LEADERS MUST MODEL SACRIFICE TO RETURN TO THE SOURCE OF WORK ’ S VALUE
In these volatile and uncertain times , work must be redesigned around people and purpose .
t used to be that leaders just needed to know
I how to sell things for more than they cost . That was often hard enough . But now the tables have turned . Profit isn ’ t always a requirement — but satisfying multiple constituencies is .
Today , employees crave work that has meaning beyond money . They want to feel that the time and effort they invest in work serves more than their boss and their landlord . It doesn ’ t seem unreasonable to expect some intrinsic satisfaction from work — on top of the whole shiny basket of extrinsic incentives that many managers believe condition productive behaviours . But if you ’ re leading in a business with razor-thin margins — which most are — accommodating these demands is difficult .
And that ’ s only the beginning . Just as Bangladeshi garment workers require safe working conditions , both gig workers and corporate strivers demand that the hours and conditions under which they work don ’ t damage their cognitive or human capacity . Long hours , excessive time spent with technology , working nights and weekends : all of these , we now know , erode our capacity to think — even though thinking is what most of us are paid for these days .
Although we ’ ve known , since the first productivity experiments in 1888 , that human capacity declines precipitately after about 40 hours a week , few employers bow to the science .
Yet you don ’ t have to believe it for it to be true — so flying in the face of over 100 years ’ evidence is having entirely predictable results , in the form of burnout , mental illness , errors , accidents and disengagement . Increased productivity won ’ t be achieved by sweating your human resources .
What actually motivates people most is each other
The current volatility of the working environment demands resilience from everyone . This is both the physical resilience of recovery from crunch mode , and the intellectual and imaginative resilience to embrace and experiment with new ideas , casting aside what won ’ t work and moving on to find what does .
The best response to uncertainty is a high level of experimentation , but that means much of what is tried will fail . For all that writers are rhapsodic , talking about the long-term learning that failure offers , they gloss over its immediate emotional cost . Invent a new app or product or service that fails ; sure , it ’ s learning — but abandoning fantasies of glory and triumph hurts . Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn ’ t taken any real risks . Recovery takes time and stamina .
And if all of this wasn ’ t tough enough , any leader who isn ’ t wilfully blind must now confront the challenge of legitimacy that global warming presents . We ’ ve known about this for 30 years now but , taken as a whole , business response has been little , late , lazy and often evasive .
The time left to repair the planet is short and this decade will segregate , with pitiless clarity , those who listen to their children from those who listen to no one . The position of business and government as sources of solutions has never been regarded with greater scepticism , and the race is on to see who earns a licence to operate .
The rampant individualism of the past few decades has made the concept of sacrifice unfashionable
This might sound scary and , to unseasoned managers , it is . Those with more experience need now to dig deep to remember what years of booming economic growth have obscured : that actually what motivates people most is each other . What gives work meaning isn ’ t key performance indicators or targets or the ephemeral hedonic satisfaction of extrinsic reward , but a sense that the work helps to make the world a better , safer , more just place . Decades of social science illustrate that what makes communities truly resilient isn ’ t how rich they are but how far the people in them know and care about each other .
Recently , contemplating the volatility and uncertainty of the times ahead of us , I interviewed a number of leaders who had navigated existential crises in the past : moments when their businesses and sometimes they themselves stood on the brink of collapse . These were unforgettable , gut-wrenching conversations and in each case , at some point , each of my interviewees wept .
What , I wondered , had kept them going through years of agony ? Just two things . First , they were lucky enough to have friends who understood , who cared about them , who provided moral and emotional support . Second , they knew that the sacrifices they and many of their colleagues had to make were for a good cause , one bigger than themselves . That was enough to keep them at their gruelling work long and hard enough to survive .
The rampant individualism of the past few decades has made the concept of sacrifice unfashionable . Social norms more often target our selfishness than our altruism . But change never occurs without sacrifice . And the changes required by the climate crisis , by the rising rates of mental illness , by the redesign of work won ’ t occur without much in the status quo being assigned to history .
As individuals , we accept sacrifices when we know that they are necessary , when they make us feel active in the face of otherwise paralysing threats , and when we believe they are shared equally . We embrace them because they confer a shared sense of nobility , speaking to our deepest sense of value and meaning .
That ’ s why it is important to call them out for the sacrifices that they are so that together people can feel valuable to one another . The challenge for leaders in this new decade will be to model sacrifice , to define it with care and justice and to inspire it in others .
In doing so , all the various demands for purpose , meaning and resilience will be met as we return to the source of work ’ s value : that we do it for each other .
Dr Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur , CEO , writer and keynote speaker .