work 2.o: rewriting the contract

Citation

Lockyer, C. (2002), "work 2.o: rewriting the contract", Employee Relations, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 558-561. https://doi.org/10.1108/er.2002.24.5.558.2

Why we all need more than a little “whoosh” and “wow” to survive in today’s “tough‐love” economy

The task of reviewing two recent management texts: Whoosh. Business in the Fast Lane and work 2.o: rewriting the contract has been tedious but ultimately amusing. Half way through the introductions I realised I was going to have insufficient “whoosh” and “wow” to read these seriously.

Tom McGehee defines whoosh as:

… a feeling driven by opportunity, fuelled by confidence, grasped by audacity and regarded by all that partake in it as a success …. Whoosh is excitement, confidence, energy and accomplishment. Whoosh is the feeling you need to have about your company. Or, whoosh is the sound you hear as your competition blows by you.

The new slogan, McGehee tells us, is “Freedom‐and‐focus + collaboration = Whoosh”. With sufficient “whoosh” or a “whoosh” management style executives can make their company a “creation” and not a “command‐and‐control” company. Creation companies share 19 common characteristics, including “focussing on the positive”. Initially, and thinking positively, I wondered whether whoosh would be the sound the book made as it was thrown into the rubbish bin.

Jensen, in delivering “a powerful new covenant for today’s tough‐love economy”, sets out 20 “articles” (elements) that employees now seek of their employers in the new employment contract. Article 13 tells us that work value today is “now, wow, and addictive learning”. Jensen enlightens us that we are drawn to jobs and companies where:

… we get just‐in‐time, on‐demand learning that’s exciting and continually draws us back for more … the wow part comes from connecting with, and learning from, great people … no boundaries exist between play and work, informal and formal learning, tasks and what we need to know.

Absorbing the messages in articles 16 and 17, that today’s work “flows from simplicity and common sense” and that modern employees “ignore the time bandits”, I simply questioned why anyone would waste the time to read this book or to take it seriously.

Notwithstanding the sheer banality, the “quack” analyses and remedies, plethora of simplistic comparisons between the old and the new, and lists of anecdotal stories, the books are interesting in their similarities and the extent to which both are examples of the surprisingly rigid conventions and constructs underpinning such management texts. Underpinning Jensen’s work is a simplistic and uncritical view of the consequences for organisations of the emergence of contingent employment and the rise of the portfolio or self managed career. In contrast, McGehee focuses on the organisational and leadership issues in managing and coping with change.

Both base their arguments on a mishmash of the knowledge economy, information society, recent performance of the American economy. As Jensen states:

… this is a tough‐love book for tough times …. Virtually every sector is now being hit with breathtaking drops in earnings. No wonder you’ll find in these pages recurring themes like productivity, assets and ROIs (p. 2).

To McGehee the changes are “technology, connectivity, globalisation, economic change” leading to changes in how work is configured and organised and why people and work have changed.

Unsurprisingly, both are consultants in change management, McGehee is described as vice president of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young’s accelerated solutions environment, while Jensen is president and CEO of the Jensen Group (www.work2.com).

Both offer general principles, Jensen offers 20 “articles” in the new work contract, and McGehee 19 characteristics of the creation company. Like their predecessors, these lists contain contradictions and inconsistencies.

In common with the reflective, experience‐based strand of management writing both present their “wisdom” as the distillation of theirs’ and others’ experiences, both books echo with anecdotes of how managers “saw the light” and “found and led the breakthrough”. Like latter day prophets they talk of visionary experiences; McGehee’s description of his realisation of the right leadership style while in the Marines serves not only to explain the but also to reassure (?) the reader that this author knows what leadership is really about. While McGehee tells the reader of his extensive Marine experiences, Jensen turns to the military to explain “extreme leadership”. The following passage is typical of much of the book:

06.30 (sub text – visionary managers are early risers). Hit the deckplates (sub text – visionary managers are hard and can take it). Within hours of meeting Rob Newson (lieutenant commander and a U.S. Navy SEAL), I was whipping across San Diego Bay at 47 knots an hour, being subjected to tremendous forces as we made instant 180 degree turns (sub text – visionary managers can cope with anything).

The message is that just as the task of the special operations personnel is to blow things up, “your resolve to reinvent leadership must be the same” (sub text – visionary managers must think the unthinkable).

Both offer simple and naïve solutions to complex problems of work. In places the banality and triviality is breathtaking. At the end of work2.o Jensen asks “What do Robin Hood, Denmark, Machiavelli, ARPANET, Archie Bunker, MTV, Globalisation and Gen Y have in common?”[1].

Likewise both present a route to the management goal of common purpose and employee acceptance of a unitary perspective on the organisation. Follow the new principles and employees will be motivated and committed. “Whoosh encourages people to focus their actions through the lens of three interlocking ideas: purpose, principles and their leader’s intent”. Whoosh is simply a synonym for high commitment and motivation, “ …enjoyed an eagerness to come to work, felt that you are valued for who you are and that your unique talents and capabilities contributed to the success of the organisation”.

Both have a simple checklist of actions, simple differences between the old and the new, implicitly neither consider the issues of insecurity at work, of the routine, stress and intensification experienced by increasing numbers of employees. Their message is like much of management writing, focussed on managerial and professional workers. Conflict is non‐problematical. The solutions to all modern organisational problems are in the hands of the manager, as usual the employee wants to be highly motivated and committed and is just waiting for the manager to find the right approach to unleash the “whoosh”. The creation company “tends to the good of the organisation through the good of the individuals”.

The style and message are little changed from the nineteenth century “success ethic” and have the same story line as the traditional Western, the manager can overcome the hazards and problems of modern corporate life by taking responsibility and encouraging colleagues.

Both are populist accounts of how to manage and leadership style, while McGehee talks of leading the creation company, Jensen uses the term extreme leadership, and lists of key tasks and activities. McGehee concentrates on principles and examples and less on lists “With purpose, principles, intent, and integrity” you can become a management leader and icon (McGehee, p. 149).

These two books, apart from a few new examples of company policy and changes and a reflection on semi‐current themes, are no more than average examples of airport lounge management theory, they have a few examples and stories, and are a useful source of management terms if you feel a need to update your buzzword bingo cards for the next faculty meeting. As further and higher education struggles with departmental and faculty deficits, of the consequences and implications for the next QAA, it is tempting to suggest at the next faculty meeting that all we need is Whoosh and wow. But exercise caution, some of our academic managers may actually believe this. This is a joint review with Whoosh. Business in the Fast Lane.

Note

1. 1.

   1. According to Jensen all have contributed to the emergence of the new work contract, Jensen humorously informs us Robin Hood is associated with the “first workplace benefits programme”, Denmark, with the “first national flag and the start of global brand management”. Machiavelli “is the first HR director” and Shakespeare is credited with launching “the first leadership development series”. Wow I hear you gasp. Another of the “55 disruptive moments pushing us into the new work contract” is (no 24) “the first water closets appear”. Now we know what the “whoosh” is for.