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Work used to be such an easy deal.
When you needed to fill a position in your organization you hired someone who could do the job. Then they signed a contract—they agreed to give you a specified number of hours of their life and in return you’d hand over some money.
Everyone knew where they stood. And just in case there was any doubt, you had regular performance reviews.
But that’s so last century.
Things Have Completely Changed
As products and services have been commoditized, consumers need to feel that the companies they work with aren’t just good at what they do, but also are good.
Customers look for culture—for signs of personality, character and happiness. They want to feel that the people they deal with aren’t just drones doing a job, but ambassadors—happy to provide a product or service in ways that make the customer feel empowered and special.
But a single embittered or unhappy employee can also create havoc, with your customers then using social media to wreck your reputation. So the once mighty organization is now vulnerable.
All in all, the traditional balance of power has shifted from those who hold the purse-strings to those who now do the work.
In order to thrive, today’s organizations need employees who take ownership of their work, feel pride for what they do, and are whole-heartedly committed to delivering a service—to the very best of their abilities.
There’s no employment contract that can cover that level of commitment. So what can you do?
The End Of The Command-And-Control Era?
The only thing you can do is to create the right culture at work and learn to trust your employees.
But culture is hard to create, harder still to maintain and next to impossible to get right. James Davison Hunter, tenured professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia, suggests an answer: He says culture is manufactured out of four distinct characteristics:
- Culture is a resource, and therefore a course of power.
- Culture is produced through the action of the network.
- The propagation of what constitutes cultural values is a dynamic connection between those at the center of cultural development and those at its periphery.
- Culture becomes world-changing when the values of those who are the champions of change align with the values of the institutions they lead.
There’s an underlying assumption here, but Hunter makes it explicit: Any significant shift in attitude starts from the top and filters down to the bottom. This makes the role of leadership within the organization key to creating a culture that ensures the organization thrives—because its staff is thriving at work.
The approach also signals the end of the traditional top-down, command-and-control era. Organizations now need greater information flow within and faster response time outside their walls. The only thing that can deliver that is the establishment of entrepreneurial spirit through every layer of the organization.
But How? Emotional Labor!
The term “emotional labor” was coined by sociologist Arlie R. Hochschild, who in her book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, defines it as: “management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display.”
In other words, great places to work deliver better customer service, and are staffed by people who don’t forget to smile and be human.
There is, of course, always the risk that an enterprise will use its strength in monitoring and control to somehow demand emotional labor as part of the employee contract—even if the requirement is implied rather than stated. But in a social-media world, where authenticity and social conscience are mission critical for business success, such demands will fail to create a competitive advantage.
A tangible example of this disruptive power is the Market Basket story, where an ousted CEO was reinstated when staff went on strike on his behalf and customers boycotted the stores. The tale ended with a buyout of the company and a wresting of control of the company from its board.
Accounts of what happened vary, but its reinstated CEO, Arthur T. Demoulas, called the coup a demonstration of, “a person’s moral obligation and social responsibility to protect the culture which provides an honorable and a dignified place in which to work.”
The Bottom Line
Businesses that win in this area achieve an internal alignment of purpose at every level of the organization: Everyone knows exactly what the business does and how.
In order to connect with the increasingly demanding, empowered, educated and mobile consumers of today, enterprises must mirror the decentralized, trusting processes of the social Web. Businesses that succeed in doing so will enjoy committed, highly-motivated staff, driven by an internal entrepreneurial spirit.
But those that fail will find themselves churning customers—spending more and more on advertising each year, for ever-diminishing returns.
What's your take? Weigh in with a comment below, and connect with David Amerland (Google+) | @DavidAmerland (Twitter).
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Image credit: International Institute of Social History (public domain)
