Work is political.
It is no longer acceptable to treat work as a values-neutral place focused on the creation of value (for shareholders and incidentally customers).
Customers, partners, staff, and society at large all expect organisations to reflect their values.
In Vietnam (physical or virtual) Dr Vu leads with all the talking (i know zero Tieng Viet, and she is a magnificent presenter), while I make the technology work and worry unnecessarily about her timing. This is startling to many, to say the least. It’s a very patriarchal society. Equally subversive are our displays of affection. And our practice of engaging people of all statuses equally.
We are delighted that we can plant a few social seeds while working.
Work as you live.
Friedmanism is stone dead. It gave us all the gross excesses of the last few decades, from Madoff to Trump. Get with the times.
Greed is not good. Your customers, partners, and staff all expect you to live values through your work. Angry white men who say IDGAF are doomed, and obsolete.
I for one am happy to see politics discussed on LinkedIn. It flushes out people I never ever want to do business with.
Not because I disagree with their politics, we should be able to do that in a civil way, it’s the point of democracy.
It’s because i disagree with their ethics. If you put profits ahead of lives, belief ahead of science, or privilege ahead of humanity, we’re done.
If you don’t have a values driven organisation, you get failures like Enron, Boeing, and EBay. Boy, I’ve seen some toxic culture in NZ on LinkedIn, almost universally from older men like me.
Public service isn’t exempt. I’ve encountered an antivaxxer working for a hospital, a few racists all over, and misogynists everywhere. But generally in NZ we are good at truly wanting to serve the public and in embracing the values of the nation.
I want to help with values-driven work, to make work better: better results, better lives at work, and better society within which we operate.