I hope your week is going well. For today's In Confidence I look at something we've all seen at work: a really bad idea.

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'Tea bags, literally. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous?'

I opened the photo from my friend Vanessa: a clear plastic tray stacked with yellow-green packets of tea. Hundreds and hundreds, a predictable infusion of chamomile and anise.

A flyer nearby announced the company’s ‘Sleep Week', encouraging everyone to take home sachets and make a drink before bed. Part of a well-being 'drive'.

'Do they think we're idiots? Are they too stupid to come up with a proper solution? Or do they simply not care?' said Vanessa, not inviting an answer.

Managed in this way, Sleep Week will make Vanessa's colleagues feel misunderstood, then unappreciated. Resentment will rub salt in the wounds of long days; people will become less engaged (and more prone to insomnia).

Missing the point
What had inspired a manager in head office to despatch tens of thousands of tea bags around the world?

Apigenin in chamomile binds to benzodiazepine receptors in the brain (think Valium) and can have a mild sedative effect. Chamomile may also, by cultural association, nudge people to think about sleep hygiene.

Still, this will not conquer the sleep deprivation that is endemic across the world of work. The problem is hardly that employees are skimping on their herbs.

Truth in others' experiences
As Vanessa says, stress causes insomnia. Many of her colleagues worry they won't meet the rising cost of living. With more cuts on the horizon, some fear that in three months they may be jobless.

Industries have laid off swathes of people. Employees who remain struggle to finish their tasks within a fair, eight-hour day. When they do go home, late, glued to the company phone or laptop, many have no energy for their families.

Obsessed with short-term profit (because this is what markets expect?) senior managers push line managers to push their people. In some teams a culture is emerging whereby members are scared to have a five-minute break.

Bad thinking is an insult
Employees are anxious, all day long and into the night. Chamomile is an insult, not an answer: Sleep Week shows how 'the company' is out of touch with the experiences of its people.

Barbara Speed in the Guardian makes a related point: our obsession with sleep is doing more harm than good – and ignores the real problem. How did Vanessa's head office not see this?

If Sleep Week is not a 21st-century act of "Let them eat cake!' then it's the bad judgment of bad thinking. Crackpot ideas at work, nine times out of ten, result from not attending to the human (and thus very real) complexities of a situation.

It’s easy, in the hubbub of long days, to skip thinking and jump straight to the ‘actions’ or ‘next steps’ that our work culture demands. We enjoy a hit of self-satisfaction and a box firmly ticked – yet good rarely comes of such haste.

Questions for better thinking
Three questions encourage us to ground our thinking in reality and help us make choices that will lead to better outcomes:

1. What are people’s real-life experiences?

2. What, then, is the true problem we have to solve?

3. How can we best solve this problem, at fair cost?

Initiatives built on the experiences of others make for strong relationships, good work, and well-being that lasts.

I trust you enjoyed this email; feel free to reply with any suggestions to make In Confidence better.

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With thanks for your support,

Quentin

Create Value. Not Work.

P.S. ‘Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!’ (which in English became 'Let them eat cake!') is found in Rousseau’s Confessions and likely was never said by Marie Antoinette. She was a child when the philosopher wrote his book.

Q.E.D. 😊