Am I crazy or does the slide deck embedded in the article look totally normal? I would applaud if my senior management presented this.
This type of culture is fine, there's nothing wrong with it, but we need to acknowledge that for people who joined in the previous setup, this is simply a management bait-and-switch.
The slide deck is not surprising or positive to me either. For me, it is an example of the corporate neofeudalism that currently dominates the US workplace. Not only are you are cog in the machine, but you have to be passionate and optimistic cog too! It is not ok to simply do your job, you have to be outside your comfort zone!
From my perspective, it is dehumanizing. People have value beyond their economic potential.
Top-down mandated culture changes are never going to be popular, but this looks like a particularly big one.
But then other times it was blatantly aimed at pushing people out of the company.
Management now aims to:
- Push teams further than they think they can
- Give employees clear goals to meet, by definition unrealistic ones
- Drive everyone harder to meet those goals. "No matter what / do anything."
- Fire them if they don't perform.
Also if an employee chose to take a lower salary to work at a company with a relaxed culture, and that culture becomes just like any company, why wouldn't that employee expect their salary to be upped accordingly?
If the culture will be gone no matter what because of the company's own reality, and they refuse to accept such changes, isn't departure an inevitable outcome?
Sure, but the point I am making is that it is a material change to established terms and conditions.
Interestingly, one of the standard lies told during acquisitions is that "nothing will change", it's quite unusual for an acquisition target to do something like this. Usually its managers and even its previous owners if they become employees of the acquirer are taken by surprise when head office stamps on them.