Chronic confusion

When you hear that someone is chronically sick what do you think?

It seems we are confused about ‘chronic’. It’s not high alert, really bad, about to die, intensive care, emergency. Chronic is actually low level and over a long period of time.

Here are a few of the chronic conditions afflicting the construction industry:

Chronic adversarialism – the battles fought between clients, designers, contractors and sub-contractors seem more polite nowadays. Before ‘partnering’ it was all out confrontation. I am told it’s now about stealth – ‘you have to maintain the relationships’.

Chronic problem solving. For the last five years I have been asking groups of people ‘are you a type 1 person (what’s the problem and how we going to fix it) or type 2 (what’s working round here and how can we do more of it)? The vast majority tell me they are type 1.

Chronic overwork – rushing around fixing problems!

Chronic underfunding of research and development – rushing around fixing problems!

Chronic mistrust – manifesting as slightly holding back … ‘I’m just going to keep this to myself for now and see what happens’

Chronic over management – where there is no trust there needs to be control. I see this everywhere; ‘we need to add in a procedure for this and that just so ‘they’ get it right, cos I am not really sure they are up to it’. And, ‘I’m just going to check they are doing it’

Chronic e mail overload – it has kind of crept up on us. Leaders and managers get hundreds of e mails every day. Some of these contain thick documents, just in case it all goes wrong and the sender can point to that paper sent to you six months ago. Most of these e mails don’t even get opened, though we live with the doubt … ‘have I missed something important’ and ‘why hasn’t he replied’. It’s now common for senior people to dedicate an hour a day while on holiday to keep on top of e mails.

These and other ‘low level and over a long period of time’ conditions are so pervasive that we are either unaware or we just ignore them, though they are damaging people and businesses right now and just as much if not more than that bad job we are all diving in to sort.

So there’s the confusion; chronic isn’t that bad job that’s bleeding away the cash, it’s the low level and protracted stuff that probably led to the bad job in the first place.