The pressure in the business world is intense. Global competition and uncertainty, combined with high Wall Street expectations, can drive managers to a single-minded focus on streamlining their teams to improve the bottom line.
Yesterday, Gill Corkindale, in his “Letter from London” column for the Harvard Business Review, discussed the psychological toll of the imperatives of competition through the story of a leader who transformed his division “from a loss-making liability into a cash-generating asset.”
Unfortunately, though employees agreed “that the actions of the new regime have safeguarded their future,” they found the workplace environment dreary and mechanical and lacking in any kind of team spirit. Employees felt “empty, disconnected, and indifferent about the organization.”
The reality, Corkindale feels, is that “companies are becoming brutal.”
For managers caught between the imperatives of competition and the desire to create an inspiring (and productivity boosting) feeling of a shared project — of being fellow travelers on the way to excellence — among their team members, Corkindale offers some suggested reading:
Nothing Personal, Just Business: A Guided Journey Into Organizational Darkness, by Howard Stein, an anthropologist and consultant.
The Leader on the Couch: A Clinical Approach to Changing People and Organizations, by INSEAD professor Manfred Kets de Vries.
So, all you managers who would like to create a workplace that is both profitable and human, off to the bookstore. And let us know back at BNET how you feel about what you’ve read.
