Jumping Ship
After 20 years of incredible personal and professional growth, revelational conversations, and unforgettable experiences, I’m choosing to walk away from all of my professional affiliations and all of the tools I have used in my practice. I wouldn’t change a single thing about any of it, but I’ve come to realize that those tools and affiliations are no longer serving me. And equally to the point, I have lost confidence that my contributions in those circles are helpful, because my ideas aren’t being field-tested in “real world” business environments. It’s easy to say something ought to be some certain way — much more difficult to show evidence that the way works.
My beliefs aren’t coming from evidence of what works. They are coming from evidence of what doesn’t.
What I am seeing and hearing from the people I know who work in American companies of many shapes and sizes, is that the “mission statement” or the “vision” or the “values” are lovely but meaningless bits of poetry, framed in posters or engraved on plaques on the office wall, but honored far more in the breach than the observance. Companies talk about “integrity,” but never define what they mean by it. Tout “work-life balance,” but fail to provide what people need to thrive. Expect unfailing loyalty, but do nothing to earn trust.
Corporations are not people, but America treats them as though they are (thanks to the Citizens United decision). If a corporation were a person, it would be a sociopath — a person without empathy. Corporations exist to return profits to their shareholders. They have no other ultimate purpose. And when you combine that reality with the short-term orientation of American culture, you end up with a system that rewards sociopathy in individuals. The executive who can make this quarter’s numbers look good will be richly rewarded as soon as those numbers are published, and can sail that golden parachute away to his next adventure before the consequences of his decisions are reflected in the following quarter’s results. Why should he care about the cuts to the workforce, the elimination of customer services, or the compromises of quality, safety or durability of the product that enabled those numbers to look so good in the short term? None of that affected his bonus. And when the product fails, the customers revolt, or the workers strike, the people who made those decisions are gone — and with them, any real accountability for those choices.
Meanwhile, people without power or money or influence are left to pick up the pieces. The ones who were laid off are left to compete for fewer and fewer jobs in their field. Those who remain have to respond to angry customers, deal with returns, repairs, and rework of inferior products, attempt to explain why anyone should trust their company, even as their own trust has been betrayed.
And how does the system deal with these people? It blames them. They are blamed for the shortcomings of the company. Blamed for losing their jobs. Blamed for decreased productivity. Blamed for “not making their numbers” when the product they are selling is no longer worth buying.
We have started seeing the devastating consequences of these patterns. Take the aviation industry as a particularly stark example. The Boeing Company was once one of America’s premier engineering juggernauts, building aircraft and spaceflight hardware that were the envy of the world. But around the turn of the century, Boeing shifted its focus from being an engineering company to being a financial company. About 20 years later, two Boeing 737-MAX airplanes crashed in the space of five months, killing 346 people. In the last several years, the Federal Aviation Administration has reduced staffing of air traffic control towers, citing “cost savings.” Exhausted and overwhelmed tower controllers are more likely to make mistakes, and we have seen that bear out in the form of incidents and accidents, some fatal, at busy airports. But the people making the “cost saving” decisions are not the ones being harmed by those decisions. The risks, and the consequences, fall on ordinary people, while executives are insulated from harm and rewarded for financial results.
In my dream world, we would remember the story of the golden goose. She will lay golden eggs indefinitely if you care for her properly. But if in your haste and your greed you cut her open, the gold will soon be gone.