Heh, this is a topic that me and my father have went around and around on over the years. 'A poor day's work for a poor day's pay' has long been a motto of mine and he can't stand that. He has a similar approach to yours and was always similarly well compensated but I've always been down on the 'as little as we can get away with' end of the pay scale and it didn't seem like a fair bargain. Outside of work is a different story, for me it's 'solve problems' rather than 'lift heavy shit' but the idea is much the same, be proactive and get shit done. Just never worked anywhere that treated me in a fashion that made me feel they deserved a similar approach. Meanwhile, my partner is working in health care and isn't afforded the luxury of that attitude.
Are you the type of person that will not lift a finger for your employer without there being remuneration for it?
You've got me wondering how different the labour market is there compared to here. Under most circumstances I'm not the transactional type but everywhere I've worked it's been 'do more for less' and the reward for a job well done is more work, stress and responsibility, and nothing else. Meanwhile they'll kick you to the curb without a second thought at the first sound of 'labour costs'.
Ever read any Ayn Rand? She's an interesting author and thinker who you might appreciate, albeit one I agree and disagree with in almost equal measure. In Atlas Shrugged the main character is on a strike of sorts, he will only do menial, manual labour unless and until he is treated and compensated like a human being, and that has always shaped my approach to dealing with my employers.
Being sick anytime sucks but that goes double for the holidays, hope you get back to 100% soon, have a good winter break!
I agree with much you say, employers seem to have beaten proactivity out if staff through consistently asking for more even after more is given and not rewarding it in any way at all; a typical story and I've worked for places like that, fortunately not any more though. It causes people to become disgruntled and that means they do less, or the bare minimum and expect to be paid for every second.
I used to work with a person who would get to work at 08:59, spend some time getting coffee, arranging her things and all then be at her desk by 09:15. Her start time was 09:00. She'd start packing up around 17:15 and be on her way out the door at 17:29 as her finish time was 17:30. She was performance reviewed and fired. I agreed with the decision.
And yet, there were people at that same business putting in far more, (some the bare minimum, not sub-optimal levels like above) and being model employees...all of whom were treated poorly and were not rewarded for their extra efforts, well, all except my team who were rewarded because I made it so.
My point is that there needs to be some understanding, responsibility and ownership on both sides of the fence and if there is then good things can happen.
I like your Ayn Rand reference and point...I believe there is an onus on a leader/leadership-team to inspire and empower the team to perform at their best. I also believe it's up to the team, and each individual (including the leader), to work towards performing at their best and put thoughts and attitudes in place to make it so. Of course, there's compensation required, remuneration, and I believe it should be a multi-pronged approach. A heartfelt thanks for your work goes a long way, a demonstration of gratitude, better conditions, flexibility, understanding, a good pay structure and so on. But alas, many companies do not do these things, including some I've worked for...all take, no give. Fortunately the organisation I work for values their personnel.
There's really a lot to unpack with this topic when it's delved into. Someone has to work, many people really, but we're fast moving to a world in which people simply don't want to.
Lift heavy shit, or solve the problem, or work the problem - whatever it is, it needs to be done, things need to be done and we can't all sit back and leave it to someone else. I'd like to see humans doing it, not AI...maybe I've seen too many Terminator movies where AI goes wrong. Either way, I'll die eventually and it'll be of no concern...until then I'll keep being human.
Thanks for your solid response. Good one!
Ha, yeah, we could write essay after essay and still have plenty left to say. There needs to be something akin to a social contract between employer and employee. Are labour unions very active/influential there? Collective bargaining agreements are about as close as we come to that here in the US but the unions have been declining for a long time and union jobs are few and far between these days. The union jobs I've worked have been much better in terms of treating people decently. The Company still sucked but you knew that there was always means of redress.
I can't shake the feeling that with AI and technology more generally, we're at the beginning of the digital equivalent of the Industrial Revolution and we're headed for big changes come hell or high water. Probably be a mixed bag of good and bad but we could easily reach a point where most people don't have to work and that's going to be one hell of a reckoning all on its own.
On a vaguely leadership related note, are you familiar with Auftragstaktik?
I am, mission-type tactics. It's a really interesting leadership strategy although (I believe) it can fail if the unit does not contain the right people it would probably end in disaster in some case but with highly trained and motivated units it can bring great success. I'm sure there's many cases of it having failed but also many in which the faster decision-making process in the field has brought stunning results - it worked really well for the Germans.
The technique, in a business environment, can also work really well but due to the lack of military it's often critical for leaders to make the objectives very clear, and the parameters also...also critical for the unit/team to understand the repercussions of failure which makes it problematic because, in business, lives rarely rely on the objective being attained, just jobs.
I agree with the AI thing, I think it's going to be an interesting time, but I'll admit to not seeing a lot of positives coming from it generally.