Actually, We Should All Hate Each Other!

It seems ex-Stinker, Tim Davis, newly freelanced and focusing on his burgeoning music career as part of Bim, disagreed with me on my post How Well Is Your Company Really Doing?

His take is that strident relationships in a company produce creativity, they bring the edge and dynamism that a team needs if people are, not quite at each others’ throat, but know where to draw the line and stop at fulfilling their work role, as producer, developer, or office hard man. This doesn’t, as he points out, doesn’t make for good friendships, at least perhaps he is right, office relationships are realistically more nuanced than either he or I have portrayed them.

In his book “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be” Paul Arden talks about mediocrity and about creativity in the context of ideas, success and the ad industry.  His take is one that describes the office as a place for the interchange of ideas, and the continual drive to seek out higher thought and better standards.  His picture is one of the battle of minds, rather than of personal relationships, and one that doesn’t predicate fractious inter-play or tense relationship.  Professional relationships do not  preclude personal friendships.

I’ve talked before about the Soup Metric, one of Tara Hunt’s devices to determine your real friendships in the realm of social media.  It’s a rather blunt tool, but it is one that proves a clear point and perhaps reflects that my rather blunt indicator, the so-called “Relationship Score”, could be equally indicative of the base social glue within your team.  Whether it is love or hate, that you desire amongst your employees, is another matter, but it is an indicator nonetheless.

The nice thing about the “Relationship Score”, in my unbiased opinion, is that irrespective of the nature of relationships within office, it glides swiftly over them.  A publicly fractious relationship doesn’t necessarily mean an unproductive one, whilst at the same time not necessarily reflecting a lack of friendship either.  It would be a mistake to assume that professionally tense relationships, whether good or bad for the company (you decide on a per case basis), cannot foster respect and friendships.

If anything, in its current state, the “Relationship Score” is a little too blunt and needs to be sharpened up to factor in the weighting of professional relationships and other dynamics in the company in question, such as the desired levels of inter-play between individuals.  It’s of course one thing to operate like the army, it’s another to run the show like factory.

Having grown up with a father who has been self-employed since 1978, and between 1984-96 pretty much ran a full-time office from home with anything upto 10-15 employees in tow, I find it intriguing to watch, analyse and understand office relationships or “politics” for want of a better word.  During my own career in web development I have found it interesting to see how even the slightest details can cause seismic changes in the way people interact, and understanding these can be the key to making your company a success over a competitor, not just your strategy online.

Ultimately any office relationships, be they on a professional or a personal level need to result in growth.  Not just for the company but on a person-to-person level.  Being able to tick the industry boxes and garner the silverware for your trophy cabinet is one thing, but perhaps more importantly, making sure the dynamic works within your team is critical for a desired success.

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