plenty than ordinary may render some workmen idle, cannot be well doubted; but that it should have this effect upon the greater part, or that men in general should work better when they are ill fed, than when they are well fed, when they are disheartened than when they are in good spirits, when they are frequently sick than when they are generally in good health, seems not very probable. Years of dearth, it is to be observed, are generally among the common people years of sickness and mortality, which cannot fail to diminish the produce of their industry."

From Wealth of Nations, p 57 of 641 (in my edition)

How do you spot privilege?

What is privilege?

First, privilege exists. None of the people I interact with deny the existence of privilege. The issue is around accepting what is, and what isn't. The reason this is difficult, is that it's difficult to see, for those that have it. So, as a quick primer, I'm going to put out my definition of privilege.

priv·i·lege  

/ˈpriv(ə)lij/

Noun A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to one person or group of people.

Who has privilege?

In the current conversations about privilege, I think the definition needs some expansion, or perhaps some examples. I don't see privilege as a granting of advantages. I see it as the lack of disadvantage given to certain groups. Those groups have traits they are born with, which they can do nothing about, which will impact them for their entire lives. Race, gender, and sexuality are main ones. I have seen some people add education, wealth, and others, but I'm not sure I agree, as both can be attained throughout life (barring disadvantages given by race, gender, or sexuality).
What does this mean?

• Not white? Lose a few rights. Expect to be treated worse than a white person, in almost any given situation, particularly interactions with the government, or cultural expectations
• Not straight? Lose a few rights. Expect people to question whether you're pretending in order to get attention. Expect them to tell you that you can't marry the person you love. Expect to hear that you'll never be a complete person unless you change who you are.
• Not male? Lose a few rights. Expect to be blamed for being raped. Expect to be told that you have to act differently, dress differently, and behave differently, if you don't want someone to force you to have sex with them. Expect to be told there are things you just aren't good at (like math). Expect to be told that you're overreacting, or being dramatic. Expect to be told that your feelings don't matter.

It means something else, as well. People who have privilege have no control over having it. They didn't ask for it, they have no control over having it, and they may be unaware of its existence. Most people want to believe that people are treated equally. If you suggest that they have an easier time because of something they have no control over, most people (that I have spoken with) get defensive - most people want to think that they deserve the good things they have, so it's hard for them to accept that they have been given a leg up by the luck of their birth.

What impact does it have for some people to be born with privilege, and some without?

The first impact is that it defines how we have to talk about it, if we want to make progress. If somebody is reluctant to grant that their current station in life is due, in large part, to luck, then pointing it out is likely to result in defensiveness, whether it's right or wrong. To that end, I prefer to approach privilege slightly differently.
Privilege isn't something an individual wields control over - it's systemic. Privilege isn't something had by an individual. Privilege is something that impacts everybody with it, as much as people without it - systemically. The first important step in identifying, and working to rectify privilege, is to accept that most people with it have had it conferred on them, rather than chosen to use it, or take it. The reason that I think this is a crucial first step is that it allows us to move away from attacking each other, and toward attacking the actual problem - ways in which society is geared to negatively impact a majority of the people in it.
After thinking about it for a long time, I have decided to focus on the ways in which privilege tears people down. It's true, that in order for their to be losers, there have to be winners, but I actually think that the highest point of privilege (currently held, in America, by straight, white men) is the default for how people should be treated. Every step removed from that is privilege lost.

How does privilege come to be?

When you have all the power, and all the control, then people want to be like you. They see how you act, how you dress, how you look, and how you think, and they internalize those things as desirable, and as normal. And to have normal and desirable, almost by definition, requires abnormal, undesirable. People who fit the profile come to expect that they deserve to be treated in a particular way, and those that don't fit the profile expect to be treated differently. Laws are passed by people in power that reinforce those beliefs. Whatever reason they have to pass the law (racism, paternalism, elitism, sexism, ignorance, meaning well) is irrelevant, because the impact of passing the law is to reinforce their beliefs. Lawmakers work to pass laws of people they empathize with. 200 years ago, that was white men (sexuality wasn't a factor). All laws were written as if white men were the only people, and nobody else mattered. It wasn't intentional racism, they were products of their time. I'm not excusing their racism, or their sexism, merely trying to put it into context.
Similar laws continued to be passed for 100 years, before a war was fought over whether men of different races were also people. Turns out, they are. But the framework had already been built. White men were still the people in power, and had no understanding of the problems facing black men, or the ways in which American culture made life harder for anybody who wasn't a white man. In fact, quite a few laws were passed to make things harder for anybody who wasn't white.
50 years after that, another war was fought, this time without loss of life, about whether women are people. It turns out they are, too. But 150 years of contrary lawmaking doesn't go out the window over night. The system is still biased in favor of men.
30 years after that, major civil disobedience was called for, asking the country to recognize that yes, not only are black people people, but they should have the same rights as everybody else.
That takes us up to around 50 years ago, since which time things have been slowly improving. But progress hasn't been inevitable, because 200 years of thinking is hard to change. The system has its own inertia. And while some parts of the law have been updated to reflect that non-white people, and non-males, and non-straight people should have the same rights as everybody else, not every part of the law has caught up. And the reason for that is that not everybody agrees with it. So some laws are made, or talked about, or pushed, which perpetuate the belief that people who aren't straight, white, men are different. And the only way we can convince ourselves that it's ok to pass laws that affect different people differently, is by believing that some people are more deserving than others. We already had that foundation, when America was founded, so it's easy to fall back on.

What impact does privilege have?

Once this way of thinking becomes normal (as it was for a couple hundred years), it becomes incredibly difficult to dislodge, or to spot. It becomes part of how the system works, so that speaking out against it becomes increasingly difficult, due to the investment of time, and energy, that has gone into maintaining the system. The more investment there is, the better the system is seen to be (due to the sunk cost fallacy).
We believe our laws are just, and that we do the best we can. We also know that some people are punished more severely for essentially the same crime as somebody else. Therefore, the laws must be unjust, or some people are more deserving of punishment than others. Some people go down one path, and advocate for equality, equal chances, measures to provide a level playing field for people who have been systemically biased again, while other people choose, whether they consciously think it, or not, that some people deserve to be punished.

Now that we've established what's normal, any change by those pursuing more just laws, or improvements in the system, are frequently construed as an attack against 'normal.'
For example:

• Gay people want to get married? That's an attack on straight people
• Women want to vote? That's saying that men don't do a good enough job
• Black people want to vote? They're saying that white people don't do a good enough job
• Latinos want to be able to legally work and be paid minimum wage? They're taking jobs away from 'hard working Americans.'

Racism/sexism/etc become ingrained, to the point that it's no longer thought about

1. If Muslims don't want to be profiled, they shouldn't be terrorists
2. If black people don't want to go to jail, they shouldn't commit crimes
3. If women want equal pay, they should do equal work

The reasons why these attitudes represent privilege isn't necessarily clear, so I'll unwind them.

1. Muslim terrorism
1. The vast majority of Muslims aren't terrorists
2. The vast majority of murder in the US is carried out by non-Muslims
3. When a white person blows up a building, we don't add profiling of white people to the list of things it's now OK to do
4. When a white person shoots up an elementary school, we don't start searching every white person who wants to go to a school, and we don't single them out for special treatment
2. Black crime
1. Drugs with identical impacts have harsher mandatory minimum sentences if the drug is predominantly used by black people
2. No white person ever gets pulled over for Driving While White
3. The vast majority of white collar crime is committed by white people, who almost never go to jail for it
4. The majority of drug use is by white people, but the majority of people punished for drug use are black
5. Violent crime has been pretty closely tied to poverty, not to race (incidences of violent crime in wealthy black people closely matches that of wealthy white people, just as poor white people commit roughly the same amount of violent crime as black people.
3. Equal pay
1. Almost every high paying profession is male dominated
2. The perpetuation of male domination is achieved through environments that are pretty hostile to women
3. Skills that women generally have more of (though societal expectations) make them better managers, who do a better job building teams, but they make up a small portion of senior management, despite the implications that companies would be doing better if they were hired.

How do we spot privilege?

Now that we know how it came about, and how ingrained it is, and how hard it is for those with privilege to spot it being exercised, let's talk about how to identify privilege.

The first way to spot privilege is to ask, in any given situation where there is an interaction with power structures (government, law enforcement, media, etc), whether you would expect the same treatment regardless of privilege. Would a straight, white man have gone through the same thing, in the same situation? A gay white man? A gay woman of color? If a given situation results in the same behavior, regardless of the privilege involved, then it probably doesn't have anything to do with privilege.

Once we move out of power structures, it gets a little less clear, because the systemic impacts are indirect. They play on our feelings which then impact the way we treat other people. In these cases, it can be much harder to spot privilege. 

One of the ways we can spot it, however, is to ask ourselves whether, if the positions were reversed, would this have happened? For example, take a recent bakery incident that involved the news. A gay person went into a bakery and asked for a wedding cake. The cake was refused because making a wedding cake depicting 2 people of the same sex went against the beliefs of the shop owner. Outside of the question of whether this is legal, is the question of whether this demonstrates privilege. We answer that when we reverse the positions of the two people involved, and ask whether a gay shop owner would have refused service to a straight person, on those same grounds. We can argue whether it's possible for service to be refused, but the question is whether the request would be considered abnormal, that way around. A straight person asking for a wedding cake with a man and a woman on it? Perfectly normal.

That doesn't capture all instances, so I have one more situation to consider, when trying to identify the existence of privilege. If the privilege levels were the same, would this have happened? In this case, it has to be done twice - once to adjust for either perspective. If the answer is no, either time, then privilege is probably in play.

Conclusion

I don't get it right every time. I don't inherently spot privilege, or its lack. This is something I have had to learn, and which I am still learning. I have privilege. Enough that I could conceivably walk away from this discussion, and never think about it again, without fear that it would ever impact my life adversely. I frequently don't see privilege until it's pointed out to me. I don't feel bad about that, as this is relatively new to me. I accept that there are people who have spent a lifetime experiencing privilege, who see it, or feel it, as naturally as breathing. I have learned to trust that not seeing it doesn't mean it isn't there. There's an element of faith in there, and an element of trust in my own judgement. While I'm learning, that's how it has to be. My biggest hope is that by learning, I can help change things, for the better.

The Outsider’s experience

I have been doing a lot of work recently with organizations that aim to serve people with multiple, sometimes conflicting, needs. I work with charities, and the not-for-profit sector, who generally have several different end users: individual funders, corporate funders, government, volunteers (of which there may be many different types), and program recipients (which may be different for every program implemented).

As part of the work I've done, I frequently find myself asking similar questions, all of which are aimed at figuring out the same information (and helping the charities see it for themselves). I have put together a short list of questions, along with an explanation, that I use to help figure out what's going well, and what isn't.

The value of working with any organization lies not in the programs the organization wants to deliver, but in the delivery itself. Delivery is not about how things look from within the organization or whether metrics are being hit, but about how smooth, easy, and helpful things are for people on the outside.

What defines good interactions?

1. Are my needs met?
2. Are they met rapidly?
3. When the organization makes a mistake, how do they recognize it, and how quickly is it rectified?
4. Does the organization understand my needs?
5. How much of the time I spend interacting with the organization is spent on things I want (adding value), as opposed to things that interfere with me getting what I want (waste)?
6. How many people do I have to talk to in order to get what I want?

It is imperative to take the outsider's perspective whenever possible, because it is incredibly easy to become blinded when we look around with our normal perspective. It frequently seems normal to divide the company based on the functions that each team is responsible for. But customers don't experience things in a functional way - their experience is holistic. Customers don't care if a problem occurs with the person they interact with, or deeper within the company. And they certainly don't want to have to chase the solution themselves.

Some of the benefits are highlighted in this article, but the truth is that this concept goes back nearly 60 years, to when Deming started working with the Japanese to build quality into their processes. Deming's main point, and one born out by time and experience, is that you can't inspect quality into a process. It is either built with quality, or it isn't. If it isn't, no amount of tinkering is going to fix it. The questions I ask above are meant to help identify whether quality is part of the process, by challenging organizations to figure out whether they're actually delivering what their customers need and want, or whether they're delivering what the company has told itself they want.

NB: This list is subject to updates.

This post owes a lot to the concept of failure demand