Simon Drake – Writer

There are thousands of ways to get to know your colleagues, some fun, and some mundane, some forced, some purely sporadic. In reality, very few of us have the real time and patience to get to really know our colleagues, having to work with them is taxing enough, so learn to classify people, and fast, because like it or not they’ve already done it to you.
Also come to understand the dynamics or lack of them between two types of colleagues. As an example, take Permanent Staff vs. Temporary Staff (including contingent and contractors). They work well together, are complimentary, and exist in a strange paradox: Each envies the benefits of the other, but given the chance to swap they would choose to remain in their respective slots. It’s a case of job security vs. it’s my time: a sacrifice of one or the other depending on the side of the fence you work on.
Permanents seem to have a better deal: they are harder to dismiss, can receive holiday, sick and severance pay and bonuses, and promotions, but they have to abide by employers’ conditions. Conditions equals restrictions, causing resentment, so it’s no time that permanents are likely to work the system. Meanwhile, temporary staff are paid by the hour to do the work the permanents have learnt to tactfully avoid. Temporary staff are the safest option for all the demanding and/or banal jobs; temps are easy to hire (except for the expensive and their expertise), are malleable to tasks, and if they aren’t of any use, dismissible in a matter of minutes, proof that slavery is far from extinct, it has simply evolved into a lucrative business re-branded as ‘recruitment’. In the office permanents are probably there for the long run, until retirement with all its benefits, whereas temps are there for the day, and if they tow the line, they may work tomorrow. However, permanent staff, though smugly enjoying their job security (thanks to new laws they’re not so dismissible as in yesteryear, hence it’s safer to hire disposable temps), are restricted to a fixed amount of holiday time per year based on their status. In retaliation, some permanents treat their job as a second holiday; tasks can be stretched out to fill the time available until some higher authority kicks them in the shins. Permanents have the time and mental space to play political in the workplace for the long run, until of course, the higher authority instigates a purging of the dead wood. Now call in the temps to carry the load.
Temporary staff are valued because their motivation, obvious by their decision not to become permanent, is not to ensconce themselves in the office, and are unlikely to devise some devious plan to acquire an abundance of un-due responsibility, power and knowledge wealth, leading to a plain-sailing lazy career. It seems temporary staff are there for the quick money and not much else. They gain experience and may become permanent, but they can only do so after they have proved their worth. But most importantly, temporary staff command their work (they can just as easily leave as they arrived: it’s their choice) and holiday time; time not working with people like you, not money, is their precious commodity.

True knowledge, worldly experience and higher intelligence, is never sufficiently remunerated, but what we are paid to know – our own expertise and prime reason for employment – has to be defended, rewarded, capitalised upon and armed like a battleship in order to show those responsible for our wages or business that we are worthy of it, and also that they are worthy of us providing it for them. There’s always someone who can take your place, so the knowledge you’re paid for becomes the legs on which you stand, and can easily be kicked from under you. When the shit hits the fan people normally ask:
- Who knew it would happen? (responsibility)
- Who could have acted on it? (accountability)
- Who knew but didn’t act? (responsibility + accountability)
- Why didn’t they act? (knowledge war has begun – who knows best)
- It was you! (time to defend yourself)
- OK, so who then? (blame someone else)
When people are delegated duties to do with knowledge, they have to attack, defend, reinforce and constantly evaluate where they are on the knowledge terrain in the office regardless of what they really know. You can gauge your knowledge on an issue and rate it as being low, middle or high ground, and do the same with a competitor. Two people in the high ground have a lot at stake, while two people in the low ground might not have much to share, but much to gain.
Rather than thinking of knowledge as an abstract world, map it out and view it with a strategy in mind. After all, when people want something, they have a strategy, which means they have a plan. It’s only fair that you create a plan, and the simpler you can describe it, the easier you can explain it to someone else who can aid you.