About a year after the transition to Covestro, I was asked what I thought of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I do not remember my exact wording, but I remember how I approached the question. I started with the positive experiences I had had during the IT migration. The first migration had not gone particularly well, but the Covestro project team had reacted quickly, learned from the problems and become increasingly capable and helpful in resolving them. I regarded the strength of the Covestro IT organisation as one of the positive things I had experienced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I then mentioned what I experienced as the other side of the balance. I had begun to notice a more top-down way of working than I was accustomed to, with more detailed prescriptions of how things had to be done and a considerable number of rules and standards. This was not only about formal external requirements. Engineering, and IT for example, had their own set of sometimes detailed standards and rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To me, this was a perfectly normal way of giving an assessment. At DSM, we were used to giving two-sided assessments. After an appraisal, a safety tour or almost any other review, you would normally mention what was good and also something that could be improved. Criticism did not imply rejection; it was simply part of giving an honest assessment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer I received surprised me. I was asked, in effect, why I did not work for another employer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The exact wording has faded from my memory, and at the time I did not regard the intervention as something that would stay with me for years. It was certainly uncomfortable, but I could put it aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second intervention was different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Geleen Business Manager was also present. She started by describing positively how the integration of her people into Covestro had gone. She then raised a concern that she said was shared unanimously by her people: they experienced the growing burden of compliance work as a threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her question was not whether her people could simply ignore the rules. Her business was small and did not itself perform chemical operations, and she was questioning whether all the requirements and compliance activities designed for a large chemical company were relevant and proportionate to her situation, and whether some of the burden could be alleviated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She explicitly said that she was speaking on behalf of her people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The response came from a very senior Covestro manager, someone from whom I would expect behavioral leadership. I was sitting next to the Business Manager and he was opposite us, so I could see him directly when he answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The argument itself was not necessarily unreasonable. He explained the potential consequences for managers, and even for a Board member, if applicable requirements were not complied with \u2014 including the possibility of imprisonment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, such personal liability can be a legitimate reason why certain requirements cannot simply be relaxed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that was not how I experienced the response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was the combination of the content, the tone and the situation<\/strong> that struck me. It sounded to me as if we were already on the brink of a situation in which somebody might actually end up in prison. That seemed far beyond the question that had been asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A simple “no, these requirements cannot be alleviated, and this is why”<\/em> would have been an entirely acceptable answer. It might have been disappointing, but it would have addressed the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, I experienced the response as intimidating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What affected me particularly was the way I saw the Business Manager being treated. In my eyes, she had done exactly what a good leader should do. She had listened to her people, acknowledged what had gone well, taken their concern seriously and brought it forward. She was not challenging the legitimacy of compliance; she was asking whether the way it was being applied was proportionate to her business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet the response made me feel that she was being treated almost as if raising the question itself was problematic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a long silence in the room afterwards and the discussion stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I cannot know what the other people in the room were thinking. Perhaps the silence meant something quite different to each of us. But I remember it, and I have sometimes wondered what the senior manager saw when he looked around the room after his intervention. Did he notice how strongly his answer had landed? Did he recognise the silence as a sign that something had gone wrong in the conversation? Or did he simply consider that he had explained an important responsibility and move on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I never heard anything afterwards about how the intervention had been received. Nor did I hear from others that it had subsequently been discussed or evaluated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, however, the moment did not simply disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What made the experience particularly striking was the contrast with the culture in which I had worked at DSM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At DSM, I had learned that giving a responsible management assessment meant being able to say both what was going well and what concerned you. After an appraisal, a safety tour or another review, it was perfectly normal to acknowledge the positive aspects and then point out something that could be improved. A two-sided answer was not a sign of disloyalty. It was what I understood an honest assessment to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same applied to representing the concerns of people in your organisation. If a manager brought a concern forward on behalf of her people, I regarded that as taking responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The two interventions therefore became, for me, an early and rather strong experience of a different organisational culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do not know whether that difference should be attributed to Dutch and German culture. It may have been specific to Covestro, to the particular management environment, or simply to the people and circumstances involved. But the contrast with what I had experienced at DSM was unmistakable to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At DSM, I associated speaking up with responsibility and trust<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this meeting, I experienced speaking up about rules and requirements as being met with authority and fear<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That distinction became emotionally significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later I would often hear the phrase:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nothing is worth getting hurt for.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I associated that with care. It expressed the idea that no production target, project or business result was worth putting somebody’s health or safety at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I had another phrase in my head:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nothing is worth getting in prison for.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I associated that with fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think the second intervention had created that association in me. It was not necessarily a fair description of Covestro’s intentions, but it was the emotional reference point I had taken away from the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I noticed something else later. Whenever Covestro used the word “courageous”<\/strong>, I would think back to this experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intended meaning of courageous<\/em> was presumably positive: have the courage to speak up, challenge things, take responsibility and do what is right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I had my own reference point for the word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I remembered a manager who, in my eyes, had shown courage by representing the concerns of her people. I remembered how that intervention had been received. And I remembered the silence that followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps this is why the word courageous<\/em> could trigger a very different association in me from the one intended by the organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back, I think this episode may have influenced how I experienced what came afterwards. The later discussions about empowerment, standardisation, performance data and the organisation of projects did not happen to me on a completely blank sheet. I had already formed an emotional reference point for what could happen when somebody questioned the established way of doing things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That does not mean that my later frustrations were necessarily caused by this meeting. Nor does it establish what Covestro as an organisation actually was. I cannot know the intentions of the senior manager, and I cannot know how the other people in the room experienced the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can only say what it did to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And perhaps that is precisely why the episode belongs here. It became part of the lens through which I subsequently experienced Covestro.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The organisation may have intended courage<\/em> to mean speaking up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had experienced a moment when somebody did exactly that \u2014 and the memory I carried away was not courage, but fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I did not spend the rest of my time at Covestro trying to resolve that contradiction. I moved on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I already had the network of MES users that I had built during my DSM years, and at Covestro I gradually expanded that network with many new colleagues. Many of them were very nice, friendly and enjoyable people to work with. They were the people I interacted with every day, and through them I could continue to do work that I found meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In that sense, I became less concerned with Covestro as an organisation<\/strong> and more concerned with the people and the work immediately around me<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps that was also a way of putting the experience into perspective. Whatever I thought about Covestro as a company, my experience of working there was not defined by one senior manager or one meeting. It was also made up of the many people I met, the relationships I developed and the work we managed to accomplish together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The memory of that meeting nevertheless remained. I simply carried it with me, rather than allowing it to determine what came next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About a year after the transition to Covestro, I was asked what I thought of the company. I do not remember my exact wording, but I remember how I approached the question. I started with the positive experiences I had had during the IT migration. The first migration had not gone particularly well, but the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_heusje_archive_order":130,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[19,18,21,20],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career","tag-career","tag-covestro","tag-dsm","tag-work-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":446,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heusje.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A different meaning of speaking up<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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