MacroEdgo

If Quiet Quitting Results in Reduced Production – A Big ‘IF’ – Then It Was Production That Never Was Paid For

The despondency many feel captured in pre-release comments by a friend, immediately agreed upon by another…

Since my comment on LinkedIn about David Westin’s sub-par coverage of Quiet Quitting on Bloomberg Television, I am pleased to observe that he has lifted the bar to his normal high standard. Even articles on Bloomberg’s website with titles ostensibly indicating opposition to the trend on deeper reading point at all of the reasons for why it is an important and necessary development.

On Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week from 23rd September David Westin had a much better discussion over these developments with Larry Summers, introducing the topic through Tom Brady’s announcement he is taking each Wednesday off from work.

Larry discussed his concern over the potential impact of these trends on productivity, which is a regular concern mentioned by business leaders and economists, and by politicians in general talking about policies aimed at increasing workplace participation.

It was suggested by Larry that a drop in hours worked by employees of say 3% equated to a pay increase of 3% and a 3% drop in productivity.

It was unclear whether Larry was talking about overtly working fewer hours for the same pay, which is obviously a related issue as it addresses improving work life balance, or whether he was talking about Quiet Quitting which meant the reduction was in reality setting a boundary and that the time being reduced was never paid for by the employer.

If it were the latter, I would find it jarring that there would be concern about a loss in productivity that was obtained as a gift from workers at best, and by exploitation of workers at worst.

Yes, when all of the labour businesses use must be paid for, productivity per dollar spent producing a product will decrease.

But is there not fundamentally something wrong with not paying workers for the labour they supplied to produce the product?

Is that not something that the West has railed against for over a century since slavery was abolished and has objected to with regards to other nations?

There is another problem with this simplistic view, however, and it is made obvious by the data emerging from trials around the world at reducing paid weekly work hours while maintaining the same level of weekly salary. Consistently these case studies are showing that the level of production is maintained even though people are working fewer hours per week, i.e. real labour productivity increases, that being production relative to effort as measured by time.

It is confirmation of what David Graeber said in “Bullshit Jobs”, along with others, and of what I have been saying about ‘just in case’ work consuming large portions of workers’ effort and time.

Many may have trouble accepting this reality. So, as I like to do, I am going to break it down with a concept to show how this all was predictable based on changes in the workplace that have occurred over the past half century of Extreme capitalism.

Implicit in capitalism is a view that each worker will contribute towards the bottom line of the enterprise, whether it be profits for businesses (as in Friedman’s Profit Imperative) or outcomes towards goals for not-for-profits and Government agencies. Of course, as greater acceptance of these Friedman’s precepts spread in management culture, the not-for-profits and Government agencies were reorganised to more closely resemble in function and in culture profit-based organisations so that outsourcing and all sorts of initiatives were undertaken in the name of efficiency (even when experiences were often showing these to result in inferior outcomes).

But the point is that this culture spread so that there is not much cultural difference between workplaces, in general, and that the rare workplaces that standout for being good employers for workers are a result of actively and decidedly swimming against that current.

(Don’t believe me, well check this article out and while I readily admit to being impressed by the Founders, the reader should note I did not even realise that the article I was about to mention in my post was actually on the Atlassian blog until I copied the link.)

What has been the biggest element of these culture changes through the long period of Extreme capitalism?

I would suggest it has been the increased competitiveness between colleagues and the acceptance of a view that the ends – of achieving promotion and other individual rewards – justify almost any means.

This explains a large part of my interest in the reality show “Survivor”, and especially how the show has developed – i.e. competitor tactics or behaviours – over the past two decades, as I have mentioned often in my blog posts.

The belief in the importance of the individual over the collective good has been central to this change. The misbelief that greed is the greatest natural motivator of human beings was used as justification and led to broad acceptance that self-interested actions are a natural and, to some, even admirable modus operandi.

I also have it on good authority – actually several authorities – that recent and temporary migrants from developing nations are especially sort after within strongly domineering organisations as such individuals typically retain a stronger ethic of working towards a collective goal, culturally they are inclined to believe (and are less likely to challenge) their boss and higher executives on what is that goal, and because their extra vulnerability makes them especially compliant and hardworking, and thus less likely to object to their exploitation.

Where did this self-interest culture come from?

Well ask the average person whether they believe many politicians are acting in the interest of the broader community, and whether CEOs deserve pay packets equivalent to 100x the average remuneration within the organisation and then receive a sweet golden handshake when leaving after just a few years at the helm even when their performance was sub-par.

In Australia we even had a recent ex-politician (and Ambassador to the US) admit that the government he was a part of had given up on doing the job of leading the nation, justifying their dereliction of duty with some waffle about private enterprise and the individual.

When people observe those entrusted to lead exploiting the system for their own advantage over the collective good, then the concept of working towards something greater than oneself is not just severely eroded – it is entirely lost!

Why would they be a dope and work for something greater than themselves when nobody else is?

Now I am not for a moment suggesting that ambition to ‘get ahead’ is new, but I would suggest that whereas that saying once indicated a desire to get ahead of regular bills and financial commitments to give a little breathing space in life, now it is given to imply a great deal more about outcompeting colleagues and others in society.

And along the same lines, I will get in quickly before the doubting reader retorts, “but aggressive and dominating bosses have been around since day dot”, and say that the fracturing and individualisation of the workplace – along with strict control of information sharing between colleagues, with legal implications – has weakened those collegial links and made everybody more vulnerable to psychological and other impacts from dominating bosses.

So here is the concept. Whereas 50 years ago there was an assumption that everyone in an organisation knew that they were working towards maximising the bottom line outcomes, and understood within the organisation there would be a spectrum of ambitions held across the workforce, most people believed that the leadership – if not always sympathetic to individual concerns – was invested in those outcomes.

Conceptually that might be depicted as below with all levels of the organisational triangle from the CEO (or highest placed executive) at the peak right down to the newest and most junior members (the bottom level of the hierarchical pyramid) of the workforce committed to working for that outcome. In this model with 6 hierarchical levels above the base level (left triangle) each person has 6 direct reports so that the level below the CEO is responsonsible for the resources below them in the triangle (the middle triangle) and each subsequent heirarchial layer has responsibility for resources below them (as shown in the right triangle for an employee on the second level below the CEO) and so on downwards to the base layer. Thus, this model organisation is composed of 46,656 employees below the CEO.

In the pre-Extreme capitalism period there was an implicit assumption that employees’ motivations were well understood – everyone was working towards the same goals (below left, a portion of the above hierarchical triangle depicting every worker at every level in the organisation motivated to drive towards the desired ‘bottom line outcomes’ for the organisation as indicated by green arrows) while there would be variation in the level of aspiration for promotion amongst the workforce (as indicated on the right in the same portion of triangle, thus the same employees, with various sized red arrows pointing upwards indicating varying aspirations for promotion).

Now from a half century of increasingly Extreme capitalism few really believe that everyone is working primarily towards the stated bottom line outcomes because it is not their lived experience or what they see from people in privileged positions within society.

Yes, I realise that compensation frameworks for high level executives attempt to match remuneration with stakeholder expectations, especially of the owners of capital (large and powerful shareholders), but we all know the whole system has become very short-sighted. Shenanigans that lift share prices rapidly or are at least seen to rapidly achieve other goals, irrespective of long term needs or even consequences, win out with the owners of capital and other influential stakeholders who are more often than not looking for quick gains. But you don’t need to believe me on that, just observe Warren Buffett’s commentary over much of this period (I realise some infer he is a relic who does not understand the modern business world… or is the reality that he imposes a level of authenticity to contemporary business practices that most insiders would prefer left unstated?).

In a very individualised system, where greed is thought of as not just natural but a necessary ingredient for success, where there is no trust that anybody near or around you is authentic and genuinely working primarily towards the bottom line of the organisation, it is very obvious what a person in charge of resources – including labour resources – is going to do…

Of course they see those resources as theirs to get for themselves additional winnings including remuneration and bonuses, promotions, and other status-related trappings of their position which they can brag about internally within the organisation or externally within their social groupings and display to broader society.

The people with greatest self-interest in the system are primarily motivated by using the resources at their disposal for their own purposes, and the degree to which this self-interested motivation outweights organisational bottom line goals is inversely correlated (as below showing the same portion of the organisational triangle as above modified to reflect the situation in Extreme capitalism).

That is where ‘just in case’ work erodes the bottom line of all medium to large organisations – those in charge of these resources fill much of the time of those working under them with extra tasks that might just be handy to make that manager look good, as if they have gone ‘above and beyond’, to those in a position with influence that just might increase their case for rewards including promotion.

This works just the same for those (many) managers with dominating bosses – their anxiety over being picked apart leads them to have their staff following all sorts of red herrings ‘just in case’ their boss has had a bad day and is intent on finding something wrong in what has been done knowing that continual setback will impact their chances of receiving rewards.

Now here is another thing – of those businesses that I mentioned earlier that have been trialing reduced weekly work hours for the same weekly pay, I wonder where these businesses open-minded enough to participate in the trial might be on the spectrum of workplace cultures.

I think most would agree that they are likely to already be some of the better workplace cultures.

And if these ‘better’ workplaces are seeing significant benefits, then you can be sure that workplaces with very dominating and destructive cultures will see very significant benefits.

So I ask anybody thinking deeply on Quiet Quitting and the other broader changes happening in this new era which I refer to as the Great Reset, which revolves around significantly greater self-care through redefining our identities through our broader connection in society, what is the most important task for leaders today…

Convincing workers to go back to the office and doing all of those extra unpaid work hours?

Or implementing a Compassion Culture so that the workforce buys into the authenticity of the bottom-line goals of the organisation?

Now, just as the answer to this question is obvious, so too is the biggest stumbling block – that the escalators of budding executive leaders within organisations are full of the same type of self-interested, hyper ambitious individuals – affinity bias in action – which need to be made to understand that the culture has changed; that the resources that they have been privileged to oversee are living breathing human beings with lives more diverse and complex than their pure utility in the workplace.

This is where I actually was encouraged by the recent widely discussed Gallup research which found that fully two-thirds of managers were not engaged. That supports my thesis because it shows that these people trying to ride the escalators of ascension are also hurting, and I would have been disappointed and discouraged if the findings were at the other extreme.

This means that these managers know that they are not thriving as individuals within such competitive and dominating environments, and many likely are seeking change but feel powerless to achieve it by staying in place, while believing that a shift is unlikely to be to a better workplace culture.

This has actually been a common retort of employers through the workplace changes noticed in the Great Reset era thus far from ‘the Great Resignation’ through to ‘Quiet Quitting’ now.

My response is simple – you are not better off with the devil you know!

Think about what you said. You are dealing with a devil!

And we all need to have greater optimism in humanity and that the best we can aim for is to be accepting of our exploitation.

It has long been my view, based on vicarious observation, and ultimately trauma, that for many who spend time in a deeply toxic work environment their behaviour migrates from civil to increasingly boorish as they learn from observation and experience that such behaviour is more frequently rewarded within the culture.

Such compromises to character and values are not done without a psychological cost to those who plasticise their personality for personal gain.

The bottom line is this – managers will buy into a Compassion Culture if the leader is authentic. And those who resist, those truly psychopathic managers out there (I recall one Australian survey found that 1 of 6 managers had psychopathic traits) who have been favoured by the selection process and affinity bias applied through the Extreme capitalism period, will simply need to be culled.

And if senior decision-makers baulk at the thought of paying out the phsychopathic managers to remove them, just consider for a moment the cost of not doing that in terms of productivity loss from their negative impacts, and worse still, costs from injury claims and legal costs that I stated are likely to explode over the years ahead especially for organisations slow or resistant to implement a Compassion Culture.

Perhaps the biggest question is exactly how many of the psychopaths made it to the real seats of influence within our organisations. As my close connection made clear in their comments to me in the photographic header to this post, and another who read their comments and immediately agreed, there are many who have been in these environments for several decades and are deeply despondent in their belief that there are far too many psychopaths in influential positions to even countenance that positive change is possible.

But I think you will agree, Larry Summers, perceived drops in productivity from Quiet Quitting is really quite trivial when we consider the prospective unleashing of the full creative potential of humanity in the Great Reset era where work life balance is sustainable and people identify fully with their broad contributions to society …

Published first on LinkedIn on 30th September 2022

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Quiet Quitting, Quiet Firing and Loud Quitting: Explainers

Quiet Quitting – An employee doing what they are paid to do to the best of their ability, but doing no more. At its basis this is about a worker setting boundaries to not be exploited by an employer and is thus a rejection of Extreme capitalism that assumes an employee will accept any and all ‘opportunities’ for a chance to ‘get ahead’, i.e. build more wealth in competition with colleagues and in broader society to acquire more material and status goods. Some QQs may be prepared to do more work, to the best of their ability, if paid. Others are not interested in doing more work, even if paid fairly for it, because they recognise the extra costs to them of that work in terms of their broader roles in society and the impacts on their health, and because they have deprioritised the acquisition of material and status goods.

Quiet Firing – An employer, most often a manager or group of managers, deciding that a worker or group of workers is no longer beneficial to them – or perhaps the worker(s) has tried to improve the culture which threatens the manager(s) as in the case of ‘whistleblowers’ – so the workplace is made intentionally hostile to that worker or group of workers to psychologically coerce them to leave rather than them being overtly fired with potential costs including, but not limited to, legal action or bringing extra attention to the manager(s) internally or externally. Results in greater toxicity, because those implementing such a strategy are inauthentic and incapable of the authentic compassion and empathy necessary for a healthy work culture, which may be counteracted by offering (real or illusory) enticements to others to encourage the isolation of those being quiet fired so that colleagues lose their own empathy and compassion for their colleagues who are being mistreated.

Loud Quitting – Is when an employee has become so disillusioned with a workplace that they will leave but will not do so quietly taking to social media and other means to expose the toxic workplace culture responsible for traumatising them. Many career advisers suggest that this is an error for the worker, and while there is some validity to the view that there may be career consequences, it is important to not trivialise the trauma to which the employee has been subjected especially when their voice (cries/pleas) was disregarded. I do not profess to know what was going through that dear, precious woman’s mind, but it would appear to me very obvious that by taking her life by jumping off the Ernst & Young building where she worked, for very long hours in an environment she had told friends she was mistreated, Aishwarya Venkatachalam’s final statement to the world was a piercingly loud one against toxic workplace culture and racism. As a society we cannot let that statement pass without action – we must not remain tone deaf to these cries for help from very many amongst us! #sayhername

First Published on LinkedIn on 21 September 2022

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Quiet Quitting

Actually, it looks like I have lost my posting ‘privileges’ on LinkedIn so it remains to be seen whether this will be published on LinkedIn today – I have tried several times, although it says posting was successful, it does not appear in my list of posts or in my activity … addendum – amazing what mentioning here and in an email did – post up now…

Quiet quitting – the term – is a misnomer.

Most assume that it is about quitting on a job. It is not.

It is about quitting, or refusing to participate, in a system that has progressively become unsustainable because it is unfulfilling and unhealthy to those within it.

Extreme capitalism is what is being quit!

Quiet quitting is an appropriate and compassionate action to take and it is a part of major changes that come together in a new era which I refer to as the Great Reset.

What needs to be asked is not whether it is acceptable that a colleague does just what they are paid to do, nothing more, nothing less.

What really needs to be asked is whether a colleague should be permitted to outcompete others purely in terms of hours worked.

If someone feels insecure at proving their value from a set number of working hours, with their unique combination of hard, intense and efficient work (relating to intelligence including EQ), should they be permitted to work uncapped hours to outcompete others who may not be able to work extra hours because of any number of reasons related to their broader lives (i.e. parenthood, other caring roles, and other giving roles within society including self-development and self-care)?

Of course the employers and self-interested managers within the system are not going to recognise this and support or even agree with the need for this change; Extreme capitalism benefits their self-interests and many feel they are due this from subordinates or employees because it is what they did to achieve their status.

With no cap to permitted work hours, within a system based on domination from imperialist white-supremacist patriarchy, insecure workers in large organisations take on more and more meaningless, ‘bullshit’ (from David Graeber’s work), just-in-case tasks that are pointless and soul-destroying, while in small business they remain vulnerable to exploitation as there are few other options where a compassion imperative is enacted.

Like all Real change this is being driven by people power.

It requires self-reflection on what is really important in your life. Many have done that work for themselves through the pandemic and have decided to quietly quit on Extreme capitalism.

There is nothing to be afraid of, you just need to be honest with yourself on one question – Did I feel fulfilled with the life that I was living in 2019?

If the honest answer is No, then you need to ask yourself whether you really want to return to it as pandemic measures become forgotten and employers push for a return to ‘normal’, the normal that favoured them so greatly.

Perhaps quiet quitting is the most compassionate thing you can do for you.

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Compassion Culture Benefits All Stakeholders Including Shareholders

Why is a compassion culture better for all stakeholders in capitalist societies including shareholders?

Besides the threat of unheralded injury claims from toxic workplaces that put businesses in jeopardy (as I explained in “The Great Reset At Work“)…

it is my thesis that a great deal of work done by white collar workers is ‘just in case’ work which is really about making self-interested managers look good, or addressing their anxiety over potentially appearing bad to their domineering managers, rather than actually adding value to the business.

I have witnessed the rise of ‘just in case work’ from many sources over many years.

And yes, this is highly related to David Graeber‘s famous “Bullshit Jobs” thesis where he argues that over half of work is pointless and knowing this does harm to those who are made to perform this work.

After the extended period of Extreme capitalism, many workplaces are operating manically, and managers down through the hierarchy are thus incapable of making good decisions to increase productivity by genuine efficiency measures. Executives have continually initiated restructures to achieve efficiencies which in the main are a euphemism for smaller workforces.

Headcount cuts just drives that viciously manic cycle and actually decreases pure productivity (quantity of work adjusted for quality relative to effort) thus burning out workers trying desperately to, at best, appear to be as productive as before the headcount cuts by increasing their own effort even further.

All of this is worsened by ubiquitous communication technology eliminating separation of work and home life.

This explains the negative stimulus behind the Great Resignation/Reshuffle and Quiet Quitting.

(Of course the positive stimulus is Great Reset era thinking that a better work life balance, and an identity less entwined with ‘what I do’ for income, is indeed attainable.)

This describes the reality of many large organisations, and the consequence has been an enormous experiment to see how long before large numbers of human beings ‘break’.

The evidence, from many sources including from insurers, suggests that point was surpassed in the past decade.

Of course in small businesses the reality is somewhat different in that actively involved owners will immediately seek to eliminate inefficient ‘just in case’ and other pointless work if detected.

The more tenuous nature of the small business workplace, however, incentivises small business owners to exploit workers and owners use this to justify their own poor behaviours to themselves.

This behaviour is systematically supported in two ways. After decades of Extreme capitalism, regulatory capture by business groups including small business means that regulation and enforcement is not as active as it should be to protect workers from exploitation.

Secondly, when the worker knows that there is as high a chance of being overworked and burnt out in a large corporate business as a small business, ‘better the devil you know’ becomes a strong factor in accepting exploitative practices.

If large corporations develop a ‘compassion culture’, and if Governments regulate and enforce for it, then small businesses will have no choice but to follow, and businesses that are viable only by exploiting workers will be exposed as unsustainable.

This will lead to much better allocation of resources in economies, and thus will actually strengthen our capitalist societies.

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The Great Reset: The concept and the passion

In “The Great Reset: An explainer” I gave a brief description of the political and economic backdrop that led to humanity entering the pandemic at a moment of social extreme with a paradigm shift due or even overdue.

I explained that trends in society tend to occur in cycles that can be conceptualised as a swinging pendulum.

The truth is that this concept is simplified because it infers that trends oscillate around a stationary point but we know that – no matter how much conservatives seem to dislike the idea of it, at least over shorter time frames – human society has progressed an awful lot since we mastered fire and put circles to work (as wheels and then gears).

So intuitively most of us understand that our societies progress over time, but most of us also recognise that there are periods where change seems to happen quickly, and there are other times when change happens slowly, or perhaps conditions even go backwards. In many ways we see societal progress over time as the diagram below shows, a wavy line but generally heading up to the top right hand corner of the graph.

To make the situation even more complex we all understand that societal progress is in reality a whole host of factors ranging from major issues such as how we view inequity in wealth (the major idea discussed in the ‘explainer’) to relatively minor factors such as how we choose to dress and present ourselves, though older members of society through history have often treated these as far more significant issues (for example in the 1960s when young people as a cohort really began to express their individuality). That is in part an over-reaction from those who feel insecure that they are no longer a part of the demographic that sets trends within society, but it is also a reflection that all of these trends intersect to produce an overall view of societal progress.

In other words, if we were to narrow in on that wavy line of progress we would notice that it is the overall trend, but that there are an infinite number of trend lines – some more significant, some less significant, some oscillating more slowly, others more rapidly – that together make up the overall trend. This is a little like zooming in on a Google map revealing progressively smaller roads which are less and less significant to the overall way people move around, but that does not mean that those very minor roads are less significant to all of us (e.g. those who live nearby in the case of roads).

Of course the relationship between capital and labour – those who have large pools of resources and wealth at their disposal, both personally and/or as a consequence of status or position within society, and those who do not – has always been one of the most critical trends affecting human progress.

Now these wavy lines of social progress can still be reconciled with the swinging pendulum concept if we think two-dimensionally, or in the second derivative as some who like maths prefer to say.

If you are not a fan of mathematics, let me explain it this way. Imagine that you have an animation of a singing pendulum on your phone which you are looking at on the face of your phone. Turn the phone a quarter turn so it is at a right-angle to you and then gradually raise your phone as you move it from left to right while visualising in your mind the position of the round end of the pendulum. Hopefully you can visualise it tracing a wavy line like the one above.

Now in this concept I intentionally chose a pendulum singing widely and above the centre point because that is how progress has occurred for humanity to this point as I described in my explainer. The path of the centre point of that pendulum swing is drawn on the next diagram to show that it indeed rises at a constant stable rate but that there are moments of extreme when the pendulum approaches a course change at the top of its swing.

Wavy line of social progress showing periods of extreme

Side view of a pandulum at various positions indicating its centre (the orange line) moving upwards at a constant rate over time.

I referred to this concept of an upwardly rising pendulum for societal progress in an earlier essay entitled “How Might Milton Friedman Respond To The COVID-19 Pandemic“. Friedman is considered a hero of conservatives as it was in large part his intellectual rigor that led to the reforms of the 1980s most famously implemented in the US by President Reagan and in the UK by Prime Minister Thatcher due to their veneration by Anglophone conservatives. In Australia reforms around this time were implemented by the centre-left Hawke/Keating governments.

The main point of that essay was to say that I believe that the Mr. Friedman who wrote “The Social Responsibility Of Business Is To Increase Its Profits” in 1970, if he were brought forward in time to assist humanity in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by allowing his economic rigor to intersect with recommendations of medical experts, would not have recognised the economies that he was dealing with because it would be unfathomable to him the extreme to which his ideas had been taken. Thus I posited that he would have said that if he was to formulate a response to the COVID-19 pandemic he would not be starting from here!

There is no need to rehash exactly where we are, in my view, in an observational sense as it would be a repeat of that essay and much else that I have written over the past 3 years including most recently in “The Great Reset: An explainer” and in “The Great Reset At Work“. Instead I will label the most recent half century of that wavy line of social progress with dates as below showing how through the 2010’s the pendulum was at an extreme and its direction change has created the perception that our progress is actually retarding.

Just as the 1960s and 70s was a period of social extreme, so too was the 2010s as the pendulum reached its climax especially in the way our Extreme capitalist system favoured capital over labour.

However, if we narrow in on the model for the present day and through the next few decades this model explains exactly why I am ultimately very optimistic.

As the pendulum reached its extreme in the 2010s social conditions were extreme. But the pendulum has begun its swing back and is gathering momentum. This is the Great Reset Era and the rate of change will continue accelerating as ideas spread from early adopters to influencers to the broader public.

I firmly believe that we are setting ourselves up for a golden Great Reset era where social progress will accelerate on the back of significant reform which is possible because humanity is primed for that change no matter how much conservative and other right wing political actors attempt to scare the population away from the idea of social progress (again, which I will not discuss as I have on many occasions, most recently in “The Great Reset Era At Work“).

The evidence of this is pervasive through society in the way that we communicate and tell stories, i.e. through all of our media, and is apparent to anyone perceptive to it. And my perception is that this is indeed accelerating as I would expect to happen.

Much of that change will centre around how we identify with ourselves in the Great Reset era, and at the centre of that will be the role of paid employment and creating a better balance between it and our broader lives and roles in society. Thus industrial relations is shaping up, once again, to be a focal point.

Given the level of inequality, debt, and middle-class erosion, however, the breadth of dissatisfaction expressed and change desired will surprise many corporate and organisational leaders and leave many flat-footed and unable to adjust. The impacts will not be felt just in poor performance of organisations under their influence, it may prove fatal if toxic workplace culture is exposed through the legal systems as I anticipated in “The Great Reset At Work“.

Simply Milton Friedman’s profit imperative is being replaced by a compassion imperative.

The corporate leader who has best articulated this change to this point is Indra Nooyi and I recommend this video to all.

In my next post I will describe one idea which I believe its time has come and which has the potential to unleash human potential in unimaginable leaps and bounds – the introduction of universal basic income.

Before I close, however, I feel I need to go negative once more because that is still the mood of this phase of the Great Reset era, and it is appropriate because it spells out exactly what is at stake.

As this model of social progress shows, and as most of us know intuitively when we think over the very long term, humanity is continually at its most progressed state even though there are periods where we perceive we may be regressing, sometimes for long periods such as in Middle Ages (for a brilliant blog post on this see On Progress And Historical Change at Ex Urbe).

We look back and wonder – either actively or subconsciously – how was it that we lived without developed language skills and proper shelter, without knowledge that mercury and lead were poisonous, without electricity and modern mechanisation, and without labour and human rights protections.

Many of us take that one step further and wonder how our current societies will be viewed in centuries ahead, and as our science continues to progress, what commonly used substances and practices will ultimately be proven to do us more harm than good.

I am of the opinion that this period over the past half century will be viewed dimly because, for all of our smug contempt for our ‘primitive’ forebears, we have lost our sense of community as self-interest has led to the ‘democratisation’ of human beings harming human beings as people have fallen for the Extreme capitalist propaganda that status benefits (materialism and ego) from ‘winning’ outweigh the benefits of deep and rich connection with our societies.

There are no real winners in Extreme capitalism, just an unquenchable aspiration for more wins and more things.

Even the ‘winners’ and ‘owners’ are hurting, they just cannot admit that to themselves let alone others.

A culture of domination nourishes nobody.

And when it comes to the unsustainable use of our finite resources, we are all losers even if many still refuse to admit their error.

The extreme self-interest exhibited by our leaders within the political and corporate spheres has been especially harmful. It is hardly a surprise that this type of behaviour has been imitated widely throughout society, after all, there is a reason why the term ‘leader’ developed.

For my entire life I have lived in a society where nothing is valued, not an action, thought or thing, unless at least one other is prepared to pay for it. Now that the mental health impacts of all of this are becoming understood, mainly because it is impacting the profitability and functioning of businesses, there is growing acceptance of the critical need to address mental health. But there is no market value in acknowledging that this crisis stems from the unquenchable aspiration at the heart of Extreme capitalism.

The evidence now shows that diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces are more profitable. So finally we have sufficient reason to be fair to all human beings within organisations, if only we would genuinely commit to achieving it!

And what about equality on a global basis?

That our society has devolved to the point where human beings being good to other human beings is only prudent when it is profitable says everything about us as a modern society.

The most striking peacock is equally vulnerable to the same diseases as the rest of the flock, the toughest fighting male salmon soon meets the same fate as the vanquished, and the hardest working bee will survive not one day without a hive.

The success of humankind was not built on the individual, it was built on the collective support of individuals within our society. If we wish to unleash humanity’s full potential we need to collectively support all individuals with compassion and love.

That is at the heart of the Great Reset era…

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To Reset To a Compassion Culture A New Global Formal Greeting Is Necessary

In organisational and formal social culture, nothing speaks more to an imperialist white-supremecist patriarchal system based on domination than the handshake.

There is so much social expectation and perception associated with the handshake. Virtuallly every person living in a western nation has had the feeling of having their hand twisted into a more passive position (with their palm facing more upwards) by someone intentionally or subconsciously asserting dominance.

I have heard body language professionals give advice on how to respond in such a situation.

When greeting by handshake a hand extended in the upright position indicates equality – a willingness to meet as two equals. So when the hand is extended with it twisted over beyond the upright position – indicating inequality – rather than responding by being passive and submitting by turning your hand with your palm facing upward, you can place your hand atop theirs and shake.

Much is made of handshakes because of the importance of first impressions.

Those particularly polished in etiquette and diplomacy train themselves around this, intentionally altering their handshake for the circumstance. If they wish to appear warm and non-threatening they will extend their hand with their palm more open and facing upwards so that they can embrace the other person’s hand, often then cupping it with their other hand or touching them further up the forearm to accentuate that warmth. If they wish to appear firm but fair, the hand is extended upright at 12 o’clock. And if they wish to assert themselves they extend it in the dominant form, twisted over beyond 12 o’clock to a varying degree depending on the level of strength or dominance that they wish to express.

The force exerted in grasping the hand is also important with obvious correlations.

It is as common for people to criticise others’ handshakes for being too weak or limp as it is to criticise them for being too firm. In my experience women often speak of males’ handshakes being weak suggesting a level of learned or hard-wired expectation of masculinity.

Personally, I was taught how to shake hands when I was 5 by my father when he refused to continue kissing me when I went to bed at night, telling me that men shake hands.

I am certain this behaviour, stemming largely from homophobia, is repeated in many cultures. I remember my brief but great mentor JR Bonami (also a very important mentor to my friend Dr Shi Zhengli, the brilliant “Batwoman” scientist from the Wuhan Institute of Virology) explaining to me local social etiquette during my time in Montpellier, France telling me that in the south of France men don’t kiss like the (apparently less macho) northern French men.

In the new Great Reset era, where we are developing a compassion culture to replace the culture of domination, where for instance heteronormative men are expressing themselves by wearing clothing formerly associated only with women, it is appropriate that we develop a new custom of greeting in formal situations in parallel with the fluid informal expressions of affection that accompany friends greeting.

However, because what is being discussed is a formal greeting, and people often feel uncomfortable over-expressing warmth such as by hugging or kissing, and often females especially feel pressured to comply when someone leans in to kiss or hug, it must take a form that is truly inclusive.

Developing a new mores (I admit I needed to search for the right word) for formal greeting is important because it gives us agency to express immediately in a formal setting that we are woke and will not accede to imperialist white-supremacist culture of domination.

The greeting should be strength expressed as warmth and compassion.

Do you think we can learn from other non-imperialist matriarchal or more passive cultures and adopt that custom, and if so, please share your suggestions.

Otherwise should we develop a totally new style of greeting?

Head to LinkedIn to let me know your thoughts in the original post, and please share… thank you

Published on LinkedIn 25 August 2022

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The Great Resignation In The Context Of The Great Reset

At this point in the Great Reset era we have heard most about the Great Resignation (or Great Reshuffle) which is unsurprising as businesses wonder aloud why they are finding it challenging to retain their workers and how to attract talented workers.

Some employers are even sceptical, and have suggested workers may regret their actions, especially as interest rate increases result in more challenging economic times which employers believe will give them more leverage over their workers.

Those who lead organisations would be wise to accept that the Great Resignation is just one, albeit important, feature of this new Great Reset era.

What is occurring is much deeper and goes to our identity and our perceptions of self-value.

Collectively we are all acknowledging that our lives are short and precious, and that we want to live the best versions of ourselves.

While the majority of us continue to trade for income our most valuable time and energy of our lives – for over 40 hrs each week for 48 to 50 weeks each year from our late teens or early 20s through to our 60s – we are going to continually assess whether that situation is working for us and whether it allows us to be who we really want to be.

Organisations that thrive in the Great Reset era will be those whose leaders engage authentically and deeply in compassionate wellness with their fellow human beings.

Published on LinkedIn on 9 August 2022.

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The Great Reset: An explainer

Pendulum at extreme in favour of Capital

After walking amongst humanity for a while, cycles beyond the seasons or clothing and hairstyles become noticeable.

These cycles are noticeable also in political beliefs, and although that can seem boring to understand, it’s important because the political system affects all of us.

Perhaps the most important political cycle that affects everyone is the balance of power between those who have a lot of resources or ‘capital’ – that is the wealthy and privileged within society – and those who have few resources beyond their own natural attributes – that being their unique combination of intelligence and physical abilities – which they trade as ‘labour’ to employers.

In our modern capitalist societies the balance between various groups is arbitrated by our democratic rights to share our views freely and vote based on them.

In my lifetime over the past half century that cycle between capital and labour has swung from one extreme to the other as if we were on a widely swinging pendulum. When I was young the balance was in favour of labour, the majority of people, as trade unions had significant support and power within the political system.

It was a time of many strikes, high inflation and poor economic growth as priority was given to providing good incomes to the majority of people. In truth the system was not very efficient and it became unsustainable.

But from the 70s the pendulum swung back and a lot of necessary reforms happened. It’s important to note that these changes were agreed and often enacted by centre-left governments as well, which occurred in my own country of Australia.

Unfortunately humanity has not really worked out how to know in real-time when we have reached the point when too much of something is a bad thing because the balance has shifted too far.

By the time we entered the new century the balance between capital and labour had shifted too far and the signs that we had reached a form of Extreme Capitalism were showing, especially in the extreme level of inequality even in the most prosperous societies.

The middle class was shrinking and the working class poor were numerous and growing.

At the human level these deficiencies were mainly expressed in the impact on the mental health of people in the system where most felt that they were on a hamster wheel, sprinting and reaching out for juicy carrots but getting nowhere fast. The only thing in their hands were a few crumbs that had trickled off the table from the privileged one percent.

People were increasingly expressing their exhaustion but were feeling trapped, partly because they believed the saturation advertising that the rewards would be worth it if they just ‘hustled’ enough on their hamster wheels.

So by the end of the 2010s the system was due for a paradigm shift; the swing in the pendulum back from that extreme form of capitalism.

The unceasing drive for efficiency in the system, which led human beings to treat each other as if they were already machines, was unsustainable because it was literally breaking people.

Human beings were breaking other human beings!

Enter the COVID-19 pandemic which, in an attempt to minimise human impacts, or at least manage impacts on hospital capacities, led to isolation measures which for many forced separation from their hamster wheels.

Many still worked, either at home or onsite in essential services, which in itself highlighted for many that the rewards from this form of extreme capitalism were not tightly correlated with the importance of those roles in society.

This forced physical separation allowed a unique opportunity for reflection for everyone. It allowed psychological separation to varying extents.

While we were isolated from most others in society, for those who sheltered with others closely related to us, including family and other loved ones, it was an intense period of connectedness with those who matter most in our lives.

Right through this period we all searched for updates on the pandemic, watching the news or scrolling through social media, which served as constant reminders of the reality of human life and of sad loss experienced by so many.

It was always going to be the case that through this period many people would reflect on their lives and whether they felt that trading the majority of the quality time and energy of their lives for the rewards of the hamster wheel was really a fair trade.

Some parents and families realised that they had not been all that closely connected in recent years as the parents were on those hamster wheels convincing themselves that they are doing best for their families, and even children were kept busy with extracurricular activities almost as training for their own future hamster wheels.

Others realised that they had made compromises and moved away from their earlier aspirations and ideals.

Still others reconsidered whether the cost of earning extra income for now or later in retirement was worth the cost to them in the here and now while their health is good, especially as they understood that life expectancy was falling with this new ultramicroscopic threat which just highlighted one of the many omnipresent threats to human lives that have always existed.

With the pendulum at its extreme in favour of capital – the wealthy and privileged – our societies were due for a reset.

That it coincided with, and in many ways was catalysed by, the first global pandemic in a century meant that it would be a very significant Reset.

Given the potential for it to lead to the addressing of some of the longest lasting or most devastating issues humanity has confronted, in the form of social cohesion and in the climate crisis, optimistically from March 2020 I began to refer to this era as the Great Reset!

As I have consistently stated since the first few weeks of the pandemic, the more of us that engage with these changes and share our views and aspirations for a better humanity, the better – dare I say, the Greater – will be that Reset and the more cohesive our societies.

By working together towards compassionate societies we will reduce the oscillation of the pendulum and prevent the turbulence and heartache that the extremes cause. This will improve the quality of life for all of humanity and the space that this peace provides will allow us to address new crises from nature as they are certain to continue to arise.

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In The Great Reset Era Successful Leaders Focus On Wellbeing And Authentic Connection

The underlying premise of what many say here at LinkedIn – especially those employed in the corporate wellness sector, either embedded in organisations or as external consultants – is that addressing wellness is good for the bottom line.

While I recognise the accuracy of this statement, I find it confronting.

Since work culture is a result of the behaviours of groups of human beings, what is really being said is that human beings should care about human beings because it is good for company profits.

While this argument might act as justification for a salary or a consultancy, from a societal perspective there is something fundamentally very wrong with that statement.

Moreover, while these measures may lead to improvements, I really do wonder at how enduring change will be when it is so correlated to monetary and market-based rewards. We all know that organisation/managerial fads are commonplace in contemporary workplaces.

I can say this because I am not driven by a profit imperative or self-interest. I simply want to play a role in helping society towards a better future by engaging and sharing my views.

That we have devolved to a society where it makes most sense for human beings to be good to each other, and within our broader interactions in the world (i.e. our impacts on the environment), if the market rewards it monetarily or in some other manner (typically related to societal status) is a consequence of the form of extreme capitalism that we have swung towards over the last half century.

This is at the heart of emotion and logic behind major changes, such as #thegreatresignation , we are seeing in this new era we have entered which I refer to as #thegreatreset .

People are tired of this world of transactional relationships as they crave authentic and deeper connection.

In the Great Reset era work-centric rhetoric and responses are seen as lacking and impotent.

Compassion is the only sustainable answer, and that is true in all settings

The irony is that those who understand and enact that in the way they live will reap the full rewards from engaging in society, including from capitalist markets as the underlying premise of the statement is correct, though they probably will not notice it since it is no longer their main goal.

For example, over many years I have closely observed one of the greatest capitalists ever in Warren Buffett and it is very clear to me that he was never driven to be powerful. Instead he was driven to excel at whatever he did, no doubt partly to provide security for he and his family, but also as a contribution to his society, and since he was especially good at capital allocation in a capitalist system he became wealthy almost as a byproduct of his passion and skill.

The short answer: if your motives are true, your actions will also be, and everything else will fall into the place it should be…

Published on 2 August 2022 on LinkedIn

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Power Dynamic Disruptions At Work In The Great Reset Era

Anybody who wishes to monetise their ‘social’ activities on the internet knows that they should frequently remind the human beings they are engaging with of the value of those activities. In other words, they must post frequently lest their engagement metrics decline along with their potential earnings.

I said from the outset that I was not about seeking financial reward for sharing my views at MacroEdgo, even though the pandemic provided a timely opportunity to do just that given my related experience and uncanny ability to accurately forecast how the pandemic progressed which caused my readership to explode in early 2020. I recognised this opportunity, but my motivation remained true to providing a service to my community rather than seeking to profit from what was a very sad and unfortunate development for everyone.

Now I have been especially quiet in my writing this year and that is primarily because I have had to deal with some very serious personal issues. In truth these issues were present at the beginning of the pandemic, requiring a great deal of balance to pour energy into everything I needed to at that time. Then early this year, as the pandemic issues settled – note carefully, not the pandemic itself, but the rate of new issues of relevance settled considerably – and as my personal issues reached a crescendo, I needed to prioritise care for my loved ones and myself.

Now that those issues have also settled I am able to engage again with social issues that I see as critical and which I feel passionate to write about.

I continue to be more and more convinced of my views about humanity having entered the Great Reset era, and in fact I am noting how this phrase is growing in use through society, in entirety or with an alliterated R-word following ‘Great’, as in the Great Resignation, Reshuffle, Reassessment, Rethink, etc, etc.

Much of this usage to this point relates to changing power dynamics at workplaces as workers enact plans for change to balance their lives better as I foresaw early in the pandemic – this search by people for balance and purpose in their lives is, after all, one of the main underlying premises of my ‘Great Reset’ thesis.

Since career and workplace dynamics is a major focus of change, I have decided to become active on LinkedIn. Below is a recent post which was spawned from some thoughts that I shared in a comment on LinkedIn.

The underlying premise of what many say here at LinkedIn – especially those employed in the corporate wellness sector, either embedded in organisations or as external consultants – is that addressing wellness is good for the bottom line.
While I recognise the accuracy of this statement, I find it confronting.
Since work culture is a result of the behaviours of groups of human beings, what is really being said is that human beings should care about human beings because it is good for company profits.
While this argument might act as justification for a salary or a consultancy, from a societal perspective there is something fundamentally very wrong with that statement.
Moreover, while these measures may lead to improvements, I really do wonder at how enduring change will be when it is so correlated to monetary and market-based rewards. We all know that organisation/managerial fads are commonplace in contemporary workplaces.
I can say this because I am not driven by a profit imperative or self-interest. I simply want to play a role in helping society towards a better future by engaging and sharing my views.
That we have devolved to a society where it makes most sense for human beings to be good to each other, and within our broader interactions in the world (i.e. our impacts on the environment), if the market rewards it monetarily or in some other manner (typically related to societal status) is a consequence of the form of extreme capitalism that we have swung towards over the last half century.
This is at the heart of emotion and logic behind major changes, such as #thegreatresignation , we are seeing in this new era we have entered which I refer to as #thegreatreset .
People are tired of this world of transactional relationships as they crave authentic and deeper connection.
In the Great Reset era work-centric rhetoric and responses are seen as lacking and impotent.
Compassion is the only sustainable answer, and that is true in all settings 🙏
The irony is that those who understand and live that will reap the full rewards from engaging in society, including from capitalist markets as the underlying premise of the statement is correct, though they probably will not notice it since it is no longer their main goal.
For example, over many years I have closely observed one of the greatest capitalists ever in Warren Buffett and it is very clear to me that he was never driven to be powerful. Instead he was driven to excel at whatever he did, no doubt partly to provide security for he and his family, but also as a contribution to his society, and since he was especially good at capital allocation in a capitalist system he became wealthy almost as a byproduct of his passion and skill.
The short answer: if your motives are true, your actions will also be, and everything else will fall into the place it should be…
Brett Edgerton (Stay at home Dad at MacroEdgo) at LinkedIn published 3 August 2022

I have also written an essay entitled “The Great Reset Era At Work” which I published exclusively at LinkedIn.

I will still publish here at MacroEdgo, but please consider coming and following me at LinkedIn. I have a few more pieces in draft ready to be published there.

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