Extending of working careers - for real

Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy (MEE) has established a important goal to have the best working life in Europe in 2020. Simultaneously there is a need to extend the working careers of Finnish citizens to bridge the sustainability deficit. A strong lobbying favors to raise the retirement age and sadly only little political support to seek alternative ways to solve the issue.

Raising of retirement age is like giving a medicine for headache, that is caused by a bullet in the head. I claim that there are two major problems among working age Finnish people that need to be solved anyway - and that those issues will solve a large part of the working career extension target.

The more urgent of these two problems is to improve the working life as MEE intends.

Already regulations and support cuts rush students to graduate and go to work earlier. Also it seems that the youngsters face symptoms of burn out already in elementary school.
Pressure works only into some extent and after that people start cracking. Finnish Student Health Service considers that 25% of university students have problems with their mental health. It is terrible to see how many people around me has experienced burn out or is on the way or recovering. Healthy, motivated and highly skilled workers experience periods of lowered capability work, sick leaves and even hospitalization. This is the reality - and this must have affect on the effective working careers.

Four principles should be the most important knowhow and goal for Everyone in Finnish labour market - both employees and employers:
1) Identifying continuous stress,
2) understanding its effect on health,
3) knowing how to relieve it and
4) adjusting the work to get rid of harmful stress.




The the other issue that is not so simple to change. Finnish education system.

Finnish elementary education system has been praised internationally and for good reason. It has kept kids as kids and taught them equally good basics to stay healthy and grow to be effective Finnish labour. It has even taught them the best way to relieve stress - outdoors and exercise.

After the elementary school something goes wrong. I have completed two degrees and I claim that half of the courses was unnecessary. Although I am generalist of my nature and want to know everything - the other half in both degrees was still totally useless (sorry teachers).
Finnish higher education targets to make age groups of Leonardo Da Vinci's year after year.
I wonder what Raimo Sailas would say, if we could extend the working lifes with two years in most of the professions?! And I bet 20 yo younsters make more work than most 67 yo elderlies..


There is a workaround for this, but it needs a cultural change. I figure that most of the professions do not require min 3 year education for the employee to be proficient in one's work.
I cannot remember that I would have shown my papers to anybody since I graduated. It seems that papers are not actually needed if you know what you are doing. In a way degrees and papers are just another form of industry that give authorizations. Maybe the time for universities as a education for masses starts decaying? This excellent article (in finnish) questions the need for universities if their original purpose of developing thinkers has shrunk to sharing diplomas to the masses.

Bureaucracy award for finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health

Finnish government should receive a bureaucracy award for its tremendous success on the area of ensuring equality on mental health issues.

Recently there has been two cases that underline these achievements:
Once again a man killed his family and after that himself. Nobody really knows why, but he tried to get in care just before the killings but didn't have one more paper to get approved in.
Another case happened just after that, a man who had wanted to get into care killed a random teenager by knife just to get the attention to get into care.


Neither of these cases really imply that these men would have enjoyed or wanted to end up to these dramatic conclusions. What is really peculiar in these cases is that they both seeked help, but were turned down. Stories of how difficult it is to get into care are already numerous and I assume these events will continue happening.

It is hard for me to understand why government does not add up the numbers and take a serious attention to the mental health issues. It is not just about suffering people, it's also about their victims, their families and money.
Yes I said money. Government is using huge amount of brainpower to figure how to lengthen the working years by restrictions to maintain the national economy and nobody is taking seriously proposals about improving the working conditions and mental health support.


People want to be productive and healthy. Enabling those is more effective than restricting the retiring and care.

Meaningful feedback resulting as motivation?

Finland is a country of self service. Where this is most imminent, is cafes and restaurants. Mostly, you need to get your orders yourself and even clean the table afterwards. In a bit better places you might get service, but often it's poor or unmotivated.

Despite few exceptions it seems that service is clearly better in cultures where waiters salary consists mostly of tips. For long I considered tip based salary somewhat bad deal, but I have changed my mind.

Compared to fixed salary, tip based salary creates immediate feedback channel between customer satisfaction and waiters behavior. Furthermore, the feedback is truly meaningful to the waiter. Skilled waiters can even make a career and climb up the ladder to better places with better tips.

The experience of the profession becomes this way totally different than in Finland, where common understanding is that anybody can be a waiter resulting in that nobody actually wants to do it nor be proud of ones profession.

How to train people incompetent

"Uusavuton" is a finnish term for younger generations who don't know how to make food or clean the house. Newly incompetent might be the direct translation. (According to natives, english does not have the term, since all UK and US kids are anyway like this. ;)

I happened to read two articles below and those made me do a following conclusion:
Finnish society and individuals are over achieving in fulfilling all regulations and creating a bunch of new details to follow. At the same time there is urgent need to support new entrepreneurship. We excel in byrocracy - when we should excel in enabling creativity and business.


Unfortunately articles are only in finnish :/
Taloussanomat: Keittiö, jossa ei saa leipoa – ja muut hullut kiellot
Gradutakuu: Opittu avuttomuus

Enhancing creativity and innovatio by doing mistakes

Have you ever felt that the success is must and you cannot fail? Did you feel stressed?


Most (if not all) people do feel stressed if failure is not an option. What we know about stress is that it limits the our creativity and our capability to see possibilities instead of threats. If your resources are low and solution is needed instantly - isn't it quite obvious that you try something that has been tried before and works for sure?

In organizations where jobs are in danger, showing that projects run smoothly and mistakes do not happen can feel important. Unfortunately this kind of thinking leads into several problems.
Organization stops learning from each other, ability to create new innovations drops and information of ongoing crisis or failures of larger scale can be buried. -And we need to remember that this happens in ALL levels of organization. -We all have somebody to report ;)

Sam Swaminathan tells a story in www.managementexchange.com how one organization was changed by celebrating the Mistake of the Month.

How to lose leadership?

A friend of mine updated her status with wise words about not caring too much about the talk that goes on behind our back when we stand alone in the front line.

If you are few steps ahead of your peers or time, it might mean that you are leading. You usually have lot of people who are talking and shouting behind your back. All it takes at that point is to believe in what you are doing and enable people to follow you.

But what happens if you start listening the critics around, miss the focus or lose your belief? Sometimes it results in stress, pressure and hasty decisions in seizing funding or canceling projects.
-Decisions need to be made, but it is always good to analyze that what is my decisions really based on; peer pressure or analyzing the environment.


Following video is about gaining leadership, but to maintainit, leader needs the ability to trust your followers when they start to develop their own moves. -Unfortunately that is something what managers in big companies sometimes forget..

The third truth

The efforts to save Euro after the elderly bachelors along the Mediterranean have bankrupted the nearly whole EU is a hot topic. Hot topic also for the reason that anti EU discussion has raised it's head also in Finland.

In these discussions it's not our politicians who make the decisions, but abstract things like EU and Brussels, that have impersonated. People feel that they've lost their control and don't understand what is happening.


When doing decisions for other people it is natural to think how this law/system would be the best for the general audience and in theory. A lot of the decision making is not fixed into everyday situations, but instead in ideals and the Third Truth. -The truth we assume is the "right thing" for the general opinion, but might not be right for the creators of legislation nor for the people.


Similar  kind of behavior is visible in how culture is formed inside a group of people, nation or in religions. Even yellow press is a huge player on creating a third truth in their way of writing things in passive "A bank was robbed". -But in this case it has an active abstract actor; EU.

I don't blame people talking about EU like it was a person doing decisions. -In a way, EU is an impersonation of that Third Truth.

Powerpoint organizations

2003 Columbia space shuttle was hit by a 760g piece of insulation with life threatening result. The threat was analyzed and presented to managers for decision making. Decision was to take shuttle down as planned. Seven lives were lost.

Data visualization specialist Edward Tufte analyzed the slide that was used to communicate the threat and pointed out several reasons why Power Point is a wrong tool to communicate complex information for decision making.

Similarly, PowerPoint can be dramatically wrong tool for creating organizations compared to any nodal presentation.
A human way to use PowerPoint is to pursue harmony, balance and clarity. This can result as over simplifying organizations into boxes with arbitrary amount of size eventually linked with solid or dotted lines.
After a few years of continuous experience of organizational changes, I claim that boxes don't discuss and further, cross discipline UX specialist don't belong to any boxes.

Conclusion is that, if you want to "use UX professionals in all levels of your organization", but you don't want to increase your headcount, stop lying to yourself and admit that your organization will not be a UX driven one. -Possibility that a rationally thinking manager in resource pressure would create a PowerPoint box for cross disciplinary UX specialists is expected to be quite low.

Improving UX design by managerial decisions?

Original build of Kenwood kMix hand mixer had a power cord that could be rolled around the base of the mixer allowing a perfect fit to the table stand.

I fell in love with this feature and bought the mixer. The disappointment was huge when I found out that some "UX aware manager had clearly improved the design" by extending the cord for any of the usual reasons and simultaneously ruined the design.

I don't believe in the democracy of expertese.

Houses and apartments still selling well?

The message the real estate dealers want to give these days is that properties are still selling well. How ever this flyer is celebrating one sold property on the neighbourhood a bit too loudly not to be really desperate..

Stop water boarding

There is still no right for US government to keep prisoners in Quntanamo without prisoner of war status or without accusing them of civil crimes.
Still although US is acting agains all international agreements, they should at least retain from torture.
Waterboading is a official CIA technique. Read more from waterboarding.org, or see the video from Vanity fair.

Earlier post: Guantanamo and Low carbon economy

Can a minister have a sexual relationship?

A friend of mine wrote in Httpp//: all about what I wanted to say about Ilkka Kanerva's resignition. It would be time to understand that politicians are just people. They do send messages and meet their future girlfriends in the mall (Vanhanen).
This should be quite alright, as far as both parties agree. If Kanerva would have been harrassing Tukiainen, then I could understand that there was a reason for Katainen to ask Kanerva's resignition. But no, you can do your job -no matter how- poorly and still get away with that, but if you are a minister and want to have a sexual relationship, that's something what finnish people -or is it actually finnish media- cannot handle.

I have been preaching about 'third thruth'. In this case there is the thruth what Kanerva and Tukiainen know, secondly there is the truth of the public (that I don't care) and then there is the third truth, which is created by the media and the conversations. The third thruth claims that Kanerva has done something deeply wrong, and it starts to affect on our mind. -"Am I taking this too lightly, should I be more angry about what he did..?"
Next level is that media starts to burn us, non-believers on stake -just like the church did, based on the manipulation of the third truth.

Demonstration against internet sensorship

Yesterday 500 people was demonstrating at the parliament house against governments secret internet sensorship list for child pornography. People feel that it is not the solution to mask these pages from the users, but to act in a sense which would really try to prohibit the crimes and not just make a good conscience for ministry of communications, Suvi Linden.

The threath of restricting freedom of speech and information exhance is real and evolving. In september EU commissioner Franco Frattini wanted to have a law, which would disable internet searches for words "bomb", "kill" and "genocide (kansanmurha)"
(Tuomas Kangasniemi, Tekniikka ja Talous, 12.02.2008)

I'm quite surprised that finnish people dared to act on this manner in this contradictive issue. I have sensed a kind of over sensitivity in finnish culture. Any topic which might offend some group is just neglected, despite there would be a problem to solve.

Suvi Linden was already before a minister, but was forced to resign because goverment funding given to her golf-club. This new law can be seen as an effort to please at least some people on her new position. An address promoting Suvi Linden's re-resignition can be found here.

My personal poster favorites were:
Bush: "Terrorism" - Linden: "Child pornography"
Pääasia unohdettu (Main point forgotten)
(Photo: Viima)

"There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other"

I was buying some christmas presents which is quite unusual for me. I usually buy such only if I clearly see something is for somebody or then I just see something really nice. I bought two books and for a reason not totally clear to me the other book was "There is an special place in hell for women who don't help each other" by Liza Marklund and Lotta Snickare (Helvetissä on erityinen paikka naisille jotka eivät auta toisiaan). Today I had to open the package and I read it.. The reasons for this were probably the same as already in the store: My dear friend used the frase and I got interested how deep feministic values it posessed. And I also seem to end up in different kind of equality conversations, and I was a bit curious what kind of book this was.

I have never understood why men and women wouldn't have more or less equal possibilities in study and working life. After reading this book I understand that there's more connected than just a persons own survival strategy. It might not be enought if a person decides to claim one's place and space and be a Person instead of a stereotypic representative of one's sex. There's certain sosiomechanic structures in working environments too. Raising them to the open certainly helps to start understanding these issues. For that reason I would have wanted to see more issues from the book on the posters that Mahdollista menestys -organisation is publishing 1) 2). Posters sadly include more orders than explanations.

Reading this book also reminded of the bubbles that we create around us. For me I have found myself already in engineering bubble, academic bubble and arts bubble. Bubbles are comfortable but also make us forget what is happening in other bubbles or on the ground. I didn't remember how stubborn ideologies people still can have in some bubbles.

Most of the bubbles leave out rural areas and suburbs, where new kind of equality thinking would help a lot according to Marklund and Snickare. Unfortunately writers don't go too deeply in that what kind of changes could be made, but at least schools have major impact on the development and misery of both, boys and girls.

One thing was nice to understand. I have been on the right track when I have expected equal results from both sexes. But it is not always simple. Even now I feel that I have started to be carefull in some situations, so I wouldn't break anything. Too much political correctness is not a good thing. If we try to guess other peoples opinions, we end up rating them.

Stora Enso shuts down a city

While reading Lapin Kansa a bit forward, my ticket started to seem a small fish.

Mobile phone charger manufacturer Salcomp decided to shut down it's factory in Kemijärvi in the autumn of 2003. This resulted in a fairly great depression of the whole town. People got sick, several killed themselves and the overall financial situation for the city and it's habitants was compareable to afterwar time.
Last month Yle reported how things in Kemijärvi start to look positive again after four years.
And this week Stora Enso informs that they will shut down their profitable pulp mill in Kemijärvi - second and last major employer from the town. Stora Enso doesn't want to sell the mill - only shut down, which will surely bounce the unemployment procentage to 45%.
Ok, so what you ask.. There's families where the salary is coming from the single company. Families have bought or built houses by loans, and now they have to move, apartment is worth nothing and the bank still want's their money. And there really isn't that many tax payers anymore in there.
So in the end, I'm happy just to be able to pay my parking ticket. I just wish it went for better purpose.

More from: Lapin Kansa, Helsingin Sanomat and Kaleva

"Committed to sustainability

Sustainability has been identified as one of the key success factors in the Group's business strategy: Stora Enso aims at superior performance and image in the area of sustainability. To succeed in this, we need to ensure that we build accountability into the way we actually work, thus creating long-term value on an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable basis. We will do this by being transparent, and open to dialogue with our stakeholders."
Stora Enso

Parking ticket again - Rovaniemen parkkipirkot

I just hate being ticketed because of parking. Especially in a small town like Rovaniemi. -I also hate speed-traps, that instinctively make me step on my brakes 13 times while I'm driving between Oulu and Rovaniemi (and this time it seemed to be slippery too).
Today I received a ticket. -I took my bike to for service and placed my car on front of the shop making sure everybody have enough space. -Everybody else had, but the warden. There's no place for explanations - those women are rude here in Rovaniemi.

The shop owner felt bad. -He said it happens a lot.
I continued to Kauppayhtiö to have a comfort-baquette and started to read a newspaper Lapin Kansa (21./22.10.07).
Another bicycle-shop owner was complaining about the same topic. -He actually ended up changing his whole profession 'due' the wardens. -Please read more from the pic, where the text is unfortunately only in finnish.

Receipt guarantee

Posted from N73 through Flickr

Since the lack of extra time during last two weeks, I ended up having a take away pizza from Kotipizza. There's a good campaign against the grey economy on the box. -You get your money back, if you don't get a receipt..
 Take a note next time you eat in your local pizzeria what is their practice with the cash register. -Does it really print a receipt ;)

(Edit; photo location changed)

Biomimic mechanisms and ecology

While searching mechanisms with biomimicry, I ran into Better by Design - innovation guide. It has interesting examples and has a reasonable set of tools for analysing products ecolocical impact. It also features a lists of restricted materials, bio-materials, green fabrics and alternative flame retardants.
Via Treehugger Via Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

Check also how some American Federal Agencies are "leading by example" on their site for best practices Federal sustainability

Mikael Jungerin syytä erota?

Sorry folks, finnish again..

Joku aika sitten kirjoitin Ylen ongelmista digitelevisio kritiikin kanssa.

Tällä kertaa huuto taitaa käydä kovaksi..
Mikael Junger selitti hymyssä suin äsken televisiossa, että ensin sairaalat ilmoittivat etteivät halua joka televisioon digiboxia, sitten kuulemma taloyhtiöt. Asioita on ratkottu yksi kerrallaan ja nyt on tultu siihen tulokseen ettei digiboxeja tarvitakaan.
Ei sovi pohjalaiseen mentaliteettiin tälläinen. -Jos ajatus oli, että siirretään Suomi digiaikaan, niin sitten siirretään! Harvoin tulee sellaista oloa, että jonkun erominen tekisi asioille mitään hyvää, mutta nyt tuli.

Rasism

I enjoyed of videoclip where some US. people were asked about some questions on international topics.
Not that this is any kind of truth, but it still reminded me some US politics can be elected.
-Usually rasism is something what you practice against a minority, but are you rasistic if you don't like majority?

There was interesting article in NYT about rasism and how we can actually might cause harm with our over tolerance for Everything.
Also spending some time with japanese people I started to think, should I behave like a normal Finn, or try to adapt to their customs.. After all, the saying goes "When in Rome, do as the the romans do."