I don’t know if my mother has read Michel Foucault, but she was always very aware of power dynamics. On occasion I came home from school complaining about a teacher, trying to organise my thoughts as to exactly how I would get my point across the next day. My mother always said, “stop and think, who has the power?”. As a child, the answer is invariably the adult. My mother would then say, the only answer is then to get your head down, work hard and do exactly what they say until you get what you want. Don’t waste your energy complaining about unfairness, focus on the end goal. I was lucky to go to an excellent school, where the teachers were reasonable people, so it was a good lesson. However I’m not sure how well the lesson translates to adulthood and the modern workplace.
The lesson outlined above would perhaps have been good advice for someone entering the pre 1990s workplace. Back then we had the image of the “company man” (it was usually a man), perhaps IBM being the embodiment. If you worked hard, didn’t cause too much trouble, you were looked after with a reasonable salary and a safe pension. Yes, you sacrificed some autonomy but you were compensated with security. I don’t see anything particularly sinister about such a trade, many people still make it today when they forgo freetime or freelance work for a salaried position.
So, where do power dynamics come in? As someone who is hopefully getting married this week (am I allowed, Boris?) I’ve been doing some thinking about relationships that last forever. In a marriage, if your partner asked you to stop smoking or work harder, you should give these suggestions strong consideration. Your partner is looking out for your shared long term interests, and although the benefits may not accrue for years to come you expect when they do they will be shared. If someone you’ve been on two dates with made the same request, you might feel it controlling. Too many companies these days act as if they are IBM of the mid 70s (your wife) when in fact they are the new boyfriend. The chance of this relationship lasting forever is very low, you should be focused on getting to know each other and having fun. There are a handful of companies that can justifiably wheel out the IBM employee management playbook (Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft etc.) but for everyone else the world has changed.
When compared to a new amorous relationship, the power dynamic between company and new employee is asymmetric. I know from my recruitment experience leaving a job early is often frowned upon, meaning once a commitment is made it is not easy to get out of. There is also the fact that the company is your source of income, and thus the source of opportunity to do the things that makes life enjoyable outside of work, as well as the necessities of rents and mortgages. This makes any salaried job hard to walk away from, the temptation is always there to just stick it out that bit longer.
Given this power asymmetry, what can companies do to make the relationship more fair? While there are loads of individual policies one can look at I am a devotee of Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings in that I believe everything comes back to the principal of trust, and that trust is more important than any suite of policies. Trust your employees to work flexibly, on their own terms. Trust your employees with expenses and holidays. And if you can’t do that, fire them quickly. An abusive relationship is corrosive to both sides, and it is much easier for the employer to cut the cord than it is the employee. To quote Hastings:
“If a person on your team were to quit tomorrow, would you try to change their mind? Or would you accept their resignation, perhaps with a little relief? If the latter, you should give them a severance package now, and look for a star, someone you would fight to keep.”
Be as generous as you can with redundancy, have an exit program that upskills your staff for their next role, but don’t let a relationship become toxic. Relationships with asymmetric power dynamics always become toxic whether they are personal or professional. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, and by returning an individual's freedom to them you give them the best chance of finding happiness elsewhere.
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