Qualitosis

Well, that’s not us, but this is a representation of the sort of office we aspire to nowadays – diverse, engaged staff collaborating in a psychologically safe environment to create new, successful and socially responsible businesses…

This is more like our working environment when we started our careers. Command, control and process-driven, speak when spoken to, with the boss in the corner office or more likely on an exclusive executive floor.

So we’ve seen the evolution from this almost Victorian working environment where all correspondence was typed up by secretaries, and to CC someone was literally to insert a tissue (or max 5) of carbon paper between the vermillion sheets. Fax machines were exciting technology, photocopiers were literally magic and most importantly, the boss was king.

Unsurprisingly, the work environment was often severe. Harassment, bullying and prejudice was rife and overlooked if not accepted or even encouraged. Demotivation was not a serious management issue because work was process driven and could be monitored and measured through time and motion studies. “Inefficient” workers would get fired or side-lined. High performers and the politically astute would get promoted and supervise the others and – maybe – eventually make it upstairs. And those who made it upstairs had necessarily grown thick skins and buried any empathy towards their colleagues that they may once have had -so the cycle would continue.

That’s what makes Qualitosis so interesting to us. We can understand the old management style and why it was successful in its age but we can also see how much the world has changed, driven by technology, and how the new generations of workers have changed with it.

We have to appreciate that traditional managers have a different perspective, either by training or selection, and are not likely to be influenced by what they would consider the softer elements of management. What they understand are the hard numbers. We believe the concept of Qualitosis helps in the understanding that softer elements of management aren’t just important nowadays, but that increasingly they actually drive the hard numbers.

In this series of blogs we will be discussing any aspects of Qualitosis that we may find interesting, be it history, egregious examples or the tools available to prevent or treat it. We hope you find it interesting too.