Is the company designed fairly?

Would I be willing to switch jobs with anyone in the company? For real, would I?

To the philosophically inclined reader this question rightly feels familiar. It’s a version of the Rawlsian thought experiment which utilizes the “veil of ignorance” to examine the design of a society.

Rawls was a 20th century political philosopher who was interested in ideas about justice. His most discussed work was A Theory of Justice. That work explores whether a society is just, not enterprises, but the idea is still helpful for corporate types like me.

The idea, in broad strokes, basically goes like this.

Let’s imagine that we were designing a society from scratch, with a totally blank slate. We’d have to make all these decisions about how people are treated, how the economy works, and who has what rights and privileges. Really important stuff to decide, right?

But there’s a catch. We don’t know what our own role in this new society will be. We could become a street sweeper, a musician, a stay-at-home-dad, a CEO, or a veteran wounded in war. As Rawls puts it, we’re designing this society from behind a “veil of ignorance” because we don’t know what our specific situation will be while we’re making all these decisions.

Rawls’s thought experiment isn’t a proposal for how to design a society - it’s obviously not practical and basically impossible to actually deploy. But it is a good test. In the society we’re designing, would we be okay with essentially being randomly assigned to a role? If so, the society is probably just because it is fair.

Which is where the question opening this post comes in, it’s loosely based on Rawls’s veil of ignorance thought experiment: if I would be willing to switch jobs with anyone in the company, the enterprise is probably designed fairly.

Just about every organization I’ve observed or been part of fail this fairness test, though I suppose some are more “fair” than others.

What would have to be true for a company to be “fair” and “just”?

In my experience, the main points of contention around fairness and justice in companies are between front-line employees and management. The paragraph below is how I imagine many front-line employees view the managers and executives of their company. And I’ll own it - this paragraph is absolutely informed by own experiences, from my first job slinging popcorn at a movie theater to being a middle-level manager in a fairly large enterprise today.

I would love to switch places with those people at corporate. They don’t do any of the “real” work in this company. People like us make the products and services for the customer. People like us are on the front-lines generating all the real sales to the customer. If the people who “manage” or work hum-drum desk jobs left, the company would keep running. If we left, the company would fall apart at the seams.

And yet, we are the ones getting screwed. We are the ones who bust our bodies in factories and do hard physical labor. We’re the ones getting yelled at by customers. We’re the ones working nights and weekends. And of course, we’re the ones who get paid less. We don’t get stock options, bonuses, or generous benefits. We’re also the ones who get cut first in a recession, unlike the people working at the headquarters.

And on top of all this, we are disrespected. In the company, people don’t even share news of what’s going on and they talk to us like we’re dumb. The higher-ups are condescending towards us. And, society itself looks down at us, even though, again, we’re doing all the real work to make the things they buy at the store.

It’d be one thing to deal with all this nonsense, too, if the higher ups actually knew that they were doing. They don’t. We’re the ones who know what all the problems are, and those corporate people just come up with their own ideas and never listen. They make bad decisions which get us into problems all the time. And I’ve hardly ever had a “good manager” in my whole career, and for all this talk about “leadership development”, nothing changes. People like me are held accountable for our job, and we get fired if we’re not cutting it. But nobody holds them accountable for being bad managers.

So yeah, if you ask me if this company is designed fairly, I’d say absolutely not.

Obviously, that passage is fictitious and a bit on the nose. But I do think it hits on a lot of the tensions that make enterprises unfair and even unjust. People who work on the front line have extremely difficult jobs, but they’re often paid much less or at a minimum are disrespected. People with cushier setups get paid a lot more, have much higher status, and yet they often aren’t held to a high standard.

I am not above reproach on these issues, though I hope my errors are not intentional or gratuitous. To me the lesson is pretty straightforward, and applies largely to people, like me, who are in the management class of organizations.

If I am lucky enough to work a cushy job with cushy benefits, I have to hold myself to a higher standard. I have to earn those spoils. I have to be good at my job, I have to always treat others with the utmost respect. I have to make good decisions. I have to lead and develop others. I have to take responsibility for the team’s success and be held accountable for bad calls.

Perhaps there’s an argument to be made that managers and executives don’t get a fair shake, but I think that’s unlikely. It’s also not unreasonable to argue that if people get into management positions via a fair process, it’s not the company’s fault that opportunities in society are unevenly distributed. And again, the veil of ignorance is simply a thought experiment and not a practical strategy, regardless of whether it’s applied to designing societies or designing enterprises. All this is to say, my setup here isn’t squeaky clean or clear cut - I acknowledge that.

But I don’t think the conclusions of the exercise are unreasonable either: we should treat people with respect, we should compensate people fairly, and if we’ve got a cushier setup than average, we should earn it by holding ourselves to a commensurately high standard. 

Those takeaways apply to managers and executives (myself included) more than anyone.

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Reactions Make Culture

Typically, at work…

When a project goes “red” the team is usually made to feel embarrassed. What if the executive sponsor thanked them for raising the problem quickly instead?

When someone is promoted there’s often a department wide email talking about their accomplishments and new role. What if we celebrated their mentors just as vigorously?

When someone goes out on vacation they usually leave an out of office message. What if the email administrator turned off their email access while they were away as a matter of protocol, too?

Email signatures usually include a job title. What if that line was instead used a sentence about the team’s purpose or why the sender is personally invested in the organization’s mission?

Project meetings often start with some version of a status update. What if they started with, “what’s something important we learned this week” instead?

Maybe it’s not always clear whether it’s better to light a candle or curse the darkness. But the lesson remains: how we react shapes, defines, and amplifies the culture.

And not just at work, but in families, churches, book clubs, soccer leagues, marriages, and political discourse too.

Kitchen Table Entrepreneurship

I have been trying my damndest this year to not give into the “that’s 2020” mentality. This whole year, I’ve been operating with a mantra of “get up off the mat, get up off the mat, get up off the mat.”

And let me start with honesty: I’ve failed on many fronts.

I didn’t finish this book, I shouted a lot at my sons, and attended church less, even though it was easier than before - to name a few ways I’ve failed.

But I’m encouraged. At the beginning of the year, I thought basically everyone but me had given up on 2020, as if it made you one of the cool kids to talk about how much 2020 sucked. 

But this week, after taking a breath, it hit me how many people hadn’t given up on 2020, and were just going about their lives, quietly, but with tremendous courage and persistence.

In retrospect, I’ve seen an explosion of what I’d call “kitchen table entrepreneurship.”

By this, I don’t mean the venture-backed startups that develop software or some lifestyle product. Though I’m sure that’s continued.

I mean the ideas that were born around kitchen tables, in WhatsApp threads, or on Zoom calls by regular folks just trying to find a way to make things better for the people around them.

Like my sister-in-law who proclaimed it to be “Pajama Christmas” this year, rolled with three onsies to our family get together, and found a way for us to do a family social-distanced wine tasting after virtual church, complete with tasting scorecards to make up for the fact we couldn’t safely do our normal traditions.

Or the public servants in Detroit who just figured out how to rapidly build out drive-through Covid testing within days and weeks of the pandemic starting, put in protocols almost literally overnight to prevent the spread of Covid within DPD and DFD, launched a virtual concert of Detroit artists to help people stay sane, or delivered thousands of laptops to schoolchildren that didn’t have remote learning capabilities.

Or my wife, who’s been charging with some of her colleagues on legit, sincere Diversity and Inclusion programs and a Caregiver support group. She’s too humble to make noise about it, but she and her colleagues are doing really innovative work to change their particular workplace and improving the lives of their colleagues.

Or there are so many people who have figured out how to get their elderly neighbors groceries, or shovel their sidewalks, or get things like neighborhood storm drain cleanings coordinated even though some folks in the neighborhood barely knew how to send an email before this thing started, let alone join a Zoom call.

Or just today, I was able to use my Meijer App like a mobile cash register to scan my items as I shopped - minimizing time in the store and contacts with frontline employees.

Or our local businesses on Livernois, just turning on a dime to find ways to stay in business and operate safely. Narrow Way, our local coffee shop, is really efficient now, has used technology and new offerings to make their customer experience even better than it was before, and even though I’ve been in a mask, they still found a way to know me by name and make me feel respected and welcomed.

And even people who’ve had relative after relative get sick or pass away - I’ve heard so many stories of how they’re finding ways to get through, or continue to help others, or just keep doing what they do.

These are just examples from my own life, but they seem to be illustrative examples of people just making things better where they are, without a lot of money or a lot of fanfare. They’re just doing it.

Maybe this has always been happening and I haven’t noticed it as much. Either way, I think this kitchen table entrepreneurship is worth celebrating.

As I’ve reflected on these stories of kitchen table entrepreneurship, there has been one lesson that’s struck me most.

During this year, the entrepreneurship I’ve seen has all been on things that are important. Like, I haven’t seen stupid or totally self-indulgent or narcissistic apps, products, and services emerge from this situation. Those are getting less buzz at least.

The kitchen table entrepreneurship I’ve seen has addressed problems that matter. People are finding ways to make things better in material ways for the people around them. They’re not doing this stuff to get a pat on the back, get in the paper, or hustle someone out of a dollar. They’re doing it because it matters for the people around them: their families, friends, employees, neighbors, and customers.

And the lesson for me has been relearning a simple but wise idea: focus on what matters. That’s when hard stuff gets done, and new ideas emerge from unlikely places - when the outcome matters.

In that expression - focus on what matters - I’ve always leaned into the focus part. If I just focus more, I can live out my intentions, I thought.

But I’ve learned this year, that it might be wiser to lean in the the “what matters” part of that expression. Is what we’re trying to do really, really important? If not, why are we even doing it?

The lesson of kitchen table entrepreneurship, for me at least, has been to dig deeper for why something matters. If we can find things that matter, the focus part seems to mostly take care of itself.

Seeing all this entrepreneurial activity emerge from kitchen tables all across the country has been truly inspiring to me. And more importantly, it has been a great reminder that we get up off the mat if and when something truly matters.