Salary Lullaby and Senior Employees

I remember that soul stirring scene in the movie Titanic, in which a Mother is softly narrating a story to her two young children and trying to put them to sleep. It was evident that the ship they were travelling in, was shortly going to sink in icy, lonely and deep waters of the Atlantic. But the Mother hopeless of their chances of survival, just wanted to ensure that the children get her maximum love and peace in those last turbulent minutes.

One can debate whether the mother had other alternatives, or should have made greater efforts to save herself and her young children. But there is absolutely no debate that senior employees in the corporate world are not children. However, then why such senior and experienced employees so often get into an easy stupor, while listening to lullabies sung by their monthly salaries that have always arrived on time in their bank accounts for many years.

The notification on the phone of that says, your salary is transferred for the month has the same lulling effect on some senior employees as mom’s singing on babies. Often these senior employees convince themselves that the timely salary transfer every month that they have received for many years means that they are contributing meaningfully, their employer organization is doing well and most of it, that they are safe.

This lulling phenomenon is greater, if the senior employee is also working for a big established organization which has a great brand name, is rich with resources, has great office infrastructure and also has some genuinely great and employee friendly HR policies. The lulling effect goes even greater for senior employees who have been regularly rated as good performers and have received great appraisals for many years. In addition to this, if the company CEO or that Hot Shot Business Head also waves to this senior employee energetically every time while passing by the said employee’s work station, the employee’s eyes just refuse to open from that comfy heady feeling.

Three Mistakes of perception that salary checks cause among senior employees:

1.    I am a “Hammer” and not a “Metal”:

Imagine, if a “Hammer” was a senior employee and who worked for a company that was in the business of making furniture. The company used it to hammer nails on various wooden parts of the furniture as per their various designs. The hard working Hammer had worked in this company for many years and over this long time, it had earned the reputation of being the best and the most trusted hammer in the company. Workmen competed to have it in their tool box but the company boss assigned the Hammer to only the best workmen. It sure was one hell of a hammer who had also earned a good and stable salary for many years.

Now, Imagine a new super glue got invented and there was no longer a need to hammer nails into various wooden parts to assemble various pieces of furniture. To accentuate the change further, customers also mostly began to demand “Nail free” wooden furniture, because it looked smoother and it was also the latest trend. Initially, Hammer didn’t feel the change much. There was a pipeline of old orders to service, the supply of the new glue was yet to match demand and the Hammer continued to enjoy, though slightly muted demand for its abilities.

Time and again, the “Department of Tool Transformation” in the company asked the Hammer, if it wanted to transform into an “electric saw”. They tried to even convince the Hammer and talked about the great demand for electric saws in the furniture industry, as electric saws bring up productivity, reduce costs and ensure sharper cuts. The Hammer ignored them, as the transformation would require first becoming the molten metal again, go through the fire and the beatings for reshaping and then getting reconfigured all over again as an electrical saw. Hammer were scared of a path that goes through the fire of change and gets it into an unfamiliar path of “cutting the wood” than its comfort area of “hitting the nails”. “I am a proud hammer, I can’t see my selves as a “saw”, the Hammer thought quite resolutely.

Then one day , while it was hammering down a nail on a piece of furniture, the boss arrives and said, that this was the last piece of wooden furniture with nails that we had to make and from now on, we will only be in the “nail free” furniture business. “All Hammers have to sell as scrap”, he said and asked the workmen to deposit their hammers in the official scarp yard. The Hammer felt all hammered down with the shocking news. Deep inside, it now realized that this was the final nail in it's coffin. Repenting, that it could have realized earlier, that inherently it was a “metal” and not really a hammer. And metal could be reshaped to meet any change provided it was willing to go through the fire of change.

 What happened to the Hammer happens to many senior employees who simply refuse to shape up in response to change and continue to live in a comforting trance of their existing expertise and achievements of the past.  Regular salary checks keeps the Hammers of the world sleeping and missing to reshape the metal in them and adapt to new realities. Remember that even a senior employee is inherently a “metal” and not a hammer and can always reshape it selves to keep going successfully for a very long time.

2.    “Chicks” are not “Falcons”:

Often young new employees or trainees are assigned to work under experienced & senior employees. Some among senior employees feel a sense of responsibility for the young team members and there could be others, who may even feel a sense of superiority watching the naivety & lack of experience of these younger employees.

 It is commonly assumed, that these newbies have a lot to learn and it will take many years before they reach levels of expertise similar to senior employees. Many senior employees believe that these innocent rookies can be allocated only the simplest of the tasks. They also think that because of their experience only they could do complex tasks of greater value. They do not expect young team members to solve complex customer problems, understand market opportunities and issues or provide smart inputs to strategic business plans. Senior employees often believe that these young employees were just chicks and do not have capacities of fully grown Falcons. Due to too much pride in their long experience and fat salary checks , many senior employees think that It will be a long time before these chicks get wings to fly over any big challenges, get beaks strong enough to pierce through hard problems and claws sharp enough to fight their way forward. 

But the news is that things are changing fast for the chicks! In many of these new gen, you can expect capacities of a falcon either already there or developing really fast. What they lack in experience is more than made up by their exposure and ambition. Rememeber, many of these young fellows grew up less on fairy tales but more on Silicon Valley stories. Armed with disdain for status quo, fearlessness of an entrepreneur, a burning desire to make their mark and a much greater connect with technology and popular culture, these young members of the workforce are often matching and exceeding contribution made by their senior colleagues at several companies. Stories of these chicks transforming into falcons are travelling fast among employers. It is important that senior employees now must realize that for them to remain relevant, they need to augment their experience with rekindling of their hunger, curiosity and ambition, learn to actively adopt new technologies and understand popular culture and the churn in social structures.  The lullaby sung by the salary check that fattened over the years should not keep senior and experienced employees oblivious to the urgent need to up their game. “Chicks”, Sorry, “Falcons” are coming.

 3.    My Daddy Strongest:

I distinctly recall this advertisement from a cooking oil company, where a little girl excitedly runs to her father and the father energetically picks her up from the ground and holds her up above his head. The little girl, all thrilled to be perched high up in the air but secure that she is held up by her father’s strong arms, shouts out three words. Those words were “My Daddy Strongest”. Well, little girls and little boys’ belief in their dad being the strongest is normal and all good. What is not normal and necessarily good is, when grown up and senior employees believe the same for their employer organizations.

 Often visible, especially among senior employees of successful and established organizations, is a belief in the permanent prosperity and strength of their employer organizations. Senior Employees infer that they will remain safe forever as long as they keep on producing minimum acceptable levels of output at these stable and well established companies. They believe that their large and successful employer will carry them in its arms and they will always stride forward as a derivative of the forever forward strides of their employer organization. 

 Real world does not operate like this. Employer organizations are subject to many headwinds and forces that can slow it down and in some cases completely get derailed from its path. Technology, Economic, Political, Social and Natural forces  can adversely impact businesses of even Sector leading organizations and it often further leads to a debilitating consequences on some or all the employees.  Many organizations do reinvent themselves or adapt themselves to survive and thrive again in changed business environments, but their journey to reinvention takes a toll on those employees who are unable to adapt to the new versions of their old employing organizations. Senior employees should not let the regular salary checks from these strong companies lull them to the need to be ready for a harsh and different world outside the comfy lap of such organizations.  

The above three mistakes in perception that are catalyzed by salary checks should be corrected by every senior employee, who wishes to enjoy a long and rewarding ride in this roller coaster world of work.