“Competing for eyeballs”
When my book Freedom Management was published by Routledge in 2017, life was so different in most corporations. Even FAANG were still relying on the classical office-centered model. I will be brutal: the book was not a success. I was not a popular consultant, my fame was mostly academic, and I live in an incomparably nice country, Italy, which is not known for its management culture (unless you go back to Machiavelli). If I re-read the book my few readers were right: it was way too academic. But it spoke the truth of the coming revolution of work and organizations. I should be proud of this at least.
Fast forward to 2022 and you are in the future that I depicted back then. Work has changed dramatically (even though much organizational stuff like processes, roles, controls has not!) and people are leaving in flocks because of YOLO awareness.
They call it the Great Resignation, I would propose to call it the Great Hopelessness.
You would expect managers highly educated in top ranking business schools with God-like resumes in strategic consulting or investment banks to understand that reality is broken (great book by Jane McGonigal which has had a profound impact on me). However they seem too dumb (or self-interested) to see it. It is not coming, it is here. People are losing interest. Their eyeballs and ears and feelings are migrating out of boring corporate offices and even boardrooms. Is it for Covid19? Is it for too much spent alone at home? Is it for fatigue and mental health issues?
I do not know for sure, but my 5 cents are that it is because of too much corporate and organization bullshit. We throw away our time and everybody’s else on things that do not practically matter for anybody. We are obsessed by our own work patterns. We engage in power battles. We struggle as if we were hosted on a Succession episode, only that the award is not a giant media corporation but maybe just a marginal assignment. What for?
As Kendall Roy states in front of the executive boardroom of the fictitious Waystar RoyCo of that series, we compete for the eyeballs. It is actually way more than that: organizations compete for eyeballs, ears, feelings, desires and dreams.
And they are losing.
They are losing their grip as more people navigate and make a living selling directly their skills, refocus their desires on something which is meaningful in itself (what is the reason to do something you consider mean to earn the money to do what matters to you when you can do it straight away?), and give up sterile offices, black suits, and fixed hours.
At times I think it is a global Game over for contemporary corporations. But is there hope? My take back in 2017 was to refocus organizations around individual freedom and choice. Remove layers of management, humble down executives, and embrace a pluralistic view of coordination. Get rid of awkward tech with emails and cumbersome collaboration tools meant as patches (and yes, I am talking about the great tech from the state of Washington). Transform management in freedom management, an actor who has the goal to get rid of the too many constraints on human deliberate and purposeful action.
I have done it in my tiny start-up company. And the bullshit is totally inexistent. More, we do not talk bullshit to our partners and customers too. We do not get them to pay for it, but only for what we deliver. Honest consultancy with a purpose!