Miracles on minimum wage
My friend’s little boy came home from school really agitated a few weeks back.
Some things are only solvable by people in the chair who have power, resources and reach
He was restless, he was preoccupied, he was not his usual bubbly self.
By bedtime there were tears.
The teacher had told his class that the planet is ailing and we need to save it.
We all need to save it. We all have a responsibility to save the planet.
But he is so small, and it all felt too big, and he didn’t feel up to it. He felt like he was going to fail and then it would all be his fault. He was inconsolable and actually genuinely shaken.
He is seven.
My friend soothed him and told him the thing only your mother can ever tell you credibly: it will all be OK. To this age, my mother is the only person I believe when she tells me it will all be OK. Anyone else says it, it’s patronising claptrap. My mum says it, it’s a balm.
So my friend told her little one it will all be OK. And then she said that she was taking this job away from him.
Mums can do that.
“This is no longer your job,” she said to him. “I am taking it away.”
He still had his other jobs: to brush his teeth and learn his lessons and recycle and not litter and go to his swimming lesson and clean up his room… but saving the planet was not the job of a seven-year-old. He could stand down.
Mums rule.
The little guy went to sleep, soothed, reassured. Protected. And ready to start the next day with a job that he was up to. He would put everything in the recycling as always.
So as my friend told me this story over a dinner of sushi and red wine, I asked her if she’d be up for doing executive workshops on this.
She laughed. But I was not joking.
We have taken a wrong turn somewhere in the maze of management manuals and the poorly disguised attempts to make people feel valued without pay raises or promotions… and we have ended up over-using the language of empowerment in all the wrong places. Lead from where you are, we encourage folks.
But the reality is inside every organisation there are appropriate and apposite levels or influence.
A bank teller can be proactive in helping clients with questions that maybe are above their paygrade or helping the branch stay tidy, friendly and compliant – all of which would be outside their job description. But no matter how good they are, and how willing, they cannot instigate a rationalisation of the bank’s tech estate. Or change the organisation’s risk appetite in consumer lending. Or decide the bank won’t do business in some jurisdictions or support some sovereign debt funds.
This is important because as much as I love knowing that people feel empowered, it is a fallacy to expect a seven-year-old will save the planet when raw sewage is openly being pumped into our waterways and industrial waste is drowning us faster than he can learn how to spell it.
He has a role to play. He has to be responsible in himself and we hope he will be proactive and reach a bit further than that.
But some things are only solvable by people in the chair who have power, resources and reach.
Not the seven-year-olds. And not your staff on minimum wage.
And if I look inside our own organisations, there is this learned helplessness at the top that has to be seen to be believed.
People sitting at the pointy end of the pyramid with the vantage point, resources and mandate to run vast organisations look down the rungs for creativity… courage… decision-making.
The industry has seen incredible energy, dare I say it… innovation… and impetus for learning and change coming almost exclusively from lower down the power (and pay) pyramid than you would need it to for true, far-reaching impact.
I don’t know what it would take for people at the top to take their own empowerment spiel seriously.
To not just say it to their juniors but to believe it for themselves.
To stop expecting miracles from people inside the organisation… people who are encouraged to reach much beyond their job description by those who stay firmly colouring within the lines of their own narrowly interpreted role.
Caretaker, not leader. Captain of a steady ship, not explorer.
And there is an element of that, of course, undeniably. But since leadership and creativity and exploration are needed… and they are needed to reach far and wide… I really do think that a little pep talk from my friend may help.
“Saving the bank isn’t your job, 23-year-old intern. I am taking that job away from you,” she would say.
You still have a role to play, but your job is to learn and grow and do the best you can with what you are given by way of tasks and projects. And when the time comes to lead, it will be your job.
Until then, I give this job to you… board member and CEO, executive and senior manager… this is actually your job. It has been your job all along.
So get to work.
#LedaWrites
Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.
She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem.
Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.
All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!
Follow Leda on X @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.
Yep:
Managers asking employees to set their own objectives (nope, that’s your job);
Wellness apps and poorly selected mental health first aiders to combat toxic working environments (nope, that’s exec’s job, not to take advantage of well meaning staff);
Employee “discount” schemes (lower cashback rates than free for all to anyone who can use Google) in place of fair pay rises (my employer doubled their highest paid director’s salary, yet give below inflation pay rise to staff and undervalue their skills and experience).
No wonder the employees of the world need “mum’s rules” of “worry about things that are in your control” and try to block out our striver mentality that it’s our responsibility to keep our poorly managed companies in business.