Requiem for a Working Stiff

There are two reasons that economies exist: (1) to remunerate the owners of capital to the optimal degree; and (2) to maintain social stability, a.k.a. so the renters of capital keep the roofs on their backs and don't storm the gates of McMansionville. 


The further the U.S. strays from reason #2 the more convinced I am that there is a price for greed. There is a cost for fear. What us humans will stumble over the brambles of adversity in the life auction to bid for at any price is stability. What's the market doing today -- name your price. It's stability that's priceless. There's actually a third reason -- electing more Republicans to public office by promising to cut the taxes of all Americans (dead or alive). But I digress. 


I showed you my economic cards to foreshadow a recent get-together with a former colleague once removed. It happened at a completely pass-up-able trade show in Boston few weeks back. I wasn't speaking, I wasn't listening. I wasn't paying or expensing or conventioning any of it. But I went because it gave me the opportunity to run into folks I normally graze indirectly through a fleeting tweet or a bump on a blog. The fact that these are "chance" meetings with no formal agendas or hard stops is sometimes as appealing as the names that drop into these calendar openings.


However, there was one meeting of particular merit because it reminded me of a time in the past where terms like "career-building" and "ladder-climbing" were more than platitudes to gold watches and indentured supplicants. The gentleman I was meeting with had just accepted a job to work as a KM grunt with a prestigious and high-flying brain factory fired from piping, fresh HBS idea ovens. 


George (I'll call him here) had a much better run than I as an independent KM consultant with longer feasts, shorter famines, and enough returning engagements to get him on the short list of folks who are called into bless, validate, and handicap most big ticket enterprise content decisions.


What search engine do we buy? Why is garbage-in, garbage-out the only process flow that works with any regularity in our document life-cycle? George was the guy who could address the daunting and predictable questions  looming on  the radars of cash-rich, strategically impoverished IT shops left minding the information management store.


Maybe it was another college tuition to meet? Perhaps it was a spouse furloughed by the uncertainty that the future includes a place for over educated Americans who expect promotions and raises? Maybe it was the shock of knowing that mom and dad are now not just confusing our names with our siblings but referring to us as their own siblings? 


Whatever landed over the top on the wrong side of the watershed  bed, George decided that being paid twice a month was preferable to the prospect of fatter, inconsistent pay days. He confided that it stung a little to see no press release parading the new home of his worthy track record and talents. The simple fact is that companies don't crow about their costs and George's new employer doesn't sell KM consulting for a living. 


Do they want to deliberate about how the only thing standing between them and bigger deals is better knowledge-sharing? Nope. And especially nope if they can't bill for it. Community-building? IP propagation? That's what we hired you to do, George. Let us know when you've fixed it and we'll have something.


I sympathize with George -- to a point. But then I need to remind him -- not of his senile parents or farcical former clients but that he is now firmly under the radar and cleared for take-off. This is a glide-path where he can pilot the hypotheticals. The slideware is gone.  Every new hire is not just a collegial grunt but a recruitment opportunity: what is it from me you expect? If the answer is a blank stare, I'll mold the fillings. You'll be pedaling your fulfillment right out of our showroom (or intranet for those of you viewing at work).

It's worth noting that in my own family my wife had her own recent breakthrough on working stiff etiquette.  Rather than lamenting the fact that her basket case nonprofit closes its firewall to remote access, she saw her dysfunctional IT operation as the gift that it is -- six uninterrupted hours on Acela to wifi her way to a job that leaves her alone long enough to live her life.  


In conclusion, George, believe your indoctrination into the land of working stiffs will offer its own rewards – not the least of which is far greater flexibility to unleash your pragmatic creative problem-solving in an environment that will benefit your new colleagues in ways they scarcely know.