“Working from home” is losing ground as an alternative to on-site presence; it is not hard to understand why. Really, it’s not rocket science. But common sense is not so common-so I will point out the reasons that I think that this is happening.

1. Working from home deprives management of the outer accoutrements of power. Their larger office, parking spot, and various gadgets all disappear. Everything that visually separates them from the mob is wiped out by working from home. Thus, management has seized the moment (which moment exactly I will explain soon) and returned to the status quo ante covid. That is the number one reason for the demise of WFH, and is far more salient than any other reason.
2. The context of working from home post covid (I stress, post covid) must be seen as part of “almost everything goes” which characterized so many quirks, such as language policing, DEI on steroids, parenting-uber-alles, work life balance (not answering emails on the weekend, eg). It appears that the “everything goes” pendulum swing is now swinging the other way, as the populace cringes from so many perceived excesses.
3. The technology often stinks. In my experience, at least ten minutes of every hour is spent on connecting people up to the network, reconnecting people, “can you speak up”, and muffled mumbling.
4. Working from home destroys and guts the informal networks, so critical to making an organization work more smoothly.
5. WFH is perceived as empowering staff to make choices which should, according to senior management, be made by employers. An example being, “sorry, my baby is crying; I need to drop off this call”.

Do you remember fountain pens with ink? Do you remember buying a movie ticket from an actual person at the theatre? Do you remember calling a service centre and not being molested by a voice menu as long as my leg (I’m tall)? Well that is where working from home is going.

Caduc. Those were the days.

NB 1. I like WFH. I also like vanilla ice cream. But I don’t want a gut. I like sunbathing, but I had BCC and in situ (thank heavens) melanoma. I love bitter chocolate. See gut issue above. I love to booze-but I can’t due to medications I take. Same same with WFH. It will continue to exist; it will not wither away. But it’s on the way down. Like smoking, or taking pervitin.

NB 2. I predicted this in 2020.

John to consultant: My boss Alexander told me that I would get a two month bonus by Jan 13. Yesterday at lunch, I reminded him, and he said, “I never promised you anything like that.”

Does Alexander have a bad memory?

Ira (who works with John but in another department) to consultant: Alexander makes up decisions ex post facto, so you can’t win with him. But I’m 65, with two years to go till my pension, so fuck it. What do I care!

Perhaps Alexander DOES have a poor memory? But maybe not. We find themselves in a quandary in such situations.

What is the best approach to take when confronted with stories like those told about CEO Alexander? There are 3 approaches which I want to map out.

• Manipulation

Managers do use selective memory loss as a tool to change decisions, wiggle themselves out of an uncomfortable situation, or de-commit from something they promised because reality changed. So, let’s be real – this all could be part of CEO Alexander’s strategy when the going gets rough. Look for that pattern: that’s always my default action plan. In my 45 years of experience, I would estimate that “poor memory” is very very often best explained (away) as a manipulation of some sort.

• Organizational memory is poor

At times, different people remember different things, especially when ambiguous terms (“at the beginning of next year”) or sensitive promises to clients (“it should be fully functional by the spring”). If key decisions are not documented via a plan of record, or a meeting summary, or a text message, then it is organizational memory that needs to be the focus. However, often an organization will push back on too much decision clarity as it is seen as backing oneself into a corner.

• Oh shit, it IS memory loss

In the unfortunate case that there is lots of smoke, and perhaps you yourself has encountered the memory eclipse, the first step is to find out if the client is going through a stressful rough patch. If so, discuss the stress with the client. If the memory loss is not stress related, my suggestion is to wait until you and the client remember things differently, on several occasions, and then-discuss the option of seeing the relevant professional health provider.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/it54wi0maaxsby0g8t480/Episode-3-01-07-25-Customers-v-stock-holders.mp3?rlkey=xxsew826g37bfjn6bysgj2p81&st=jnjako8d&dl=0

Or-why customer service has gone down the toilet….and how HR fiddles as Rome burns. Veteran Canadian journalist Howard Schwartz, shown below,  interviews me.

Ann has been hired as an OD consultant to facilitate a process revising “the strategy, the supporting strategy and the critical success factors of a large cosmetics, family owned firm active in 16 countries. The process will take place over one year, with meetings in Paris, Rome, Goa and Tel Aviv. Ann reports to the board, who has instructed Ann to “add a “wow” factor. A market dip 6 months into the project stops the process cold. The chairman wrote Ann that “we hope to restart in two years”. The outcome of the process until it was stopped is a 18 word mission statement.

Harold has been asked to work with a mortgage companies’ call centre due to “employee churn” of 50% a month. Harold chose to “shadow” the shift leaders and give them ongoing feedback about their people skills. However, the shift leaders themselves left and the new shift leaders hired in their place had, as per the HR manager, great people skills. Harold’s project ended.

The “time frame focus” of organization development efforts varies between clients and practitioners; each time frame focus may be legitimate but some foci (plural of focus) are better than others.

There are those who focus on a rather long term which entails working on sustainability, vision and other elements that will (or will not) impact the organization is a few years. Clients and consultants who choose to do OD in this fashion are often well off or government funded, multi layered, and have plenty of people in “staff” positions who garner power by managing these efforts.

In my experience, these projects are either effective, or they are not. Often the output consists of statements/declarations, ppt presentations, training and are subsequently translated into branding efforts.

At the other extreme to the long-term focus, there are short term OD efforts which help cope with on-going operational issues, such as better coordination between pre-sales, sales and marketing. These efforts include team building efforts, facilitated meetings and 1:1 consultation.

These types of efforts are successful in the short run by compensating for flaws in the skills of management, and/or serve as a counterbalance to internal political pathologies. Often when these interventions cease, the status quo ante reappears.

In the centre, between the operational short-term and the long-term focus is the type of OD that I find myself doing for the many decades (4) that I have been in practice.

To explain the focus, I will use an automobile-related metaphor. In daylight, we do not need headlights.  Yet, at night we need to use our headlights, and at times, the bright lights. However, we don’t have lights that are, let’s say, twice or thrice as bright as our bright lights. Using another metaphor-neither tactical not strategic-but rather mid range…beyond tactics and less than strategy.

The OD interventions focused on this time frame include creating more scalability via minor tweaks in organizational design, introduction of new positions, revamping onboarding, and improving enabling small changes which will, eventually enable bigger changes.

Sadly, there is too little effort to train OD practitioners about the time frame goal-post that they should be aiming at with their clients. Too much focus is given to OD trends and fashions, outdated values, and crying about the past.

OD practitioners who adopt this approach will never find themselves short of work, nor getting booted out when budgets get cut “because we cannot afford fluff and/or we can do without you”.

1. A company that installs its products before it develops them has approached you to in order to understand how OD can support their business. What are the major issues you want to emphasize in your 15 minute introductory meeting?
2. A US based company acquired a development centre in a country in which  the culture shows respect towards elder people and women are generally in junior administrative roles. The boss of the acquired site will be a 29 year old Canadian female with a PhD from a leading university, who will manage the site remotely from Vancouver. She (the boss) has asked to meet with you for “cultural tips”.
3. A Boston based company is about to launch an “anti-mansplaining” campaign in all 12 countries  (including Japan and Malaysia) in which the company  operates. The Human Resources Board Committee of the Board wants an OD consultant to provide a sanity check on the idea. Your approach?
4. Frank manages a group of chemists and physicists PhDs who have a very poor level of coordination. Frank has decided that “working from home” is banned starting March 2025. The board has mandated that Frank implement his plan with an OD consultant. Your approach?

I don’t remember what I did with the 2 huge posters I that used to hang in my room in Ville St-Laurent: Mao Tse-tung, and an Israeli fisherman throwing his net onto the Sea of Galilee.

To be honest, I cannot even remember if I took them down. I do know that I left behind my beloved Phillips tape recorder which I had received from my grandmother as well as all my clothes save what I had put in a very small duffle bag, along with a few other items. The crate I was allotted was all used to store my books. The crate would arrive 3 months after I did.

Nor do I remember the days before I left. That probably explained what motivated me to leave in the first place.

I do remember however that I just could not wait to go. The drastic move would make me a creature of habit for the rest of my life-at least in the small things of life-like what time I eat, or what I eat.

Dad took me to the Orange Julip on the way to the airport. I ate a triple cheeseburger, poutine and a cherry coke. Dad told me that triple cheeseburgers “are going to be a thing of the past”. In retrospect. I just cannot imagine the pain he felt as his first-born son left home forever. Dad knew I would never return.

No one else really believed that I’d be away for a long time, albeit my declarations.

I met Franky on the Montreal-Idlewild leg of the trip, and he said, “ya ya-see you in a few months”. Franky had been a tutorial lead (professors assistant) in the honours seminar in the” Sociology of Ethnicity”. Albeit the huge amount of ethnic groups Franky could have discussed in class, he focused on the Italians and the Jews-especially the languages they chose to speak in Quebec.

I do remember landing in Israel at Lod Airport. The heat was overpowering. When I arrived in Tiberias a few weeks later for total Hebrew immersion, I thought that the heat would kill me, literally. We studied from 06.30 AM till noon; then from 16.00 till 19.00. Evening studies were often marked with bombings near the border near Kibbutz Ashdod Yaakov, close to my language school Ohalo, very near Tiberias.

I learnt more than Hebrew from Ilanit.

Three years fast forward. It’s 3.00 AM and rain is pouring down on our squadron as we patrol the Jordanian border near Ashdod Yaakov. Rain whips me hard and fierce, fogging the green night-vision glasses I am wearing. My patrol partner is Avi, who himself emigrated from Lebanon. Avi and I speak in Hebrew which we both know well, and French. Luckily, I don’t have my thesis with me, which I had finally completed. I would have had to type it again on my old Hermes typewriter, the one I had also stuffed into my duffle bag when I left Canada for good.

In the 60s, AM and FM radio was  similar to what smartphones are to the present generation: a very close  friend.

My radio was one of my very best friends. I had a small transistor radio that fit in my pocket. It was ultra small, and a very very beloved companion during long walks, sad times and sadder times.

CJAD’s morning man Bill Roberts would accompany me the start of every school day, be it getting dressed or eating my peanut butter and jelly toast. At 8.20, “skedaddle”, as uttered in Bill’s unique way meant-off I go into the freezing cold, prodding my way to Sir Winston, often picking up Miller on the way. CJAD was not always the most popular station, but very few people I know did not listen to Bill Roberts.

Gord Sinclair from CFCF was another one of my favourites. He had a perfect voice which had I been blessed with, and had I stayed in Quebec, may have landed me in radio. Eventually Gord purchased CFOX, a country music station. True, French Canadians love country music, but not only French Canadians.  I’m a Jewish Canadian by birth, who was addicted to CFOX. “Whether you’re at home or in your car, country music’s never far, just turn your dial and let it stay-on C_F_O_X.”

Paul Reid, again CJAD, used to read poetry between songs. I used to write down the names of the poems and try to find them at the Ville St Laurent library, and learn them par coeur, by heart. Whenever I think about Montreal, French creeps in. Nowadays, no one would listen to Reid, and that says a lot, not about Reid but about listening to radio nowadays.

At night, starting at about 10pm, I would look stand with my transistor near the window looking for WWVA in Wheeling West Virginia and WKBW in Buffalo. The former featured songs from the Grand Old Opre and the latter featured Joey Reynolds, the greatest radio announcer on the face of the planet. Reynolds must have laboured hours on each show. He played about 6 characters all at once. I was hooked on WKBW although the static to clear content was NOT in my favour.

I was upset when Dad told me that HK Bassior’s first name is Hank. HK was the all-night man; his program “Milkman’s Matinee” featured a corner called “Stump your Neighbour” during which people would quiz one another with silly questions, such as “How long was 100 Years War” or “How do you say in French “cote des neiges”. Dad knew HK’s father; he was the CFO of Beth El, the synagogue Dad belonged to, but rarely frequented. “Stand by for HK Bassior, and his Milkman’s Matinee”.

Dave Boxer is undoubtedly the best-known DJ ever to work in Montreal radio. I used to go to les centres d’achats (malls) from which he broadcast to watch him in action. His popularity among music lovers was simply out of the world, way before branding existed. Boxer understood that the 60’s was all about music. And his choice of music was outstanding. When he talked, he had planned what he wanted to say-and people listened. Especially teen agers!

In Israel, my romance with radio continued-707 with Alex Ansky and Tramp with Dori Ben Zeev. I knew Dori very well, and when Hadassah died, he played a super sad song about tears falling from the sky. Hadassah worked at Kol Israel as an editor of the “Literary Corner”. She was a beautiful woman but had a surprisingly deep radiophonic voice. She was my wife.

Like many things in my life, so much has changed. I have my 400 song Spotify list which I listen to most of the time. I am no longer interested in new music that comes out. I prefer 60’s, with no yak yak. Paul, Bill, HK, Dave-all belong to  the past. I guess that so do I.

Even though waiting is a pain in the ass, it is worthwhile making it into a skill. Veteran Canadian journalist Howard Schwartz interviews an impatient man about waiting.

And if you missed it, listen to veteran Canadian journalist  Howard Schwartz’s first interview with Allon about “one size for all”.

.אין דבר יותר מתסכל עבורי מאשר ההמתנה

אני מאבד את הסבלנות ברמזור אדום. אני מתעצבן בהמתנה למעלית. אני לא אוהב לחכות לחשבון במסעדה. כששתי מכוניות  נמצאות לפניי ליד משאבת דלק, לחץ הדם שלי עולה. וכשמטוס מחכה על !!המסלול  חצי שעה (או יותר) ללא הסבר, אני ממש משתגע

זה לא משהו שאני גאה בו, אבל זה מה שזה אבל לחכות זה לא הצד החזק שלי

ועד לא מזמן לא הבנתי עד כמה חמור חוסר הסבלנות שלי עד שביקרתי באוגנדה. באוגנדה מחכים להכל. לעולם אל תסע לאוגנדה אם אתה לא יכול לחכות

גם אם יש לך ויזה אלקטרונית, זה לא אומר כלום; אתה עדיין צריך 20 דקות המתנה לאדם בשלטונות ההגירה, אז תעשה את החשבון אם אתה מספר חמש בתור

כן, יש 4 מסלולי יציאה לעמדת התשלום החניה בנמל התעופה של אנטבה, אבל שלושה מהם חסומים. היציאה משדה התעופה אורכת 90 דקות

המלון נמצא רק 12 ק”מ מהמלון שלך? לֹא! זה מרחק שעתיים וארבעים דקות

הזמנת כריך בשעה 19.00? השעה רק 20.00

האם אתה רוצה לשלם את החשבון שלך? אנא המתן, ה”מערכת” מושבתת; תחזור בעוד עשרים או ארבעים דקות. צריכים לתפוס מעלית? עלה במדרגות.
.וכן הלאה וכן הלאה

!כמעט הטלתי ביצה מהמתנה

בניגוד אליי, אוגנדים מחכים בסבלנות. כמעט בלתי אפשרי להאמין כמה סבלניים רוב האוגנדים (לא !!!כולם). הם לא ממצמצים עין בפקק של 4 שעות

הם מבינים שמעט מאוד ישתנה אם הם יתעצבנו. זו הגזמה. הם למעשה מבינים ששום דבר לא ישתנה אם הם יתעצבנו; במקרה הטוב, הם יהרסו להם את היום. לפיכך, יש מעט מאוד לחץ באוויר שכן התפיסה היא שזמן הוא משאב בלתי מוגבל

ההמתנה זה לא רק עניין של סבלנות. זו גישה, הלכה למעשה. המתנה אינה בהכרח גישה של כניעה. זוהי קבלה של המציאות, שימור העצמי.

אם יש תשתית לקויה וכל מה שאמור לקחת שעה יכול אורך חמישה ימים, מה זה עוזר לאבד את הסבלנות

כשמוזונגו (ילד או ילדה לבנים) מאבדים סבלנות, ההטיות התרבותיות שלנו צפות אל פני השטח במהירות רבה. המוזונגוס רוצה שדברים יעבדו כמו שצריך; אם הם לא עובדים כמצופה, יש לתקן אותם. עַכשָׁיו. הציפייה הזו מוזרה לאוגנדה. העולם שלהם לא מתנהל כך. כשמשהו לא עובד, יש לשמור על שפיותך. כפי שוולטר קרונקייט נהג לומר, “ככה זה

לפני הטיולים שלי לנמיביה ולאוגנדה, חשבתי ש”פשוט חסרה לי סבלנות”. הניסיון האפריקאי שלי לימד אותי שאני צריך לרכוש את המיומנויות והעמדות התומכות בהמתנה”.

זה לקח עצום לעיכול. ואני רוצה להשתפר הרבה יותר ביכולת ההמתנה. מעולם  לא חשבתי שאי פעם אודה בזה

There is nothing as frustrating for me as the act of waiting.

I lose my patience at a red light. I get upset waiting for an elevator. I do not like waiting for a bill in a restaurant. When two cars are ahead of me at a gas pump, my blood pressure goes up. And when a plane waits on the runway for half an hour (or more) with no explanation, I am fit to be tied.

It is not something I am proud of, but it is what it is but waiting ain’t my forte.

And until recently, I did not understand how severe my lack of patience is.

Then, I visited Uganda. In Uganda, you wait for everything. Never go to Uganda if you cannot wait.

• Even if you have an e-visa, it means nothing; you still need 20 minutes processing per person at immigration, so do the math if you are number five in line.
• Yes, there are 4 exit toll booths at Entebbe airport, but three of them are broken. Exiting the airport takes 90 minutes.
• The hotel is only 12 km from your hotel? No! It’s 2 hours and forty minutes away.
• Did you order a sandwich at 19.00? It’s only 20.30.
• Do you want to pay your bill? Please wait, the “system” is down; come back in twenty or forty minutes. Need to catch an elevator? Take the stairs.

And so on and so forth.

I almost laid an egg from waiting.

As opposed to me, Ugandans wait patiently. It is almost impossible to believe how patient most (not all) Ugandans are. They don’t blink an eye in a 4 hour traffic jam.

They realize that very little will change if they get upset. That’s an exaggeration. They actually realize that nothing will change if they get upset; at best, they will ruin their day. Thus, there is very little stress in the air since the perception is that time is an unlimited resource.

Waiting, I learnt, is not only a matter of patience. It is an attitude, a weltanschauung as it were. Waiting is not an attitude of surrender necessarily. It is acceptance of reality, a preservation of self.

If there is poor infrastructure and everything that should take an hour can take five days, what good does it do to lose your patience?

When a muzungu (white boy or girl) loses patience, our cultural biases float to the surface with great speed. The muzungus want things to work; if they don’t work as expected, they need to be fixed. Now. This expectation is strange to the Ugandan. Their world does not operate that way. When something doesn’t work, suck it up; preserve your sanity. As Walter Cronkite used to say, “that’s the way it is”.

Before my trips to Namibia and Uganda, I thought I “just lacked patience”. My African experience has taught me that I need acquire the skills and attitudes that support “waiting”.

That’s a huge chunk to digest, for me anyway. And I want to get much better at waiting. I never thought I would ever say this.