This newsletter is an exercise in exploring the intersection of Mind, Money & Machine. Occasional personal observations. If you enjoy this issue, please share & subscribe below
This piece is brings small signals together to speculate on the topic of workplace management
One of the big societal issues that was simmering prior to and exploded during Covid is Mental Health.
Simultaneously trauma has stealthily replaced ‘war’ as the dominant metaphor through which companies view talent decisions and company culture.
On the plus side the wider cultural trend of talking about mental health has been great to help lessen workplace stigma around MH.
But the dark side of this trend has been the over-qualifying [the act of assuming someone is capable of more than the position requires] of managers, who now have to deal with issues that they are not really capable of effectively managing.
When all you have is a hammer…
When a family is dealing with someone who is in the midst of a mental health crisis, they may try and talk to someone. They may try and reach out for help to someone at a hospital. They may try and set something up for a clinic.
When that family member who is in distress doesn't want to go, for most people the only place they have to call is 911, and 911 has three options, a fire, ambulance, or a badge.
Over the years police officers have more and more been called to deal with issues outside of their core skill set.
Because of the this scope creep regarding the type of work police officers are being asked to do, LAPD’s police union is proposing that someone other than police respond to more than 28 types of 911 calls in a bid to transfer officers’ workload to more serious crimes.
These calls range from mental health situations, quality-of-life and homeless issues, problems at schools, welfare checks and more.
The move is part of a national trend aimed at limiting situations where armed police officers are the first to respond.
Creating psychological safety, managing the whole self at work, intersectionality, unconscious biases, remote/hybrid working.
Much like police officers, managers have been tasked to deal with things that experts take years to learn, apply properly and still struggle with.
We keep saying that people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. Perhaps managers are not bad, just in the wrong place and the wrong time.
Trained to fight the last war because companies refuse to learn that their internal culture is nothing more than a lagging representation of what’s already happening outside their walls.
If nothing else way, companies would be wise to:
start understanding the impact of how the Mental Health Lens has altered their ideas of what modern management is and is not.
Start planning for short term reactionary trends to this lens?
Start asking what next lens is, as of yet, invisibly taking root in your company?