Organizations are adrift. Leaders are struggling. Mental diseases are booming.
It looks like a tabloid cover story, but it has been happening in the corporate world for years.
Before examining the biggest corporate challenge of the century, let us start with some historical perspective. Designed in the early 1900s, large corporations had broken their “job for life” commitment in the 1970s and 80s due to the acceleration of innovation processes. Since then, shorter business cycles and disruptive business models fostered by digital technology have only increased external shocks on companies, naturally hurting emotional attachments with employees due to the fear of losing their jobs.
I must remind you that humans do not have enough cognitive skills to really understand fast-moving dynamics in any situation. Our brains process incremental and linear pathways, but usually get completely lost with complexity, velocity, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Lucky robots! It’s clear then that digital transformation has undoubtedly had a major impact on organizations.
Nevertheless, based on sociological and economical evidence, I should point out that the ethical transition is actually the greatest corporate challenge of the century. Amazingly, organizations and leaders have not been as aware of this social phenomenon as they both should have been. Digital transformation agendas might seem sexy, but the ethical transition really impacts the core principles of the meaning of work – just because it also changes the meaning of human life.
Philosophically speaking, the meaning of life is the cornerstone of metaphysics and religions. Facing the unbearable fear of death, humans desperately look for psychological and social anchors that help them to live a meaningful life with a certain level of resignation and joy. Throughout the history of humankind, families, communities, nations and temples came together to provide a sense of meaning for an individual inserted in the collective social life.
I will now briefly describe the bastions of ethics as a paradigm of duty that has defined the meaning of human life for hundreds of years on this planet, notably in the Western world. The family was certainly the core nucleus, assuring stable marriages even in the absence of love, raising lots of children amidst the elderly. Small communities used to be the center of social life all over the world, with neighbourhoods surrounded by small shops, families, houses with no walls, calm streets and traditional rituals. Though nations were invented during the 1800s, kingdoms, empires and tribes expanded and diminished around common social customs, folklores, language, food and shared values, thus providing a sense of belonging to something greater and, at the same time, a sense of distinction in relation to foreigners. Lastly, spiritual life has always been the ultimate bridge to eternal life, initially with its sacerdotal-centric power over supernatural forces intensively experienced by believers, then eventually replaced by a puritan moral behavior defined after the disenchantment caused by the Lutheran Reform in the 16th century.
Companies are, in fact, a recent human invention, only possible due to productivity gains aligned with technological advances in the field of farming and in industrial facilities. Large global companies are even more recent in human history. Initially inspired on Roman legions and modern military armies, large companies were designed as social control mechanisms to provide scalable repeatable compliant production of goods and services to a mass of consumers developed by mass merchandising. Its rational-empirical perspective was perfectly aligned with ethics as an imperative duty: science, formal relationships, long-term stability, technical procedures, puritan moral behavior, fearful God, clear social roles for family members, national authority, predictable linear progression, sacerdotal authority, and community authority. Even the educational system was transformed into a manufacturing machine of ready-to-be-hired blue-collar employees, and suddenly managerial schools arose to provide better skilled white-collar managers, well equipped with 2×2 matrixes.
It’s now crystal clear that the “job for life” motto was the perfect employee value proposition until the 1970s and the 1980s. Stable families, stable communities, stable societies and a stable spiritual world required a stable working life, rewarding longevity, conformity and loyalty. Employees – both blue- and white-collar – perceived jobs as jobs, companies as companies, bosses as bosses, working activities as working activities. There was no need to seek the meaning of life inside manufacturing facilities or corporate offices. Life’s fulfilment was attained outside company walls by solid psychological and social anchors, so that working was only about working.
Then, what happened? Well, in just about 50 years, these anchors have become severely eroded. Families are now smaller and much more unstable – unhappy marriages now embrace transactional divorces, while kids are being replaced by pets. Communities have become fragmented in fancy apartment buildings and in their impersonal relationships, while appearing on social media has transformed social connections into a commodity to be monetized. Nations have been losing credibility for decades, while local customs have been extinguished by global standards. Finally, spiritual life has been detached from God, curiously embracing the power of superintelligent machines (you might now consider Apple Store as a real Apple Temple). Strange world…
Anyway, with the rapid decline of traditional psychological and social anchors, individuals now have to struggle with the meaning of life, facing their inexorable death. Philosophically speaking, ethics as a duty have been replaced by pleasure as ethics during the past thirty years, especially in the Western world, but, due to globalization, also in the Eastern world.
Pleasure as ethics can be simply defined as a hedonistic perspective on life. With no boundaries and commitments provided by families, communities, nations and priests, individuals see themselves only as relevant stakeholders to be satisfied all the time. They want engaging experiences, self-expression and relevant causes that enhance self-image.
Just to illustrate my arguments, two great artifacts reflecting this new way of life are selfies and tattoos – real worship of the human body in search of social approval and recognition. However, humans are social animals, requiring meaningful social interaction to define themselves. In the absence of that, there is only meaningless individual life. According to the World Health Organization, 16% of the global population now suffers from some mental disorder, such as anxiety, depression, bipolarity, and schizophrenia. Meanwhile, in the US mental disorders now account for 2% of its population. Of course, it is noble to treat these diseases with drugs and treatments, but instead we could focus on their root causes.
So, now companies are being required to offer answers to metaphysical questions. The entire quest for meaningful jobs happens concomitantly to meaningless life. It is admirable to redesign the corporate environment and retrain leaders in alignment with the mental, physical, spiritual and emotional aspects of human dynamics. On the other hand, only fancy open spaces, perks, early morning mindfulness sessions, cool gadgets and squads are not the appropriate response to improve job satisfaction.
I do not foresee any recovery of the relevance of families, communities, nations and priests. Sadly, I truly believe that human life will probably be more digitalized, artificially boosted, socially isolated and self-centered. Maybe people will soon choose to completely abandon reality in favor of some X reality framework that redeems their sense of belonging. Maybe people will soon choose to use drugs to artificially stimulate perceptions of a meaningful life. Maybe social robots will take care of us in the near future.
I also believe that the meaning of jobs will change before people discover the Holy Grail of meaningful work. Integrated digital platforms, IOT, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence are increasingly fostering productivity gains beyond traditional manufacturing facilities and service lines. Sooner than expected lots of job functions will be split into micro working activities capable of being delivered by multiple contractors, with no formal job relationship with any one company. Perhaps working will find new meanings beyond the definition of jobs, with unpredictable impacts on the organizational culture of these large companies.
From a leadership perspective, understanding the impacts of the transition of ethics is the key to really optimizing influence. At the extreme, it is hard to motivate meaningless life anyway when mental health issues arise and prove this to all of us. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile rethinking approaches, reviewing processes, redesigning organizations, reskilling teams and renewing mindsets to deal with the current challenges posed by pleasure as ethics in the workplace.
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Daniel Augusto Motta, PhD, MSc
Founder & CEO BMI Blue Management Institute
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