To Meet Tomorrow's Challenges, Business Needs More Truth
Tellers
Young people need to hear you tell it like it is. Leaders like
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg know this intuitively.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN
Business seems to have turned a corner, and I couldn't
be happier or more grateful. It's been a long time coming, but the days of
management walking on eggshells to appease snowflakes, Millies, and other
entitled employees could soon be ending. The timing couldn't be better.
If the U.S. is planning to compete for the future on a global scale,
employers have to get back to seriously taking care of business after
enduring several soul-sucking and defeatist decades of political correctness,
lip biting, and tongue holding.
Billions of dollars and millions of hours were wasted on
frivolous and foolish efforts to make miraculously sweet lemonade out of life's
lemons.
If you didn't like working for a living or working at
all, if being graded, evaluated, and judged was just too tough a test for
your selfish little self, and if no one had ever bothered to tell you the hard
truth about so many things in the real world, then just give us a
moment or two, and we'll try to change our reality to meet your fantasies,
insane expectations, and absurd entitlements. We'll do this because we
"owe" it to you for ancient offenses, past sins, serious
misconceptions of what makes the world go around, and other grievous errors for
which we will promptly atone and beg your forgiveness in advance. All because
we really like you, in large part, because you remind us of when we were young
and equally stupid.
Meantime, China and India are raising and training millions of
"meat eaters"--serious, ambitious, diligent, and brutally
hard-working individuals--who are grateful for the opportunities finally being
afforded to them, willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead, and proud of
the commitment, sweat and effort it's going to require for them to achieve
their dreams.
They're not ashamed or apologetic about competing aggressively
with their peers, wanting to better themselves and make a difference for
themselves and their families, and working ceaselessly toward those ends rather
than wishing or waiting for them to magically appear. They don't expect the
world to hand them their future on a silver platter. They don't need time-outs,
safe spaces, speech police, or security blankets to get on. They just need the
chances that we take for granted.
Meanwhile, here at home, parents are raising millions of precious little flowers who need to be accepted and appreciated for what little
they've achieved rather than expected and challenged to reach for better and
bigger things. They're focused and fixated by trivialities and trumped-up
traumas and concerns while the rest of the world rushes by them. They want to
bring their whole selves to work, but they're not that excited about actually
working once they get there. They've been taught and told that they've clearly
got more important things to do and other places to be.
Watching college professors pontificate to their sadly
deluded students about how using proper pronouns can increase productivity; how
math, motivation, and measurement are somehow racist and prejudicial; and how
"men" can get pregnant, and "women" can be whatever they
like has been one of the most galling, painful, and perverse pageants of
prideful pomposity, calculated ignorance, and stunning arrogance ever seen in
this country.
I'm confident that millions of other CEOs and entrepreneurs
agree that telling it like it is--outside of their soon-to-be-burst bubbles--is
the best service and favor that we can do for our kids and our younger
employees and, not incidentally, for our businesses as well. Serious businesses
can't succeed on a fabulist foundation of half-truths about diversity and
inclusion, false promises (which are quickly abandoned when the rubber hits the
road), and made-up pithy mission statements, which no one lives up to.
The pendulum is hopefully turning back toward frankness, painful
honesty, daily doses of reality, and actual authenticity which can only help
all of us manage through what are likely to be several more years of ugly
surprises, hard times, and do-nothing politicians aiming only to inflame and
anger us.
Companies need to give employees and--even more
importantly--the newest grads a simple message about work: "You don't have
to like it, you just have to do it." In a world of special cases, a
million exceptions, tender sensibilities, and helicopter parents, this message has
the special charm of being a one-size-fits-all solution. Sit down, shut
up, and suck it up. When you come to work, be prepared, be honest, and be
on time. Leave your angst, your affirmations, and your anxieties at home. Or
feel free to "pretend you're working
somewhere else," as Elon Musk
says.
Mark Zuckerberg is even clearer in his no-nonsense approach
in talking about changes coming to Meta, noting that, "Some
of you might just say this place isn't for you. And that self-selection is okay
with me."
Entrepreneurs and managers who think they can still try to be
all things to all people are engaged in a fool's quest. Worse yet, they're most
likely to be called out as phonies by the very people they're trying the most
to please. These people are never grateful or satisfied because their demands
are never-ending. Twisting yourself in knots and spinning around in circles
trying to placate them (while the very words you speak stick in your craw)
isn't productive and only wastes your time and energy.
You can hope to be anything, but in the end, you can be
only yourself. If you're true to yourself, your own upbringing and
beliefs, and your own commitments to your work and your business, you'll
discover that that's the best you can be for everyone else as well.
AUG 1, 2022
