Joy at Work. Dennis W. Bakke
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change in our large organizations? If we have different assumptions about the nature of people today, why do our workplaces have so many characteristics that their forerunners had two centuries ago? Why are compensation arrangements still designed as if people work primarily for money? Why do managers exercise most of the power? Why do staff officers still hold so many of the levers that control organizational behavior? If we believe that the workplace of Collin Doherty leads to drudgery, emptiness, and dissatisfaction, why hasn’t there been an Information Age “revolution” to correct the problems?
I believe there are three reasons for this resistance to change. The first is inertia. Anytime something is moving in one direction, it takes extraordinary forces to change its course. Restructuring the working environment shaped by the Industrial Revolution is like trying to stop a powerful locomotive heading down a mountain pass. Nothing in the contemporary workplace has matched the power of the innovations that occurred during the 18th century.
Second, the Industrial Revolution produced so much good that no one wants to risk tampering with its successful workplace formula. In a few hundred years, the gains in health care have extended life expectancy by roughly 40 years around the world. Average family income is up, and, even with the large disparity between rich and poor, poverty has been reduced substantially. The green revolution has made it technically possible to eliminate hunger and famine, as long as corrupt governments and civil wars don’t intervene. Few would question that our corporate system has produced social progress and an enormous amount of wealth. Even if a side effect has been to create a workplace that is stifling and joyless, most business leaders consider it a price worth paying.
Third, to change the workplace in a positive way would require executives to give up a large measure of their power and control. This is the chief impediment to a radical overhaul of our working environment. Even if a corporate leader were convinced that surrendering these prerogatives would improve the lives of millions without hurting economic performance, the rewards of power are usually too strong to give up. The result is that few leaders have been willing to take the bold steps necessary to junk a workplace model that reduces employees to little more than gerbils on a treadmill.
Not all workplaces are miserable, of course. Exceptions can be found in all types of institutions—businesses, nonprofits, and governments. But these exceptions usually are not as progressive as their leaders think. Small organizations, especially those where most of the workforce is homogeneous, with similar educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, will often have a more collegial feel than organizations of the industrial age. Law partnerships and consulting groups often operate in ways that make the work enjoyable—at least for the partners. Associates, clerical people, and others in the firms may have a work experience as unhappy as Collin Doherty’s.
Many forces conspire to return organizational structures to the “tried and true” model of the past. Rapid growth diverts the energy needed for organizational innovation. Pressure from aggressive investors or lackluster economic performance can prompt executives to play it safe and organize their enterprises along conventional lines. Finally, no change can be sustained unless leaders have an unwavering conviction that change in the workplace is both right and necessary. This requires leaders with courage, stamina, and a high degree of moral clarity.
These are extremely difficult barriers to overcome. The qualities needed to bring about radical change are rare, even among leaders who share my philosophy and recognize that the results are compelling. It does not surprise me that so few large organizations have instituted workplace reforms and that fewer still have managed to sustain them. And it should not come as a surprise that the culture of drudgery seems as pervasive as it did 200 years ago.
Most of today’s start-up companies begin with a flexible, human-centered approach. This often includes many decision makers, a flat organizational structure, and a collegial environment. Information is shared, relationships are trusting, and management systems are almost nonexistent. In the early days of AES, I was lulled into feeling that living our shared values and principles was going to be easy. “Wait until you grow up,” warned more experienced leaders. “This will not work when you are bigger and substantial changes are inevitable.” They understood that most new workplaces soon become more concerned about improving efficiency and making profits than about creating a more fun and humane environment.
Bureaucratic behavior remains the heart and soul of most work environments. Important decisions are still made at the top. The rest of the leaders and employees are left out of the process or, at best, are asked only for their suggestions. President Clinton once told me about a relatively minor matter that was neatly summed up on a single piece of paper. It contained 22 signatures of people “signing off” on the issue before the president made the final decision.
Most employees in large organizations seldom see, meet, or know the CEO or other senior managers. Countless AES people approached me over the years to say that they were grateful to have spent time talking with me. “I never met the plant manager of the company I used to work for,” was a refrain I heard on almost every trip I took around the company. In effect, they were telling me, “in the other company I wasn’t important, and in this company I am important.” Most employees in large organizations have about as much contact with senior leaders as Collin Doherty did.
Frederick Taylor is given credit for the new era of “scientific management.” He disappointed his wealthy Philadelphia family by going to work in a steelworks, which he found shockingly inefficient. Taylor then became an early version of a management consultant. He timed how long it took workers to perform tasks and rearranged factory equipment to speed the production process. His ideas about improving efficiency swept the country in the first 30 years of the 20th century. While his research led to some useful innovations, his approach reinforced the idea that people are like machines in a manufacturing process. Unfortunately, this view of workers has not changed much in the intervening years. Just listen to the cold, quantitative analyses of people in the workplace articulated by organizational and strategic gurus today.
Even the current emphasis on “training” is demeaning. “Let’s see. I train horses and dogs, and I toilet-train children.” There are, of course, cases in which people need training to master higher specialized functions. But the main image that comes to mind is opening the top of a person’s head and pouring data inside it, much as you would pour oil in a machine or install software in a computer.
Education broadens our experience and understanding. Training confines a person by teaching narrow skills. But you would never know it’s a blind alley from the way it’s described by management and HR departments. They sell employees on the idea that training is a way to advance their careers. It would be better, I believe, to substitute education for training. Education allows people to seek out information that they consider important—and that has the potential to transform their working lives.
Two centuries after Collin Doherty, company finances remain a mystery to all but a few. In companies with thousands of employees, fewer than 50 to 100 people may have access to important financial information, and even fewer have a substantial say over how funds are used. This is true in most governments, corporations, not-for-profit groups, and educational institutions.
While time clocks aren’t found as frequently as they were in the past, most lower-level employees still punch in, metaphorically at least. One of my associates used to work at a law firm where she was made to “understand” that she should be in by 8:30 a.m., even though her boss did not have such a rule for himself and her work was only marginally related to the time of day. In most organizations there might as well be a sign on the wall that says, THE MACHINES START AT 8 A.M., AND YOU ARE ONE OF THEM.
The ever proliferating staff offices do not have direct responsibility for producing a product or offering a service. As one cynical line person once said to me, “staff offices do nothing but keep me from producing what I am supposed to produce.” In their “support” and “coordination” roles, these staff offices often take power and control from people with line responsibilities. Their control of vital information and their usurpation of functions once performed across organizations have made staff offices a major contributor to the humdrum routines of so many working people today.
As noted earlier, the greatest