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Most management books support the notion
that enlightened management and engaged employees help the
business succeed. There are, however, plenty of books that
argue the opposite – that treating workers as a nuisance
and a cost is the way to maximise profits. They are long
established in Western culture, are widely read, and have
had huge influence. |
It transpires that those of us who write management
books have a rival literature – literature. I am
increasingly convinced that the explanation for our reluctance
to adopt the practices of good management lies deep in
the cultural sub-conscious; in the ideas shaped by our
commonly shared fables and characters.
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The grand-daddy of all of these is
one Ebenezer Scrooge. To this day, his name is used by headline
writers to describe a mean boss. Re-reading A Christmas
Carol recently, it is remarkable to recall just how short
it is; fewer than 100 pages, with only a couple of hundred
words on the subject of management and business. Have these
few paragraphs had more impact upon the craft of management
than the millions of words in all the leadership books and
learned articles over the decades? |
Dickens tells us directly that Scrooge
is very rich. We are told also that he is very mean. These
messages come clearly on about the third page (depending
on the edition). The door of the counting house was kept
open ‘so that he might keep an eye upon his clerk’,
who inhabited a ‘dismal little cell’, with a
‘very small fire’. Bob Cratchit resorts to attempting
to warm his fingers by the light of a candle. Dickens does
not pause to comment on whether, if the productivity of
the clerk mattered to the business, the capacity of his
digits to function would be of commercial benefit to a profit-hungry
boss. Still, it is not an unknown assumption by modern employers.
In my own experience, I have worked at an office where the
IT server had air conditioning, but the workers did not.
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A mean boss is rich. Treating workers
better adds to direct costs. Therefore being mean maximises
profits. This is the ‘story’ – the myth
of the zero sum game. Unfortunately – or rather, fortunately
– it is incorrect. Treating workers badly reduces
short-term costs, but adds to operational risk. In some
contexts, admittedly, the risk may be marginal; but in others
it can be sufficient to imperil the entire organisation.
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The term ‘The Blues’, describing
both existential ennui and a type of music, is derived directly
from the working experience, and its style was probably
the biggest single influence on what we would today consider
to be rock or pop music. So the structure and syntax of
the latest R n B single would be very different without
the influence of slavery. |
Let’s take Scrooge, his counting
house and his one employee, and carry out a people and business
risk assessment (something that very few employers do to
any comprehensive extent). |
Just how advisable would it be for
a Scrooge, under any economic circumstance, to treat such
a diligent, incorruptible and effective worker quite so
badly? The most cursory risk assessment would rapidly conclude
that Bob Cratchit was highly likely to seek employment elsewhere,
and that there would be no guarantee at all of finding a
replacement of similar calibre. His first duty was to his
large family, including a disabled son, not to Scrooge.
Only if unemployment were very high would such a people
strategy be even feasible, never mind sensible. |
Scrooge’s mistakes are common,
of course. Indeed, this little scene at the start of
A Christmas Carol is a perfect microcosm of the priorities,
structure and operating assumptions of the typical business.
In Scrooge’s rigidity and myopia one can identify
the genesis of the MBA: the pretence that employee welfare
matters only to the employee and is a net cost to the business;
the emphasis upon accountancy, rather than understanding
the business; the ignorance of the links between employee
engagement and business performance; the neglect of the
risk of loss of talent through indifferent management and
poor leadership. |
Of course, Ebenezer Scrooge does undergo
a moral conversion, with copious supernatural assistance.
Unfortunately, the description of a kindly Victorian philanthropist
in the last stages of the book simply confirms the myth
of more kindly treatment of workers as an expression of
mere generosity. The implication is that all ‘good’
works of any employer must involve a cost, and that better
pay and treatment must necessarily involve compromising
the profit motive. Dickens does not hint that, with a more
engaged employee enjoying better prospects and adequate
heating, Scrooge’s business might actually benefit.
It could even have expanded to become a thriving chain of
businesses, held together by the enthusiasm and vision of
the founder, encouraging his staff to serve customers and
attract new ones. |
To this day, institutional investors
seem guided more by the pre-conversion Scrooge than by management
research. Whenever job cuts are announced, share prices
rise, without the merest analysis as to whether the restructure
will help the business. Ebenezer’s myopic belief in
the myth of the zero sum lives on |
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