What Century Do You Work For?
Reshaping culture is central to success in the coming economy
It does really depend on when you arrived on this planet, but when we look back you can see that over the past few hundred years, especially in the time where the century turns, a lot of crazy things seem to happen.
From the late 18th century into the early 19th a change in the power structures in both nations and the individual covered a wide spectrum of political and religious dimensions. The concept of a citizen came into the light, though it may appear rosier than it really was, it was a time of raw idealism and upheaval.
From the late 19th century to the early 20th we saw the dissolution of national monarchies and the rise of industry, standardization, the counter-agrarian move to cities, and the increase of leisure time. Now the citizen struggled with defining themselves across a stormy sea of wars, social disruption, democratization, and technological achievements.
Though many 20th century behaviors are still with us, we are here in the 21st. Understanding which behaviors and actions we should adopt or discard will be key to evolving our culture forward.
20th-century mindsets will be anchors to progress …we need to begin our evolution to 21st-century realities or we are headed down the wrong road.
It’s a big subject so let’s use observations on the current state of the business and workforce ecosystem.
Culture. It’s an ever-increasing challenge to address and many companies solve their issues with patchwork solutions to stem the ever-time-fragmenting and identity-strained workforce. Some companies focus on maintaining the core profitability of the business and use meritocratic models that enable the culture to descend into a dog-eat-dog, social marketplace. Others challenge the business to ‘evolve or die’ before the clock runs out on their industry or workforce. Many companies do very, very, little to prepare for change. In these newly born events of upheaval due to the pandemic, all of these are critically flawed approaches.
Capitalism. It’s a popular notion to think businesses steer clear of thinking of cultural health as an imperative. They simply let profit and culture coexist. Whenever bad things happen they manage the fallout like a triage ward at a hospital. This is an expensive after-care approach. A lot can be learned from small companies that can maintain a level of balance and fiscal performance due to tribe sizing, manageable networks as well as strong, accessible leadership.
Many companies are clearly not seeing workplace culture as an equal partner to profit in their success. The ones that do see the value often struggle with maintaining a balance with all the disruption and tumult in their industry or business as a whole. Yet, culture and profit will continue to clash, and this dysfunctional 20th-century approach will collapse on itself. We see early signs of failure as the COVID-19 stay at home orders are straining the frail structures that so many people, prior to the pandemic, in corporate functions have tried to maintain.
Workplace culture appreciates celebratory cultural events but they aren’t always impactful to an organization.
To date, many companies haven’t genuinely addressed the problem of dysfunctional 20th-century behaviors in their cultures. Over the years they have been staging an elaborate pantomime of change events, hires, lectures, webcasts, PR campaigns, and hallmarked days for the sole purpose of demonstrating intent. They aren’t being genuine. They are marketing their intent to their own people.
An HBR study focused on female CEO appointments determining that the ‘spillover’ impacts of appointment of a woman to a top position can have a negative downstream impact on other female hires. Commonly there is evidence that so-called ‘token’ appointments advance the perception of diversity while there is no actual change in the rank and file. Marketing the perception of change is symbolic, but not a reality of change for the workforce.
This is a 21st-century challenge. As companies digitize their businesses, they have to modernize their workforce. The veiled demonstrative acts of cultural pandering hark to a multi-century legacy of dysfunction that’s been handed down from industry to industry and business to business like a virus.
To address the problem we have seen an increase in strategies that appear to be a remedy; modernizing physical spaces, developing internal and external work enhancement activities and programs to train people to collaborate. Technology platforms, always willing to step into the breach and push their products as the remedy, have seen the benefit through 20th-century glasses. What we have observed is that leaning on technology as a quick fix for underdeveloped or neglected employees is old thinking.
In a recent client cultural research project this response was heard from about 50% of the executives of a company I was working with “…we can’t focus that much on the workforce and keep making money, if talent leaves/quits, we’ll find more…everyone is replaceable…and usually cheaper.” In these days of hyper-specialization and collaboration, these notions sound like the words of a factory boss from the 1950s.
“The 20th century called and it wants its bad ideas back…”
It can be very easy to understand what century your workforce is coming from and what drives the divide. Let’s take a look at a compilation of behavioral statements that demonstrate this division.
Work/Culture-specific: This first section clearly shows what could be a generational divide or at least a societal separation but in almost all cases there was an even split between 18–40’s and 40–60-year-old age groups.
Employee Experience: The same is demonstrated (below). Attitudes toward work and lifestyle are dependent on scores of data points (upbringing, religious affiliation, geography, etc.) yet in aggregate it was clear this was not based on age or generational status.
Technology specific: Here the approach to understanding the concept of a new device or service embedded in said service is separated by personal aptitude, non-work familiarity, and a supportive work environment.
Even with this window into how 20th and 21st-century mentalities differ it’s clear we’re slow in our workforce transition to new models. While the majority of divisions are obvious this will continue and be more pronounced over time.
In their book New World, New Mind, Ornstein and Ehrlich summarise it best :
“We have made two observations over and over again in this book. The first is that the world is an increasingly dangerous place, and many of its new dangers are not instantaneously obvious. The second is that our reactions to the modern world are often inappropriate because of the nature of our minds and the training we give them. This mismatch threatens the destruction of civilization.” (pp 189–190)
Clearly the destruction of civilization is on the mind of most people in these days of COVID-19 pandemic. Our quest to understand where we’re headed demands that we need to spend some time knowing ourselves to be better prepared for change. Time working from home is the ideal environment for that reflection.
Yet we’re likely to see many of the old ways of solving the problems we face. With reflexive purging and getting back to profits (which is not a strategy), we’ll be reminded of simplistic transactional acts without any long term goals. It’s clear that gutting this pandemic situation out and getting back to work by bringing back essential staff and eliminating older workers and cultural misfits will not change things for the better in terms of a healthy change. Managed well, utilizing misfits and experienced workers can be catalysts for positive change during post-traumatic events.
So how would 20’s or 21’s look at getting back to work during this transitional time?
20th-century workers — what we observe today is that they value more fixed forms and timing of work/life balance, they desire established roles and titles, they self-train during unpaid hours, they have a decreasing number of outlets for managing dissatisfaction, personal time is absorbed by mobile connections to work and their health and longevity becomes a deciding factor in surviving toxic workplaces. They work within conventions of real work being essentially in-person. Progress equates to making money, rewards for performance are complex and highly structured, external competition is an abstract, internal competition is tactile, toxic, adversarial, and usually unresolved.
How they might return to work: They’ll desire to get back to the old routine (even though it probably won’t ever be the same) and look for continuity from the pre-pandemic days. They’ll have a stronger desire to reestablish power structures/relationships and take advantage of any gaps in the organization; increasing their power or influence on upper management. They will avoid talks of rethinking the business long enough so that the old familiar paths of power and ways of working recommence.
21st-century workers— they’ll be focused on more utilizing work time for advancement, adapting well to changes in the workplace, over-saturating in screen content and social media as an outlet, they’ll favor cause-related engagements as a company venture, the virtual collaboration will continue to be second nature and they will look to their uniqueness as accelerator and a ladder to social and financial advancement. For them, there is always a better way to solve problems and their time away will open their minds to wanting to be part of substantive changes in their company.
How they might return to work: They will desire a discussion about new role definitions, how to set up their department/value-to-customer in a more measurable and relevant way. Discussions on how their time and effort will be dispersed will be more regular. Focusing on personal, reflective time will rise and growth ideas around new living situations in concert with work will start gaining acceptance.
Both of these groups will have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of the post-COVID-19 workplace, which will be very uncomfortable as these issues will be more pronounced than ever in the coming months. For businesses, rehiring or hiring will be taxed, profitability will be top of mind and many won’t take the time to rethink people, culture, and organizations. If ignored these will be debilitating in the coming years if left unanswered.
So with all this noise, what needs to change?
- Rethinking models of workforce management
- Reevaluating the idea of ‘replaceable’ workers
- Value metrics for retraining
- Arcane, dysfunctional or quasi-compatible technologies
- Financial engineering (stock buy-backs, etc.) as a measure of success
- Short-term grinds to support quarterly reporting
- Marketing social/community efforts to employees
- Minimal vacation time
- Inflexible work hours/locales
And what are we progressing towards?
- Impact-by-employee metrics
- Robust capability analysis and retraining programs
- Preventative mental and physical support programs
- Alumnus mentoring programs
- Virtual schooling sponsorship
- Annual/Bi-annual investment market reporting
- Stronger tax incentives for employment reinvestment
- Restructured high-impact community programs
- Extended vacation/recharge/family time off
Big messy issues, yes. By taking on the big ones first we will open up a lot of productive discussion and participation to accelerate change.
The demands of business performance can’t wait for the 20th-century musical chairs strategy of getting the best and brightest people to work for them by simply cutting old roles. They need to rethink and retrain employees as part of the value chain. Education, whether it’s software, new management techniques or culture modernization and collaboration methods needs to be fully saturated and measured both qualitatively and quantitatively. Progress through the stages of modernization and change should be lauded and encouraged as much as financial metrics. Addressing these goals simultaneously, and genuinely, will create a truly healthy organization.
Business, technology, and culture have yet to settle the argument between profit, prosperity, and the needs of humanity in the workplace.
Investment in these new paradigms of work culture will also reap great benefits, it will future-proof businesses … if there is a full commitment. The ‘fake it ‘till you make it’ strategy will prolong dysfunction. Companies must also include the very people they are trying to impact the curriculum development process. The usual practice of a small group handing down program decisions and KPI’s will exacerbate the divide between management and the employee.
It’s time to depart from the immature notions that modern ideas are crazy and unattainable. The health of corporate cultures depend on the response of an evolved leadership vision, one that doesn’t seek to inhibit inevitable changes …but to shape and embrace them. The COVID-19 pandemic has and will continue to expose us to this reality. A solid rethink of not only business but government, culture, and… people is at hand. It will be uncomfortable, but recovering from the old ways usually are.