The Great Resignation is a Flashpoint for Culture Change
Announcing a new podcast series on the Great Resignation
Long before the “Great Resignation” was a thing I was part of it. It was July of 2011 and I was done with the 9-to-5 thing, which was really a 9-to-9 thing with a deteriorating culture. I was VP and sales director of a boutique event production company. I had a stack of contracts on my desk waiting to be processed. I looked at the contracts. I looked at my computer screen. I looked back to the contracts, again to the screen, and realized I was done. I couldn’t do it anymore.
Usually processing contracts is like the icing on the cake. It means deals closed. It means revenue, commissions, profitability, and the like. This time, it meant more of the same. It meant roping in companies to something I felt was losing its value. And I was starting to feel like the proverbial ‘used car salesman.’ I no longer felt like I had something of extraordinary value to offer. We were coasting on past results that suggested we had a product that was worth the customer’s time and money.
Change is hard for most everyone. It’s hard for me at times, even though I welcome it and look forward to it, if even with a pit in my stomach. Not change for change’s sake but change that is necessary and healthy. Like leaving a job that’s become unhealthy, or lifestyle changes that foster greater wellbeing. It’s also extremely difficult for companies to pivot their strategy and business model based on changing tides in an industry.
I worked at a big city newspaper during a time in which the publishing industry was changing in profound ways. It was like Kodak during the advent of digital photography, or IBM during the birth of personal computing, or the big three auto makers during the current rise of electric vehicles. In my newspaper days everyone knew we were standing on shifting sands. Many people had a sense of what we needed to do, but the change was as slow as a sloth crossing the road.
I left my position with the newspaper to take on a role with the boutique event production company mentioned above. I went from a company of many thousands of employees to one of 22. It was family owned with a family-like culture. Then in late 2008 the financial crisis hit and everything changed. With revenue waning, so went the culture. The values of the company changed and I no longer felt in alignment. I thought by leaving a large company for a small one things would be different. And they were at first . . . until revenue became harder to come by. By the time I resigned, I found the culture just as dysfunctional as the large company I left behind.
It's not about the size of the company, or even the industry. There are companies in industries with typically bad cultures who rise above the fray. There are companies in industries you would think would have excellent cultures who descend to the depths of malfeasance. You could say it’s about the economy or regulation or any number of things, but values are values regardless of how rough things may get.
The Great Resignation
The “Great Resignation” is a flashpoint for culture change. People are leaving good paying jobs with benefits, not for a lateral shift, but to leave the ‘rat race’ and search for a life of less stress, higher ethics, inclusion, and more meaning.
I’ve been watching this movement with great interest, because I was an “early jumper” — a new term a friend recently coined. I jumped almost eleven years ago. In that time, I’ve made less money, while enjoying less stress, more freedom, and more happiness. While it hasn’t always been easy, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
The statistics are in, the Great Resignation is telling us that while people are quitting for a variety of reasons, there are clear indications that income is only moderately related to their decision to leave. 24 million U.S. employees resigned between April and September of 2021 — an unprecedented number. Less than one quarter of those are related to involuntary separations. And it should be no surprise that people are 10.4 times more likely to leave a job for having a bad corporate culture than income. The next most common reason? Coming in at a distant second is job insecurity and reorganization, which is 3.5 times more likely relative to income.
What this tells us is that culture is king. Culture is the “show me the money” indicator. As Peter Drucker famously said nearly sixteen years ago, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
But What Does This Mean Exactly?
It means cohesion, integrity, and leadership versus management. It means trust, inclusion, respect, and dignity. It means so many things, and only one thing at the same time — a company with a kind of leadership who genuinely cares about people.
We can say that caring about people is a luxury when profit is imperative. We can throw around the common colloquialisms like, “We’re not a charity.” Or “It’s all about the bottom line.” But the true visionaries, like the late Tony Hsieh, understand that caring is the new way to profitability.
And in the context of a changing culture, this has never been more true than now. At a time when more than 4 million people are quitting every month, it’s time for organizations large and small to play catch up with the direction of culture, which is people willing to take great financial and career risks for the sake of balance, harmony, and respect.
Easier Said Than Done
We can’t legislate caring. We can’t deluge business leaders with statistics about the importance of caring and building strong cultures and expect them to pivot on a dime. It doesn’t work that way. But the pain of the Great Resignation is being felt, if even subtly. It’s not going away and it won’t let up.
Investors, shareholders, and boards will eventually have to wake up to the new reality or otherwise face a continued slow decline. Change is hard, but not changing is harder.
Creating A Mosaic of Changing Culture
Such awesome research is being done on the Great Resignation, as many are completely fascinated by it. And we believe we have a novel approach to shine more light on this important moment in time, which is to tell the personal stories of those who have resigned.
We want to hear them. We seek to understand their pain. And we’ll be sharing their stories with you here in the DEEPER side of things.
Next week you’ll begin receiving a weekly podcast and blog sharing the story of a unique individual. Who they are, what kind of work they do, what caused them so much pain that led them to leave a well-paying job, and how is their life now?
We’ll be creating a mosaic of changing culture through the telling of their stories.
We’ve interviewed two so far. Their stories are revealing, insightful, inspiring, and hopeful. We can’t wait to share them with you. Stay tuned, and if you haven’t yet subscribed to the DEEPER side of things click the button below. And if you find our emails valuable please share with a friend.