A few weeks back Greg Smith published his letter of resignation from Goldman Sachs in the New York Times. There were those who applauded Mr. Smith’s call for human dignity in a professional world turned shark tank. Most of the reaction I encountered, however, spoke of sour grapes. Mr. Smith’s detractors cast him away as an under-performer who blamed his employer for his inability on his way out the door. The opposition to Mr. Smith’s “Jerry Maguire Moment” promotes a popular premise:
If you have something bad to say on your way out the door you must just be a bad egg.
In other words, the only reason someone would leave a company is because they feel they no longer are able to compete in their corporate environment…so they blame their employer and go looking for another company to fool for a while. This line of thinking speaks to a convenient Executive ignorance:
Our fiscal success is proven, Greg was underperforming and he failed to take accountability.
….with the aforementioned thought in mind a company can continue to protect their broken culture, ignore relevant on-the-job evidence that would serve to improve their company, and hire less-talented people that are willing to accept bullying from the boardroom…..”If you don’t like it, get out! There are people lined up to fill your position”. Greg Smith is one in thousands of people a day who are shown the exit then have their letter of resignation tossed in the trash.
Greg Smith’s New York Times piece received so much attention because it spoke to the double standard of the working world:
Accept the accountability of job description, but don’t you dare hold Leadership accountable for reciprocating this sentiment.
A few days back I had a conversation with a young man who had left the only job he had ever had. Instead of his quarterly report he had sent a resignation via PowerPoint to Executive Leadership. His reasons for leaving:
- Deflated Company Environment
- Leadership Hypocrisy
- Poor Pay
- Lack of Career Path
The aforementioned points resonate with many business leaders. Unfortunately, the points of contention in an exit interview seem to adjust hiring process instead of fixing what has become broken. No one would fault a 50 year old company for losing sight of their founding principles. It happens. The task of a Leader’s day is to fit 50 hours into 20. The process is never elegant and we are all doing our best to keep bread on our employee’s tables while keeping the lights on in the corporate offices. All this aside, there is one piece of evidence that cannot be over-looked:
STOP PRETENDING THAT LOSING EMPLOYEES IS OK!
It’s better for both parties, she just wasn’t holding up her end of the bargain, just not the right fit…..all excuses given when an employee leaves a company. For once, it would be nice to hear:
Over the last year we have lost sight of what is important to us as a company. We have valued numbers over the people who produce them and have de-humanized our organizational culture. We are profitable, but that’s not good enough. The employee who left our company helped us realize that we have been operating in an ivory tower. We have come to find out that line managers are protecting their position by keeping feedback from the trenches to themselves. Not only have we accepted this CYA managerial practice but we have come to expect it. The things that made our founders want to be in business have been lost…and we will be making an effort to get them back! It hurts to lose someone who gave 20 years of their life to our company, we were wrong, and we are going to make changes to protect the rest of our valued employees”.
….that would be nice to hear….
From Goldman Sachs, the former employer of the young man mentioned above, or SMI (Jerry Maguire’s former employer). But its Monday, there is work to be done, and we have to get back to the task at hand. It’s a new quarter and we have to hit our numbers……did we ever find out how much those robots would cost us?
Thank you for reading!
Dave Kovacovich