Tooth and Claw – Daniel 28

 

[For back story go here: Story so far and especially this one.]

[Relevant back story links also within text.]

Daniel surveyed his notes. He’d made a good lot of audio calls and video calls with people around the company and some of them had even been enjoyable. But that didn’t mean they’d been productive. One of the biggest takeaways from the exercise at the moment was that being innovative really didn’t mean doing new things. Sometimes it meant reintroducing old stuff. Or just asking what was so good about new things anyway?

For himself he wanted an innovative way to talk to people. After all this time there had to be a better way than through the computer screen or entering tech hell with a dodgy mobile phone signal. He suspected the fantastic and easy way to communicate was actually by being in the same room as the person you wanted to talk to so you could look them in the eye, read their body language and see you had their undivided attention. But that was the whole point right now. You couldn’t do that and innovation meant replacing face to face meetings with computer code. There just had to be a way to make it enjoyable too.

“To be honest, mate,” said a clearly bored programmer, “Stuff here’s fine, but then someone tries to get in touch with me about something irrelevant and the whole thing goes stupid. I get stressed, they get stressed, no work gets done. I just want to be left alone.”

Being left alone didn’t sound particularly innovative, thought Daniel. Especially if there was someone who actually needed to talk to you about something. Being employed and then left alone sounded great in principle, great for the person concerned but… And then he wondered if that was just a veiled dig at his own current work.

“So that puts you out of your comfort zone, right?” he suggested.

“Mate, where have you been?” said the programmer, “When was the last time you were in a comfort zone?"

“So just thinking out loud here,” said Daniel. “If you had to imagine you were some kind of animal in the workplace, what animal would you be?”

“Animal?”

“Yeah,” said Daniel. “What kind of animal would you consider yourself to be when you’re working efficiently?”

“Don’t know, really,” said the programmer. “A wolf? A lone wolf. Out on my own, doing what I want to do and nobody daring to bother me?”

To be honest, thought Daniel, this didn’t sound like a wolf. But it was a first step, at least. He needed to delver a more engaged staff. Or never mind more engaged, what about just engaged in the first place? Maybe the workplace as menagerie could do that, in an innovative way.

“I want more straight forward communication,” said a young bloke from marketing. “I get sort of confused by the numbers things that people go on about sometimes. I mean targets are all well and good and everything but are they actually realistic or useful?”

“What if your target were an animal?” asked Daniel. “What kind of animal would your target be?”

“Eh?” said the young bloke.

“I’m just thinking out loud here – if I said go after the target like a gazelle or your target is a gazelle that you need to hunt down. Would that make a difference? A gazelle rather or a, a kingfisher, perhaps. How would that make you feel?”

“Bit confused,” said the young bloke.

Claudia from project management leapt at the animal idea with both, and even four feet.

“To be honest with you I’m being several different animals because I need to look after a lot of different animals too. I mean, if you were in charge of a zoo, or more likely a country park where everyone wanders off in different directions, to their natural habitats and I have to track them down and steer them back and get them to work,” she said. “Like a…. lion, a lion crossed with sheepdog so obviously when I’ve got everyone in place I get them to work rather than you know, kill them.”

“So what would help you round them up?” asked Daniel, enjoying the metaphor.

“Better coffee,” said Claudia. “Better coffee and better biscuits. Think of it like treats. Or bait. Bait to get them where they should be.”

“But if everyone’s in their own home..?” started Daniel.

“Back in the office we used to have fantastic biscuits,” said Claudia. “Every now and then, for some reason or another this amazing box of biscuits would appear by the water cooler. Unexpected. Completely random it seemed. They need lasted long but it always got people talking and really got people to hang out by the water cooler. Even if there weren’t biscuits. Just on the off chance. Get that to happen again and I can stop being a tarantula and be a shetland pony instead.”

Daniel left the call easily more confused than when he’d started it. But he was certain the future needed to include biscuits. Possibly by mail order.