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WHAT MAKES WORK MEANINGFUL?
THINKING ALLOWED
MISHLOVE: What you're saying makes me think that there's a basic sense that you can take within a corporation of trusting human nature -- that everybody at the workplace, they all want to find meaning, they all want to communication, they'd all like to see it work, really, and if you go in with that attitude, people will respond. But the exception, I think, is if you've got a person in the business who is totally incompetent, or even criminal in their behavior, because of this natural optimism that people have, you're not going to be able to move against that person too well. JAFFE: Well, the temptation, you see -- and you've painted a pretty extreme picture of somebody who's not just incompetent but bad, evil -- MISHLOVE: It happens from time to time. JAFFE: What happens is people begin to adopt the strategy of the person that they're having difficulty with. So if that person is defensive and closed and angry, somehow we begin to mirror that. And that is precisely the kind of response that doesn't work. What I suggest to people, even with the most difficult supervisor or boss, is to begin to adopt an open strategy, to really try to keep the dialogue open, to look at the person and say, "This is not a bad person, this is not an evil person. This is a person who I simply haven't figured out, and I have to work harder to find out what they want and what makes them work, and also to make them aware of what I need." The other ally you have in that is usually if one person is giving you trouble, he's usually giving everybody else around him trouble as well, and you can begin in kind of a nonsubversive way to begin to bring other people together, and sometimes you can't say something one-to-one, but you can bring some people together and begin to open up a dialogue, or help a person act differently. MISHLOVE: Let me approach the question of meaning with you from another point of view now, Dennis. I think a lot of people find that ultimate meaning in their life has to do with metaphysical, with spiritual issues, with creating something sacred, even in their lives. This aspect of meaning seems so far removed from the workplace. Is there any hope that this kind of sacredness in the workplace can ever happen? JAFFE: Well, it's interesting. There's a study that was collected in the book New Rules, that's about looking at the new values and the new things that people are wanting from work, and what Yankelovich, who conducted the study, found -- MISHLOVE: The pollster. JAFFE: Right. He polled many, many hundreds of people, and found that people were looking for sacred meaning and significance in their work. They were looking at what their company did, they were identifying with what the whole company did in the world, how the company treated people -- some of the positive things about the mission of the company. A lot of the companies that people work for do some very incredible things. I mean, a transportation company brings people all over the world; a hotel creates comfort for people. Apple Computer's Steve Jobs said, "What we're doing is not making a computer. We're in here to change the world." It's quite clear that people are willing to work for less and have more excitement working for Apple because they really believe in the meaning of what they're doing and what their product is achieving. Not just, "We're selling the best computer at the highest margins and making the most money, and therefore this is an exciting company." There's something about the meaning that they create that makes it more fun to work there, and makes people really choose that work environment. MISHLOVE: That's certainly true for many vanguard industries and vanguard companies. But what about the steel mills? What about the places where they make ball bearings? JAFFE: Well, the steel mills are very interesting. There's a number of steel mills that are being sold to the workers, and incredible things are happening even with the steel industry, which we would say is totally lost to foreign competition, when people really feel like it's their company and they get inspired with the fact of showing people that they can really make a go of it. At some steel mills and other kinds of companies -- I think there are a number of retail chains and other kinds of industries that you'd say are kind of in decline or in decay -- and when the employees buy them out, take over, or when somebody comes in with a new sense of vision, there's what I call a renewal process. Something that's in decline, when there's new meaning injected into it, there can be an incredible shift in a company that people would have written off before. MISHLOVE: But you know, Dennis, many of the largest employers today in this country are manufacturing weapons, or they're manufacturing pesticides. They're doing things that seem to go against the grain of social value. At least many people would think so; others argue. Or manufacture cigarettes. How can you find meaning in that kind of environment? Aren't people somehow really selling their soul, in a way, to earn a dollar? JAFFE: Well, I'm not going to take a moral stance, but I'm going to answer it in a different way. There are people that work for certain kinds of companies -- for example, one of my colleagues talked about seeing somebody for psychotherapy, and he was having all these illnesses, and he was burned out, and he just wasn't really doing very well at work. In the therapeutic process he began to discover that his issue was that his company was engaged in weapons work and he had a lot of difficulty with that, had a pacifist background, and basically he needed to change his job. MISHLOVE: I know for myself I'd jump out of my skin if I were in that kind of company. JAFFE: That's true. The other thing I see, though, in some defense companies and some kinds of industries, is that in some way, whether we agree with it, whatever our feelings about it, the people there are inspired in some way by the outcome. They see people feel good about working in a weapons company when they really identify with the role of peace. The same with people in the armed forces. I think they are incredibly dedicated when they see what they're doing as maintaining peace. There's a way in which it can become a vitalizing mission. MISHLOVE: Well, we might agree or disagree, but I suppose in any industry it wouldn't exist if there weren't some kind of a perceived social need, and if there's a way in which those industries are really on track in terms of need -- if they're really providing peace, if the pesticide companies are really improving the quality of our life in some ways -- and people know and understand that. And if that's not happening, I guess you'd have to say it's up to the people in those industries to be vocal. Of course they lose their jobs. JAFFE: Or to make a choice about where they want to work. I think a lot of people have left industries and have made job changes to find a job where they feel comfortable, and really feel identified with what the work is doing. There are all kinds of ways that I see people taking control over their work. A lot of companies, for example, are what we euphemistically call downsizing, which means they're laying off a lot of people. It's very interesting to see that a lot of people that are laid off by a company begin to say, "What am I going to do with my life?" and they begin to find ways where they can be self-employed, they can do a different type of work, they work as contractors doing specialized work for numbers of different companies. It appears that one of the future waves in the workplace is going to be companies that employ mostly independent contractors, and people will say, "Well, I'm not going to really depend on one company. I'm going to work for a number of companies. I have this skill, this skill is marketable, and I'm going to keep control over my life where I can work here, work there, take time off, spend time with my family raising children, looking at other aspects of my life." The statistics are that the number of self-employed, independent people at work is increasing drastically. End, Part Three Join us next month for a continuation of this interview.
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