Employess ARE the pieces of the puzzle

I am not a native of North America. And after 18 years living on this continent I still find the North American tendency to fully disclose rather confusing.

On the one hand it’s very helpful; a better understanding of the people you work with eight hours a day, five days a week certainly takes the guess out of the relationship. On the other hand my natural reserve is unsettled and I wonder if I too am expected to “spill my guts”.

This is not the model I grew up with.

The model I was raised with is long dead. In that model people went to work and left their problems at home. It was stiff upper lip all day long and kick the cat when you got home. Of course in those days people really did work eight hours a day and there was a cat at home.

The reality, then and now, is that we are all on a journey. And no matter how hard we try the private journey will intrude on the workplace. Most of us are able to see the connection between our personal and workplace travels. The truly productive among us are those who fully integrate the corporation’s journey into their own personal travels.

When the private and corporate journeys diverge – we’re in trouble. At that point we feel like our values are being stepped on and separation is highly likely.

When I was growing up it was the job of the employee to “buck up” and step in line. The tables have turned. Faced with 80 million retiring boomers corporations can no longer expect employees to abandon their own life stories in favor of the corporate story. Now the company must meets its employees half way and help them to integrate the personal with the workplace. It’s no longer enough to tell only one side of the story.

Highlighting individual stories of achievement is a good way of building the corporate story. It’s rather like a jigsaw puzzle; the corporation is the border and all the employees are the pieces in the puzzle.