fixing quiet quitting

Okay, let's talk about quiet quitting. I know

it's the buzzword of the moment and everyone's doing it. And

what even is that? First of all, what people are describing as

quiet quitting isn't quiet quitting, it's doing your job.

It's doing the things that you agreed to do in the way that you

agreed to do them and expecting to get paid for it. That is not

quitting. Quitting is putting down your pen, closing your

computer, walking out of the room, and not going back. If

your time is still being purchased by the company, and

you are still producing, that is not quitting. So let's start

there. But then let's start talking about why why this quote

unquote, quiet quitting. What it is, is a recognition of the need

for, for dignity. Humans are inherently entitled to dignity.

Humans inherently have worth. And when an institution or an

organization or another individual starts treating

people like they don't, eventually they will notice. It

might take a while. In this case, I think it's probably

taken the better part of almost two generations. But here we

are. Here we are. And the bottom line greed has finally overtaken

people's willingness and ability to ignore it. And so people are

taking a good hard look at what they actually agreed to sell.

And only selling that much. They're doing it because they

have finally realized, we have finally realized, that we

deserve to have ourselves whole and beautiful, that we belong to

us and not to institutions, corporations or capitalism. That

we should be able to eat and sleep and breathe and rest when

we are sick. And make the choices that are best for us and

still earn a living. For a while in a past life, a fairly long

time ago, I worked as a baker in a small town. I worked at a

bakery. That is to say it was not my bakery. But there weren't

very many of us working there. And we pushed ourselves. Yes.

And some of that pushing was probably unwise. Yes. And it may

have led to my back injury, yes. But at least we were afforded

the dignity of basically making the decisions for ourselves

about what was possible. And not doing more than that. Of what we

were capable of and not doing more than that. Of not working

with substandard tools if we didn't want to. Sometimes what's

substandard isn't obvious. We worked with ancient pizza ovens.

But those old ovens would heat up come hell or high water.

Every morning. It took three hours but once they were hot,

they were hot. And we could run three, at least, batches of

bread, maybe four through them before they needed a break to

reheat. Nobody is quitting and staying at work. That's not how

that works. But how do you be a company that people don't want

to do that to? That people won't do that to. Well. You treat them

like full people. You give them plenty of time off, you give

them the flexibility to define the terms by which they are

judged. You work with them. You get them on board with your

company mission, you do something that matters in the

world. You care about them for real and you act like it. If you

ever find "Oh, well, that's a cost of doing business" coming

out of your mouth, you better be talking about something like

credit card fees. And not about human misery. Quite some time

ago, I got into a very brief spat on Twitter, because

somebody had said that he wanted to see that people were crying

at work. He was, I don't remember, either a founder or VC

and he got on this thing about "you don't have to tell me that

you're doing well. You just have to tell me that you have people

crying at their desks." And I thought that is atrocious.

Especially in the beginning of a company's culture. At the very

beginning of a company's culture. What are you thinking,

sir?

What are you thinking that you're building that into your

culture that that is considered normal? That someone being that

miserable or that tired or that overwhelmed is a sign of

success? No, sir, no. That is a sign that your system is already

failing. And your primary concern should be to stop

failing. Because that will grow into 10 and then 100 and then

culture of needing to cry at their desks in order to prove

that they are working hard enough. Which leads to burnout,

which leads to resentment, which leads to corruption of various

kinds, which leads to people being less important than almost

everything including and especially the bottom line. And

if that is how you are running your company, sir, it is a moral

failure. I said as much, more or less. Some people agreed with

me, a whole pile of other founders and VCs jumped on my

head. But you know what, I'm still right. Because we know

about systems theory that you need to create a healthy culture

from the beginning, in order to have a healthy culture going

forward. And not only is it healthier for your employees,

it's also healthier for you. It also means that everyone else

develops this fierce loyalty to your organization, because your

organization is actually taking care of them. That old fashioned

company loyalty thing was some systems and propaganda, but it

was also some, the companies actually took care of their

employees sometimes. And so of course, you wanted to keep

working for them, because they were providing for you in a

reasonable way, they were making a reasonable life possible, a

balanced life possible, a happy, healthy life possible, a joyful

life possible. If that's making that possible under capitalism,

you're gonna stick with it. People don't quit, or cut back

on what they're doing, because they're happy. People cut back

and quit, because they can't figure out how they're going to

survive any other way. Nobody likes to compromise having their

basic needs met. People compromise having their basic

needs met, because they don't know what else to do. People

quit their jobs when they don't have another job. People cut

back their work, people set limits, when they have tried to

set limits every other way and nobody has paid attention. If

you're a manager, and you just keep telling someone, they need

to be more productive as you quietly eliminate position after

position at that same level so that the one person is now doing

three, or four or six jobs because it's better for-

something- your bottom line, you need to stop. Because that

person will hit a limit and that person will quit. People don't

want to. They do it because they are not happy. Because they are

not thriving, because they are slowly eating themselves in the

name of your bottom line. And that is immoral every way you

slice it. And so they just won't anymore. And that is what this

thing is that people are calling quiet quitting, it's actually

people taking care of themselves. It's actually people

attending to their own needs, it's actually people putting on

their own oxygen mask first, so that they can be of service to

others and to themselves. So don't tell me that this quiet

quitting is some kind of weird rebellion. And don't even get me

started on what the Fed has been saying about how there needs to

be a little pain in the wage-earning class. They're does

not. There does not. We can all be well-paid and treated well.

And nobody will suffer. And that is the transformation that we as

business owners can bring about. Because the more often we offer

a job with good, healthy boundaries and benefits; the

more often we, as intensives, look at the world and say this

whole system is bullshit and we're not doing it. The more we

do that the better off we'll be. The more we do that, the more

people will come to work for us, the more people will value

working for us over working for corporations that treat people

like a number on a spreadsheet. And when there are enough jobs,

like what we're offering, that will put pressure on the job

market, like what we're seeing.

And suddenly, large institutions will also have to offer people

their humanity back. Thanks for tuning in; talk to you soon.