The Shipwreck of Humanistic Culture!
I was recently called in to be the psychologist in attendance when a multinational company announced it was closing its Australian business. We were ushered into the main trading floor on a cold and blustery day as the CEO read out a prepared statement to the 100 staff gathered there and dozens more online. The company was declared to be insolvent, and all operations were to be placed in the hands of the administrators. All jobs ceased, effective immediately.
What struck me was the stark contrast between the bright and optimistic office space decorated with company values and positive affirmations, and the brutal reality that the European parent company was facing a recession and needed to repatriate its capital to stay afloat. It was a shipwreck!
The staff, mostly millennials and Gen Xs, took the announcement well enough. There were tears and supportive hugs. The CEO looked haggard. The administrators assured everyone they would be paid their entitlements.
But what about the culture, the feeling of camaraderie, the friendships, the teamwork? The remains of a chocolate cake sat alone on a plate, someone’s birthday today. There would never be another birthday celebration. Posters with individual sales achievements now hung uselessly. Cheery desktop mascots now looked ridiculous.
In that moment I reflected on my 40-year career making workplaces more humane, building cultures of emotional competence and psychological safety, and improving performance through coaching and inspiring leadership. This workplace represented the epitome of all those ideals. But I might as well have been arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This ship had met the cold, hard iceberg of financial reality.
It got me thinking that my humanistic bias was no match for the powerful tidal currents of economic forces. The corporation was intended to be a way to leverage physical, financial, and manpower resources to make money. At best it’s a process system which harvests opportunity and converts it into a market benefit. At worst it’s a blind and ruthless machine which serves only one purpose. The corporation is merely an instrument, and we participate in its machinations as willing servants. When the machine needs to be shut down, we are cast aside.
So, what’s the point of all this posturing about building a performance culture and growing the next generation of leadership?
The mistake I’ve made is to assume that the corporation is the sum-total of its citizens. Change the way the citizens communicate with each other and make decisions together and you change the corporation for the better. However, I now think we engage with our colleagues and friends as discrete social entities. The corporation is the backdrop to our individual growth and development, not the result. We are ‘humans being’ always. And I recognize that my work has been to encourage individual and group self-awareness and even self-transcendence. The benefits to the corporation are a spin-off.
Everyone in the room that day will go on to create other social connections in other corporations. They are survivors of the shipwreck.
What do you think? How has your work experience reflected ‘humans being’?
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