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When I once dined at my college hostel, one weird behaviour stood out. People will hurriedly eat their fried eggs right off the skillet from the live counter, sometimes sustaining burns in the mouth. It did not make sense for me until I witnessed a bully stealing the fried egg from another person’s plate while he was waiting for it to cool down. The food was billed in such a way that people have to pay extra for egg and non veg food, being students; every rupee saved is every rupee earned. So some students always bullied others by taking what is not theirs. To prevent this slowly a lot of people started eating it very hot off the skillet without enjoying their meal. This is Nash equilibrium, no one person alone can alter their behaviour to a pleasant one unless the entire group changes it.

A more simpler example, when in a concert if every one else is standing then there is no use to comfortably sit down and enjoy the concert unless every one else sits down. Standing gives a better view, at the expense of others and eventually every one stands up if not fixed earlier. In the prisoner’s dilemma defecting being the best choice unless both decide to co-operate together.

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How does this relate to at the workplace?

Many workplaces I have visited, I noticed there exists a hero/heroine culture. There would be a few people who were regarded as doing exceptional work; typically they stay very long hours, always available on call, too often will come up with shortcuts to get the job done. The rewards were also proportional, those who played hero/heroine often get rewarded with promotions and hikes which was sizeable compared to the rest who did not play that game. Eventually everyone in the team followed suit; arrived early, stayed late, became more greedy with credits, self-centered in a team setting.

This spirals quickly into a toxic culture and it is not possible for one person to fix without the rest acknowledging and agreeing to fix it. Whoever deviates from it, will soon face the brunt for not complying with the group. This equilibrium has terrible outcomes. It is stable, often detrimental to health leading to burnouts. Unless the leadership takes an action to fix this problem, it will remain stable for a long time. Too often, leadership would have emerged from this culture, making it self propagating.

Some of the leaders whom I interacted with were able to put a stop to it with simple measures. Rules like no calls scheduled after 7PM and before 9 AM local time worked wonders by forcing a lot to work within a time window. One of the leaders went to an extent to revisit this every fortnight at the retrospective to make sure collective growth and well being exists. Unless a sizeable group of individuals or a leader comes up and disrupts, it is very hard to get out of this equilibrium. If you spot this in your teams, try to break the chain and bring it to a better state. No change can be worse than staying at this state.

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A lot of have been talked about stress at the workplace, those are visible and bold like toxic managers, unrealistic deadlines etc. A very few people speak about silent stressors that are very much invisible but damages more in the long run as very less is done to eliminate them. When I had begun working, hardware was very expensive. In some companies they used to use the machine across multiple people in shifts. I got a machine assigned to me and over the course of 4+ years it was never replaced. It was impossible to run an IDE so I had to rely on text editors to code. What this meant is a constant loop of editing code, going to the console to compile and come back to figure out errors in the editor by comparing compiler outputs. The days just dragged on in endless loops.

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One of the other types of stressors were unplanned working days. At the hands of a novice manager, days get difficult to plan. Developers need unbroken time and reduced ambiguity, but constant interruptions and ambiguity feels like a constant droning in your head. Detachment from family and social life, this stressor builds up slowly and is a secondary stressor often a result of other ones. In my younger days, I have missed many of my friends’ weddings, found it difficult to be at the side sick parents/grand parents at home town and slowly the immediate circle is only acquaintances from the office which is a deep echo chamber.

Identifying these stressors early is a key to good mental and physical health. I did not realise this for a long time, once I figured out and eliminated it then it improved my quality of life. Ask these simple questions, a single no requires you to reconsider what you are doing?

  1. Are you able to finish your work week within ~40 hour window and still find it fulfilling/ having a sense of achievement/ being recognised? (Some lean weeks and some tight weeks will be fine, but the average should be around 40)
  2. Do you find time for friends and family?
  3. Are you able to eat, sleep and exercise well?
  4. Do you like going to your office, is your 1 way commute less than 30 minutes or if it exceeds do you have a commute routine that is engaging (like reading, audio books, podcasts or simply enjoy the drive)

Ask yourself these questions? Find out the root silent stressor and figure out a way to eliminate it. The stressor could be anything from poor hardware, bad planning, noisy environment, gossip culture, poor management, tough competition etc. Don’t cope up with any kind of stress, just remove it.

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During the current Dusshera celebrations, our tradition is to have multiple thanksgivings. We thank our house, tools (like scissors, kitchen knives), books, currency, vehicles and anything that helps us earn our livelihood and live comfortably. People whom we employ for domestic help are gifted something as a token of thanks, as they make our lives easier. This was celebrated as a festival in our region called Ayudha poojai and Saraswati poojai. In hindsight, this was nothing but a tradition introduced to value our various stakeholders in life. It instills a sense of gratitude and a reminder every year that we owe our success to our stakeholders. I have seen this first hand when I visited a small restaurant owned by a relative. They were serving unlimited rice in a meal, I asked what if people eat a lot and leave you with less profits, will you add slaked lime to make them feel full faster? The restaurant owner replied, that is killing your customers, it is a form of fraud and you should never do it.

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On the corporate side, I have never observed the word stakeholder holding a 360 degree meaning. It is almost and always a person who has invested in the company through money, a share holder or an owner. Stakeholders are never employees nor customers nor tools, in other words these are numbers to be used for profit generation. What this leads to is a quarter on quarter rush to increase shareholder value neglecting the real stakeholders. A restaurant treating their customers profit sources will lose in the long term than the ones who think about them as patrons who deserve good hospitality.

Success is a collective construct, keeping that 360 degree view will help to keep decision ethical, create long term loyalty from customers & employees and also keep the workplace morale high. There are very few examples like Costco, Semco who genuinely attempt this mindset and is able to succeed. Many of them are lured by the short horizon profits and lose out in the long run.