Corporate madness is a malady that often goes untreated. We are paying a price for this.
I wrote last week about the dangers around the status quo. I have been struck over the last few weeks of the madness within the corporate world around this. It's as if hope has replaced the action of fixing what will eventually kill. Hope has turned into do-nothing.
By the way, the one with the best and biggest retirement package does not win. Never has, never will.
The erosion continues.
This post was originally written in 2006, it was timely then and timely now. Is your organization paying attention?
I read today that Jeff Skilling of Enron fame wasn't in "it" for the money. He just wanted to build a solid business. I'm not here to judge him, but his comments are telling…as it relates to fear and greed.
Oh, how great it would be if every junior executive/manager got the workshop on fear and greed. It wouldn't guarantee total bliss, but it might reduce the wrecks. Sadly, corporations fail to talk about this due to their own addictions. You see fear and greed can be habit forming. They seem OK when you first taste, but leave behind ruined lives afterward.
If you're new to management or ownership, take some time to deal with the issues of fear and greed. No matter how well you think things are going. Your employees/subordinates will thank you for it.
What level of faith (belief in something that is real, but unseen) do you have in your business? How about your people? Do you act on this faith even if the brilliance is not seen by many?
The answer to the three questions I posed will tell you a lot about the soul of your business and its true health.
This is the "hard" in hard work.
Convinced more and more that our search needs to be toward scarcity. In such a way that our abilities, talents, strengths, etc. are called upon to remedy the need for what is scarce. Economics reveals this too, but we can apply across platforms. Your ability to change the world for the better is linked here.
This assumes, like me, that you want to shake things up where you're at.
I'm all for profit, wished I had more. And I'm very into meaningful work. The problem is found in the collision of profit motive and meaningful work.
The problem rears its ugly head when the profit motive starts taking greed steroids. Meaningful work exits when this happens. I wish this scenario was rare, but you and I know it's not. The crazy part is profit and meaningful work can coexist and thrive.
In many ways we live in a tale of two cities. One city is a place where management (entry to executive) is focused on profit, expenses, quarterly news, and the like. The other city is a place where the employee is looking and longing for meaningful work. They're not immature children or idealistic dreamers, just people who understand that life is a limited time offer and they desire to make the most of the time given. This is the reality and the reason we're in such a mess, relating to how we do and live out our work.
So why are the two at odds?
I've always been about people-for better or worse, so I'm not writing to offer solutions on how to fix corporate America. In the spirit of giving you a place to start, a place to begin discovering where meaningful work may be found, I want you to take a look at the following video clip:
Who do you trust? What do you trust? How do you trust? This is a difficult time for trust in America. Seems like just about everyone is pitching an angle or spin. Many have shrugged and found themselves saying hello to their jaded self.
We've arrived at the end of trust.
It's not so strange when you look back over the last 30 years. In my land of America, we made the mistake of thinking trust didn't need attention. We thought it would take care of itself. Like so many other things in life, trust doesn't just take care of itself. It requires priority and work.
I'll never forget a mentor asking once if I could be trusted with the gifts and talents I'd been given. It cut right through me because I knew he was referring to my ability to understand the meaning of given and my responsibility to live out the trust I ask for from people. That question has been part of my psyche ever since. A gut check for me.
Can you be trusted?
The conclusion is found in the wieght we assign to trust. If it's like a feather, then I hope you'll always be protected because you're going to need it. If it's heavy, I since you'll treat it with great care and respect wherever you give or ask for it.
Trust is a verb like no other in a world that's lost, not found.
I spoke with a friend yesterday about the role of her manager in her job. He's an advocate for her and a buffer. The buffer part was what struck me. He's a buffer between my friend and senior management. Sadly, senior management in this organization is living in an alternative reality, so they need someone who is deft at translating this reality into real world application. This happens a lot in the corporate world.
This post is not a defense of the middle-manager, nor is it a rant about how bad they sometimes can be. In the spirit of balance I want you to consider 7 things your manager wants you to know:
If there is any statement I would want a manager/leader to understand, it would be the following:
"Your people are smarter than you think."
I feel sorry for those organizations that promote, deify, and plain flatter the pants off of management candidates and new hires (including senior management). I feel even sorrier for those individuals because most of the time they are not prepared to lead. It's often a case of letting words on a resume or some performance metric around revenue generation that leads to this ride to hell.
On face of it, you might say congratulations are in order for the recently hired or promoted. I wouldn't want to stop the celebration and I certainly applaud those who desire to lead people. The problem rests in not taking time to explain some key and essential truths. And one of those is:
"Your People Are Smarter Than You Think."
So You may be wondering why the emphasis on that statement? Here are the reasons why:
Saw this post yesterday in Forbes and it got me thinking about the implications of trust.
What strikes me is how our business culture has forgotten or needs to be taught about how trust is built and kept. We definitely are living in a curious time, when it comes to trust. Seems like many have left trust in dust, even though we say its so important.
The vast advances in learning has led to arrogance on the part of business leaders. This is the type of arrogance that threatens the very enterprises deemed to be so valuable to multiple groups.
Can those (family, friends, company, etc.) conting on you trust you? Are you building and strengthening trust everyday?
We've all encountered organizations who have systems that seem to work smoothly. For example, in banking, Chase will probably get 99% of their transactions right today. Accenture has a process that will react when a company puts out an RFP. But as great as their processes may be, if the leaders inside lack heart, there is something fundamentally wrong.
Leadership starts with the heart. Indeed, indeed.
Great organizations (small or large) begin from the heart. Their business models are full of art. That kind of art that solved a problem, made a customer smile or inspired a child to dream. No guarantees of success I know, and certainly you've got to have a business model that can make/raise money. But if you listen to music don't you want the melody along with the rhythm? If the organization only has one side of the equation and not both, then you're looking at a hollow endeavor.
The great warning goes out to organizations that abandon the heart, thinking the head can do it all.