Saturday - First Time Ever

I lay in bed this morning drifting through that halfway house between sleep and panic sticken wakefulness. Even though I've been off work all week, my thoughts were stuck on my job like a wheel in a rut. I imagine as my return to the office on Monday looms ominously closer, my thoughts gear themselves up to getting back into 'workmode'.

As I lay there, it all became clear. The whole concept of the corporate work ethic is flawed. If I could break it down into a single rule it would be this.

'If people are encouraged to succeed at work in return for personal reward, then the company will also prosper.'

Of course this is complete crap because it assumes that the individuals aims are the same as the companies, which of course they are not.

Anne's goal is to avoid getting sacked. She doesn't need any more money at the moment and all she does is with this aim in mind. Jez's objective is to gain more power, authority and money.

Neither of these goals benefit the company. The company probably would prosper if Anne were sacked as it would save in salary and improve the morale and efficiency of the department that she runs. Jez's objective means that he backstabs his peers and works on whatever he thinks will impress those that can enhance his career path. Again this will not benefit the company. Now multiply that by the thousands that work for the business across the globe and you have a group of individuals all pulling in completely different directions. The company is just going to get pulled apart.

Even the CEO, just works to impress the shareholders. He doesn't work to improve company profits, not really, impressing the shareholders and the market to increase share price is his sole aim.

This all goes back to my original theory of quantum objectives and I realised as I lay in bed, can be found in all walks of life. But there has to be a different way. When I was at school my class was given an exercise to create the ideal utopian society. Everyone agreed that money was the route of all evil and then reinvented systems based upon communism and barterism.

Now, a good few years older, I wonder if perhaps money isn't the problem but the way in which we distribute it is. Perhaps we need to step back from the detail and understand exactly what it is we want to achieve. And then I had an idea.

What if we didn't reward people on the basis of meaningless and unmeasurable objectives that were vaguely attached to some corporate work ethic. What if people were solely remunerated based upon good deeds? Would the world be a nicer place then? Would more people give up a seat on a train or be complimentary about someones haircut if it meant they got an extra tenner in their karma based salary that month. This could also be extended to the workplace, where position and salaries were based solely on niceness. I daresay that Jez - who is playing the game by the rules purely for his benefit would change tact and likewise his manner in the office. And then who could begrudge him his post.

Now you're probably asking yourself how this will boost company profits, but we have to make a complete paradigm shift in our thought processes. Company profits as we know them will not exist because companies will not exist for the same reasons. They will make profits based upon every good action they take. They will still manufacture products and sell financial products for the benefit of mankind but will be rewarded by the way in which they benefit the human race. It will be simply a question of measuring and rewarding the how and not the why.

Of course there is one slight flaw in this plan, in that those who have attained power and status through more traditional means would then have to give it up and by their very nature, they're not likely to do so. But if we ask nicely they just might comply.