Fixing The "Green Light Culture"

I’ve written before about the notion of compensated slavery , which is deeply tied to the “always on” culture that a lot of bosses demand these days. The screenshot above is from this report on digital presenteeism, which also has a corresponding documentary (!) about “the productivity paradox.” Essentially: we have all these tools nowadays, and stuff is supposed to be so great and automated, but a lot of people seem absolutely miserable with their jobs, the general economy isn’t that productive, and we keep seeing articles about record quit rates. WTF?

I think you probably need to start this discussion by thinking about the role of control, which is really what most “knowledge work” is about (and some non-knowledge work). People want some degree of control over their lives, and as their lives shift, they want to hang on to any rocks that resemble control. If you have three kids and your wife has stopped paying attention to you, or you have one kid and you think your husband might be straying, or if dinner conversation is now only about child activities, or if you’re barren without kids and hitting the bars too much, etc… in all these situations, you can feel like there is less control. When many people feel that way, they want more control, and the easiest place to exercise control is work, because work is largely organized around fiefdoms and other ridiculous, outdated notions that we should have sacrificed at the altar decades ago.

If you’ve ever been managed by a roughly 47 to 54 year-old male, it probably was good 1 time out of 10 and sucked 9 times out of 10. Why? He’s overly busy, he’s stressed about his family life, and he just wants some semblance of some control, and he’s gonna find that in micromanaging your tasks. This is just reality; most choose to deny it, however.

One of the easiest paths to establishing control is this “always on” culture, where you, as an employee, feel the need to have a “green light” on all day, answer emails at 7pm, etc, etc. In reality almost everything in knowledge work can wait one more day, but there’s a sidebar hustle culture perpetuated by guys like Elon (“I sleep for two hours in my office and that’s it; these are the costs of changing the world”) where many feel it’s good and virtuous to get on top of that meaningless thing now.

This obviously can scale burnout. Executives don’t really care about burnout , because many of them view it as the cost of doing business (“I work all hours. Why can’t they?” “Well, you make 311x what they do…”) and it’s a good thing to put on some year-end recap slides. But if you want to please other people (many do), and you view work as akin to your calling or a pseudo religion (many do), and you like income for tasks (most do), you’ll likely capitulate to this “Green Light Culture” in the name of your boss feeling some form of control.

It’s comical that a lot of bosses confuse “Oh, Amanda is online, that’s good” with some form of leadership or management, because it’s really neither. Leadership would be high-context discussions about what Amanda is doing and how she could do more and use her skills in different ways. That part almost never happens. Management would be checking in with Amanda on roadblocks, deadlines, competing priorities, etc. That sometimes happens. But when you “manage” via “Ah, she appears to be working,” literally no one is benefiting in any capacity except for a lot of distrust, burnout, and new job search windows.

It’s almost as if you have a few different buckets in this discussion. You have:

• The legitimately burnt out
• Those chasing control
• The legitimately bored out
• The execs, clueless to most of it

The Green Light Culture — aka digital presenteeism — exacerbates the first one, comforts the second one, scares the third one, and the fourth one could barely care and just wants to get into another meeting about Q3 revenue plays.

And we wonder why quit rates are generally so high, ya know? The system doesn’t work.

The Solution Set

• Look for ways to put more empathetic people into management
• Understand that “leadership” must involve high-context and high-touch conversations
• Understand that “management” must involve a discussion of not just deadlines, but also pitfalls, roadblocks, and external life concerns
• Realize that some people do their best work at 3am, and some do their best work at 10pm, and if your goal is the best work, you should allow people to work when that quality will be there for them
• Tracking employee behavior and monitoring output is a fucking gulag, not a workplace. Embrace that.

Takes?