Last week at Basecamp, a 57 person, Chicago-based software company, they had a bit of a family feud. Their leadership announced that they didn’t want political discussions going on at their office or in company online meetings. As a result, a third of their workforce quit.
I read on Twitter that some of the disgruntled employees said things like “they wanted us to be a family” – but we ain’t no family – who are they kidding?”
This incident made me wonder about companies versus families.
I have had about ten different employers in my career. And in the last five years, as a consultant, I have been in and out of dozens of companies on temporary marketing assignments.
In almost every company, inevitably, some person, often the CEO, President, or Board Members stands up in front of everyone and says, “we are a family.”
I never believed that statement from anyone.
My immediate reaction, to quote President Biden, is malarky. I’d use a more colorful word, but you get the drift.
I recognize how close I got to some of my colleagues and even many of my superiors/bosses. But I never bought into the “we are a family line” at work. It never rang true. It seemed disingenuous.
Of course, there are many individuals who I worked with who were like family. We cared about each other and did our best to demonstrate our deep friendships. I can think of about a dozen people from the last thirty years I still talked to regularly, and we deeply care about each other and our families. When we sold our company, it felt a little like we abandoned the employees, especially since we moved to North Carolina. I went to work for GoodMark Foods who bought our business in their marketing department.
But work was never a family.
Even when my wife and I were the owners in charge at Rachel’s Brownies in the late 70s into the 80s, we tried hard to be like a family – but in hindsight, I’m not sure we succeeded. We tried. The pressures of meeting a payroll, keeping up with orders, managing the schedules of 50 + people – it was quite difficult. I wish we could have done more.
We treated people with dignity and respect, but we had to make tough decisions all the time that felt harsh, cold, and driven by money.
Having to fire someone was never easy – I would tell myself, it’s just business. even though at company meetings I’d talk to our employees about being like a family.
What is a Family?
My family finds ways to support each other no matter what – and when things get tough, we don’t make “the hard decisions” to let go and kick someone out of the family. We never restructured our family to create better results for shareholders or to improve efficiencies and meet our KPI’s. (key performance indicators)
In my family, we love unconditionally.
I don’t recall my parent’s saying..
“Jeff, I’m sorry that you continue to fight with your siblings even after three warnings. We are going to have to let you go. You are out of the family. Don’t worry, you can still use your bedroom to sleep until the end of the month and we will write you a nice recommendation for your next family.”
Our motivation as a family has always been centered on love, empathy, and compassion. I don’t remember doing a family P&L to see if we could afford to keep one of our family members as a part of our little tribe because they cost us more than another member or they came late to family dinners.
What is a Company?
Most workplaces are brought together around a few critical goals based on the values and needs of the stakeholders. Grow revenue. Make money. Build market share—stuff like that.
There is nothing wrong with capitalism. The desire for people to trade their labor for a wage or salary in exchange for following a bunch of rules is the deal we signed up for with each new job. Scott Galloway, who teaches marketing at NYU Stern Business school likes to growl that when a company has rules, “that’s what the money is for that we pay you.”
At a company, you are free to leave if it isn’t right for you. Be my guest. I have no issues with companies who want to be financially successful and need to eliminate jobs or restructure or be sold to another firm. But don’t call us a family.
I remember my friend and former CEO boss Lars managing a difficult situation around 2009 when he had to cut back production and work during the beginning of the great recession. He was compassionate in his approach and spread the pain across everyone as we all had to take a reduction in pay.
I don’t remember Lars or the leadership team trying to pretend that we were a family. We were a company facing challenges that needed to be met. He was honest, tough and most folks understood the difficult decision.
But many CEOs use the line – we are a family and employees don’t buy into the pretense. l call B.S. because that’s what it is.
Please, don’t tell me we are a family when you must fire dozens of people or close a division that will affect one hundred families. Don’t hide behind the words – remember, we are a family. Be truthful and fiercely honest. Employees accept difficult situations. They can smell the spin.
Companies aren’t families. They are organized around the shareholder, not the employees or the community. Loyalty to employees goes out the window to keep the shareholders happy.
Now, that may be changing a little. But it’s rare to see it in the wild. B-Corps and some businesses are making much more concerted efforts to balances the desires and needs of shareholders, employees, customers, communities, and the environment. It is quite a juggling match.
Whiles, I’m ranting, I hate when a business is sold, and the new owner comes in and says – nothing will change. Wow. What a lot of, well, malarkey or that other word. Treat us like adults, but don’t pretend we are a family. We get it. Don’t sugar coat it and then hide behind it when things are tough.
Friendships
Workplace friendships can be special. You spend so much time working together in an office, remember offices? If you travel to visit customers or go to work conferences – or work long hours on a big project, you can build close friendships.
There are many people I respected, learned from, and who help me become a better marketer. Those folks are some of the most cherished parts of my work memory. Those with who I remain connected continue to bring me guidance, support, and friendship.
Many of them are like family to me, and I try and love, honor, and support them to the best of my ability. But with each of these work friends, what endures is the friendship – not that we achieved an 18% growth over the prior year’s revenue or grew market share by 12%.
As Maya Angelou said, “we don’t remember what people said or did, just how they made us feel“.
What lasts are those personal, human experiences. They are unrelated to profits or accretive shareholder value.
Don’t confuse families with companies. They are different animals.
So, the next time you are in one of those meetings, when someone is about to tell you that “we are a family,” ask them when they’ll come over and do the dishes, and remind them that it is their turn to take out the trash.
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
