“Employers have gone away from the idea that an employee is a long-term asset to the company, someone to be nurtured and developed, to a new notion that they are disposable.” – Barbara Ehrenreich

When you talk to a lot of people everyday, you can see things through different eyes.  Sometimes I wind up in conversations where someone is complaining…a lot…about distrust of the people they work for. It seems like there’s a return to the thinking of the past where employees are just cogs who are expected to unthinkingly follow directions. Remember the grey people from the Apple TV spot named “1984?”

But the new twist on this is that you must distrust them, and always make sure they aren’t taking advantage and are working hard enough. There’s even a business rationale for this – increased efficiency. The “do more with less” strategy.

Somewhere someone decided to write a business book about efficiency, taking the perspective people are lazy and could do more than they were. That concept was sufficiently simplistic and shallow enough that it became an instant “quick fix” success. Cutting the workforce by 40% became a badge of honor.

This has all but destroyed growth in radio. First PD’s were cut, and one was in charge of 3-4 stations. Then high paying talent that wouldn’t take a 50% cut. Then “unnecessary” executives, and finally, salespeople. So many of the top executives have replaced long-term concern for the industry with their own short-term financial goals. Leadership has been replaced with dictatorship, so naturally the answer to self-inflicted problems is to blame those shiftless employees.

We’ve divided into three types of organizations, (1) those who really don’t care about people, (2) those who distrust people, and (3) those who see a time like this as one to build great, people-oriented organizations that produce crazy good return.  Think Zappos.

The people I work with are amazing, dedicated, hard-working and even fun to be around.  We ALL know that we are all working toward the same end.  I don’t have a good guy/bad guy mentality.  If someone isn’t hardworking or dedicated, then it calls for some tough conversations and action.  I won’t subject my people to a cancer of dissatisfaction.

If you really think about the future, like Jefferson did, while acting in the day, you understand the value of talent, good leaders, and hard workers as an asset of the organization.  Not a liability, not a line item expense, an asset.  Spreadsheets don’t make organizations strong or innovative or valuable…or even failures.  It’s your people.