Editorial
Why is work so miserable?
Weren’t we promised that ERP, then content management, then enterprise search, then CRM and then social networking would allow humans to work less and do more high-value work? None of that came to pass… but maybe AI is just the ticket. Or is it?
Organizations have spent billions annually on technology over the last few decades, and certainly, it has allowed us to do a lot more. Why, then, does work feel so much worse?
Remember The 4-Hour Workweek and the promise that new technology would allow us to work less? Meanwhile, most people I know are frazzled, overwhelmed and anxious. In Welcome to the United States of Anxiety, Jen Lancaster reminds us of how much anxiety has increased in spite of decreases in violence, poverty, disease and abuse. Layoffs have gone from never, to only when a company is in deep trouble and are now normal operating procedure. Median CEO tenure has decreased by over a year in the last decade.
No one seems happy. What’s the problem?
Humans Are (Still) Competing With Technology
AI has shifted the skills prioritized for hiring in 2024 to uniquely human abilities like communication and people management, while AI is taking on more production-oriented tasks like writing, data entry and translation. That is consistent with what we know about how AI can complement employees and improve productivity.
HR teams have seemingly gotten the message — or have they?
At the same time, the OKR craze in performance measurement is still ascendant — and not only does it not capture how work is done, but capturing it is considered bad practice. That alignment gap between how work happens and what work happens is where toxic culture thrives.
Related Article: Fight, Flight or Freeze Is Not a Strategy
Organizational Systems Are Discordant
This disconnect is seen when employees are hired for expertise (how) but judged by output (what). Employees are not assets on organizational balance sheets; there is no financial accounting for the expertise they use to produce results. That disconnect is a foundational attribute of organizational governance.
Two employees in the same role with the same compensation are seen as equal, even if one is generous and collaborative, and the other hoards information and credit. An employee who collaborates on a customer issue and does most of the work will get no credit if another employee delivers the solution and fails to credit their colleague.
Why is it any surprise that almost every organization has issues with collaboration and accountability? Why is it so common that change initiatives succeed for a while and then recede back into the status quo?
Obfuscation Is a Feature, Not a Bug
In an excellent history of organizational governance, Accounting for Slavery, Caitlin Rosenthal connects the ways that organizational governance is still like that of plantation governance, from which it evolved.
She explains how quarterly reporting emerged because the progress reports sent to overseas plantation owners relied on quarterly shipping schedules. Production was done by enslaved workers and owners did not care how production happened (or how abusive it was) because they wanted the financial benefits of free labor, but not moral accountability of what was required to produce it,because avoiding it allowed for plausible deniability.
The legacy is accounting systems that track what is done but not how it is done. Not knowing how things are produced allows for abstraction, which is a powerful way to avoid accountability for abusive management, intentional then and convenient now. It left us with opaque accounting practices that make it difficult to see, at an aggregate level, how work gets done and how value is created. That makes management, improvement and change challenging and vague.
Like its original intent, this accounting legacy obscures all manner of abusive and toxic behavior in organizational cultures. It creates resentment between those doing hard work and those who get attention for the work. This legacy leads to competent employees being overlooked for promotions and acknowledgment while making it easy for others to take credit for work they did not do, especially if they have relationships with those in control.
The cultural issues and toxicity in organizations are not vague, obscure or soft. They will not be solved by more employee benefits, employee resource groups or team-building events. Cultural friction will be reduced when there is transparency and alignment between effort, value and compensation.
Related Article: 8 Steps to Build Greater Trust Within Your Workplace
Uniquely Human Skills Are Not Valued
When slavery was abolished, people were removed from the asset side of the balance sheet. They are only liabilities. Treating employees as liabilities has some significant implications, especially when we cannot see how value is created. It means that investing in employees, or the management of employees, increases an organization’s financial risk. It makes HR a cost center since increasing the value of a non-existent asset is impossible. It’s why experienced — and more expensive — employees are at greater risk of being laid off regardless of the fact that they have expertise that improves outcomes.
This gap in accounting has relegated employees’ value to an ignorable externality. Organizations have little incentive to be transparent about employee value as it increases their own accountability.
Toxic culture is not an unfortunate result of bringing people together; it is a by-product of a system designed to minimize costs and concentrate wealth.
A Reckoning Is Coming
AI is going to force a reckoning. If value is only generated by the production of things, there will soon be no more need for humans. People will never be faster, produce more or be more consistent than machines.
So why can’t we let AI do its thing and go to the beach?
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Today, we are drowning in content but starved for meaning, connection and joy — all the things that make us feel alive and worthwhile. They are all the things that allow us to trust each other. It is what draws us together to achieve.
The unique value of humans is the activation of all value. Without trust, meaning and validation, there is no value. A diamond only has value because De Beers created artificial scarcity and changed the way people felt about diamonds; De Beers made diamonds meaningful.
AI may produce diamonds, but it cannot make them meaningful.
Coherent Cultures: Anxiety Not Required
Toxic cultures and the anxiety created by them are often assumed to be the unavoidable consequence of working in a large group. Anxiety, however, is not a default response to complex systems. Humans are often soothed by complexity; walking in the woods, which is filled with a vast array of things — more than anyone can ever absorb, calms the human nervous system.
Why, then, when employees walk into work, does it immediately trigger tension? Systems framed by outcomes are akin to being in the middle of a hurricane, with mattresses, cars, cows and building materials swirling around. Everything that comes at you is different, and there is no predictability. It is a dissonant system with no coherence, and it is jarring.
Organizations framed by values and behaviors, however, are coherent systems and akin to being in the eye of the hurricane. The wild array of outcomes is still there, but your view of it is focused on the wind, which is a consistent, repeating connective pattern. That coherence is centering and calming even when there are differences and disagreements because the governance model is focused on and reinforces the commonalities rather than the differences. In doing so, it makes room for and rewards everyone.
Work can be so much better — if we only believe it is possible. I know it is.
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