ARE WE A NATION OF IDLERS?

This question is in Britannia Unchained in 2012, written by, amongst others, Liz Truss. 

More fully it said: 

“Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor…. Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football and pop music.”

Oh dear. This is an ill researched cartoon. We work longer hours than nearly every country in Europe and retire later. “Worst idlers” is such an old-fashioned term. Successful people I know are idle but smart – they get other people to do the work for them. What’s more current thinking by a Silicon Valley consultant, amongst others, suggests that productivity would be improved by lower, not higher hours.

Britannia Unchained feels so out of touch with the reality of today’s world. Had the writer been to China where at 12.30 every day the lights are turned low for an hour and everyone goes to sleep? Had they watched Chinese at work? 

The same applies to India where workmen often work in slow motion. Of course, there are showcase examples of speed of construction in China – a multi-storey hotel being erected in a few weeks but health-and-safety doesn’t seem to figure high on their agenda. “996”, the so called Chinese work ethic – 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week  - which the authors of “Britannia Unchained” might presumably have espoused -  was put unfavourably under the spotlight in February this year when a 25-year-old content moderator for short-video streaming site Bilibili died of brain haemorrhage after working extreme hours. The company called it a “wake-up call.”

A friend of mine who’s a corporate lawyer working possibly 70 hours a week on average has worked in Japan and China and thinks it is not that the British are idle, not at all, it is they are a bit “soft”, a softness engendered from us having had it rather easier than the previous generations (up to now). 

The huge salaries some earn are generally the result of working extraordinarily hard (read the story of Bill Gates’ youth). Often at the top of the wage pyramid great wealth, poor health, long hours, burn-out.

Generally at the bottom of that pyramid, terrible wages, poor health, maybe doing several jobs to pay the bills and very long hours. These poor people are not idlers, they’re exploited and have got by so far through being work machines.

But I’m like anyone writing on this subject liable to lapse into generalisations so let me take a step back. Our world is unrecognisable from that of just 10 years ago. We are just beginning to grasp the opportunities of technology like AI and are struggling to grapple with the problems and challenges it will create. The current strikes across the public sector are caused as much by a realisation that a radical change of working practices is imminent as they are about rates of pay.

I believe most people prefer working hard than having too little to do. I believe most people want to do a good job. I believe most people want a decent job.

We need to spend time working on a strategy for the future of work and remove the word redundancy from our lexicon. Work is changing. We need to explain why and how that can benefit us rather than enforce people to be unemployed or unemployable.

We need to work, not just for money but to feel we are relevant and to give us self-respect.

WE'RE GOING TO LIVE TO A HUNDRED

Do you remember the 1980 TV series “Fame”? It was about the New York School of Performing Arts. This week I remembered one of the songs in it.
“Fame …. I’m going to live forever
Baby, remember my name”

It was no surprise to hear at the London Business School this week that we had moved into an era where there was a fair certainty most would live to a hundred. Hurray… that’ll keep King William pretty busy. 80 million telegrams….or will they do it the other way round - send e-mails to the families of those whose members miss the century - “hard luck!”

The thesis is this. Governments and Corporations don’t know what to do with the oldies. But we can’t afford to support people for 35 years after retirement. Pensions used to pay out for only 5 or so years and then “aagghh!”

So we’ll have to work to 80….and the question is doing what exactly? Bricklaying, digging, riot policing?

The plan on paper looks fine - we learn up to 22 then hone that learning into practical, high earning work for 20 years then take a new learning sabbatical and emerge to do good work but much less well paid and at age 65 - 70 pause before embarking on a decade or so of creative mentoring before, aged 80, heading for Southampton for the cruise ships.

Talking about an abrupt change to pension arrangements is not something governments will ever do - suicide is something they tend to try and avoid.

Do you remember the film 1976 Logan’s Run which depicts a dystopian future society in which population and the consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by killing everyone who reaches the age of thirty thereby preventing overpopulation? Thought not.

Nature will use its cocktail of plague, pestilence and natural disaster to control population growth but what are those who make it through this going to do? The alarming data from a US University who’ve conducted research into MBA graduate aspirations over 20 years is that the new cohort is a bit different.

• 1/3 say they won’t have children
• 1/3 say their work is all
• 1/s say they’d negotiate equal work rights in marriage (if they got married…. If!!!)

We are considering the intractable problem of irreversibility. If you marry at 20 and make a mistake it’s an 80 year error or worse - it could turn out to be 4 errors of  20 years each with a devastating impact on your wealth.

But don’t despair.

The solutions are threefold:

• Grandchildren
• Technology
• Creative thinking

It’s seriously time to stop thinking about WORK but to see work as life and creative and fun and carry on doing it as long as we can disguising our visible age by technology and cosmetics.

After all did anyone know the genius PD James was 90 odd when she died still writing? Oh and Melvyn Bragg above is 80.

WHEN ADVERTISING GOT SCREWED

Today I read that international agreements about global GDP calculations had changed whereby money earning occupations like prostitution and drug-dealing, hitherto ignored, should now be included in the calculations. This is exceedingly good news for Mexico, Colombia and Afghanistan. This probably means Mexico has overtaken France (mind you at the moment everyone is overtaking France….sorry that’s very, very mean of me.)

The consequence is some £10 billion is added to the UK’s GDP. £5.5 billion of this is from prostitution. The calculations go as follow: there are just under 61,000 prostitutes with on average 25 clients a week, charging on average £67.16. Hmm…. it doesn’t seem much. And what, the mind boggles it really does, is performed for 16p?

But if you find this all mildly shocking I find the next disclosure truly awful. For years I worked very hard doing an honest, creative sort of job, oiling the cogs of industry, helping the wheel of capitalism spin. I thought hard about how to titillate, persuade and convert. I was a missionary of branding. I worked in advertising.

Yet it appears the economic value of prostitution in the UK is actually greater than advertising. Martin Sorrell will be horrified or, being smart, may change his business model. WPP will change to Whips, Panders and Prostitution.

It somehow seems deliciously appropriate doesn’t it? One in the eye for that old fraud Scott Fitzgerald who said of advertising:

 “You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero."

Advertising like prostitution enlivens the world, gives it colour and sometimes at its best has a sense of humour. Hugely useful…like farming …which is I gather a similar size. Now that is shocking.

Enough of this…we are off to Venice for some sun, some art and some Italian food for ten days. In the 15th century when Venice was the powerhouse of the world, it was four times the size of London and 10% of the population were prostitutes. This means that if you extrapolated their GDP potential to the UK on a per capita basis that would be worth £ 640 billion which is - let’s face it - a pretty impressive thought.

Enjoy the sun.

www.colourfulthinkers.com

THE MYSTERY OF WORK

Years ago I was walking through London and as I stared up at a skyscraper my companion asked “do you sometimes wonder what they all do in there all day?”

I ask the same question as I go through an airport early in the morning, removing my shoes and belt as I queue for security and seeing all these businesspeople rushing off to Euro-meetings.
Fast Company on Friday had a piece entitled “Why productive people have empty schedules” mostly dealing with Warren Buffett’s diary and his ability to keep it free and provide himself with time to think.

The article went on to explain that if we’re going to do the work that we want to do, we need to own our time because it’s limited:

• Time is highly limited: As humans, we're immature in our first decades, and declining in health in our last. 
• Time is uniquely limited: You can't bank, transfer, or recover time, unlike money. 
• Time is equitably limited: we can, on average, expect to live about 77 years. That expectation isn't equal with resources like money. 

So if you are creative and that’s where your greatest earning capacity and, more importantly, where your greatest contribution lies, spend your time feeding that urge and honing that skill.

Most of us are trying to redefine what work is – I, for instance, haven’t worked as such for years. I spend my time doing stuff I enjoy. But what I do not especially enjoy are old fashioned skyscraper offices.

I’m puzzled by the need to have such offices with partner desks, carpets and filing cabinets. Places of Victorian labour. Yet when I speculate about creative spaces and working from home, my godchildren, nearly all of them major successes and working 60 hour weeks, look at me as though I’m mad. The truth is they seem to like being punished by the tyranny of work and having a grey office in which to lament the amount they have to do.

We are obsessed by work and by jobs. We seem to believe the Chinese or Indians or Americans or Germans work harder than us. They don’t. And the jobs most of them are doing are old fashioned.

We are spending too little time thinking about that and the fact that around 2/3 of today’s schoolchildren will end up doing jobs that haven’t been invented yet.

So just ask yourself the question “what do I really do all day?” and “why?”

www.colourfulthinkers.com

JOBS - AND KEEPING THEM

You have a job? Congratulations. They say HR is going to be like Casualty or ER in 2009. A lot of good people are going to be going into teaching, the church and counselling. Freelance is going to become a profession.

And we’ll see a rush of potters, painters and novelists – which would be terrific – but for that mortgage. So what can you do? By working harder; trying more stuff…new ideas; learning new tricks; learning new skills; being taught to improve.

2009 is the year to make more of whatever it is you have and then reaping the harvest in the next decade.

Tomorrow - making things work

http://www.richardhall.biz/