The newspapers are filled with headlines “Bank of America to lay off 30000 people”, “HSBC to cut 25000 people”. The bigger the number, the more the gossip on the streets, especially over the evening drinks at LKF; a street full of bankers, ex-bankers and future ex-bankers, drinking and bitching about recent financial crisis. If someone with a job even got a chance to bitch then the unanimous response is “At least you still have a job and get your monthly pay check”Pondering over this statement makes me throw up because it forces me to be content with mediocrity than chasing growth and success.
The recent financial crisis has forced banks to lay off thousands of people in order to improve their balance sheets and regain shareholders confidence. In many cases, tax-payers money was injected into these banks against a demand to reduce risk taking activities and make their balance sheets sound. This has in fact worked contra to the tax-payer's interest by making companies inefficient and forcing them to operate below excellence levels, thereby putting more pressure on the economy and governments, and creating more unemployment directly and indirectly.
This false illusion is not only making companies, including its leaders and managers, more risk averse but also pushing them to act towards self-preservation rather than growth. This is certainly not the objective of individuals, teams and the companies as a whole. Many of the individuals in banks come out from elite business schools where they are taught that crisis provides opportunity; that their girth is measured by the goals they set and efforts they make to chase those goals, and not by preserving a job.
The desire, reason and way of self-preservation is sometimes obvious but in most cases hidden under many layers of company bureaucracy. Surprisingly in most cases the drive for self-preservation comes from self-realization that they are actually not competent and have been riding on the back of smarter people in the organization. Yes realizing that they are part of 80 and not 20 in the 80:20 rule of most companies. In some cases, employees have got richer by the desire of certain organizations to become bigger without any strategy, pushing them to hire mediocre people with fat packages to drive growth but eventually falling on their faces.
The most derogating of all is the lifetime employment concept, which promotes the idea of job security rather than performance. For a believer of free capitalism, the concept of guaranteeing life-time job, irrespective of his contribution to the company is as fatuous as it can get. In companies where employees are not rewarded and promoted solely on their performance provides opportunity to incompetents at the cost of another deserving candidates. It is like Sports committee telling Ussain Bolt that he cannot compete in Olympics because they promised a particular individual life time participation in sprinting.
Some of the employees have been successful in preserving their “precious jobs” due to company policy of hiring freeze which is forcing managers to keep under-performers. Anyone who believes in talent management knows that the only way to deal with under-performance is to replace them.
When employees work towards self-preservation, it increases “workplace politics” which is like playing hunger games where the only way to survive is to kill others.
What we need to hear more from individuals and companies is that “Lets adapt and win”. That statement signals commitment, confidence, drive and ambition. How often have we heard that human capital is the biggest asset of a company and how often have we seen companies and managers brushing that thought aside as one of the “good to have management principles in our mission statement”?
We get excited and cheer winners in all facets of life. We celebrate when new world records are set. Why is that? It is because individuals and teams are supposed to excel at everything they do. It is because we are supposed to raise the bar. It is because the objective of working is to reach new heights of success. It is because our action defines the work place, the society and the world.
When companies perform sub-optimally it has a cost not only for its employees, owners, shareholders but for the economy as a whole.
For individuals who are trying to stay content with just a job, let me quote Ayn rand
“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours”
