Align your behaviour with those of the corporation

The problem was never communism. It was size. And that problem is back with a vengeance

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

Communism is back

Fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, one would expect the urge toward central planning would long have become a thing of the past. Not so. A glimpse inside the modern large corporation reveals that not only is the urge for central planning thriving at the core of private executive power, but all the trappings of communism are also liberally scattered throughout the sprawling workplaces of today's large enterprises.

It was a mainstay of American Cold War propaganda to delight in the gory details of personal behavior modification techniques exercised by communist bosses over hapless factory peasants. Often workers were made to identify their own weaknesses, to find ways in which their behavior both at the factory and at home might hinder the goals of factory production, and to get together with other workers to discuss ways in which they might as a group produce more for the good of the factory, for the good of the state, and for the good of communism itself.

Move up a few decades, put ties on those workers, take away their levers and knobs and replace them with keyboard buttons, and call them “leaders” instead of “workers”, and you have the worst of communism all over again right in the heart of the modern capitalist corporation.

For example, consider this advice to bosses hoping to instill better work habits in their staff, found in “Business and Strategy” magazine, one of the more forward-thinking and popular journals for middle managers at large cutting-edge corporations: “Leaders [by which they mean workers sent to what can only be described as a more posh re-education camp] were expected to: Review their 360-degree feedback with an internal or external consultant; Identify one to three areas for improvement; Discuss their areas for improvement with key co-workers; Ask colleagues for suggestions on how to increase effectiveness in selected areas for change; Follow up with co-workers to get ideas for improvement; Have co-worker respondents complete a confidential custom-designed ‘mini-survey' three to 15 months after the start of their programs.”

As part of the preparation for their workers' visit to the re-education camp, bosses were asked to “develop a profile of desired leadership behaviors that had been approved by upper management. After ensuring that these desired leadership behaviors were aligned with company vision and values, each company developed a 360-degree feedback process to help leaders understand the extent to which their own behavior matched the desired behavior for leaders in the corporation.”

Did Mao ever put it so coldly?

The comparison can only go so far. The modern global corporation is driven by a stated desire to increase profits for its owners, while the typical communist enterprise was driven by many stated goals, including broad social welfare achievements, advancement of civilization generally, and defense of the nation from annihilation by capitalist adventurers.

Nonetheless, from the point of view of the workers inside them, there is little beyond cosmetic appearance to separate the worky-day experience of today's 40-something middle manager at a Lockheed Martin plant in Idaho, say, and the experience of a 40-something middle manager at Soviet Ballistics Factory Number 12 in Kiev some twenty or so years ago. Both could expect the overriding influence on their lives at work and at home to be pressure to see how well “their own behavior matched the desired behavior for leaders in the corporation.”

From the point of view of those of us on the outside looking in, the only obvious commonality between yesterday's Soviet tractor factory and today's financial services office is the sheer size of the enterprises. No small firm of 20 people or less is ever going to do anything but laugh heartily at the idea of sending one of them off to a high-priced coastal resort-cum-executive school to learn leadership behavior modification techniques to implement best practices among colleagues in order to trend the corporation toward higher productivity. Like normal humans, they won't try guessing what that could even mean.

You say leaders, I say workers

This however is the latest of business trends, and “leadership behavior training” books threaten to take over best-selling lists. One popular author of “leadership coaching” books gives away the game on the jacket of his book: he sees America one day filled with 100 million “leaders.” There are about 100 million workers in America.

Rather than large corporations, the economy of all modern nations depend utterly on the ingenuity, innovation, and hard work of small businesses. Most of today's large businesses do not innovate and never have. They buy up small companies who do. This is the story of the world's leading big company, Microsoft, which last performed bona fide innovation when it was a small company run by Bill Gates and a few friends. It was the case with General Motors as well, a few generations ago, when it stopped innovating and instead bought up small car companies who did.

If an economy was taken over completely by large corporations, it would be as dead as the communist economy became, because it would be the very same thing, and life for citizens would be just as miserable as it was for all workers behind the iron curtain.

On the other hand, if the economy were completely populated with small companies, everyone would be having a much grander time, and innovation would be everywhere evident everyday. A study three years ago by this newspaper found that Commercial Drive, a popular and funky retail district in East Vancouver dominated by small, owner-operated stores and restaurants, with roughly the same combined square footage of floor space as an average Walmart store, achieved roughly the same combined overall revenue as a Walmart, but employed about three times the number of people, generated about 50% more profit for a far more dispersed ownership, generated social program-supporting taxes several times greater than what is paid by a Walmart, and likely would have been found to generate a much greater degree of personal satisfaction for everyone, managers, workers and shoppers all, than what is possible at a Walmart, if such a thing were possible to measure.

There was much to despise in Soviet communism. But mostly the negatives that affected personal lives so miserably had to do with the effects of the sheer scale of communist enterprises, and had little to do with the ideology or goals espoused by the bosses. The same scale of enterprise is here with us again in the form not of Soviet factory complexes but in the form of globalized corporations.

The same results are evident: the people openly profess a loathing for the biggest of the big companies and smash their symbols and windows when possible (like Nike and McDonald's in Seattle in 1998), and otherwise try to undermine their power in ways not different from what Russian people did when confronting huge Soviet enterprises that dominated their lives no less—nor no more.

Then and there as well as here and now, the media propagate favourable stories about the big companies and denigrate the efforts of people struggling to limit the intrusion of them into their lives. Then and there as well as here and now, the big companies, just like the big Soviet enterprises, called on the power of the state, namely the police and the military, to corral the unruly people, demonstrate the power of their force before and above them, and generally order them back to work in the factory. Then and there as well as here and now, the future is bleak, personal relationships are fruitless, and more of us feel alienated from our own geography and lives.

Keep it small

It's the same misery because it is the same enemy. It could call itself communism or it could call itself capitalism, but the enemy of humanity has always been the large-scale enterprise regardless of the symbol sitting atop its factory. They are so indistinguishable that a large American clothing manufacturer could use the hammer and sickle as its corporate logo atop a gleaming downtown glass and steel tower of a head office, and no one would bat an eye. The irony would not be noticed.

The remarkable thing is this: if all big corporations disappeared tomorrow, there wouldn't be too big a disruption to any of our lives. Small businesses would spring up overnight everywhere to fill the voids left, and they would do so employing more people in more happy situations, generating greater economic circulation on more local levels, and producing better quality products and services for all of us. By contrast, think what the consequences to your life would be if all small companies disappeared tomorrow.

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