The Productive Pessimist

  Today, I attended a webinar on "Capability and Ill-health in the Workplace".  It was hosted by a corporate insurer who provides HR consultancy services. Those attending were business leaders and HR representatives, and the Q&A at the end made it clear they believed they were only in a "room" with other  leaders and HR reps. Their attitudes around long-term ill health and disability were immediately presented as: . This is an intolerable and ridiculous burden to us as employers . This is too expensive . These people are taking the piss . It's not going to be fair to able-bodied people who have to pick up their slack. This is also the attitude I've personally, directly  encountered as someone trying to work whilst also being disabled.  It's the attitude that lost me my last job - a job I mostly enjoyed, and a role I'd hoped to build a career from. Employers. HATE. Disabled. And. Chronically. Ill.  Employees. They do not  want to employ disabled p...

  Recently, my regional newspaper carried an article which cited that 25% of domestic violence victims are men. That article was discussing a wider situation of a DV incident involving a same-sex male couple, which will immediately allow some people to claim that "See?! It's all still just violent men!" Except, that 25% will be an understatement, because men are often focused on what is practical, and, in the UK, it's not practical to report domestic violence when you're a male victim. Firstly, there are almost no  refuges or support groups for men. (And, with support groups, especially online ones, when men set them up, they very quickly get inundated with women demanding access, because "something" about any of the hundreds of resources for women "doesn't appeal" to the women demanding access to spaces intended for men - when those same women would be outraged if men tried to access women's spaces with the "justification" of...

  We enter Pride Month at a time when global LGBTQIA+ rights are under direct, immediate attack, including in developed Western countries - which has not been the case, on a systemic level, for many years.  For some younger LGBTQIA+ Western people, they have never in their lifetime   known a situation where, systemically, at a legal level, they have not had  rights as a default position. It feels frightening - even when you have  lived through being LGBTQIA+ without rights, or without the level of rights younger Western people have been able to assume were "just naturally there." It actually is  frightening. It is terrifying when your government directly positions itself in opposition to your ability to safely exist as yourself in the world. And LGBTQIA+ people have to exist in the world. Including non-passing trans people. Including very butch Sapphic women, and very femme gay men. Including people who are visibly intersex. Including polyamorous people who...

There's a lot of talk these days about "boundaries".  Every other social media post tells you that "boundaries are important."  Half of the rest of the social media posts mock the entire idea of boundaries, and insist it's all part of the "woke agenda". But what are  boundaries, and how do you hold them whilst still enabling people, including the strangers who may become your collaborators, your team members, or your customers/clients, to approach you freely? What are boundaries? A boundary, in human psycho-social terms, is a requirement you have around the way people behave and interact with you.  It needs  to be expressed, because expected people to "just know" what your boundaries are is unreasonable; people aren't psychic. Many open-access spaces include signage about zero tolerance of verbally or physically abusive behaviour towards their staff - that's a poorly stated  boundary, because everyone's idea, particularly of v...

  The Supreme Court's recent ruling that "woman" refers to "someone who was biologically female at birth" only directly connects to roles specifically reserved for women , which have to follow a specific process to authorise gender exclusion against men.  It does not  mean "I want my organisation to be female-dominant, so I don't have to employ trans women anymore!"  Nor does it mean that you "aren't allowed" to continue respecting the gender - and names and pronouns - of trans people who currently work for you, and those you "don't think look like women" - who probably actually aren't  trans. For Boards, who are being legally obliged towards demonstrating equity, the real diversity is diversity of approach.   Here at The Productive Pessimist , we work very much in alignment with Leandro Herrero 's style of management - and very much agree with his statement: "If you have two people who think exactly the sam...

  The Productive Pessimist ' s  working practice is to ask 5 questions of clients whom we're helping to address strategic, systemic, and crisis challenges in their focus remits. 5 questions. No more, no less. Asking so few questions compels everyone in the room to focus on the "real problems", and set aside their personality clashes, their fixations, their personal perceptions of "the problem", and come together to bring through meaningful responses. The business community, once they finally accept they do have  problems, engage quite well with the challenge. The charitable sector, however... I'd like  to say the non-profit sector doesn't even accept they have any problems, because that would at least be reasonable, and make a lot more sense than the real situation, which is that the voluntary sector does nothing other than  complain about all  the "problems" it has.  And yes, many of those problems are genuine, and valid.  But, despite all...