Is Corporate America ok?
This post is a summary of my in-depth podcast episode on the same subject:
If you’ve been on Tiktok or Insta lately you’ve seen the posts of terrible bosses. We’ve all seen the influencers play acting as toxic managers who insist that employees sleep with their phones on their chests to be available for some urgent 2 a.m. phone call, or pretending to be a clueless boomer boss bumbling through basic technology. #funnynotfunny
The theme that I'm seeing that underpins all of these happenings in the corporate world today is a lack of consideration for employees AS PEOPLE. With things like stack ranking and yearly layoffs and robotically piling on the work while teams get pared down, and then the whole return to office strong arming.
If you follow me on social media, you’ll see I posted about the awesome book The Man who Broke Capitalism by David Gelles. And the man that Gelles is referring to in his book of course is Jack Welch the former CEO of GE. Neutron Jack (yes, they really called him that) is legendary for the 5 things happening today that he basically introduced to corporate America:
Stack ranking
Leading through fear
Offshoring and outsourcing
Ruthless, merciless cost cutting
Astronomical CEO pay that is of course is also tied to company stock prices
One of my friends who works for a large tech company said it's not that 2023 was the year that corporations stopped caring about employees, it's the year they stopped pretending that they did.
Ouch. I think anyone in corporate America can relate to that sentiment right now. Work just feels increasingly hostile to employees.
The bad news: We're being asked to take on the work of our team members who have been fired, we’re expected to be available at all times on all of our devices, we’re strategizing on how manage up, we’re working across multiple countries and time zones because of mergers and acquisitions, and we’re also frantically reprioritizing almost every day because senior management never seems to agree on strategy.
The good news: Managers can positively impact their teams in this climate, even if they can’t change the corporations they work for. Little moments of humanity and kindness add up and help people feel appreciated when times are hard.
