The Problem Is Apathy
Do you care? Do you want to be a good person? A good parent or spouse? A good citizen? Do you want to be a good employee or a good manager? Do you really care? I've been asking that question of audiences for years. The overwhelming majority of tens of thousands have said yes. I bet you did too!
I was once invited by Xerox to come to Chicago and speak. I was to be the final luncheon speaker at the end of a week long customer conference. I got there early enough to hear several speakers ahead of me. I'll never forget this one guy.
This speaker with great sincerity and conviction got up in front of about 3,500 people. With the passion of a pastor pounding on a pulpit he said "The greatest problem in America today is apathy!" And he really meant it. Almost instantly some clown sitting behind me turned to his neighbor and said "Who cares?"
I'm not making that up. It honestly happened.
The goof-off sitting behind me may have been trying to be funny or maybe it was Freudian. It doesn't matter. The point is that the speaker was wrong. I believed that then and I believe that even more strongly now.
The word apathy means that you don't care and I don't think that's the problem. I started by asking if you care. If you're like most people I've met you said yes. People always do. So the problem can't be apathy.
I think there's a word in our language that we confuse with the word apathy. That word is futility. Futility means that even if you care you don't believe there's anything you can do to make a difference. You don't think that you can affect the outcome. Futility means that you feel powerless to do something that will change what is ultimately going to happen.
When organizations blame a lack of business success on employee apathy they just don't understand what the problem really is.
If you're like most employees, you care. You want to do a good job. You may have figured out that organizational process and culture can stand in the way of performance and lead to an astonishingly paralyzing sense of futility.
Futility occurs when you are not kept fully informed of what's going on and where things stand. It occurs when you are not allowed to think or make decisions on your own and you're told exactly what to do. Futility raises its ugly head when creative problem solving by employees who usually know what works and doesn't work is discouraged. It's when you aren't allowed to express your ideas or points of view and you're given no voice.
What's the impact of futility on your bottom line? No one knows. But companies concerned with how they engage and manage their people have drastically reduced that cost. People don't want a job; they want a respected relationship.
Companies that find agreement with our Team Covenant Philosophy often experience the lowest levels of employee futility. They also have the lowest rates of employee turnover in their industries. Our philosophy is simple. It's based on very specifically defined rules of respect for the individual in exchange for clearly defined and measurable individual employee accountability,
As you would expect we have other ideas about minimizing futility.