Book 288 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Treat People Like People…For the Right Reasons!

Book – Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek (Part 1/2)

Book Description:

In his work with organizations around the world, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives are offered, are doomed to infighting, fragmentation, and failure. Why?

The answer became clear during a conversation with a Marine Corps general. "Officers eat last," he said. Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line. What's symbolic in the chow hall is deadly serious on the battlefield: Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort - even their own survival - for the good of those in their care.

Too many workplaces are driven by cynicism, paranoia, and self-interest. But the best ones foster trust and cooperation because their leaders build what Sinek calls a "Circle of Safety" that separates the security inside the team from the challenges outside.

Reflection:

There is nothing that gets me fired up more than modern day business practices and how in turn it causes them to treat their people.

Modern day business is fueled by dopamine. There is a maniacal focus on hitting numbers, achieving goals, and monitoring key metrics to report back to investors to show constant growth. The prevailing thought is, if you aren’t growing, you’re dying. This sentiment holds true whether you work in a startup, scale up, or massive corporate conglomerate.

We all feel that pressure across the entire organization to constantly produce greater and greater results or get out. You are hired to do a job, grow shareholder value, and if you can’t deliver…the door is right over there.

Deep down I think we all know this to be true.

I honestly wouldn’t care if businesses were upfront and transparent about their true goals, but who would really want to work at a place that said that was their true mission and how they operate? Come work at Globocorp where we’ll treat you like a machine, slowly drain the humanity from your soul, and give you a tiny reward so we can hit our goals and grow shareholder value!!!

That sounds awful, but at least it would be accurate and truthful.

Here’s what gets me so fired up, modern day business knows that Globocorp’s pitch sounds about as appealing as taking a 16-hour flight to Australia with a 2-year-old so they cleverly tweaked it. Somewhere along the way, they discovered that if you vail your true purpose and pretend to care about your people, give them an alternate mission that sounds more appealing, and create a value driven system than you will actually be able to accelerate the growth process even faster and hit bigger and bigger numbers…and it worked.

The results speak for themselves, when you treat people like people you get explosive outcomes. When we are able to produce meaningful work with meaningful relationships, humanity is impossible to stop.

It was clever, but I think the gig is up. People aren’t stupid, and they all know that nothing has really changed. We slowly discovered that it is still the same old shit sandwich just strategically placed in a beautiful Tiffany’s box.

To be fair, there are some businesses out there that truly want and try to treat their people like people from the genesis of their founding. Unfortunately for them, they are still operating in a broader system that doesn’t care and is only focused on numbers, money, and growth which dooms them to the same outcome from the jump.

So, what to do?

Well, you could do it alone, and that is what so many have chosen to do. The freelancer economy is thriving, and people have found they can still make a living while still maintaining most of their humanity in the process.

Unfortunately, the freelancer economy still isn’t a truly optimal human solution as we still have an innate desire to connect and feel like we belong to a broader organization. As Simon Sinek shares, “nothing of real value on this Earth was ever done by one single person alone.”

So, then what is it?

Maybe lets treat people like people, not for money, but simply because it is the right thing to do. My vision for the future is to create an ecosystem that focuses solely on satisfying all the conditions humans need to thrive first and always. From there, get out of the way and let the magic happen as the meaningful work and meaningful relationships grow over time and transform into something no one could have ever even imagined.

How…I don’t know yet, but I plan to spend the rest of my life figuring it out.

Question: What were the conditions present when you have produced your best work?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek