Naturally, we prefer a living and working environment that is not toxic or suffocating. Yet somehow we find ourselves in exactly the opposite of what we were hoping for. Putting on soft music didn’t work. Firing a bunch of negative folks only leaves the place more hollow. Senior leadership came down to “fix” but only making matters worse.
What to do?
Talents have already left. You are stuck to rebuild from scratch, literally. Folks who stay are mostly admins and low-risk tolerance folks.
Those high performers and hard-hitters have already jumped ship.
This reminds me of a bunch of writers and artists who left America for France: Hemmingway, Henry Miller, Johnny Depp, Charles Bronson, Malkovich….
For one, French cafe at the time was better (than 7/11 coffee).
Two, even the “Oui” from the mouth of French babe sounds more thrilling than a Yep from US counterparts. So cut and dry.
Here is the last caveat: from the rubbles of WWII, a nation emerged, resistant and more artful than ever. It might have suffered defeat from Dien Bien Phu, but that’s not enough to choke its art scene . Chinese tourists flock the nation’s capital. Its work week has fewer hours than American’s, yet productivity jumps through the roof.
And its ” In search of lost time” by Proust has Swan as the main character, has left indelible impression on millions.
Here is an excerpt from Miller’s “the Air-conditioned nightmare” about sitting in a park in France: “I remember the view of a church from where we sat as the wine trickled down from my gullet. I remember the glassy stare of the water, the tall trees swaying against the soft French sky, I remember that I felt a great peace then, a peace such as I had never known in my own country. I looked at my wife, and she had become a different person. Even the birds looked different. One would like to hold such moments forever. But part of the deep joy which is in them comes from the knowledge that it is only fleeting.”
Serene.
But flip that around, and place that in today’s US, with Walter Reed Presidential “unscheduled visit” etc… and we find nothing “serene” but suffocating (as of this edit, Fresno shooting. I concur: the place is suffocating enough to render such an act, albeit I don’t condone).
A leader’s job is to create an environment where talents want to serve, not leave. A leader’s job is to ramp up capacity and provide a tone that needs no music to supplement it. A leader’s job is to lead great people to even greater greatness. Not drive them away to sit in some other country’s bench, and look at some other country’s church, to feel the opposite.
Suffocating or serene?
Thang Nguyen 555 