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Peter Honey
| 2 Jul 2009 | 11:29
According to the Office for National Statistics, for the first time there are more people aged over 65 in the UK than there are people aged under 15, and the fastest growing age cohort is the over-85s. The problem is that rising life expectancy is coinciding with low or falling fertility rates - and this is an economic time bomb. At present in the UK there are four people of working age supporting each pensioner but within, say, 30 years this will have fallen to 2.5 people.
Soon I will be 72 and, assuming I get to 85-plus, I am not only going to be a nuisance but, according to one report I have read, I shall be dangerous. Actually there are three Ds: doddery, dependent and dangerous.
The gloomy prediction is that us oldies, many with inadequate pensions, will not only be an economic burden but we will be competing with you younger folk for increasingly scarce resources – jobs, housing, exhaustible fossil fuels, food and water, the NHS and so on.
Solutions are easier said than done, but here are a few:
• old people should work until they drop (the participation rate for over-65s is currently only 7 per cent – and that includes me);
• we should boost labour output with more working women and/or more immigrants;
• we should invest heavily in lifelong learning so that an ageing population develops new skills and remains competitive.
The population time bomb may be every bit as serious as climate change. Doing nothing certainly doesn’t seem a sensible option. Or am I just being paranoid?
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Recent postingsPeter Honey
| 9 Jun 2009 | 13:12
I’ve never met Sir Alan Sugar in person but, even allowing for the distortions of an editor determined to up the aggro, his behaviour on The Apprentice leads me to worry about whether he appreciates what being an adviser to the government will be like. He doesn’t strike me as a man who has the temperament or the skills required to be an adviser. I see him more as someone who is comfortable issuing orders and, naturally, expecting them to be obeyed, rather than someone who offers recommendations and hoping they might be taken up.
Being an adviser is a frustrating business because, even though you know you are right, you have no authority when it comes to taking action. Advice inevitably triggers resistance – lots of it subtle and hard to detect – because the people who are supposed to be taking action usually see the advice as implied criticism.
Poor Sir Alan has already said something ill-advised that will put the people he aims to help on their guard, even if they have never watched The Apprentice. He said: “With all due respect to the people in Victoria Street [the offices of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform], they are what they are, they are civil servants, and they have never actually been in business. You have got to have someone there to guide them in the right direction.” Not, I think, designed to endear him to his new audience.
I can offer some advice to Sir Alan about being an effective adviser:
• ask people for their ideas (yes, even people who have never been in business) and work out how to build on them;
• make gentle suggestions, not dogmatic proposals;
• welcome criticism (preferable to acquiescence);
• understand the objections - they give you valuable information about where people are coming from;
• ask questions, rather than indulging in justifications; and
• remember that if your advice is rejected, it was your failure, not theirs.
I’m confident that this advice will not be heeded. But, unlike Sir Alan, I’m quite used to having my advice ignored.
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Peter Honey
| 29 May 2009 | 14:49
I was shocked by the Baby P case: the mistakes, the denials, the fact that it had all happened before and, despite claims to the contrary, that previous lessons had not been learnt.
Now I’m shocked all over again at the outcry over the prison sentence given to Baby P’s mother. This wretched young woman has been given an indeterminate sentence “for public protection” with a minimum term of five years. This means that she has to serve five years, less the time she has already been in prison, before she can be considered for parole. There is no question of an automatic release. The independent parole board has to be satisfied that her continued detention is no longer necessary to protect the public.
Two children’s charities, the NSPCC and Kidscape, have complained that the prison sentence for Baby P’s mother is inadequate. The NSPCC said: “For the sake of Peter, and for the sake of children who are alive today and whose care teeters on the brink, this case should be referred to the Court of Appeal without delay.”
I can’t understand how giving Baby P’s mother a longer sentence has anything to do with improving the life chances of other children “whose care teeters on the brink”. Presumably the NSPCC believe that a longer prison sentence would be a deterrent to other negligent mothers.
No, rather than want a longer sentence for Baby P’s mother, I want to know why she is in prison at all. It can’t be to protect the public; it can only be to punish her and/or to rehabilitate her. Sadly, prisons do not have a very good track record when it comes to rehabilitating people. Removed from society, inmates usually emerge thoroughly institutionalised, dependent and less able to make decisions and cope with life’s complexities than they were before their incarceration.
So what do you think prison is for? I’d better declare my interest: I’m vice-chair of Prisoners’ Education Trust, a small charity that believes that offering prisoners access to education improves their self-esteem and enables them to choose a more constructive way of life, thereby making it less likely that they will reoffend. I very much hope that Baby P’s mother will apply to us for a grant but this may be a forlorn hope - prison is not by any stretch of the imagination a learning-friendly environment.
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Peter Honey
| 18 May 2009 | 14:52
We’re going to do some supposing.
Suppose you join an organisation and, as part of your induction, you are briefed on the system for claiming expenses. You are given guidelines that are, shall we say, open to interpretation.
Suppose, after a couple of months in the job, with lots of travelling and nights away from home, you want to have your expenses reimbursed. You go to the department that processes expense claims to collect the forms you need. The expenses you can claim for fall into various categories, some needing receipts attached and some not. It all seems rather confusing, so you seek advice. The official is helpful but rather offhand and more or less says that what you claim is up to you.
Suppose, still feeling unsure, you seek clarification from some experienced colleagues who have been with the organisation longer than you. They advise you to claim all the different allowances open to you. They assure you that everyone does this to compensate for salaries that are openly acknowledged to have fallen behind market rates.
Suppose, despite some misgivings, you act on the advice and claim all you have been told you are entitled to. Your claim goes through with no questions asked and the money is paid into your bank account.
Suppose you gradually get used to the system; it all seems normal and routine and your expense claims are never queried. Your job is demanding and you are very busy. You start to get “careless” and claim for some things that you know are iffy. No questions are ever asked – your claims, just like everyone else’s, always go through on the nod.
In the light of all these suppositions, what would you do if, suddenly, your expenses were challenged and you were asked to justify them?
I bet you’d blame the system.
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Peter Honey
| 12 May 2009 | 12:44
I’ve obviously been around too long, or certainly long enough to see things get rediscovered and repackaged for the umpteenth time (everything is cyclical). Emotional intelligence (EI) is a good example. When Daniel Goleman introduced this concept in 1995 I felt a bit miffed. To me he seemed to have rediscovered the interpersonal skills that Neil Rackham and I had written about in our book Developing Interactive Skills in 1971 - but we weren’t American and we didn’t have the good sense to call it “emotional intelligence”.
Recently I have read lots of articles extolling the virtues of EI. A recent Sunday Times feature had the headline “Good leaders manage feelings”. This was presented as if it was new, leading-edge stuff, nothing short of a breakthrough. The article went on to make some spurious claims. For example, it said that raw intelligence accounts for only about 1 per cent of management success (how on earth was that measured?) and that what really matters is EI. It also said that personality is about 67 per cent genetically determined (notice the “about”) with the other 33 per cent affected by your early learning environment. Despite explaining away 100 per cent of personality, the article insisted that “your emotional intelligence continues to develop”.
What a muddle! What to believe?
In the absence of hard data, I have adopted an operating assumption that goes like this: for practical purposes I assume that I inherited predispositions that “contaminated” my early learning and accounts for, say, 50 per cent of my characteristic behaviours (notice the “say”). These ways of behaving have been with me for so long that they have become ingrained and habitual and are relatively fixed and unchanging. However, the good news is that this leaves the other half up for grabs - malleable and amenable to life-long learning.
I like this assumption because it removes the excuse that I can’t do anything to change my behaviour - sceptics often despair of me at this point. They remind me that a leopard can’t change its spots (and, even more depressingly at my age, that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks). But a leopard’s spots are a physical characteristic and nothing to do with the leopard’s behaviour.
I’d far rather believe that I can choose my behaviour – even choose my feelings – rather than being a zombie dictated by genes. If our behaviour patterns are irrevocably fixed by the time we are adults then any attempt to help people develop their soft-skills is rendered utterly futile at a stroke. Learning and development activities rest on the assumption (another assumption) that it is possible for adults to learn relationship skills, empathy, self-awareness and all the rest of it. We’re back to the claim that EI “continues to develop”.
Some years ago I wrote a song called “Choose, choose, you can choose”. One of the verses goes like this:
Choose, choose
You can choose
What to do
What to think.
Assert or shrink
Agree or refuse
Frown or wink,
You can choose.
It would sound more convincing if you could hear me sing it.
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Peter Honey
| 20 Apr 2009 | 11:08
I’ve been reading about Roland Fryer, an economics professor at Harvard. He’s experimenting with programmes in US schools that pay kids to learn using a points system for high grades, good behaviour and so on. Inevitably, this has been condemned as bribery, but I can’t help wishing that I had been bribed. I’d have been up for it, that’s for sure.
I messed up my 11-plus and was sent to a secondary modern school where I was treated as a failure. I spent most of my time there knitting (dishcloths progressing to scarves), weaving (scarves again) and doing woodwork (I’m still a dab hand at dovetail joints). School bored me and I didn’t have any inspirational teachers until years later when, miraculously, I made it to the sixth form. My parents were distraught, but all their warnings about mucking up my life chances fell on deaf ears. I simply didn’t care.
I’m convinced that, if I’d been paid to learn, it would have motivated me to learn my times tables, spell those lists of tricky words and name capital cities on a map of the world. I might even have managed to learn a foreign language or to play the piano.
As it is, I finished up with a sad list of lessons learnt from my schooldays:
About the learning process
I learnt that learning was supposed to happen only when you were taught and that what you learnt mattered far more than how you learnt. I learnt that knowing lots of things, passing exams and getting qualifications was the most important life skill.
About teachers
I learnt that the purpose of producing work was to please teachers. Teachers always knew best and were infinitely wiser than I could ever be.
About how to behave
I learnt that expressing my opinions usually resulted in ridicule – and that it paid to be deferential to anyone in authority. I learnt that asking questions (especially “why?”) wasn’t a good idea. I learnt that mistakes were to be avoided and that unpleasant things happened if you were caught making them. I learnt that collaboration was cheating and that being competitive and excelling at sports was the easiest way to win approval.
About the learning environment
I learnt that an autocratic, hierarchical structure, with lots of imposed rules, was the only way to get things done. I learnt that I wasn’t to be trusted – hence the need for close supervision to ensure that I was where I should be and doing what I should be doing. I learnt that it was good for me to do things I didn’t want to do. I learnt that I was a flawed, inadequate person because I wasn’t sufficiently accomplished at things that teachers’ revered – eg, reading aloud in class or being quick at mental arithmetic.
What does your list look like and how might it have changed if you had been bribed?
Comments [2]
Peter Honey
| 9 Apr 2009 | 11:28
I read that the director of the Centre for the Economics of Education recently condemned literacy and numeracy training for adults as a waste of taxpayers’ money. Apparently there is no evidence to show that the government’s Skills for Life initiative, launched in 2001, has boosted Britain’s economic output.
A spokesperson for the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills is quoted as saying: “We have no intention of writing off the 12 million adults who struggle with literacy or numeracy... We consider it money well spent”. I say thank goodness for that! Some things in life fall into the category of being the right thing to do and I consider helping adults to read and write to be one of them.
I am a trustee of a small charity called Prisoners’ Education Trust. We provide prisoners with distance learning opportunities that would not otherwise be available to them through the statutory educational provisions. These are often people who messed up their schooling, played truant and so on, only to realise as adults (often having been in and out of prison a number of times) that education is the answer. Every week we get heartfelt letters from prisoners saying that the chance to study has changed their life.
However, a reasonable question you might ask (if you were sufficiently hard-nosed) is whether there is any evidence that prisoners who elect to do distance learning while they are banged up have lower re-conviction rates than those who do not. For me, this is the equivalent of asking whether helping adults to read and write boosts the economy.
My answer, cavalier as it is, is to say that I don’t care! I’ll do it as an act of faith – just like exercising, drinking water and eating five fruit and veg a day. I have come to the conclusion that you can take the evidence-based approach too far. It is not that I am against evidence as such - just evidence that kills off entirely laudable things like learning. People often ask me for evidence that learning in organisations contributes to the bottom line. I always tell them they are confusing training and learning. Of course training should be evaluated. But learning? Hands off! It is one of those things that is the right thing to do.
By the way, there is a positive correlation between prisoners doing distance learning and lower re-conviction rates. But, of course, the next question is why. Perhaps prisoners who have the sense to educate themselves re-offend just as much, but are better at not getting caught.
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Peter Honey
| 20 Mar 2009 | 16:47
Oh dear. I fear that management incompetence at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust will have done nothing to enhance the reputation of targets. Apparently, the target that all A&E patients must be treated within four hours led to a number of disastrous unintended consequences. The target was met at the expense of patient care.
Targets often get a bad press– but I love them. The existence of a target or deadline spurs me into action. Without targets I’m sure I’d do a fraction of what I do now. Perhaps I’d even grind to a halt.
Targets and deadlines have so many advantages. For example, how could you ever under-promise and over-deliver unless there was a target or deadline to be under or over? How could you know how well you were doing unless there was a target to use as a yardstick? How could you “aim high to hit high” unless there was a target? The whole concept of “high” is meaningless without targets. How could you impress people unless they knew your target and that you had achieved or exceeded it?
How could you review progress towards a target or deadline if there wasn’t one? You’d have to play the “I’ll know it when I see it” game, which is a pathetic way to dodge the whole business of having to predict a desired outcome. There is no perception (ie, learning) without contrast and there can be no contrast without a target. How could you learn to set relevant, realistic targets if you never had any in the first place? Targets, especially missed ones or ones that spawn unintended consequences, generate masses of learning.
Why am I so keen on targets when most people grumble about them? Well, if you are suffering under the yoke of imposed targets, you’ll have spotted it straight away. It is simply because the targets and deadlines I have been eulogising are mine, not the absurd, often irrelevant, often impossible, things imposed by “them” (you’ll have your own “thems”). Not targets that distort priorities and get people to do daft things.
Agreed targets between consenting adults are the obvious antidote to imposed targets. Everyone has the right to be consulted about the targets and deadlines that affect them. Whenever anyone attempts to impose deadlines on me (clients often try this) I remind myself that I have a choice: if I’m happy it is sensible, I can agree, or, if I think it is unreasonable, I can negotiate. All those people who knowingly do silly things to meet imposed deadlines should exercise this choice.
Comments [2]
Peter Honey
| 13 Mar 2009 | 12:39
A recent piece in The Times claimed that the recession was exposing management theory as “the jargon-filled sham it always was”. Apparently management theory (I never knew there was only one) is to blame for incompetence at Haringey Council, the BBC Trust, schools throughout the land (“schools last year received 6,000 pages of theory and guidelines from Whitehall”), the NHS and the police. “In the past two decades, management theory... has been deliberately imposed on almost every aspect of commercial and public life.”
The article takes no prisoners. “Those who have watched management theory evolve into a religion wonder whether its false gods should take responsibility for the current economic downturn.” No management theories are spared – Management by Walking About, Theory X and Theory Y, Senge’s Five Disciplines, Kolb’s Four Learning Styles, W Edward Deming’s Fourteen Points and much more.
The piece has left me reflecting on the extent to which management theories (I insist that this should be plural) can be imposed on utterly resistant and unwilling managers. If the theories are so daft, so patently absurd and damaging, how is it they attract a following in the first place? I suspect it takes two to create a management fad: the originator and the recipient. Are managers so gullible that they are seduced by whatever the like of Tom Peters says? If so, they only have themselves to blame.
There is a telling passage in the Times article. Key performance indicators are under scrutiny and David Craig, author of Plundering the Public Sector, is quoted as saying: “KPIs are absolutely fabulous if used by effective management. But if you have incompetent, ineffective management and policies that only want to give the illusion of progress, they are a disaster and demote everyone in the organisation.”
Exactly my point. Ineffective managers fall for silly fads. Effective managers extract whatever is useful from the theory being offered, adapt it to their circumstances, implement it cautiously and monitor its usefulness. If more managers were effective, fads simply couldn’t exist. But which, I wonder, comes first: management theories or effective managers?
Comments [1]
Peter Honey
| 27 Feb 2009 | 12:46
A minefield – but here goes!
Everything I have heard and read about the controversy over bonus payments fails to mention an important principle: contingency. It is only when a bonus is applied contingently that it works as a motivator. In essence this means that a bonus, if it is to be effective, must a) be conditional upon the occurrence of successful behaviour and b) must follow the behaviour in question quickly enough for the link to be obvious. A bonus that was non-contingent would not act as an incentive, it would just be a thank you present: nice, but without any motivational impact.
Lots of things at work are non-contingent – for example, a monthly salary that stays the same regardless of how hard the person has worked in a given month. Some months might be quiet, but the salary stays the same. The performance during the month makes no difference to the monthly pay cheque. It is non-contingent but welcome.
I’m the first to admit that the promise of a monetary reward (in my case a fee) gets me to show up. But, once I’ve done that, it has little impact on my performance. Other factors take over, such as not wanting to make a fool of myself, being eager to please my clients, the extent to which the participants show an interest in what I have to say, the questions they ask and so on. The prospect of receiving a fee has nothing to do with it. Even when I donate the fee to a charity, I work just as hard.
Bonuses were dreamt up in order to overcome the shortcomings of paying people a fixed, non-contingent salary. The basic idea was to have a system that was contingent upon success. In other words, the success, defined in advance, had to occur before any bonus was paid. And the bonus would have to be timely, paid as soon after the success as possible.
There are, of course, two interconnected perils. The first is how success is to be defined; the criteria, or targets, often distort people’s behaviour so that local successes are achieved at the expense of wider organisational aims. The second peril is to do with timing. Bonuses, in their eagerness to motivate, tend to reward short-term behaviour.
One thing is for sure, we can’t uninvent bonuses. All we can do is think harder about the implications of making them contingent.
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