Just fire them. It’s that easy.
But seriously, employees just don’t care anymore, they aren’t grateful for the jobs that we’ve given them. They are so quick to switch jobs, to go somewhere where the pay is more or somewhere where they can work from anywhere.
Even a prestigious company like Goldman Sachs can only get 50% of their employees to come back to the office.
It’s probably because they can stay home and slack off right?
What happened to people caring about their jobs, being grateful for what their companies did for them, being loyal to the companies that invested in them?
What happened to the good old days where hard work, loyalty and grit were our norms and not whining, avocado toast eating, disloyal, apathetic people? Not generations of kids who deliver on one project and ask for a promotion/raise/recognition. What happened to the people who put in the time, work and energy before they expected to be rewarded?
Unfortunately, those days are gone. Those people are retiring and we’re stuck with the younger generations.
But what if I told you there was a way to get stock returns that are 2-3% higher per year?
What if I told you that the 2-3% per year in high stock returns were over 10 & 26 year periods so they are sustainable, better performance than your competitors?
What if I told you everything that we thought about business was wrong?
That chasing stock price is like chasing happiness?
That the very act of chasing happiness doesn’t allow us to be happy and the act of chasing better stock prices doesn’t allow us to have the highest returns.
We can chase our employees for performance; we can add OKRs, KPIs and metrics for everything. We can install employee monitoring software so we can monitor keystrokes, messages, emails, and even turn on their webcams so we can see that they are working. We can monitor their performance, lay off the bottom 20% every year and promote the high performers.
We can do all of that and still miss out on the highest returns.
What if we did the opposite of chasing stock returns? What if the unlock was to care about our people?
Because that’s how we get those returns.
Getting those returns is possible, it just looks different. We lean into caring about our people, we lean into building trust, fostering inclusive workplaces where people feel like they belong, fostering psychological safety where people feel like they can learn, innovate & share ideas. We lean into empathy and compassion when people are struggling. We give people meaning & purpose with their roles that are greater than hitting their performance targets, purpose and meaning that are tied to social impact. We give our people a Why instead of a How Much.
The more we chase our people for results, the more we chase them out of our organizations and chase ourselves from getting the returns we want so badly.
As Sandy Hyatt-James said, “the moment you stop chasing happiness, you become happy.” and as I would say, ‘the moment you stop chasing returns, the better returns you will get’
Click here for the best, research-backed, high-performance leadership strategies that will build you into a high-impact leader who turns their teams into happy high performers that achieve their goals. Rather than traditional leadership coaching, Elite High Performance blends neuroscience, mindset coaching, high-performance leadership strategies with cutting-edge technology & data to provide a clear path to building a high-performing team – or to turn around an under-performing team. It’s the same way professional sports teams combine high-performance coaching, technology and analytics to build a winning sports team.
For more on the future of work, check out this week’s Leadership Launchpad Project with Sammy Courtright. We talk about how to engage your people remotely and what the future of work might look like. Check it out on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts and more!
– Coach Rob
