REQUISITE HR BOOK CLUB, NOVEMBER 2016
Issue 6
42
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Requisite HR Book Club November 2016 LEADERS EAT LAST BY SIMON SINEK
Welcome to the latest Requisite HR Book Club share. We will be continuing with Leaders Eat Last (Why some teams pull together and others don’t) by Simon Sinek (author of Start with Why)
CHAPTERS ELEVEN AND TWELEVE
90% of the population believed in the war and nearly all Americans felt part of something bigger than themselves. They did not sit back and point fingers about what should be done, instead they came together and did it.
Part 4 – How We Got Here Chapter 10 - The Boom Before the Bust This chapter starts with describing America in the 1920’s, a time when America truly become a consumer society. Americans were relativity wealthy and used their disposable income to buy luxuries and new technology. For example, America went from 1 Commercial radio station in 1920 to 500 in 3 years to keep up with the 12 million households who purchased a radio. It was a good time, a time of success and excess, but nothing can grow forever, so despite the belief at the time that these times would last forever, there was a correction in 1929. Black Tuesday was a huge correction in the Stock Market, this correction was so large that it set off what was known as the Great Depression. During the Great Depression waste and excess were not an option, and to make ends meet people learned to work together and help each other. It was not until World War II occurred that America was able to pull itself out of the downturn and head into a great war. A war that involved an entire country not just the 12% of the population that served in the military. 18% of the population relocated to take up defence jobs, millions of women and minorities suddening found opportunities in the workforce, and those that couldn’t provide physical support bought war bonds or planted victory gardens.
The generation who lived in this era, were called the Greatest Generation. They were defined not by their excess or consumerism but by their hardship and service. The people raised during the Depression and sent off to war, went to work upon their return from war and applied their values of working hard, cooperation and loyalty. This defined how companies operated when this generation ran them. However, at the end of the War, there were celebrations, not just for those on the front-line but for all who had participated and sacrificed in their own way. These celebrations created a never seen before 40% population growth rate, which lead to the Baby Boomer Generation. As we know each generation tends to confound or rebel against the generation before it. Each generation has values and beliefs moulded by the events, experienced and technologies of their youth, which is different to the generation before it. The push and pull between generations creates balance, stability and checks and balances, allowing us to progress and change, whist not breaking everything in the process. But this only occurs when population growth occurs at a steady rate.
The influx of Baby Boomers upset the balance. Baby Boomers grew up with parents who wanted to give them everything they had never had. There was a swing from a need to serve others to a desire to take for oneself. The country transformed from a country that would fight to protect a way of life, into a country that would fight to protect the way they preferred to live. This generation rebelled against material wealth and the philosophy of working hard and work devotion. Instead they lived the life of individualism, free love and narcissism. However, they also worked towards civil rights, better pay for women and challenging society injustices. Due to the events of the time when they hit the workforce they detoured, to focusing on protecting the world with which they were most familiar – raising wealth and affluence. They became a group more concerned with their own happiness and well-being than the happiness or well-being of those around them. With a vastly fewer previous generation to balance out the ideals of the new mebefore-we generation, the new workplace mentality became self-centered and cynical. The focus nationally became about service to ourselves and wealth protection, not the sharing of wealth, nor the use of it to support causes of national importance. The situation only became worse when these Baby Boomers transitioned to positions of power in the workplace and government.
Chapter 12 – The Boomers All Growth Up The 1980’s were amazing boom years and during this time ways to protect the Boomers wealth were being developed, technology and PCs in the home supported the desire for individualism, and disposable items created comfort in items that had a shorter lifespan. The Disposability of Things; a symptom of excess, then start to be transferred over to our attitude toward people. In 1981 America embraced layoffs when the President of the USA fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers, after they conducted an illegal strike over more pay and a shorter working week. Not only did he fire them, but he banned them from working for the Federal Aviation Administration for the rest of their lives. (This was repeal by a later president in 1993.) For people with skills that were hardly transferrable to other industries they were banish to poverty. The point of this story was to illustrate the long-term repercussions when a leader sets a new tone about what is acceptable or unacceptable inside an organisation. When the layoff occurred, CEO’s interpreted his action as permission for them to also use swift and even aggressive decisions to use mass layoffs to guard against short-term economic disruption. Social conventions that had previously restrained CEO were instantly gone, now the precedent was set for protecting commerce before protecting people. Prior to this event layoffs were previously used as a last resort, not as an early option. Previously those individuals that worked hard, or sacrificed or contributed to the company in meaningful ways would receive loyalty from the Company in the form of job stability, but no longer. Anyone could be laid off simply to balance the books for the year. Protecting money became more important that protecting people, which left people asking themselves the questions “How can I ever feel safe at work?” and “How can we ever feel committed to the jobs we have, if the leaders of our companies aren’t committed to us?” These changes redefined modern leadership and wreaked havoc on the employee / employer relationship. Those in positions of authority and responsibilities allowed outside influencers to impact their decisions and actions. This trend moved from industry to industry and then permeated Wall street and Congress, and all; to varying degrees, abandoned the people they existed to serve, in favour of more selfish priorities. This new leadership style rattled the very foundation upon which trust and cooperation were built. We forgot that living, breathing people will play a greater role in our ability to innovate, make progress and beat our competition, than the bottom line. When we aim to compete with numbers we lose sight of the fact that our people are our most valuable assets. The better the products, services and experiences a company is able to offer its customers, the more it can drive demand for those products, services and experiences. It is people that invent, innovate and supply the company’s output, and if we put people second on the priority list, innovation declines and the pressure to compete on things like price and other short-term strategies increases.
When we have less and outside dangers are many, we tend to be more open to sharing, because our survival as a species depends upon it. Ironically the more we have the bigger the fences we build and the less we want to share. Between our desire for more and our reduced physical interaction with ‘common folk’ we create a disconnection or blindness to reality. Sine the Boomer took over running business and government there has been three significant stock market crashes. A new set of norms and values have become established in our businesses and society, where dopamine—driven performance rewards us for individual achievement at the expense of the balancing effects of serotonin and oxytocin, that rewards us for working together and building bonds of trust and loyalty. It is this imbalance that caused the stock market to crash. And the unwillingness to change only creates greater imbalance. History has taught us over and over again that a self-correction will occur and if we are not smart enough to correct it ourselves slowly and methodically it will occur suddenly and aggressively. Given our inclination for instant gratification and weak Circles of Safety within businesses, it is likely we will take the hard route. We can’t blame an entire generation or any industry or CEO for the ills of today, but there is a lack of empathy and humanity in the way we do business today. We are so focused on running companies and managing systems, that we are not leading people. “No one wakes up in the morning to go to work with the hope that someone will manage us. We wake up in the morning and go to work with the hope that someone will lead us”. Bob Chapman, CEO Barry-Wehmiller The problem is, for us to be led, there must be leaders we want to follow. Abundance can be destructive, because it abstracts the value of things, resulting in a situation where the more we have, the less we value it. And if the abstraction of stuff makes us value it less, image what it does to our relationships. Business operates at a huge scale these days, and scale creates distance, and at distance human concepts start to lose their meaning. But it is not abundance that needs to be managed but abstraction. We no longer see each other as people; we are now customers, shareholders, employees, email addresses, expenses to be tracked…… Your Chapter Challenges: o Self-reflection - Who are you? Are you a manager or are you a leader? When business is a struggle is your first reaction to protect the short-term or the long term? Do you have people working for you or employees? Do you build trust and cooperation or the opposite? Is this who you want to be? Is this who you need to be? Are you the leader your team wants to follow?
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