The Paradox of Genuine Relationship: How relationships within organizations have deteriorated over time

A few weeks ago sitting in a room with colleagues in my home – we were discussing what makes a workplace aspirational for people to work for, what keeps people committed to the cause of the organization, and what will potentially disengage them.?As we compared and related to various experiences along our careers – one among us reminded us of a few conventional beliefs that for a very long time thought kept people together in an organization. Loyalty, safety, and camaraderie were all values that made the core of an organization in those days. Cultures evolved and somewhere in the 2000s two additional values became part of the organizations – Ethics and Accountability, this was the time when some of the greatest organizations went to incorporate some of the most progressive practices for their people like Value propositions, Engagement frameworks, Employee Wellness. These practices were not entirely absent – just that these were adopted based on how the top few people thought about the organization’s cultures. What was happening now was that organizations were encouraging a large portion of their workforce to think this way – where each member of an organization would be held responsible for their goals while organizations will do all that they can to keep their people safe and secure in all spheres and walk of life.

This continued to get better every day, with organizations cruising their way to exemplary cultures when somewhere in 2014 the startup boom began to take over and affected rather quickly some of the values that had been nurtured by leaders of various organizations. First of such change was – the leaders of many upcoming startups began challenging the this entire “Concept of culture”. They took great pride in dismissing culture as an HR jargon that meant nothing. “Culture” for them was the new “strategy”. So you cannot build and nurture something that doesn’t exist. Once this belief was propagated strongly enough – a rather devastating change ensued. Employees/ people now were referred to as talent and this change didn’t happen slowly – it was almost inflicted like a disaster shock on the leadership construct that management thinkers had built through years of research. Talent was now to be bought and these startups knowing where the talent existed, got onto a frenetic race to buy the talent.?The hammer was struck on the mindset that existed - “Don’t just shift job for money” – they knew this won’t be easy the hammer was to be harder – thus they escalated the compensation fight by 2-3X and took these battles right to the campuses and the ultimate mercenary axiom “everything/ everyone can be bought if the price is right” prevailed.

No one should underestimate the power of darkness it allures even the purest. It didn’t take much time for various people from many organizations to make their way into the management cadres of the startups across levels. It didn’t take too long for leaders of the startups to realize that this game of breaking the barriers of loyalty could not be reserved for hiring talent alone– because just like employees – consumers were bonded to organizations as well. So to shake off the shackles of loyalty the entire startup world girded up the lions to buy consumers as well and thus began the massive race of discounts However that unfortunate Keynesian theory that stands tall which says your resources are limited and have to be deployed carefully, began to haunt these organizations.?This rat race to capture market share confounded the founders till they realized buying consumers was more important than buying talent and to some extent harder too. But well well – the talent price was anyways escalating every day as newer organizations came up. So founders and leaders continued to cultivate misfortune even further as they thought “ if money is buying consumers, partners, etc then why do we need so many people”. Outcome – one person doing the job of many –- and founders were not wrong in their thought process that money was indeed doing most of the heavy lifting, as most of these organizations made their products and services into commodities by engaging in discounting war rather than trying to add genuine value.

Thus, with one person shouldering the responsibilities of multiple people/ areas – compromised the emotional and psychological well-being of people (Now talent), alongside an absolute limited focus on learning interventions etc made the talent working in these organizations realize that this was no paradise. Their working hours became much beyond the 8 to 10 hours every day. The 5-day week became an illusion.

While startups continued to emerge they now did not have to look any further than this disillusioned workforce of their contemporary organizations – give or take 2 years here and there. BUT – this workforce had understood what working in these organizations meant, they also knew their relative value – because well, they now had the experience of working in the startups too. So the talent price increased with every switch of jobs and what was before termed as negotiation was now treated as an auction.

Leaders found it extremely difficult to now hire and retain and with increasing talent price-and resorted to replacing those who could handle less assuming that the solution to increasing the price was giving more responsibility and paying more while replacing a fraction of their workforce under the garb of low performance. LO AND BEHOLD – conferences, articles, and panel discussions from India to Harvard university started raging. The objective was to solve for vice that they had created.?Finding this retention and attraction of TALENT unsolvable – leaders of these organizations took charge, hoping they will be able to use their power of storytelling backed by their ability and intent to pay.?However, the new-age talent had already realized that the expectation of their leaders to replace heavy lifting that the money was doing with the personal capability was a difficult feat to achieve – the new-age talent had developed his disaster of a habit to exist to use the money to prove their capability – it had not been groomed by their leaders into a professional who can deliver something out of their strengths – OR IS IT ?. I request the readers to read the next few lines very carefully. In my stints across the industry where I handled human resources of various businesses, there was always one fundamental difference in departments that were successful and departments that weren’t, that was only and only one – the leaders of the businesses were able to forge some very genuine relationships with their people – they were able to bind people with the organization and themselves with the clarity that they exist to deliver something for the organization while organizations will protect their dignity and well-being while enabling their growth based on how much discretionary effort will they put.

With employees turning into talent those relationships ended and both employees and employers began to assume that working together was entirely other party’s privilege. This new relationship lacked trust, accountability, and joint ownership of what happened to the business. The talent thrusted the responsibility of making business successful entirely on the few select leaders while harboring a belief that they needed to be paid exorbitantly just for staying. On the other hand, the leaders and founders thought that they are paying so much to an employee should in itself foster loyalty. They had got it all wrong – money was used as an instrument that pulled people out of their careers from certain kinds of organizations. The talent could be bought but loyalty and joint ownership needed to be cultivated.

The Leaders inflicted more woes upon themselves as they attempted to transition back into loyalty, relationships, camaraderie, etc which could only be successful with those who were not very great at their work. As founders started to focus on loyalty more than capability now, the top talent reacted sharply and accelerated their departure into organizations that they thought would value them more. These new relationships were a confusing mix of “average/ below average competence and “inclination to stay” which added to the deteriorating startup ecosystem. All this and more – in a small period of time transformed the startup boom into a startup bubble.

So it it really that dark with no road to redemption, well it will be very hard and many startups will continue to fail. Even those who will try to do the right thing may run the risk of being washed out by what I call the tsunami of bad culture.?It is however not entirely impossible. Below are the few complex changes immediately due to bring some semblance.

1.??????Consider people as people, not talent – Do not think money is the switch to loyalty and joint ownership – it never was – it never will be. Some of the greatest organization taught their Human Resource department to never onboard anyone who is switching only for money. Today’s startup leaders also say this so but their words lack integrity. They know it’s money that is pulling people to them. the leaders of such organizations have inculcated this thought over the years.

2.??????Build relationships with your direct team – Another fundamental difference between great leadership teams and not-so-great ones is that members of a good leadership team are deeply connected, they like to be with each other, enjoy their company – they are almost part of a socially cohesive unit along with professional. The trust that they have for each other keeps them careful about the organization’s interest– now read carefully about how ineffective leadership teams are connected – these leadership teams are not comfortable with each other; they avoid being vulnerable in front of each other for unknown reasons. The result is the lack of emotional transparency in the team which is plagued with “what is they feel bad” syndrome. Best pf leadership teams are able to have very difficult conversations with each other- one on one or even in public. They are able to call each other’s performance out and hold each other accountable for what they were supposed to do/ deliver.

3.??????Staying is not loyalty – Remember what we can do for people with whom we are connected with and feel loyal to. No relationship ever progressed just because it had few parties committed to stay – there is no such thing. Relationship exits to put a joint effort towards some goal – a goal that brought them together. A Relationship progresses as long as the goal progresses. If goal has not progressed, at least one of the parties will start looking elsewhere – news flash – it is this looking elsewhere that we call disengagement. Thus each leader of the team should make clear why various parties in a relationship exit and spend a considerable amount of time talking about them. Each party in the organization should be clear of why they exist and that those aspects that are core to the purpose of the relationship should be attended to most sincerely

4.??????Promote a growth mindset – “Growth mindset” well after “Culture”, “strategy” this phrase is the next to get into the dustbins of leaders. I will just clarify however how important is this. A growth mindset is a mindset that helps an employee to develop for himself parameters of personal success that are beyond those that are related to survival”.?Confused? – let me explain with an example. Whenever you say “I have only these many dollars and, these many dollars can only lead to these many satisfied customers” It’s not a growth mindset. Whenever a recruiter says “I am the only person recruiting for technology, there are 10 positions and we can offer only this much in an otherwise challenging market – I am able to give CVs for these positions on a daily basis is in itself a great job” it a scarcity mindset, whenever a performance marketer says “with the kind of return policy we have I am able to bring consumers to our platform is commendable” is against growth mindset. So whenever you use an organizational inability to deliver something as an excuse for your non-performance / average quality of work – you are not displaying and acting with a growth mindset. I had this customer service manager who said we are making people attend 100 calls per day whereas the benchmark is 80 calls and I am managing it so well that the organization is paying people only for 80 calls – see how much I am saving for the company – I should be immediately promoted.

?When these aspects become performance criteria, the leaders feel they have become extremely vulnerable with a lot of bargaining power in the most average people. Hold on-?did you know that though the mindset of growth is built within employees, the source of such a mindset is only and only the leadership team. Why should a recruiter handle 10 positions a day? Why should organizations pay for 80 calls and get 100 calls done? If numbers are run it would be found that the cost impact created is not worth it. It just gives everyone a feeling that such managers are the reason why organizations are surviving. Leaders/ founders must do everything in their power to pull people out of such a scarcity mindset, where such people harbor the illusions that they are the survival crutches for the organizations- when truly they are not. Take good decisions based on data and never let anyone tell you that they will adjust on basic conditions – frankly, they don’t need to and it helps no one. Almost always if you correct the basic conditions “they will have nothing to do”

5.??????Lastly, solve for the organization and not for people: ?Almost all (and you can ignore the word almost founders) tend to let people hire because they feel that would engage them, they would give people a budget to spend to give them a sense of power thinking this will engage their workforce – it is by things like these the power play starts, let us understand that everyone is watching and taking the cue. leaders doing something to engage and drive performance unknowingly becomes an engagement lever and thus a bargaining aspect for your people. Everyone should be convinced that they need to think for the organization- what will help them achieve the purpose of the relationship that they share with the organization. This will only happen if leaders show this by their decisions.

All put together – the case that I am trying to put forward is people get attracted to and retained in an organization that is achieving in the long run – those organizations achieve which have teams where members are deeply committed to their team’s cause and feel that if they put 100 percent organization will succeed – in case they feel even if they put everything they have but still organizations will not be successful- nothing can make them stay – because no one can increase compensation indefinitely and every compensation increase can be matched. all this will give purpose, a true one to be in relation with organization and we will see – we will not have to be caught in this frenzy of resignations, attritions, hiring and what not