Writing about web page http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/seminar/1999/reforms/fukuyama.htm
Yesterday, morning, in the shower, a thought occurred to me.
(I have some of my very best thoughts in the shower.)
The thought was this:
Social capital plays a huge role in my job.
A
lot of my frustrations at work are caused by a break down in social
capital – and part of what makes me good at my job is understanding the
importance of social capital.
Knowing that if I want to ask
favours of people, which is often the case in internal communications,
then I need to be prepared to give in return.
It strikes me
that a lot of people at Warwick are good about doing things which
aren’t a documented part of their job – and these are the kinds of
people that get things done.
You can probably all think of a
list of ‘useful people’ – people who you could turn to with an offbeat
problem or bizarre request – and the chances are that they wiil:
(a) be able to help you
(b) know someone else who can help you
(c) be prepared to help
These people are also likely to be good communicators.
Casey's Blog 
Unfortunately
those people are often the ones who are passed over, or whose
helpfulness goes unrewarded when in fact they are the people who
deserve the most reward and admiration.
The
trouble is, helen is that stupid dull people don’t value good general
communicators, or ‘useful’ people because they tag their behaviour as
bizarre or wasteful.
Dull people promote dull people because they see dull people as having less ‘wasteful’ qualities. Dull people run the world.
This
puts me in mind of an article that was in the Times Higher kindly
passed to me recently by the lovely Rona. It’s about people getting
things done which aren’t a part of their job, specifically women, doing
the ‘touchy feely’ bit.
It appears that managers often are
too detached from the rest of the world to know about birthdays or
other causes for celebration, start the collections, produce a get well
card for illnesses, soothe emotional problems, etc, that their staff
may be having, and it frequently falls to women in a secretarial/PA
role to be the supportive person in that instance. Plus we just
generally know what’s going on with who and why. (aside: because we
care or because we’re just nosy…?)
I realise it’s quite
generalist, but it strikes me that a lot of it is quite close to the
mark, although there are some great managers out there (mine is
lovely!). There is a whole other job description for many people that
I’ll bet doesn’t get covered in the job evaluation project or
recognised for its importance. Plus, these also tend to be the people
that you go to when you need something because they always seem to know
who you should be talking to…because they know what people do because
they pay attention!