The Case For Courage In Business: Part 2
In Part 1 of "The Case For Courage In Business" we established that it's necessary to manage will with the same rigor and focus that we apply to managing resources, and that managing will means managing courage by leveraging hope to overcome fear and self-doubt. This is necessary because business is an infinite game, and the management of will and resources is a fundamental aspect of success in an infinite game.
Those ideas may sound a bit too theoretical and abstract for some. Right now there is an utterly practical and concrete reason to focus on managing will through hope and courage. What is that reason? It’s the existential threat to many businesses at this very moment - employee attrition, most clearly demonstrated by "the Great Resignation." People are tired of working jobs that offer no sense of meaning.
In addition to employee attrition through people outright quitting, organizations are now faced with “quiet quitting.” Quiet quitting is the rapidly spreading trend of people making the minimum required effort in their roles because they see no incentive to go beyond that. We have a long-standing tradition of people making just enough effort to not get fired while organizations pay them just enough so they don’t quit. While the mindset is not new, the rapid spread of that mindset is.
If we don’t help people connect to meaning through hope and courage, then businesses will be forced to fold when their workforces lose their collective will to continue, and that moment is rapidly approaching. The status quo is unsustainable.
How expensive is employee attrition? How many organizations find themselves in an endless cycle of repeatedly recruiting, hiring, and training new people for the same roles? Is everyone who leaves those roles incompetent, or could it be that those roles don't provide those people with any hope for their future? Failure to manage attrition is a failure to effectively manage will and resources. That failure burns through talent and money and time, and that is a recipe for the collapse of any organization.
How expensive is quiet quitting? A recent Gallup Poll revealed that 18% of workers are actively disengaged from their jobs, while only 32% are actively engaged. How is that lack of engagement impacting revenue and expenses? What is the opportunity cost of disengaged workers? This is another failure to properly manage will through hope and courage. What could be accomplished if organizations properly managed will by helping people do their best work?
The traditional strategy for managing will in business has been the "Carrot-and-stick" approach - appeal to peoples' hope for material rewards, and if that doesn't work, appeal to their fear of disciplinary steps "up to, and including termination." Many organizations view disciplinary processes as tools for "holding people accountable." The flaw in this view is that it positions accountability as an external process. It is not. Accountability comes from within. Accountability is a standard that you hold yourself to, because "how you do anything is how you do everything," and once you start cutting corners, when do you stop? By way of example, the shift to quiet quitting is a shift in personal standards of accountability. A shift from “doing my best” to “only doing the work I’m paid to do.”
Anyone who's taken employees through the disciplinary process all the way through termination of employment has probably experienced at least one person who blamed everyone but themselves for the situation, even on their way out the door. According to the traditional Carrot-and-stick perspective, that person was "held accountable." How can someone who has been held accountable not take any accountability? Because accountability is an internal dynamic, not an external process.
Think of the scene in "The Shawshank Redemption" when Andy Dufresne jokes to the new inmate "Don't you know? Everybody in here is innocent." The idea of convicted criminals who take no accountability for their crimes is so familiar that everyone gets the joke. On the flip side Red declares himself the "only guilty man in Shawshank," and he is finally released by the parole board when he takes accountability for his crime during his parole hearing rather than once again telling them what he thinks they want to hear.
Conditioning people to fear consequences like documented conversations "up to and including termination" can have the effect of motivating some people. It also has catastrophic unintended consequences. If we call people whose actions are guided by hope "heroes," what do we call people whose actions are guided by fear? We call them cowards.
The Carrot-and-stick strategy does not create a culture of accountability. It creates a culture of cowards. That idea is going to upset some people deeply. It is an uncomfortable idea. Speaking as a man who lived most of his life as a coward, I stand behind that uncomfortable idea. Speaking as a man who spent most of his career in the Carrot-and-stick system, I stand behind that uncomfortable idea.
Something I know from experience is the fact that there is an even worse fate than being a coward, and that is becoming a villain. Just as human beings are adapted to crave courage because that is what allowed our ancestors to survive and thrive, we are adapted to despise cowardice because it was so often fatal when we lived in the wild. When I was a coward, my conscience tormented relentlessly for my despicable behavior. When I lived with that torment for too long, I became a villain. Not only was I not trying to make things better for my community, I was actively trying to make things worse, because if everyone around me became a coward, then I wouldn't need to feel so bad about my own cowardice. That is ridiculous, of course, but I still tried it. The best that those who consistently surrender to fear and self-doubt can hope for is to become cowards, and it will be a miracle if they can avoid becoming villains.
If you work in a Carrot-and-stick environment, think about how many people you work with who are guided by hope. How many are guided by fear? How many are actively trying to convince their coworkers to behave like cowards too? Why are we experiencing the Great Resignation? Why are we experiencing quiet quitting? Because people are telling us that it is time for a change from the Carrot-and-stick strategy that has given us fear-based business cultures. They are voting with their feet as they walk out the door on jobs that don't provide any hope for future growth.
Courage means aligning your decisions and actions with hope and wonder so that you never surrender to fear and self doubt. Conditioning people to hope for fancy things and fancy titles has proven effective for some of the people some of the time, and we are approaching the end of that time. Carrot-and-stick management has taken us as far as it can. We are capable of hoping for ideas far greater than fancy things and fancy titles.
What we have now is are business cultures that prioritizes comfort over courage, and inspire decisions and actions motivated by fear of losing that comfort rather than hope for becoming something more. Those cultures motivate some people, and only motivate them up to the point where they attain comfort. What we need is are cultures that have universal appeal, and allow for universal application, and give people the will to remain in the game for as long as possible. That is a culture that sustainably scales.
No car is shiny enough to transform thankless and meaningless drudgery into a source of inspiration that makes people spring from bed filled with a sense of purpose. It might work on some people for awhile, but eventually the drudgery becomes utterly discouraging. We can’t sustainably manage will through material incentives. We have to manage it through meaning, hope, and courage. Are people who are only showing up for the shiny or sweet things going to challenge the status quo with exciting new ideas? Are they going to risk losing the trinkets and treats by walking out on risky limbs? No. They're going to protect the status quo with every molecule of their being, and morale will continue to atrophy, and employee attrition will continue to increase as high-potential, innovative talent flees environments that shun them for aspiring to achieve something greater.
By shifting to a strategy that leverages hope and courage in order to manage will, we will see significant increases in revenue as we coach our teams to do their best work in pursuit of their hopeful future. These returns on investment can be seen relatively quickly. This strategy will also produce returns in the form of reduced employee attrition as people grow increasingly loyal and devoted to organizations that prove to be loyal and devoted to them. Then those organizations will see returns in the form of institutional memory, expertise, and innovation as highly-motivated, top-performing people have longer tenures with those organizations. Those returns will take longer to see, but will prove worth the investment. The synergistic effects of increased revenue performance, reduced attrition costs, and increased institutional memory will make the culture of the organization scalable and sustainable in the long-term.
So "playing the infinite game of business with the infinite mindset," might feel too abstract for some, but the practical problem of employee attrition is here right now. It's a problem that exists because the carrot and stick strategy for managing will has outlived its usefulness. It brought us this far. "Thank you very much, old strategy." What is the new strategy? What is the solution to the Great Resignation? What is the solution to quiet quitting? We must transition from Carrot-and-stick management to Courage Based Coaching, and replace comfort with courage as our culture's highest value. We must coach will by leveraging hope so that we can bring long-term sustainability and scalability to business culture. We must usher in the era of heroes whose decisions and actions are guided by hope so that they never again surrender to fear of losing the comfortable status quo. Darwin did not demonstrate “survival of the fittest.” He demonstrated survival of the most adaptable. Human beings survive and thrive because of our ability to adapt. It is time to adapt once again.