Companies don't make decisions, people do

Photo by Soloman Soh.

There's a thing happening right now that doesn't make sense.

There's a global pandemic. No one has felt safe for months. The layoffs in the spring were massive and many people's jobs have not come back. So you can understand why those who still have work would count their blessings, and keep their heads down. They might not like it. They might have concerns about the work. But you would understand if they decided to shut up and dribble. You might even expect it.

Only they aren't.

In our own networks, and in the world at large, we're seeing the opposite. Despite the precarity of work. Despite the uncertainty of what the fall will mean for COVID. We're seeing people, often very junior people, voting with their feet. When their employer is out of step with their values, they are organizing walkouts. They are leaking to the press. They are unionizing workplaces that never expected to be unionized. They are protecting themselves and they are protecting each other. And they are quitting.

If it seems like we've written a lot about quitting in the newsletter lately, this is why. It's not just that people are quitting their jobs during a pandemic. It's that they're quitting their jobs during a pandemic because of values. That's a hell of a thing.

This isn't a newsletter about quitting. It is a newsletter about work. Under the most precarious conditions, people are renegotiating their relationship to their work. That's important.

Reppin' hard for the status quo

While junior folks are organizing for social change, something very different is happening in the C-suite. This summer has seen a parade of CEOs trying hard to pretend that social change is something that happens somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Three months ago every corporate social media account was posting that Black lives matter. Every employee book club was reading Dr. Kendi. A question for any organization that steps into work like this is, "Those words are important, but where will we see it backed up with policy and action?" And faced with the hard work necessary to dismantle systemic oppression, several CEOs have decided to stick with the status quo.

Coinbase's CEO declared his company "apolitical." He says that he thinks of his company as a professional sports team. Paying no attention, it seems, to how actual professional sports teams have responded to social justice issues. He gave people a week to take severance if they disagree.

Hootsuite (a fucking B Corp!) formed a committee to chew on whether to take a contract helping ICE with their social media. They said yes. And then, after an employee put herself on the line to tweet about it, reversed course.

And, of course, there's always Shopify. Tobi’s platform funds every alt-right, white supremacist group clever enough to keep overt hate speech off of their coffee mugs. Rumour has it that they, too, have a "some employees may quit because of our stance, and that's okay" internal policy. Cool cool cool.

So on the one hand, you have employees agitating for a more complete view of how their employers' activities impact the world. And on the other you have CEOs hoping that no one will notice those impacts. And the thing that jumps out to us is that there's something missing.

Where are the bosses in this story? Where are the layers between the employees' sense of moral integrity and their CEO's lack of it?

The old rules

In the world of leadership development, most people want to work with the CEO. In part because of a dated assumption. That working at the tippy top is how you make change within organizations. It happens in the C-suite and flows downhill. The role of managers was to execute on and operationalize the vision. To take the decisions and put them into practice. Regardless of their personal opinions or perspective. "We're not paying you," the argument went, "for your feelings."

But these days, holy shit are we paying you for your feelings. We're paying you for your storytelling. We're paying you for your ability to keep a highly skilled workforce motivated and engaged. We're paying you to develop and grow people. And we're paying you to take the vision and tailor it. To build a personalized version of how that vision connects to the day to day work of every person on your team.

Once demand for skilled workers outpaced supply, the distribution of power shifted. Tech became a place where employers had to compete, attract, and retain talent. And as research piled up showing that engaged employees outperform, tech CEOs start to care a lot about catered lunches and feelings.

But they still expected employees to leave their politics at the door.

Those CEOs were wrong. They were playing a new game by old rules. One that assumed they still held all the power.

The new rules

There’s only one group of people within an organization who get to apply bidirectional pressure. CEOs push down. Individual employees push up. Only bosses do both. You can’t make real and lasting change in an organization without the middle.

The middle is a hard place to be, in 2020. When the decisions of the company don’t make sense, we need you to say so. Your job isn’t to mindlessly push these decisions onto your team. The psychological safety you build exists so that your people can tell you when things aren’t okay. It’s a scary thing to say, “I don’t want my labour supporting an organization that forces refugees to have hysterectomies.” When they do, we need you pushing that concern up.

And not in a one-sided way, either. As a team, we need you to hold us accountable to the work we signed up to do, too. A boss who always agrees with their team is a liability. Work is not summer camp. Questions of morality are one thing. But we’ve seen teams derailed over everything from technology choices to seating arrangements. As a boss, sometimes you’ll need to break the tie, and make a call that some of us won’t like.

Making those calls is the job. If you make bad ones often enough, you should get out of the seat. But while you’re in it, they’re yours to make. That’s what we’re paying you for. For every company being dragged into the spotlight by their own employees, it’s worth asking: what you would do as that person’s boss?

In all of it, your job is to be the translation layer. And it's a really hard job. Because you have to constantly juggle the needs of the business and the needs of your team. And every decision you make risks pissing off one group or another. But that’s not an excuse to avoid making decisions.

We’re leaving the most junior and least privileged to step forward as the ethical guardrails of our organizations. That should be us. Not because we have all the answers. But because the people on our teams trust us. We hold their employment relationship with the organization. And when we disappoint them, it’s not nameless or faceless. The people in charge will listen to us. Because when they disappoint us, that's not nameless or faceless, either.

We don’t need you to have all the answers. But if you’re sitting in the seat, we need you asking the hard questions. We need you listening, and acting on what you hear. And if you get to the point where you’re in an ethically compromising situation, and you can’t make change, or can’t be heard. Well. We already wrote the one about quitting.

- Melissa and Johnathan