Hopefully we are all agreed that the commodity model of buying, trying, exhausting and abandoning talent doesn’t work. There are two other alternatives if we confine ourselves to the individual level. One is temporarily better and the other considerably so.
The first quick-paint job some organizations use to cover the mercenary nature of the immediate commodity transaction in the present, is to promise a future Shangri-la, whether it is permanency for the precariat, ESOPs for the executives or holy-man harangues for the harassed. Depending on the gullibility or helplessness of the target audience, such remote rewards may move the motivation meter marginally for a more or less limited period.
Next, we have organizations that make genuine efforts to recast jobs and make them exciting and filled with learning. 1 As far as individual motivation goes, job enrichment takes us just as far up the peak as is possible.
Neither of these options, however, comes close to tapping the full motivational energy that resides in the workforce rising together as a group. That can only be released when the entirety of the organization feels as one. We shall examine three ways in which this group spirit can be uncorked, the dangers of getting too intoxicated with each method as well as the preventives for these risks. Each of the preventives to letting group fervour go in an unhealthy direction bases itself, in one way or another, on the creation of a virtuous organisation. What is a virtuous organization? The term entered management literature in 2007 with an eponymous book edited by Manz and others. 2 The book has several useful contributions but my purpose is better served by reaching further back in time when virtue ethics first took root. "Virtue ethics… can trace its history (in the West) to … Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, written about 2,400 years ago. [It] has had the greatest influence in this tradition and remains a primary inspiration for most who work in it." 3 To fit Aristotle to the context of businesses today we should mentally translate 'statesmen' and 'rulers' (and sometimes 'tyrants') to 'business leaders' and 'CEOs', 'citizens' to 'employees' and 'soul' to 'highest human potential'.
Worship Charismatic Leaders
The Enthuser: The first thought that springs to mind for moving every employee to enthusiasm is the magic of a charismatic leader. S/he is one who "… by virtue of both the extraordinary qualities that followers attribute to the leader and the latter’s mission, … is regarded by his or her followers with a mixture of reverence, unflinching dedication and awe… [According to Ann Ruth Willner] 4 … the charismatic leader is perceived as divine or semi-divine; he or she is deemed to possess extraordinary qualities, even super-human or supernatural ones; followers exhibit unconditional acceptance of the charismatic leader’s personal authority [and] followers exhibit a high level of emotional commitment to the charismatic leader." 5 As elaborated in a previous column, "the pressures to pay obeisance to the Oz wizard are virtually irresistible." 6
The Danger: So what’s not to like about this off-balance-sheet source of motivation? Potentially, plenty. "… [C]harisma is not always something that can benefit an organization and… when vision becomes unshakeable obsession, the potential for catastrophe may not be far away. …[C]harismatic leaders may come to recognize the power that they can exert by virtue of the awe and reverence with which they are regarded and to use that power as a means of getting their own way regardless of the views of others. The rhetorical strategies of charismatic leaders … runs the risk of leading others in directions that they would otherwise have not dreamed of going... Charismatic leaders can be despotic, mercurial, self-serving, obsessive, masters of illusion, and ultimately destructive of others... Further, since charismatic leaders are difficult acts to follow, their successors may experience great difficulty in following in their footsteps." 7 What’s the cure?
The Virtuous Organization: "Aristotle… [states that] the ruler’s objective is the good of the citizens as such, and his own so far as he is included among them." 8 And how is this 'good' to be defined? "Like any instrument, external goods have a limit beyond which they are of no use and may even do harm; happiness consists not in them, but in goods of the soul [i.e. realizing our full potential], for the more we have of these goods, the better off we are..." 9 Choosing leaders who consider the aggregate happiness of their people to be paramount, is the primary check preventing leaders (corporate or otherwise) from turning into tyrants. 10
There is a secondary check imposed by the courage of the people the leader chooses as advisors and the freedom they have to speak out. Long before George C Marshall occupied the position of trust that he finally enjoyed in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s counsels, he was asked to attend a meeting called by the President. "When the president finished talking, he polled the audience for comments, pleased to find that everyone agreed with him. That was until he came to Marshall: 'I think I have made a good case for my program. Don't you think so, George?' Roosevelt pressed, smiling broadly. In this, possibly their first official meeting, Marshall responded coldly, 'I am sorry, Mr. President, but I don’t agree with that at all.' Startled, Roosevelt abruptly ended the conference, without asking Marshall to explain. Marshall later recalled that out in the anteroom, as they left, his fellow attendees bade him farewell, certain that his Washington tour had just come to an abrupt end." 11 Had that leader been Stalin, more than Marshall’s Washington tour would have come to an abrupt end. As it was, the astute FDR saw the anti-sycophantic corrective Marshall brought, and appointed him to lead the US army to some of its greatest victories.
Destroy Hated Rivals
The Enthuser: "Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass… Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil…" 12 If you think this doesn’t happen in corporates you have never been privy to the craze for defeating a rival in a highly competitive environment.
The Danger: While corporate competitor hatred can have beneficial effects in unifying the mass of employees in a common crusade, far too often and far more deleteriously, such jealous hatreds can also be directed against internal rivals. The first couple of decades of my career were spent in a firm that enjoyed competitive dominance with a market share of well over 70% for its principal product lines. Mustering the troops with a battle cry against a survival-threatening competitor could have evoked only sceptical smiles. As Hoffer puts it, "When we feel superior to our tormentors, we are likely to despise them, even pity them, but not hate them." 13 One would have thought anti-rival propaganda would be given a rest in such a situation. It wasn’t. Inter-unit and inter-functional rivalries took its place with additional enthusiasm because the hate-targets and their weak spots could be individualized and missiled with precision while the outcomes propelled the victors upward in the zero-sum game of promotions within a narrowing pyramid. Once individuals acquire the habit of hatred it is tempting to use it for inter-unit rivalries or even interpersonal ones (in edging to the better end of the bell curve). How can this spiral of hate be prevented?
The Virtuous Organization: Some leaders encourage the diversion of hatred internally. "Another art of the tyrant is to sow quarrels among the citizens; friends should be embroiled with friends, the people with the notables, and the rich with one another. " 14 What could provide less lethal means of spurring people to give their last ounce of effort? There are at least two other ways to generate positive enthusiasm. The less obvious route is adopted by organizations that need to follow very high standards regardless of immediate pains or losses in doing so. I am thinking of the ideal versions of hospitals (and their doctors), accounting firms (and their auditors) or airlines (and their pilots). One might not miss the mark too widely if one labelled such organizations as being deontological. "For Kant, the morality of our actions has nothing to do with results. It has everything to do with our intentions and reasons for action, those that are contained in the principles we live by." 15 The other enthusiasm-generating mode is that of the purpose-driven organization. "Purpose refers to the difference you’re trying to make in the world…. A higher purpose gives great energy and relevance to a company and its brand." 16 Of course, the purpose needs channelling. It cannot be excessive enrichment of an elite or extraordinary results attained through emplocide or other ways of exploiting employees. Both rule and purpose focussed organizations can keep the dogs of hate at bay.
Perform Sacred Rituals
The Enthuser: Rituals can rarely generate zeal on their own without at least one of the previous two choices. All the same, HR readers will doubtless recognize a significant part of their time going towards organizing rituals, going by Kertzer’s definition of "… ritual as symbolic behavior that is socially standardized and repetitive." 17 Interestingly, "[t]he power of ritual communication lies just in its lack of caveats, in the very ambiguity of its symbols." 18 Hence, we should not always belittle the vagueness of some HR communications. After all, "[a] person's identification with an organization is only partly produced by the sharing of beliefs with other organizational members, for belief is a fragile, and not entirely necessary, bond. In this context, ritual provides a mechanism for people to express their allegiance to an organization or to a movement without requiring a common belief… [W]hat is persuasive about ritual is the way it discourages critical thinking." 19 That last extract sums up both the value of ritual in moulding differently minded individuals into a united movement while pointing out that the process disables not just criticism, but critical thought, while it is in operation.
The Danger: According to a darker interpretation, ritual is one way hatred and the violence it can bring in its wake are sublimated. Girard writes: "Given the fundamental importance to mankind of the transformation of bad violence into good and the equally fundamental inability of men to solve the mystery of this transformation, it is not surprising that men are doomed to ritual." 20 From there it is a short step to the scapegoating of a few or even just one victim. Once again Girard is to hand, grimly explaining that "… men are only capable of reconciling their differences at the expense of a third party. The best men can hope for in their quest for nonviolence is the unanimity-minus-one of the surrogate victim." 21 In a book dedicated to the topic, he adds: "Scapegoat indicates both the innocence of the victims, the collective polarization in opposition to them, and the collective end result of that polarization." 22 Within the corporate collage of discords, three developments can catalyse the process of scapegoating:
There is a major setback or policy reversal that shakes up everyone in the organisation.
There is a large proportion and number of decision-makers or influences who were more or less openly complicit in the now discarded policy and need to demonstrate their new-found distance.
There is one (or a few) significant owners of the lost cause who will not abandon it and whose protecting mentor(s) cannot or will not shield him (or them).
How do we stop the blame-game from swallowing some of our brightest and most principled talent?
The Virtuous Organization: The preventive here boils down to cultivating a learning culture that is eager to own responsibility for failure as a prerequisite to progress. From the Board, through the CEO downwards, every level should keep itself cognizant of consequential actions and own part of the blame when things go wrong. If public admissions of failure, punishments and departures are essential, they must start as high up the organization as conceivable. There are three contra-intuitive points of view that should be built into top level executive education to minimize scapegoating proclivities. Space limitations will permit them to be explained only by provocative quotations. No one need subscribe to these unquestioningly but they should be in our minds when we pass judgements condemning others. These are:
Limits to individual power and influence: "The individual is imprisoned within a destiny in which he himself counts for very little. The great economic and social currents are what shape the course of history." 23
Put yourself in the other’s place: "The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have." 24
False notions of agency: "No one’s deserving of their punishment or their rewards. No one’s to blame for their failings, and no one’s to credit for their successes. It’s all luck." 25
It is also imperative to have far-seeing mentors who can step in at critical moments to save talent that is about to be sacrificed to erase collective painful memories.
Recap
Commodity-style Human Resource Management is a zero-sum game. It can never lift people into becoming a sustainable competitive advantage. Charismatic leaders, a strong driving spirit and culturally prized rituals can all enthuse the workforce to action much above the minimum demanded by duty. Yet, they all have Hydean alter-egos. It is only when these genis operate within the confines of a virtuous organization that their wayward impulses can be cauterised and the organization operate at close to its full enthusiasm potential.
Worries have been growing exponentially about the impact AI can have on the future humankind. I share these. "… Artificial Intelligence has made phenomenal progress and concerns about its calamitous consequences have been getting more dire by the day – their pessimism proportional to the proficiency of the predicting expert. Few (outside the ostrich species) now doubt that the unguarded arrival of superintelligence will be less than catastrophic for the human race." 26 If there is to be any chance for humans-centred organizations to hold their own against AI dominated ones, it will be because they possess the same advantage homo sapiens did over Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago. "What then enabled Sapiens to succeed where Neanderthals failed? … The secret was probably the unique way Homo sapiens cooperated. Neanderthals and other human species probably also cooperated, but Sapiens developed a unique ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers…" 27 The ability to cooperate in large numbers and release our enthusiastic human spirits in the process is our only hope. Take this column seriously. Very seriously.
Notes: