Happy teams

Here's an interesting story about "hugging". Nothing wrong with a good hug you might think but it would seem that Ted Baker founder and boss, Ray Kelvin, hasn't yet learnt that literally anything no matter how "good", when made compulsory, becomes a source of resentment and rebellion. Ray insists that people working in his company adopt a culture of forced "hugging" whenever they meet, I've known many clueless management types over the years who think that this kind of thing is a good idea. They make the fundamental mistake of thinking that everyone is cut from the same cloth as them, and will be excited and motivated by the same things. It's a bit like making it mandatory for everyone to wear fancy dress or attend the Christmas party (or both) when many would rather stick red hot knitting needles in their eyes. Ultimately this kind of mandating of emotions, i.e. "you will be happy today", fails miserably! Different things motivate different people in different ways and the sooner the management types learn this and how to leverage the individual rather than some convenient (but bogus) identity like gender, employee or race etc., the sooner they'll have happier teams.

Update: It would seem that complaints by many of the workers at Ted Baker have nudged the management there to launch an investigation, let's hope they realise the folly of this ridiculous culture and start treating people like grown-ups rather than children.