Help! My workplace is in chaos

Hello and welcome to Working It.

Journalists love to bash HR’s love of jargon, but when I moderated a Headspring panel about the future of the sector last week, the experts gave refreshingly clear answers to everything — including a definition of the dreaded word “agile’”. (Hands up if you, like me, fear that “agile” is the new “purpose” 😩.)

As I now understand it, “HR agility” in practice can mean being quick off the mark in shifting strategies in response to changing conditions — whether geopolitical or internal — and in doing things such as creating new teams in surprising configurations. I’m sure there’s more . . . but these are good tangible examples 👍.

Read on for advice on leading in a chaotic workplace from people who’ve done it, and in Office Therapy we meet the boss who is “too cool” to organise a Christmas party 🎅🏼.

I welcome all efforts to justify jargon (though you’ll never make me say the nonsense phrase “thought leadership”): [email protected]

What that OpenAI crisis can teach the rest of us

Recent events at OpenAI made for possibly the wildest corporate meltdown ever seen. A recap for anyone (anyone?) who hasn’t been following it: the board of the Silicon Valley company — makers of everyone’s favourite CV-and-essay-writing software, ChatGPT — got rid of superstar chief executive Sam Altman, seemingly out of nowhere. Nearly all the staff threatened to leave. Altman was reinstated. Cue a reset, with a new (all-male 🤨) board in place. For a fascinating insight into what this all means for the company’s direction and the future of artificial intelligence research, see the latest Lex newsletter (Premium FT sub required to access and sign up) by Elaine Moore.

It’s an extreme situation, but plenty of people find themselves in workplaces where a charismatic founder or CEO suddenly leaves, or is ejected. And organisational crises of any sort materialise very suddenly. When that happens, what’s the first thing that any manager or leader should do?

I asked Frances Frei for advice. She’s the Harvard Business School professor and leadership coach who went into Uber to sort out its culture after software engineer Susan Fowler’s blog exposed internal bullying and harassment. (I highly recommend Frances’s workplace podcast Fixable, which she co-hosts with her wife, Anne Morriss.)

If you are left unexpectedly in charge, Frances says the priority is to “make it clear that there is someone in charge. Packs need leaders, and in this regard, humans are packs. You want to reveal that you are both in control of the situation and capable of directing the organisation to meet its stakeholder needs.

“Do not try to be the person who left — you’ll fall short and lose trust because people will not get a clear sense of who you really are. Meet with as many constituents as possible and ask questions. The goal is to learn and to reveal that you are invested in their perspective.”

And what about those of us who are regular staff members? At least the leaders are somewhat “in the loop” on what’s going on during corporate turbulence. Everyone else relies on Whatsapps and hearsay 🙉. Frances advises: “In times of sudden departures and instability, keep an open mind and look for opportunities in the shifting status quo. Call on your curiosity and suspend your judgment wherever possible. Take care of people around you and default to rigour and optimism.”

I also talked to Kirstin Ferguson, author of Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership. In 2018, Kirstin was appointed by the Australian prime minister as acting chair of the board of its national broadcaster ABC, to steer it through a sudden crisis.

Kirstin offers this advice from her experience of crisis leadership: “Your world gets very small when you are in the middle of a public crisis. Everything else disappears and the crisis becomes the centre of your day, your thoughts, your interactions. Because of that it is important to have people around you who not only support you on a personal level but can also help you course correct when you find your thinking, invariably, is unable to see the widest possible view of what is unfolding.”

I also asked her about other lessons that boards should learn (so far) from what happened at OpenAI: “If there had been a growing chasm between the purported purpose of the board and the operations of the business, why wasn’t it sorted out sooner? It is as though the board chose the hardest and most risky solution to the issue and completely failed to ‘read the room’ — a room full of their investors, employees, key partners and more. Lessons for boards from this is to take action the moment you see a disconnect growing between the board and management; it will only get worse if you don’t act.”

The tl; dr in all this? Communication, communication, communication. Repeat ♾️.

Have you got personal reflections on crisis leadership? Do email me: [email protected]. You can be anonymous.

This week on the Working It podcast

We’ve shaken things up on Working It this week with a workplace problem-solving episode. I’ve teamed up with my wise colleague Jonathan Black, who writes the Dear Jonathan careers advice column, to chew over thorny issues sent in by Working It readers and listeners 😨.

We’re going to make these episodes a regular part of the schedule — please let us know what you think of the format. (And what types of work problems you’d like to see us tackle next). Usual contacts: [email protected] or drop us a voicenote. Anonymity guaranteed.

Office Therapy

The problem: We are planning our department Christmas party. The new boss isn’t interested. Our old boss used to book a room for the Christmas party, sort out the budget with management etc. There is a small subsidy for parties — but we can’t access it except via the boss. We can organise our own event, but how do you deal with someone “too cool for school”?

Isabel’s advice: You have an insecure boss. And even though you know it’s them, not you, at fault — that doesn’t help you much. Quelling my rage on your behalf, I asked my former boss Michael Skapinker for better advice. (He also organised some excellent parties.) Michael is now a counsellor specialising in workplace issues. He says: “It sounds as if your manager is having difficulty adjusting to their role. I would suggest one of you asking straight out: ‘Could you please authorise our Christmas party expenses? And we’d love to have you there.’

“If you get the brush-off, organise it yourselves. If you have to pay for your own drinks, console yourselves with this: it’s hard to get a bad boss to change, but no one is a boss forever.”

Got a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our readers? Send it to me: [email protected] or via a voice note. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleagues or underlings will never know.

Five top stories from the world of work

1. Lunch with the FT: Tom Hanks. The actor, director and writer gives Emma Jacobs, and the rest of us, a masterclass in creating a narrative about our careers. It’s a lovely read (and Hanks is as thoughtful as you’d hope).

2. How old is too old for your profile pic? Rebecca Rose tackles the taboo topic of professional headshots — and discovers that a surprising number of people have bio pictures dating back 15 years (or more).

3. ‘Flex space’ and the modern office: Despite WeWork’s bankruptcy, the market for flexible workspaces is booming, as Simon Kuper reports, with “co-location” the new buzzword, meaning working alongside people from different organisations.

4. Slaying the UK’s worklessness monster: Alone among G7 countries, the UK has seen an increase in post-Covid economic inactivity. Camilla Cavendish traces this in part to a huge rise in the number of younger people with mental health conditions who are not working.

5. How BP’s ‘Sun King’ court enabled the rise and fall of Bernard Looney: BP’s decades-long culture of promoting favourites to become leaders enabled Looney to become chief executive with no oversight of his complex personal life. Great reporting from Tom Wilson and Anjli Raval.

One more thing . . . 

I highly recommend “Sorry you feel that way: how passive aggression took over the world”, in the Economist’s 1843 magazine [paywalled]. Josh Cohen, a psychoanalyst and academic, explains why “pass agg” interactions have become a staple of the modern workplace, “where more direct expressions of frustration and resentment are considered unprofessional”. Yep 🙆‍♀️.

Don’t tell Jamie Dimon and the office evangelists but . . . remote work hasn’t helped. “What might sound playful or helpful when spoken in person may well read as sarcastic or resentful when read on a screen. No wonder, therefore, that passive aggression has thrived as we see less of our colleagues.”

A word from the Working It community

This newsletter is generating a thriving discussion about how best to understand and support neurodivergent staff. It started with an Office Therapy problem about a staffer who was “offhand” with strangers and didn’t make eye contact. I gave an exceedingly neurotypical response, so several of you then reminded me that eye contact can be hard for ND colleagues — and managers need to take that into account. That’s the story so far 📜.

Now a Working It reader has highlighted a condition called “prosopagnosia” — or face blindness. According to the NHS website: “Some people may not be able to tell the difference between strangers or people they do not know well. Others may not recognise the faces of friends and family, or even their own face.” As our reader says, face blindness can affect people’s reactions to colleagues and strangers:

In random situations like in the lobby or when walking down the hallway or having recently started a new job then you might consider that the person could be affected by prosopagnosia.

So while a traditionally neurodiverse person may be aware eye contact is normal in these situations but not naturally do it, a person with prosopagnosia would naturally do it but may not even be aware they’re in a situation where it would be expected. This could understandably lead to the person being labelled unengaging or even antisocial when in fact they’re not necessarily anything of the sort.

Thank you for all the thoughtful replies. I will never make assumptions about people who don’t make eye contact again (and if my ND husband is reading this — I am very sorry for all the times I told you off for not looking people in the eye 😔.)