Photo “Stress” courtesy of Bernard Goldbach on Flickr

Lately, my friend has been telling me a lot about the “great company” he works for. At least that’s what he says: “It’s a great company; the problems are just in our department.” Yet there’s no evidence of the company’s greatness I’ve ever seen. In fact, everything my friend tells me suggests he works for a terrible company.

Under constant pressures, he is permanently stressed, and so are his coworkers. Many of the most talented and ambitious of the workers have left, or are thinking about leaving. The managers are in over their heads, and they are stressed to the breaking point. Morale is low. Worse yet, it’s well known throughout the company that things are terrible. And yet no one at the senior level ever addresses what’s really going on.

So how does this all add up to “a great company”?

Here’s how.

“Great companies” make great products. They go out into the world with an inspiring message that talks about treating the Earth kindly, loving nature, and making organic and cruelty-free products that everyone loves.

Their message is that they are progressive, thoughtful, conscientious, and all about loving people and the planet. And we tend to buy these kinds of messages, along with the products they are intended to sell. In fact, if I told you the name of my friend’s company, you would probably reply, “Oh, yeah—they’re a great company.”

We’ve all heard about the “great company” that buys pizza for its staff and even has dormitories attached to the office, so you never have to go home.

And you almost never do go home when you work in a “great company.” You eat the free pizza at your desk, and you work through dinner to midnight. Then you come back early in the morning, and do it all again, six days a week. Seven, when launch time is near.

The “great company” throws huge parties where everyone gets “free” beer. Forget that nothing is ever truly free if your time and labor paid for it. The company that gives you beer is always a great company.

The workforce of the “great company” is mostly young, impressionable people. They have no families and no life outside work. They don’t understand the fine line between working hard and being abused. They will give up their lives to work for a cool company that makes fairly-traded, Earth-friendly, biodegradable, organic, free-range, super-cool widgets that get featured in hipster magazines. Their employers count on it.

The people who work for the “great company,” and who have families, are filled with toxins that they take home with them each night. Some of them become alcoholics, some others spend their time at home depressed, exhausted, and miserable, dreading their return to the office or factory. They are never truly with their families and away from work. The toxins spread. Marriages and relationships suffer. The “great company” poisons everything.

In my experience these great companies are almost always paternalistic in nature. They hire young people and treat them like children—but in a cheer-leading way that, at least in the beginning, feels good. They say great-sounding things about how much they value you. Once in a while a door opens from above and the workers are showered with popsicles or ice cream or “staff appreciation day” stickers. The paternalistic “great company” only wants to talk about positive, happy things. There are no problems in the workplace, only the constant need to work harder. Everything in the “great company” is great. That’s because the paternalistic bosses carefully control the upbeat message, so that information only goes one way: from the top to the bottom. The real conditions, stresses, needs, and hazards of the workplace never filter upward, because the bosses are not that interested.

The paternalism seems less paternalistic when the official message is that everything is all great, all the time.

Great companies ask people to do unreasonable things, like give up their family life by working ever-lengthening shifts and work-weeks. When the stress fractures start to show, the manager orders pizza and gives a little speech about how great the company is, and what a great job everyone is doing.

What the manager doesn’t do is support the staff in a way that ensures they can meet their targets without burning out. The manager isn’t properly supported, either. You see, the rot—just like the propaganda—comes from the very top of the “great company.” The leaders of the “great company” tend to believe their own hype, when in fact they are running an operation that devours people and throws away their bones.

The company President is charming, charismatic, and fun. He’s so “cool,” people don’t notice he’s in charge of a highly dysfunctional workplace. For a while, the “great company” thrives on its hip image and high-energy, youth-oriented culture. Eventually however things gets so bad that even he sees the truth. By then it’s usually too late.

Understand. Be Understood. ✎ By Wayne K. Spear

15% of an iceberg is above the water, where we can see it. We know there’s much more ice below the surface, but it’s pure guesswork as to the size, shape, and nature of the submerged 85%.

Unless we dive down, which we’re now going to do.

Only, I’m not talking about icebergs today. I’m talking about you, your co-workers, your friends, and the next person you’re going to meet.

Our subject is nothing less than humanity itself. Let’s call it Introduction to People, or “People 101.”

You see, the universe gives us a magical thing called balance. I know this sounds weird, but it’s actually a practical, down-to earth matter.

Think of Newton’s Third Law:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction

When we look at nature, we see action-reaction force pairs in everything. You push down on the earth, and the earth pushes up on you. If this were not so, car tires would have no traction. You’d float aimlessly in the air, rather than propel forward toward the office. (Maybe that’s a good thing!)

Human beings come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and personalities. At bottom, however, we all lean toward either a thinking / feeling orientation or relationship / task orientation. We are either introverted or extroverted, skeptical or optimistic, active or reflective.

We can be a blend of both, but most of us lean more toward one than we do the other.

Carl Jung observed that opposites attract. Look at your life and ask “Isn’t it so?”

A virtual Odd Couple, (almost) every marriage has a personality contrast. Maybe it’s a touchy-feely type and a hard-headed intellectual. Or maybe the outgoing, people-oriented person settles down with someone who’d rather stay home and read a book. One cares what everything thinks and wants to take on the world’s problems and make everything better. The other says “you’re crazy, and anyways who cares what people think.”

The universe gives us balance because without it we would not survive. Every human relationship is an action-reaction force pair. Someone in the company has to be good at balancing the books, and someone has to be good at selling.

For goodness sake, never ask your cautious, task-oriented accountant to go out and win people over. Don’t let the sales people keep your books. Learn to understand and leverage human differences.

The people around you fill in your gaps. Your strengths are their weaknesses, and vice versa. You pick your opposite because that’s a good life strategy. Alone, we’re all two-legged stools. Together we stand.

This brings us to a mystery: why is there so much interpersonal conflict in the world if the universe gives us balance?

The answer is that the balance is all happening under the water. Above the surface we see only the 15%—the behavior of others that drives us nuts, because we don’t understand what’s really going on. We don’t appreciate, or even understand, the true nature and value of human differences.

We find ourselves in a business or personal relationship with someone who is, in some important ways, very much unlike us, and we say to ourselves: “What is wrong with this person? Why can’t he be more like me!”

And by “more like me,” we mean “right.”

Conflict begins when we see others as impeding rather than as balancing us.

We human beings take the natural balance built into the action-reaction force pairs of relationships and we turn it into imbalance by wanting others to see as we see, to feel as we feel, to think as we think, and to value as we value.

If, in contrast, you can see what others see and feel what others feel, you can achieve the same end: harmony and understanding. You can restore the balance.

I’m not suggesting that we can all, or even should, fall in love with one another. Some people are going to drive you crazy, no matter what, but you still have to work with them in a productive, drama-free manner.

In my work I use empirical, data-driven workplace assessment tools to take my clients to the submerged dynamics of their interpersonal workplace relationships. I dive down with them to explore the talents, values, and personality of every individual—in a safe, positive, inspiring, and insightful way.

I focus on what’s right with people, not what’s wrong: their talents, strengths, assets, values.

When you take the world’s (fortunately rare) psychopaths and sociopaths out of the picture, all of us are just trying to do the best with what we have.

Because we live in a world of icebergs, and because most of us don’t know how to deep-sea dive, we make assumptions about our environment and the people in it that are incorrect, simply because we don’t have all the information we need.

The tagline of my business is “Understand, Be Understood.” That’s my guiding principle, and I use it to make workplaces happier, stronger, and more effective.

And it works, not only in your organization but also in your life.

Are you curious to know more? Send me an email, and we’ll talk.

Eat, drink, and be a good marketer. ✎ By Wayne K. Spear

We live in a consumer society. We may not choose to define ourselves as “consumers,” and we may dislike the label, but we all are consumers.

Consumption is not simply the act of shopping and purchasing.

The Oxford English Dictionary coarsely defines a consumer as “He who or that which consumes, wastes, squanders, or destroys.”

Behind this notion of consumption is a moral judgement: the consumer is a parasite, contributing nothing of value to society.

The opposite notion has been elevated in modern times. Consumption is asserted to be a positive, even urgent, good. The consumer spends, which stimulates the economy, which creates jobs and prosperity.

Imagine performing to an empty room, or broadcasting a show in a world with no radios or televisions.

Sellers fail without buyers. Writers are nothing without readers. Producers need consumers.

Leaders and followers: there are countless books about Leadership, few about Followership.

An iMac is a production tool, but an iPad is a consumption tool. One is best suited to creating video, the other to consuming it.

Consumption has never been easier, nor more prevalent. The tools of consumption can be carried everywhere. The consumer is ever-present, ever plugged-in, ever-ready.

Supply and demand, consumption and production. A rise in consumption summons a rise in production.

This is also an age of producers, and of production.

The tools and media of consumption change, but the underlying reality does not. Producers must cut through the noise and the congestion to reach consumers.

As consumption drives up production, standing out from the crowd becomes more important, and more challenging, than ever.

In an age of abundant production, most of us are performing to empty rooms. We are not getting through.

The only way to get through is to find the room where the audience is, and to somehow put yourself on the stage at the front of that room.

That has been the challenge for producers since the beginning of time.

Everything has changed for consumers. Nothing has changed for producers.

What are your workplace options? It’s time to check, mate. ✎ By Wayne K. Spear

In my consulting work, I meet people who are unsatisfied in their workplace role. They like their organization, and want to stay in it, but also want to make a move.

They often have no idea what to do, or how to do it.

There are many kinds of workplace moves. The kind of move that’s right for you depends on the nature of your situation.

Consider the many forms of dissatisfaction:

– You have talents that are not being used
– Your role isn’t natural to you
– You are not challenged enough
– You are challenged too much
– You are not being properly trained and supported
– You are being micro-managed
– Your immediate supervisor is incompetent and/or a jerk

Think of your workplace as a chessboard. Each piece on the board has its own style and range of movement. Just like a game of chess, your workplace offers a variety of movement.

In most cases, you can modify your role, through workplace communication and collaboration. Maybe all you need is a small adjustment, which bring us to …

The Pawn

This is the simplest move of all, best suited to cases where you’re in the right role but want a little more (or less) responsibility, authority, or challenge: promotion vs. voluntary demotion. Some companies I know of will even accommodate the request for a demotion without cutting pay.

The King

The King is all about modest incremental, adjacent motion. This is how most moves occur, not only in business but in life. The expert on Italian opera makes a lateral move into the Italian food business. The best-selling author of Car Repair decides to write a book called Motorcycle Repair (rather than, say, Existentialism Explained). It’s about leveraging your proven expertise to move into a neighboring field. This is a logical, step-by-step process, and it makes the most sense in workplace situations where you want a bit more (or less) responsibility, authority and challenge—rather than a huge change.

The Knight

The moves of a Knight are bolder than those of a King. The Knight can leap over other pieces, as well as travel greater distance. More important, the Knight’s movements appear to be non-linear. In reality, the Knight makes a double move—two steps and a turn. This type of movement makes sense when you require a bolder transition that will take you slightly outside your current role and circumstances. In this move, it’s not only the degree of challenge and responsibility at issue, it’s the character of your role. You want something different, but not wildly different.

The Bishop

Here we get into bolder moves. The Bishop is about transitions. Rather than keep on the established path, this piece moves at angles into new territory. This is a more difficult workplace move to make, but it can be done if you’ve demonstrated your talents and competence, or if you’ve completed training. I have seen employees move successfully from HR to finance. I’ve seen an entry-level Admin Assistant become a Financial Comptroller. It happens. As long as there is an openness and trust, and a willingness to create and commit to a plan, anything is possible.

The Rook

The Rook is also about big moves, but of a logical nature. Here we consider a powerful workplace strategy—the lateral move. Lateral moves are great if you want more challenge without more responsibility, or if you want to learn from a mentor in another part of the company. Also, it isn’t always possible to negotiate a better role with your boss, or to work out personality issues. Sometimes you just have to plan your escape. A lateral move is therefore advisable when you find yourself unable to work amicably with a supervisor.

The Queen

The world is a Queen’s oyster. She has it all, because she can see it all. The Queen looks out over the entire range of motion and chooses where she wants to land. This piece reminds us that an organization holds a wide range of opportunities. What if you don’t see the perfect role for your individual skills? Then consider having a discussion about creating a role. Good companies are open to this, so you should be open to thinking, and moving, like a Queen.