This week, we will examine the final 2 factors that create problems in the corporate world today:
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Ignoring the Aspirations of Generation Y
Another key demotivating factor of today’s leadership is the inability to appreciate the aspirations of the Gen-Y (or ‘millennial’) workforce. Young people form an enormous but largely untapped workforce, as the technological and social opportunities they have make them very different from the generations before them.
However, too many employers fail to appreciate this. Gen-Y workers are dismissed as a delusional ‘strawberry’ generation—over-confident, with too much self-esteem and too many participation trophies, and needing to be coddled through the tough times. It’s been said about them: “They’re so hopeful about the future you might think they hadn’t heard of something called the Great Recession.”[1]
Some do live up to the stereotype; 40 percent believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance. It is indeed true that they stay at a single job for a far shorter time, and the average work span of a Gen Y employee is 1.5 years. To them, job-hopping represents a new normal, allowing them to try out a variety of jobs and learn new skills. They effectively sacrifice depth for fulfilment and job mobility.
But have we fed this mentality in our quest for numbers? Workers today know they can be laid off at any time, and know there is no point in becoming too attached to any one organization.
Let’s not forget the positives. Gen-Y workers are far more comfortable with technology, have greater social networks and are most adept at using social media for business. Their emotional quotient and social skills could be improved, and with that, their engagement with work.
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Rampant Corruption
The insatiable lust for money and incessant obsession with the bottom-line have created corruption on a global scale, and it has quickly become one of the largest problems in the world.
As one of many recent examples, German automaker Volkswagen has been hit with one sex, test falsification and bribery scandal after another.[2]
Wells Fargo, one of the world’s most profitable and trusted banks, has also been found to be opening multiple accounts per customer without their knowledge, in order to boost their sales and bottom-line.[3]
Even squeaky-clean Singapore has not been spared—previously highly profitable organizations like Sembawang Corp and Keppel Group have been found to be engaging in questionable practices in Brazil.[4]
Short-termism has become the curse of many CEOs, because they are expected to increase profit and have double digit growth year-after-year. No wonder employees are disengaged when they see leaders not practicing what they preach.
This is exacerbated by some CEOs who, instead of being punished, get fat exit bonuses. They are rewarded generously for corruption and failure, with far more money than their employees will see in their lifetimes.
The Real Reason for Riches
My friend Dylan Wilk, humanitarian and entrepreneur, built a gaming software that was sold to a large corporation, giving him a net worth of US$1 billion. “Why am I rich?” he wondered one night in a Beverly Hills suite—a question that changed everything. In the end, realizing how empty his life was, he gave it all up to start Human Nature, a social enterprise in the Philippines.
“Who can ever imagine that a round-trip ticket from London to Manila or the price of a handbag can build one house for the poor in the Philippines?” he asks.
The irony is that the more we earn, the more we spend, and the more we are dissatisfied. Hence, the more we want. This becomes a vicious cycle. I call it the Diminishing Return of the Tangible—that is, anything tangible decreases in value and pleasure with time, be it a smartphone, a supercar or a designer handbag.
The urge for more is what breeds a new and worrying definition of who we look up to, and why. As the saying goes, the only hero today is “the honcho with the condo and the limo and the Mirø and lots and lots of dough.”
Dylan is living proof that we are most satisfied when we use our prosperity for what it’s given to us for—blessing and providing for others, so that everyone is built up together.
O’Boyle and Harter at Gallup point out what the best do differently:
The best leaders understand that there’s an emotional undercurrent to everything they do, which affects how they conduct business every day. They take a strategic top-down approach to engaging leadership teams and then make sure engagement cascades through the ranks of managers to employees on the front lines. […] Engagement must permeate every conversation, whether it’s one-on-one meeting, a team huddle or a regional assessment.[5]
If emotional engagement is the key to bringing back passion, pride and productivity into employees’ lives and the workplace, how is this to be done? I’ll share more in the next post.
John Ng
References:
[1] Josh Sanburn, “Millennials: The Next Greatest Generation,” Time, May 9, 2013.
[2] Allan Hall, “Prostitutes, Viagra-fuelled sex parties and a $750k fund to bribe German MPs: How latest emissions scandal shows VW has learned nothing from its murky past,” The Daily Mail, September 24, 2015, at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3247421/Prostitutes-champagne-Viagra-fuelled-sex-parties-500-000-fund-bribe-German-MPs-latest-emissions-scandal-shows-VW-learned-murky-past.html.
[3] Matt Egan, “5,300 Wells Fargo employees fired over 2 million phony accounts,” CNN Money, September 9, 2016, at http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-created-phony-accounts-bank-fees/index.html?iid=EL.
[4] “Keppel’s former agent in Brazil says managers backed bribes,” The Business Times, August 3, 2016, at http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/keppels-former-agent-in-brazil-says-managers-backed-bribes.
[5] Ed O’Boyle and Jim Harter, “What Your Company Can Learn From the Best,” Gallup Business Journal, July 16, 2013, at http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/163418/company-learn-best.aspx.