The Productive Pessimist

This morning, LinkedIn was being very Monday, very LinkedIn, not very demure, not very mindful. A woman, whose profile suggested she works in recruitment, responded, quite aggressively, to a disabled man asking why companies were still  engaging in discrimination against disabled individuals with: "Because disability is a liability, it costs money, and businesses can't expect to run up their costs to an infinite degree whilst tiptoeing around every single need people could ever possibly have." This isn't an isolated thought.  It's not often said out loud in the UK - but it always has been elsewhere in the world, and it very much is being shouted from the rooftops of the USA. And it's not just recruiters and executive leadership; it's ordinary people, meaning that, even with the most inclusive, welcoming, accommodating leadership, disabled people will still be encountering hostile environments courtesy of the able-bodied people they have to work with  on th...

As soon as air travel began to become more affordable, Britain's small museums, and other smaller tourism attractions were in trouble. The problem was that, being British, those organisations didn't consider that they were  in trouble. Their entry fees were still a lot  cheaper than a plane ticket, and flying abroad was so much hassle , wasn't it? And besides, they were British.  You could have a conversation  with the lovely, British volunteers working in lovely, cosy, local British museums, you could enjoy the bracing British seaside, or the beautiful British countryside, whilst exploring quaint, quirky tourist businesses, and - the really cool  payoff - keeping your money in the local economy! And, for a while, the British public agreed with all of this. They pottered, they provided endless 2ps, 1ps, and 5ps, they brought quirky knick-knacks that would sit on a windowsill for a few weeks, then be moved to the mantlepiece, before finally being scuttled off to ...

  What do you consider a reasonable commuting distance?  20miles? 30?  Maybe, for a hybrid role, up to a two-three hour drive away, depending on how many times you're expected to be in the office?  The Department for Work and Pensions expects jobseekers on Universal Credit to travel up to 90minutes, each way - yes, including  for minimum wage roles. Well, John Tuckett, the UK's new "Border Tsar" (or Immigration Services Co-ordinator, to give him his official title), considers a commute of 1,834miles, from his "family home" to the UK, to be completely reasonable, and believes it won't have any impact on his ability to effectively carry out his new role - which comes with a £140,000 a year salary. If you were driving, you'd be on the road for almost two days, with a 37hr drive time. Of course, John Tuckett is going to be flying to the UK to carry out his new job (carbon footprint, anyone..?); with a flight time of 2hrs 52mins, plus travel to and from...

  British business spends a lot of time, energy, focus, and yes, money  "developing leaders".  Progression opportunities are secured by "demonstrating leadership skills." Constant calls are made that business, education, government, society at large, "needs more/stronger/better leaders." We need more women in leadership. No, actually, we need a different kind of masculinity  in leadership. Ah, actually, maybe we went too far, and it's time for "traditional masculinity" to be brought back to leadership. What about minority leaders? Maybe we should look at how neurodivergent folks and marginalised communities express leadership differently. The conversations, books, podcasts, and seminars around leadership are endless - and often contradictory.  We spend so many resources trying to give one definitive, always-true answer to the question "What makes a good leader?" The answer is simple: "What makes a good leader is competent, capa...

  Why bother with a mentor? Most of us have encountered the situation of knowing exactly what we want to do with our lives, or where we want to be in our careers, but not having a clue how to get there from where we are now.  The gulf between what we perceive as being "needed" in the role or life we want, and the resources, experience, and skills we have , seems un-bridge-able; there are no stepping stones, the current is too powerful, we don't know anyone with a boat... A mentor is, allegorically speaking, "a person with a boat." They've made the same journey we want to make, often from an equivalent, if not absolutely identical, starting point to us, and so they know  it's do-able for "someone like me" - because they are  "someone like you", and they did it. Unlike a coach, who supports you to become better at something you're already at the very least okay at, and who assumes the perspective of "I know more about this than...

  ADHD. Autism. AuDHD. Autistic Spectrum Condition. Neurodivergence. The words have become a jumble. Social media influencers insist that so many  behaviours are "obvious neurodiversity traits!", that if you "did XYZ (relatively common) thing as a kid, you're definitely  neurodivergent as an adult!" that it's become a meaningless fog, with some people questioning whether autism and ADHD are actually "real" conditions at all. Whether it was their intention or not, the "Neurodiversity Influencers" have brought us right back to the "naughty kids who just need to be spanked more often" attitudes, only now they're expressed as "Self-absorbed Millennials and Gen Z who lack resilience and don't want to work".   (And sometimes still as "naughty kids who just need to be spanked more often.") There seem to be so many "behaviours" that are "clearly undiagnosed neurodivergence!" that, if we w...

  Calm down. We haven't decided for a total 360 on our brand - we're still The Productive Pessimist, still a bit more "storms, spite, sarcasm" than "live, laugh, love"  - it's just that it seems like a good time to remind people that pessimism doesn't mean doom and gloom and moaning about everything - it's simply assuming that things may not go the way you'd like them to, and planning on that assumption, so that, if they don't, you can dust yourself off and carry on anyway.  After all, if they do  go they way you want...there's nothing stopping your onward progress, is there?! You hit a milestone - press on towards the goal! 2025 In a recent meeting, a retiring colleague from the property sector was asked what he imagined he'd see if he had a crystal ball for 2025; his response was "a steady recovery for the commercial sector."   The commercial sector doesn't just mean commercial property rentals, although that is my...

  It can be easy to dismiss the memes that centre "we could be hibernating right now, but nooooo, we had to invent CAPITALISM and CUPS!" as "just more Gen Z whining", and further evidence that "people are lazy and just don't want to work", and sure, some people actually don't  want to have any  kind of job. That's a thing - people are allowed to feel resentful about the idea that they are obliged  to do something they find to be either very intrusive, or actually harmful to their wellbeing. A lot of people will just be posting those memes as 'engagement-scrapes'; complaining about work we don't really  have too much issue with is part of human nature, and probably has been since we first started engaging in planned, focused, longer-term-thinking activity, rather than merely surviving day by day.  People like to bond through sharing low-key frustrations, so these memes will generate a lot of comments, shares, and likes - all of which...