Friday, December 01, 2006
The winds of change are stirring
Things at the office have been slowly metamorphosing from a laid back, relaxed atmosphere, to one completely saturated in modernist, corporate dogma. These days, GE buzz words like “sigma” and “boundarylessness”, which is actually not a word, ironically enough, are flying around like mosquitoes in the Everglades. A new corporate culture is on the rise, and not surprisingly, few people in the office seem prepared for the potential implications. Our new CEO is a 6-sigma devotee, a former disciple of GE’s Jack Welch and a man companies like the Carlyle Group and KKR believe is worth $20M/year, which is to say he is a man obligated to make waves and bring about sea change, for better, or worse.
You won’t find me arguing that change isn’t necessary. Many of the people I work with have become complacent, closed-in thinkers, with little drive or motivation to improve. Many of them are simply coasting through the final years of 25 or 30-year careers, so they are more worried about short-term job security than long-term advancement. You won’t hear me making the argument that everyone should be a corporate ladder climber, but there is no other way to bring about change in the workplace, or anywhere for that matter, than to ascend the rungs of the hierarchy and put yourself in a leadership position. Complaining about work conditions while idling at the senior level, does not make you an advocate. That message is missed here, as it is in most office environments.
So the political interplay is getting heavy and uncertainty is starting to bubble up in the ranks. Visits from “consultants”, business analysts seeking out various means to cut redundancy and streamline the workforce, i.e. identify people who can be laid off, are starting to haunt the halls and conference rooms on campus. Monitoring software is popping up on the PCs of more and more groups as part of an effort to automate micromanagement…a monumentally idiotic strategy, but one they have chosen to employ because of a corporate culture shift to authoritarian supervision. The times, they are a-changing.
We’re hearing talk about market synergies, parallel structures and business integration. I keep waiting for “paradigm shift” and “outside of the box”, but these age-old buzzwords seem to have been replaced by “boundarylessness”. These people really do read and subscribe to the same brands of groupthink. It would be comical, if they weren’t making millions doing it. Ultimately, in some ways they are absolutely right, but a heavy-handed approach is going to alienate many veterans of the business and cost us some talent. Any intelligent person knows this, but it is obviously a gamble they are willing to take.
For my part, I am not overly concerned. I’ve come to realize that money comes, money goes. If you’re smart, you setup a nest egg, spend wisely and try to keep yourself in a good position to weather the storm, should things get rough. When things are good, you remain disciplined for the long-term as part of that process. That’s why I am sticking with Scooby, rather than getting a new car. It’s why I am focused on school and pursuing both of my interests, the arts and business. We have to remain diverse, disciplined and dedicated to a vision if we are to transcend the greedy, the power hungry, and the incorporated sociopaths running most major businesses. To them, we are either drone ants in a farm they control, or threats to their controlling power and interests. Either way, non-executives should expect an attitude of condescending indifference at best, outright hostility at worst.
Most of the people here are not prepared to deal with that reality and I think it will cost them, long-term. At this point, I just want to graduate college, keep building my 401k, work the other limited investments I have going, and get the fuck out of America for a couple of years in the near future. More on that later…
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My cat keeps laying on the contol buttom and I'm typing this with my hand resting on his thigh so it's a bit difficult. So sorry about your workplace situation, that would drive me up the wall! "Boundarylessness" is fantastic... my new goal is to incorporate that senseless word in some way every day from now on.
On one hand it's worrisome, even if my reviews are always above target and my workload is always heavy. On the other, it's intriguing to see how a company changes as it goes from being a privately held independent, to publicly traded possession of a multinational, to a privately held possession of a multinational, private equity firm. I'm feeling more boundarylessness every day!