So whatcha gonna do ‘bout all that?

A friend of mine at work, someone who listens kindly and even encourages all my wild ranting, asked what my solutions are. She agrees that I've done a good job of identifying the problem or problems but what next? Most people, most BOSSES, don't want you to come to them with a problem unless you're prepared to offer a solution.

I thought about it for a second then admitted that maybe I don't have a solution, maybe I'm as far as putting the thesis together and that's where it stops for now.

As I talked though it occurred to me that even if I come up with a solution it won't matter because, just like with a substance abuser, the first thing is admit you have a problem. That's it. Corporate America, corporations, need to step up and say, "Hi, I'm a corporation and I have a problem, not only do I HAVE a problem…in many cases I AM THE PROBLEM!"

Right now, from what I can see, corporations don't believe they're the problem. They tout their corporate values and make sure everyone is abiding by them and then check each one off during the twice-yearly performance reviews. Yay for us, we have values and we stick to 'em.

What a crock of crap.

When corporations are ready, willing and able to call themselves out on their behavior then I can start coming up with solutions or better yet maybe THEY can come up with solutions. For now I'd like to see it get to the point of admitting a problem. At least it would be a start.

And once they each can own up to having a BIG problem then they can start to drill down to the little ones, get specific, look in the mirror and see the warts, and blemishes, and worry lines wrinkling their corporate foreheads.

But right now, I'd just like to see them start by standing up and admitting there is a problem and it can't be fixed by re-writing the core values or doing another lame team building exercise.

$$$ Uh-huh $$$

I've always kinda thought of myself as someone who *gets* math and even science at some level. Sadly, I've never really pursued it beyond patting myself on the back for knowing that I *get* that so yay me.

Some of my posts are just about silly things like please stop picking on Jennifer Aniston (I stand by that one, give it a rest folks, she's in her 40's there's no baby bump, shut up) but others, from the beginning of this blog, dealt with things like what the HELL is wrong with corporate America. I still hash this shit out over and over again with friends but haven't re-visited it here in a while.

Somehow in the past 24 hours I managed to come across two companies that might be getting things right.

Valve (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100522971/A_Billion_Dollar_Company_With_No_Bosses_Yes_It_Exists) is a video game company with no bosses, no HR department and seemingly no corporate-style issues like performance reviews. It seems to be working. Why is it working for them but not for everyone?

This morning I saw a news story on The Today Show about Zildjian (http://zildjian.com/About/History/Background ), the cymbal company, yeah, you know those shiny metal discs that hover above the drum kits on arena stages all over the world. They maintain a more corporate structure but still keep a family feel to the whole thing. They've never had a layoff in the company and when a job gets replaced by an advance in technology the person who had been doing that job gets re-trained for another comparable job. They showed one guy who'd been re-trained 7 times during his (many) years there and was pretty darn happy about it.

Why are these companies news items? Because they're not the norm, they ARE newsworthy. No one is reporting on the drudgery of corporate life in the entire REST of the companies here. No one is talking about the uselessness of performance review and goal setting season (just now drawing to a close in corporate America).

I'm discouraged, I'll admit it. There are no changes out there in the big world of corporate jobs.

I recently read an article about a couple of new books about FDR and The New Deal. I admit most history has completely escaped me by now. I know I learned about it but that's all I remember, I remember that I learned about something and that's it. The article made me want to read more about those times in not just US history but in the history of the world overall. It was during that era the Securities and Exchange Commission was founded and wasn't that a significant step towards where we are today?

Where are we? We don't innovate, we don't provide quality goods or services, we DO just enough to satisfy the investment community and that is our primary focus for anyone at all who even TOUCHES an industry. Even the small town deli owner is touched by big corporations when they buy their deli meats and other products. We're all in it; we're just all in it for the wrong reasons. I admit, I'm no investment guru but now I'm beginning to see that is the only real way to play in this game.

As the world became more and more industrialized people went from working farms or other small family businesses to working for someone else but in the beginning you did your job, you did your best to turn out a good product and as a reward you got to keep your job (usually for life) and even walked away with a pension, something that was set aside for you to live off of in your declining years. It was easy in many ways.

With the rise of stock trading markets it is clear that we no longer work for a company to produce quality goods and work out our days until we're rewarded with a pension in our twilight years. We work to meet the goals and expectations of the financial investment community. That's it. There's no gratification in that. Yes, I want to make money as much as the next person and live comfortably and all that but there is no deep, personal, emotional connection or gratification to doing what I do.

Systemic mediocrity just may be the result of historic bureaucracy and governed by a financial system only looking to increase the bottom line at any cost. It sucks the soul out of the people engaged in doing the actual work and in turn seems to suck the soul out of the society the work is (supposedly) being done for.

Obviously there will be more on this from me. Some thoughts perhaps on what happens when you DO suck the soul out of individuals and society as a whole…