The Scapegoat

Every day it seems we hear about another company laying off workers in an effort to cut cost. Though the worker is the one feeling the pain, it isn't the worker who is lacking in productivity or straining the company's budget, but rather the high cost of failed leadership. In their zeal to point blame and cut costs, managers are overlooking the human factors that created the success of the business in the first place.

Let's be honest. The core responsibility in any position of leadership is to be competent at continuous adaptation to unforeseeable events. It's the ability to plan for contingent circumstances which cannot be forecast that makes for great leadership. But judging from the state of this economy, one would think that precepts like stability and control are irrelevant in today's vernacular.

Kept outside the corporate planning process, employees work in a vacuum, a world apart from the more privileged executives at the top. What matters to those at the top are stock options, bonus incentives, and severance pay. What matters most for ordinary workers is job security. To that end, workers know that their job security is inextricably linked to the profitability of the company.

Now, I ask you: Who has the best long term interest of the company in their hearts and minds?

Doug Wallace, an attorney and author of the memoir, Everything Will Be All Right, worked twenty years as a lawyer representing most of the top national banks in the nation. He gained a keen insight into the minds of corporate managers. He once heard a Vice President of one of the nation's largest financial institutions assert, "Don't confuse what's good for the company, with what's good for my career." And, he was just one of the executives with a similar mindset that Wallace met over the years.

Many workers today feel unappreciated and expendable, not as important players in their company's planning process. Most workers are being asked to increase productivity in the face of unprecedented layoffs. Working under these conditions can be downright intimidating, which has the potential to create morale problems that will linger for years. A partnership between employer and employee is created when the goals and attitudes of the top executives are consistent with the goals and attitudes of the ordinary workers.

Yet, take a look at what's happening. The visible effects of the current crisis are unprecedented layoffs and worker discontent, while the executives at the top are relatively unharmed by this crisis. The worker yearns for stability at a time when they have reason to doubt the competency and loyatly of management at the highest levels. This is a problem created by blunder and greed of corporate managers--a total failure at all levels of upper management.

The economy has put the squeeze on corporations, big and small, in every industry, in every field, and the hunt is on for ways to cut costs. Workers are being let go, and those who remain are asked to make sacrifices, but workers know all too well that what is really happening is they are the scapegoat for corporate malfeasance. It was Mark Twain who said "There are many scapegoats for our blunders, but the most popular one is Providence." Except in this instance, the blunder has been created by management at the top, and the popular scapegoat is the worker at the bottom. The long term price to be paid by corporations for this blunder will be loss of employee loyalty. Only Providence knows just how costly that blunder will be.

Doug Wallace is an attorney, a successful entrepreneur and a published author. His book Everything Will Be All Right is scheduled for nationwide launch on October 1, 2009. Doug chose to write his story of growing up in poverty as a way to call attention to the unimaginable hardships for the generationally impoverished. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders Kindle, Sony Reader, and retail book stores everywhere beginning fall 2009.