A Missed Opportunity

Given the chance to boost employee morale, to reinforce the kind of messages that help build a cohesive organization, what kind of company would pass it up?

It's hard to imagine that any organization – especially in these trying times – wouldn’t want to maximize every opportunity to lift people's spirits and make them feel a part of something larger than themselves.

So it struck me as absolutely tone-deaf and (dare I say?) stupid when I actually observed a company that missed the opportunity – big time.

Escorted into the lobby of the headquarters of a multi-national corporation, a potential client, I was heartened and pleasantly surprised to see a wall of black and white photos of people: office workers, blue-collar workers and executives in various poses related to the work they do.

I recognized the CEO and commented aloud to my companion – the prospective client liaison – what a great idea it is to post all those employee photos. It reinforced the sense of community that helps define a corporation and its mission. I imagined myself an employee coming into work every morning, feeling a sense of pride at seeing the photo of myself alongside my fellow workers. "What a terrific idea," I said aloud.

So imagine my shock and surprise when she said that all but the handful of executives were in fact models, not real employees of the company.

Whoa. Check please.

Talk about a missed opportunity. Talk about a self-inflicted fatal wound.

Not only would a wall of employee photos be a real morale booster and enhance people's connectedness to the organization, but the company's failure to do so – and in such a blatant fashion – had the complete opposite effect. Were I an employee there, the knowledge and daily reminder of seeing a wall of photos of models pretending to be real employees would be a daily slap in the face. It would tell me that employees are replaceable by anonymous models and therefore not essential to the organization or its mission.

What possibly could have been the motivation? Cost saving? Was it really cheaper to hire dozens of models and take professional photos? Not likely.

In the delicate dance with a prospective client, I handled the topic carefully. Fortunately, she agreed with me and, in fact, felt herself insulted just as I would have had I worked there.

The experience revealed volumes about this organization and the people who ran it. But it also spoke to the broader issue of engaging employees in the organization and its mission.

As I wrote in the previous entry here, businesses are at their heart communities of humans. Anything that enhances that community, that builds people’s sense of connection to the greater whole, is going to redound to the benefit of the corporation.

Connecting employees to the corporation can take many forms, and the more methods employed, the better. Frequent face-to-face meetings, executive visibility and availability, communications in numerous venues and such all add up to a better-informed and better-connected employee population, employees who are engaged in the long- and short-term goals of the organization.

Envision a company that does all that and how well a wall of employee photos would be received, and how natural the addition of such photos would be.

Now, imagine the opposite. Without revealing the name of the company, I can assure you that it is now in dire financial straits – five years after my having seen those photos in the lobby. In my own mind, I see a direct connection between its current situation and that wall of photos. Sadly, it was a missed opportunity.

A Community of Humans

“Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations’ true nature is that of a community of humans.”

A client shared that quote with me a few years ago. I think it’s one of the best summations of the importance of consistent, timely and relevant employee communications, of using communications to build trust and strong, lasting relationships within an organization.

The quote was attributed to Arie de Geus, former head of Global Planning for Royal Dutch Shell, now a fellow at London School of Economics and MIT.

I got to thinking about those words and the sentiment they express the other day when I learned that The Rocky Mountain News was shutting down. To learn more about it, I visited its web site, which features a 20-minute video that, at its heart, I sensed, reinforces Mr. de Geus’ words.

The newspaper closed less than two months shy of the 150th anniversary of its founding. That’s a lot of history for any organization. In fact, the founding of the paper predates Colorado statehood by about 17 years. You can imagine the kinds of news it covered over the years – the settling of the Wild West and everything since.

The staff knew the end was near because The News’ owner, Scripps-Howard, announced in January that it was seeking a buyer and that, if none stepped forward within a month, it would close the operation.

The newspaper business in general has been struggling for some time now, having lost advertising revenue and readers to the Internet. But combining that fact with a dour economic climate, The News’ fate was sealed. The interim period gave the people the opportunity to prepare the paper’s obituary, so to speak, including this well-produced video and a 52-page history inserted into the final edition last Friday.

But it was the video that spoke to me and evoked de Gaus' words. Staff reporters and editors are interviewed and you sense the tears about to flow. It is a very sad wake, as though they had lost a parent too soon. It may even have been more profound than that.

These people lost not only a job, but they lost a mission they shared with dozens of other people within an amorphous entity called The Rocky Mountain News with which they all identified deeply, an entity they helped shape and define every day.

These are tough times for a lot of businesses. Hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs. That video makes the effect obvious. Watch it and you’ll get a deeper understanding of what a lost job really means.

We commit the majority of our waking hours throughout our adult lives to our careers and jobs. We sustain a significant sense of self-worth and value from what we are able to achieve – each in our own way – on the job. Take that away from us and what are we left with?

This is the core question that people are asking themselves as they contemplate the potential loss of their own jobs. Sure, the lost paycheck is the big immediate concern. How will we pay the mortgage? How will we pay the bills? What about our family? Will we be able to find a new job in this lousy economy?

But the deeper pain and self-doubt arises from the disconnection from that “community of humans” that was the organization we worked for, that community from which we derived so much sense of satisfaction and our connection to the larger world, that organization we helped shape and define.

Managers and company leadership must think about this component of people’s jobs as they contemplate cut backs, lay-offs and the like, rather than seeing people as numbers on a spreadsheet. They must continually engage their people to build trust and understanding – especially in difficult times – as they contemplate the extreme measures to take to accommodate slumping revenues and profits. They must convey an honest empathy with their people, and a sincere faith in the value and contributions those people bring to the greater whole that the company represents.

That’s what Arie de Gaus’ words are all about. Managers must focus their thinking on the reality of their organization as a community of humans first and foremost. If they do, if they have always done that, chances are that the fruitful and profitable economic activity of producing goods and services will follow.

Who knows? Perhaps the bite of a bad economy will have less effect on such a community of humans, and enable the organization to weather the storm and live to see better days.