There is a lot of talk about engaged employees.
Employees ought to be engaged – fully involved in producing outcomes for the company they work for.
But why?
If the company is organized around purposes – and the employee is aligned with and embraces those purposes, then it makes sense.
But if the company is REALLY aligned with increasing shareholder value, then there is no place for employees to be viewed as being a valuable part of the company. They are fundamentally an expense and are only ‘worth it’ if they contribute more than they cost. The orientation around the purpose of increasing stakeholder value as the primary and overriding purpose for the company excludes a place for any employee to engage unless they are shareholders or directly compensated based on shareholder value.
Tihe Bigger Lie is that a free market ‘conservative’ model, based on the assumption that the social responsibility of business is shareholder value, is optimal for employees.
Society does not benefit from negating the intrinsic value of human beings.
The political perspective that aligns itself around viewing the social responsibility of business is shareholder value fundamentally discriminates against a large percentage of society – ‘workers’.
No wonder the shift of pension from a promised benefit to one based on the stockmarket was embraced by conservatives. Why wouldn’t employees want to become part of the shareholder community so they could benefit? Sounds innocent and logical. But in reality, the fundamental construct of a 401k is to obligate the participants to contribute into funds that are designed to produce guaranteed income for fund managers and the shareholders of the companies they work for and have no commitment of optimizing the capital of the contributors. No shared purpose there.
It is critical that the ‘Next Normal’ includes redefining the social responsibility of business from increasing shareholder value [which is a top 1% orientation] to one where the social responsibility of business is to fulfill on its purposes that are designed to benefit society, or at least those who use their services, and to doing no harm.
That opens up the space for business to be oriented around shared purposes, since so many purposes require collaboration and cooperation across businesses.
In a shared-purpose model, working for a company produces a space for the humans that work at a company to embrace and be engaged with the fundamental purposes of that company. They can define their role in the context of how it fulfills the purposes of the company – which no longer is focused on shareholder value as the primary organizing purpose.
Employees become a means to fulfilling the purposes of the business – and a critical one. Especially when technology exists which relies on humans to do the work that technology cannot do. Technology cannot care. And technology cannot invent out of nothing. Humans can not help from caring. Humans can not help from creating and inventing, since they invent their interpretation of the world as a natural part of how they live.
What each human does to be able to survive contributes to the way they experience the world and the way they connect to the rest of society. Authentic connections are founded on both parties being valuable and valued.
A profitable business is not the purpose of business – it is rather a by-product of a purpose-focused business delivering on a purpose that is valued by society.
Businesses that hold a purpose of making money have no intrinsic value to society and are unlikely to prosper when they are stripped of the ability to declare they are socially responsible simply because they are profitable or could be.
The stock market value immediately becomes irrelevant as a measure of the economy because it is useful only if you are oriented around shareholder value.
Failing to pay a living wage is fundamentally misaligned with the social purpose of doing no harm because it automatically produces adults who lack the means to take care of their basic survival concerns.
Charging a premium for critical life-saving treatments is misaligned with the purpose of providing care because it automatically excludes certain individuals from being able to have access to care.
New measures emerge.
For health care, measures focus on the accessibility, affordability, efficacy and safety of care.
For education, measures focus on the degree to which individuals have the fundamental knowledge they require to live a good life and be an engaged member of society.
For manufacturing, measures focus on the quality of the product, the safety of the product, the degree to which the manufacturing process does not pollute or consume critical, scarce resources. Sustainability becomes a given not optional.
Ending the Big Lie starts with accepting the inherent lie. If the social responsibility of business is shareholder value, then society is committed to inequality and is not committed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness being an inalienable right of all humans.
And calling out those that champion ‘free market’ postures on their bullshit when they declare that this is a statement of freedom is part of the fix. Freedom for the well off perhaps but not for everyone. That last part is often left off.
experiential connections 