In successful companies whether multinational or local, corporate plans and reports are expressed succinctly in numbers. Revenue growth, margins, market shares, head-counts, productivity gains, cash flow management, employee satisfaction scores and more numbers efficiently tell the state of the business.
What is not eloquently reported in our presentation of corporate reports are the travails of the working men and women who were on almost infinite overtime hours, the relentless business building efforts that eat up on time that should have been spent with their families.
The human side of the business are touched on in our presentations but these are in terms of overtime rates, shorter turnaround of projects, employee satisfaction ratings, productivity hikes and enhancements in employee amelioration programs. Still more numbers. These are not expressed in the manner told us by our associates, like missing their seven-year-old’s birthday party, not being there for a son’s graduation exercise, not being able to care for infirm parents, missing a favorite TV program for months now… not seeing the sunset on the way home for some time.
There are no sections in the supplied presentation templates that would include these but they are some of the real reasons, the heart and gut of why we achieve our business targets.
How long can a company sustain its punishing business building effort? How much more would be spent in team building sessions and in reward and recognition programs?
People’s physical and emotional stamina are less finite than monetary resource. There will come a point where no amount of coaxing, bucking and flogging can elicit a response from a tired and numbed work force and enjoin, as Henry David Thoreau aptly put it, “the mass of men leading lives of quiet desperation”.
Suspension of pleasures when young is a good thing. It helps build character and sets one’s feet solidly on the ground. The time for assimilation of knowledge and honing of skills is when you are young. It is also the time for hard work because you are physically able. The reward of this is that you will not probably have to work as hard in your old age. Nobody dies of hard work except for those who, by circumstance, still have to do it when they are old and infirm.
This was what I believed in throughout my working life but towards my retirement I found it difficult to give this advice to the young managers in the organization for I have been a witness to the distressing trade-offs that had to be endured. How many opportunities for shoring up marital relationships did you miss out on? How much joy did you let pass by when your young children yearned to be with you before they went off to become teenagers? Were you able to experience the pleasure of assuring and guiding them when they faltered as young adults? Did you allow your natural creative talents to become stillborn or stunted because it had to wait for you to find time to nurture them. It is sad to have opportunities for joy expire on you, any bit of joy.
This is no indictment on any particular organization. I do not know of any successful company who do not have a resolve towards business dominance. Career people latch on to and swear by company visions and hold business targets as sacrosanct because of the rewards that go with it. They become driven lemming-like in their pursuit of these. Their falling prey to it is instinctive, an unambiguous statement of the human condition.
I look back with a tinge of regret for not setting right the mistakes committed not so much as a young man’s foibles but of those things that seemed deliberately done by a clear, uncaring and worldly wise mind – deplorable things that one did consciously without conscience.
In retirement, mentioning your regrets for them should be sufficient atonement. You can’t say I won’t do it again. There is nothing more you can do.
About Ed Roa
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