Suddenly I See
We often don’t notice the lens that we are looking at the world through, especially when it’s a lens that is generally applied by society and, in particular, the media. It becomes the default perspective, and the language and metaphors associated with it become embedded in our every day. It also carries an assumption of ‘rightness’, we are all comfortable with viewing the world that way and we don’t even question it.
It’s the taking of different perspective, using a different lens, that strikes us as odd because it feels a bit uncomfortable and needs more effort on our part. Even when we sense that it’s a better lens to use, it feels a bit wrong, simply due to the unfamiliarity. Of course, some of us like looking through different lenses and get comfortable with that, in which case it’s the use of the default lens that grates with us because we consider it inferior (or we’re just bored with it, or likely both).
Which is a preamble to saying that I was a little taken aback to see the move to self-organisation at Bayer (which I wrote about a couple of week ago) characterised in this Fortune magazine article as a way to reduce headcount and cut costs. Maybe be in my enthusiasm for self-organising I have become too zealous and blinded to other motives? Perhaps it’s not the herald of a new approach to business but just cover for the usual ruthless corporate manoeuvres?
The same article goes on to mention headcount reductions by Meta, Google, Citi and FedEx, largely amongst middle managers, whilst at Intel their pay has been slashed. There is undoubtedly a trend in Corporate America and, to a lesser degree, elsewhere of sacking employees, especially middle managers, to ‘improve efficiency’ and boost profits. Mark Zuckerberg actually referred to ‘the year of efficiency’ when announcing the cuts at Meta.
This is the default lens, isn’t it? Rounds of sackings to boost profits and please Wall Street. It’s been normalised, some might even say lionised. So Fortune magazine looks at Bayer through that lens and ascribes their plans to the same base motives.
I don’t. I look at what else they say in the article, that “CEO Bill Anderson believes that flattening hierarchy and slashing corporate bureaucracy could be key to turning it around”. I also look at the fact that he’s been brought in because he’s done it before at Roche Pharmaceuticals. The reductions in the workforce are a consequence of what he’s doing, not an objective in itself.
The key here is ‘slashing corporate bureaucracy’. It not only reduces costs, it releases the potential of the people in the organisation to innovate, be more responsive and more agile. These are essential characteristics for an organisation to thrive in the future and they deliver a long-term advantage, not just a short-term financial boost.
So, is Fortune magazine simply too locked into the default way of seeing and reporting things to see the real win here? Or am I just too naive and overly optimistic not to see what’s really behind the move?
Well, I’m pretty sure Fortune are right about all the other companies. But I think they’re wrong about Bayer, and by failing to change their lens they are missing an emerging trend that will transform organisations in the near future.
I Wasn’t Expecting That
I nearly accused Fortune of being cynical in their reporting but I think that would be unfair. The cynicism is in the boardrooms of these major corporations, who have completely abandoned any regard for their employees and treat them just as a line item to be chopped back to juice up the profits for their own enrichment. I don’t think I’ve even seen such deep cynicism and callousness across business as right now. At the fringes, yes, but not as a generally acceptable ‘modus operandi’.
Many of these companies carrying out draconian headcount reductions are more profitable than ever, especially the Big Tech companies. In contrast, Bayer are a company in a bit of trouble, underperforming and with their stock on the slide. Even if cost reductions were the only motive for their staff reductions, it would be understandable and defensible. A bit of pain now to ensure long-term survival of the company. There’s a net benefit to employees as a whole there.
But many of these mass sackings are driven by greed. There’s no business imperative to reduce headcount, it’s not a matter of life or death. They are choosing to disrupt lives and careers, to inflict pain and anguish on their workforce, simply to make more profit. It’s disgusting. It feels like the end game of unfettered late-stage capitalism to me, a pursuit of profit that damages the society that these businesses operate in. They are fouling their own backyard and we all know where that ends.
So I was amused to see this tweet from Mark.C.Crowley
“Colour me surprised”, I thought, which was pretty much what most of the comments said too. Actions have consequences and, in this case, pretty predictable ones. They are:
Loss of trust
Withdrawal of discretionary effort
Lower levels of good mental health
Loss of some high performers who decide to move elsewhere
Disruption to work flows and projects
Toxicity
Damage to culture
Defensiveness
Loss of tacit knowledge
‘Survivor syndrome’
Obviously, all of these have a negative impact. When the cuts are motivated simply by greed and demonstrate an almost sociopathic attitude to employees, you add a multiplier to the impact. There’s a good chance you’ve baked them in, too, so you now have a cynical and distasteful workforce for the long term. Well done Daniel!
Still, the massive bonus that you undeservedly receive will make you feel like a winner, right?
And perhaps you’ll be able to build your own space dildo when you lose you hair too.
Walking On Broken Glass
Whether the motivation is to genuinely free up the potential of the people in the organisation or it’s outright cynicism and greed, these changes have one thing in common - a squeeze on middle management.
I’ve have some sympathy for middle managers, having been one myself. It’s a tough job, you’re often the meat in the sandwich between the senior leadership team and the people actually doing the work. You have to translate from one to the other, appease both, balance their competing demands and do your own job. Often without any training, minimal support and a constant ratcheting up of workload as you are told to do more with less. Oh, and you’re always in the middle of having some change programme rolled over you.
But middle managers are also responsible for slowing things down, for being blockages and gatekeepers, for creating bureaucracy and for empire building. They are often accused of micro-managing, playing politics and being obstructive.
I guess, in short, they are the best and the worst of the organisation. And criticised by everyone.
I don’t think middle managers are the problem, though. I think they are a symptom of the dysfunctionality of organisations today. They paper over the cracks in the way the organisation works. They fill in the gaps between how the organisation thinks it works and how things actually get done. They are the sinews and cartilage that hold the whole thing together, the soft tissue that enables the thing to move smoothly. Getting rid of them won’t solve any problems, it will just cause a lot of pain as bone has to work against bone.
If, like Bayer, organisations move to a new way of organising, then the role of the middle manager changes but the function remains the same. They remain the soft tissue that enables the whole thing to move smoothly, only now it is through coaching and support rather than direction, oversight and control.
However, if you are more like Meta or Google, you are just cutting away at what makes your organisation function. The ‘bloat’ that they have experienced in middle management is due to the dysfunctionality of their structures and ways of working. The cracks that middle managers paper over are getting wider and wider and so you keep throwing more and more people at the problems.
However, there’s a point at which you start to get dis-economies of scale because of the coordination and communication overhead. Then, adding more people makes the whole thing less effective - but the gaps are still widening, so you keep throwing more people at in to cover them because that’s all you know how to do.
This normally leads to organisational collapse. However, tech companies like Meta, Google and Spotify have created hugely profitable business models in market segments that they are monopolies in, so the profits roll in almost regardless of what they do.
And here’s the irony. They can easily afford to carry the costs of the middle managers they are now discarding. They don’t need to inflict this pain on themselves.
And they will survive these acts of self-harm, in the short-term at least. Indeed, Wall Street thinks they are doing better than ever. Look at the profits, look at the share price!
But what they are doing is an act of weakness, of muddled thinking, of incredible short-sightedness. They are locking into ways of thinking that rooted in the past and locking themselves out of the future. The lens they are using is clouding over but they are unable to see that, unable to consider changing it for another. They are mistaking their myopia for greater focus. Mistaking impairment for improvement.
The tragedy is that they are ruining the lives of millions of employees in the process, when they could look through a different lens and start enhancing them.
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Happy Together
Looking through different lens and considering other perspectives is part of having growth mindset, a concept popularised by Carole Dweck almost 20 years ago.
It’s become part of a trend to locate the problems that organisations and societies face with the individual. I doubt Dweck intended this, it’s a pernicious development that places the responsibility on you and let’s your organisation or the politicians off the hook. “It’s not our fault you aren’t flourishing, it’s yours. You need to develop a growth mindset (or radical candour, or grit, or emotional intelligence, or resilience, or … you get the picture).
I was pleased, then, to listen to one of Dweck’s graduate students at that time, Mary. C. Murphy, talk about a ‘growth mindset culture’ on the “Leading from the Heart” podcast.
Her thesis was that this could transform any group, team, or classroom to reach breakthroughs while also helping people individually achieve their full potential. It followed her initial observation that ‘mindset’ transcends individuals.
Through her research she has proved that this gives huge performance improvements. Growth mindset culture spark collaboration, spur innovations and build trust that enables risk-taking and inclusion.
It’s not really surprising to me. In the right environment, everyone thrives, even the less able are lifted up. Mindset is a team sport, isn’t it?
To me this echoes Bruce Daisley’s work on resilience, which he prefers to call ‘fortitude’. He found this is much more reliant on our connection to others than on our personal attitude. We don’t operate in a vacuum, or as John Donne put it “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
Similarly, self-organising is much more about how we work together than separately. Connection is at the heart of it, not an optional extra as seems to be the case in many workplaces today.
You could argue that the Zuckerberg’s, Pichai’s and Ek’s have a growth mindset - they’re obsessed with growing their companies, especially the profits, at any cost. But it’s the wrong type of growth. And it’s never going to cultivate a ‘growth mindset culture’ in their businesses. It’s going to kill off anything that looks even remotely like it. Along with a few of their employees. But look at that bottom line!
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or any other topic I have rambled on about. I’m interested to hear about your experience in Corporate Fantasyland and what your challenges are (especially if they are about making good trouble or getting the hell out!). Maybe I can help you figure out what to do next.
So get in touch, I’d love to hear from you
Book a call on my Calendly page
Email me at colin@colinnewlyn.com
Powerful analysis and perspective- with which I wholeheartedly agree. It feels as though in creating scale, the sense of “shared space” for those notionally under the same corporate roof is dissolved. No one belongs, all are short term tenants.
We all need somewhere to belong, somewhere to be heard, and somewhere where what we do appreciated beyond making money. Margaret Wheatley’s “islands of sanity”
This is important commentary, and food for those reading you. Keep going.