People First

I have recently been through an unfortunate situation. A situation for which I had very little control. A situation where an executive VP needed to make some really tough decisions about the direction of the engineering department. As best as I can decipher, the decision was relatively binary. Either focus on sustaining an existing team by building relationships at the expense of a heavier cash flow. Or, deemphasize the people and expend energy to increase the bottom line. A difficult composition. The resulting choice was to defer team building and generate revenue.

“I have twenty holes and the means to fill ten of them,” were the words expressed during the discussion of my resignation. To clarify, the EVP made a conscious choice to leave the ten people-holes void of attention. The ten holes he decided to fill were primarily around pitching for new business. Given an equal amount of pressure, I’m not sure I could have made a more mindful decision at the time. As it turns out after mass hemorrhaging of skilled employees, this was clearly the wrong approach.

What happens when you choose the goals of a business over the humanity of the people when the goals of the business are centered around generating revenue? In this particular instance, the people feel neglected. They feel dishonored, undervalued. More importantly, they feel like they’re no longer appreciated as humans and rather as producers of work; cogs in a machine. There is nothing more disorienting and demoralizing than suddenly realizing you are a factor for generating income, and not a person with skills, emotions, and an innate desire to form human connections.