Who on Earth Cares?

Our power at work

Organisations exist to amplify the power of individuals, by adding to each person’s efforts resources such as capital, technology, networks, and the labour of colleagues.

Quietly, our workplace power plays out in formal and social contracts with colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders. We may take this power for granted: after all, are we not simply doing our jobs?

The reality is that, as we go about our work, most of us have agency to make others’ experiences better or worse – through how we pursue our objectives and in how we treat people as human beings.

When good choices are amplified, we improve the lives of colleagues and customers, and make society better. If we make bad choices, our work ultimately may disadvantage individuals and impoverish the world we live in.

For better

I recently saw a busy A&E nurse stop to hold the hand of a mid-seventies woman who was in tears and awfully scared. (Tellingly, the nurse’s peers rolled their eyes at this patient and walked by: one individual makes all the difference.)

A good restaurant manager takes pains to organise a special dish when you have had a long day. A taxi driver stops to help a young mother struggling with her child and the shopping, and forgets to set the meter.

An executive talks with conviction about the climate as well as company profits. Your manager sees you are upset and invites you to take a few days off. A colleague volunteers her rare skills to help you finish a slide deck for tomorrow.

For worse

People also use their workplace power to cause problems.

A restaurant chef on a bad day ruins a birthday celebration; his intractable manager further upsets everyone around the table. The jobsworth in a phone company keeps you on hold for hours and yet fails to answer your query.

Within work, an unbearable boss makes days in the office hell and causes stress that lasts all weekend. That lazy so-and-so in Finance delays you with your own budget, while Compliance blocks every deal because, well, Compliance says so.

Self-interest of OpenAI

Often these problems arise when self-interest trumps a person or team’s desire to create value for others. The scale may be great or small. When great, we see writ large the way organisations amplify our power – both thinking and action.

Today, formerly benign (ish) governments are making odd choices that disrupt whole societies. A few big firms have become a law unto themselves.

No doubt you are familiar with colleagues and people in service roles who cause more harm than good. But when it comes to misuse of power at scale, read my short article on OpenAI, Money versus people, the conflict ChatGPT cannot resolve:

‘The reckless inability of [OpenAI] decision-makers to reconcile self-interest and stakeholder value has brought, for them, influence and wealth; for everyone else, untold calamity.’

Being thoughtful

Of late, I have been thinking about more consistent ways to make good decisions, not least as these mean stronger organisations – what Marble Brook is all about.

Sadly, no clear line connects a given decision with later actions or outcomes. Motives have many facets, experiences are subjective; people are fickle and the environment volatile. Change has countless knock-on effects.

In a complex world, good decisions are not easy. Still, if we prioritise just one thing, I believe it should be to encourage more thoughtful choices.

Character of thought

You might enjoy how the Oxford English Dictionary (‘OED’) lists four senses of ‘thoughtful’, each on ‘having or characterized by thought’:

1. (a) Given to thinking; full of thoughts. (b) Disposed to think about matters; prudent. (c) Thinking about something; mindful; having as an intention or purpose.

2. Full of mental trouble; anxious; sorrowful, melancholy, moody (rare).

3. Capable of thought; conscious, intelligent (obsolete or rare).

4. Showing thought or consideration for others; considerate, kindly.

Our power to choose

We all encounter people who are not thoughtful in the ways described above.

They make poor decisions motivated by narrow values or simplistic aims; they act for the wrong, often self-serving, reasons; they fail to see how their actions harm others; they worry little about any damage they cause.

Who wants to behave like that? Whilst truly thoughtless people may be incorrigible, most of us have the power to create better experiences, for others and in turn for ourselves.