The False Corporate Intellectuals
The modern workplace is increasingly better at talking about work than doing it. A critique of corporate theatre, false gurus, HR excess, and why organizations must rediscover the simple discipline of getting things done.
PREAMBLE: The False Prophet Analogy
We have false prophets in religion.
We have false messiahs in politics.
And we have their corporate equivalent: the false corporate intellectual.
You know the type. They know all the vocabulary — alignment, engagement, collaboration, transformation, culture, agility, psychological safety, stakeholder management, cross-functional integration — whatever new phrase has just emerged from the alphabet soup of corporate management.
They always seem to have an explanation for why something did not work.
And, even more remarkably, they always seem to have a slogan for what we should do next.
But somewhere along the way, the workplace stopped being primarily a place where people came to do things.
That, I think, is where we went wrong.
I. THE WORKPLACE WAS ONCE A PLACE TO SHOW YOUR METTLE
There was a time when the workplace was where you brought your learning, your technical skills, your experience, your judgement — your unique perspective as a human being sitting near the pointed tip of human evolution.
You were supposed to know something.
You were supposed to be able to do something.
And after spending a year in an organization, there ought to have been something you could point to and say:
I did that. I made that better. I solved that problem. I reduced that cost. I built that system. I improved that process. I delivered that project.
Increasingly, however, the modern corporation seems fascinated by something else: the appearance of being smart.
I saw this repeatedly during my corporate years. Among some of us rebels, we developed the habit of sitting quietly at the back of presentations, observing the so-called high flyers.
Someone would present, and inevitably one of them would raise a hand and ask a sophisticated-sounding question. Often the person already knew the answer. The question wasn't meant to discover anything — it was meant to be heard. It announced to the room: I am here. I understand this. I am one of the smart people.
And invariably, these were often the people receiving the highest rankings — even when their body of work for the year struggled to justify the reputation.
That is when you begin to understand that a corporation can gradually develop two economies:
- The economy of work
- The economy of impression
The dangerous moment comes when the second begins paying better than the first.
II. THE PROFESSIONAL COURTIER
Every organization has them.
They understand people. They understand power. They know whose jokes to laugh at, which meetings matter, when to speak, when to disappear, and how to make important people feel good in their presence.
There is nothing wrong with being personable. Emotional intelligence matters. Relationships matter. Trust matters.
But good feelings are not, by themselves, output.
- A contractor does not complete a difficult project merely because everyone feels good.
- A compressor does not become more efficient because the team had an excellent bonding session.
- A production target does not become reality because everyone attended a workshop on collaboration.
At some point, somebody has to do the bloody work.
III. THE DOCTRINE OF WALKING ACROSS THE CORRIDOR
A trivial example that reveals a larger problem
I once encountered a piece of corporate wisdom that sounds wonderful when first spoken:
"People send emails to colleagues sitting just around the corner. Why don't they simply get up, walk across and talk to them?"
Everybody nods. Wonderful. Human interaction! Collaboration! Breaking down silos!
Except — stop applauding for a moment and actually think about it.
Suppose I need twenty pieces of information from four or five colleagues nearby. One is in a meeting. Another has gone for coffee. Another is on the phone. Why should I walk around hunting for each person, when I can send five concise emails and keep working while the answers come in?
That is not antisocial behaviour. That is asynchronous communication — one of the principal reasons information technology transformed the workplace. We spent tens of millions of dollars on computers, networks, and messaging systems precisely so that every exchange of information would not require two human beings to be physically present at the same moment.
Yet here comes the false corporate intellectual, telling us the enlightened thing to do is walk around the building looking for people. Why? Because collaboration.
Ten such interactions a day, even at thirty minutes each in interruption and searching, is five hours. Exaggerated, yes — but exaggeration exposes the absurdity.
When exactly am I supposed to work?
And a perfectly legitimate question: what if I don't particularly like the fellow? Must productive cooperation require friendship? Why can't two competent professionals exchange information efficiently, courteously, electronically — and then get on with their jobs?
IV. WHEN COLLABORATION BECOMES PERFORMANCE
Collaboration is good. Communication is good. Employee wellbeing is good. A healthy culture is good.
But almost every good thing has a point of diminishing returns.
- You can have so many meetings about collaboration that nobody has time to collaborate on actual work.
- You can spend so much time discussing communication that communication itself becomes an obstacle to execution.
- You can become so preoccupied with engagement that the organization forgets what employees were engaged to accomplish.
And when results deteriorate, what does the modern corporation often do? It reaches deeper into the alphabet soup:
A new initiative. A new acronym. A new task force. A new transformation programme. A new culture survey. A new consultancy. A new PowerPoint deck.
The organization keeps reorganizing the machinery around work because confronting the simpler possibility is uncomfortable:
Perhaps we have forgotten how to work.
V. THE POTTER
Forget Harvard Business School for five minutes. Forget McKinsey. Forget organizational psychology. Forget the PowerPoint presentation.
Go back to the potter.
Imagine a man making clay pots in an ancient village. What was his objective? To make good clay pots. Pots that didn't crack. Pots that held water. Pots so good that people travelled from neighbouring villages to buy them.
If he succeeded, perhaps he trained his son. Perhaps apprentices joined. Perhaps eventually he employed twenty people — and now we have the beginnings of an organization.
But its purpose remains beautifully clear: make excellent pots.
Everything else exists to support that objective. Training exists to make better pots. Hiring exists to find people capable of making better pots. Accounting tells us whether making the pots is profitable. Technology helps us make more or better pots. HR should help us attract, develop, and retain the people who make the pots.
The moment any supporting function begins believing it is the purpose of the enterprise — something has gone wrong.
VI. WHEN DID HR BECOME THE CORPORATE NANNY?
This is where the argument can easily be misunderstood.
I am not arguing against HR. I am certainly not arguing for brutal workplaces.
People are people. For as long as they keep returning every morning and giving an organization a substantial portion of their waking lives, that organization owes them more than a salary. They should be treated with dignity, heard, developed — not driven into the ground in pursuit of targets.
And the evidence is overwhelming: people who enjoy their work often contribute more than people who despise it. So employee wellbeing is not the enemy of productivity.
The question is one of balance:
- At what point did parts of HR move from helping people perform their jobs to becoming the nanny of the corporation?
- At what point did making people comfortable begin competing with making the organization effective?
- At what point did avoiding discomfort become more important than confronting poor performance?
- At what point did process become more important than outcome?
And, most importantly — at what point did we forget the pots?
VII. THE FALSE PROPHET AND THE FALSE CORPORATE INTELLECTUAL
The false prophet does not speak obvious nonsense. If he did, nobody would follow him. He says things that sound profound. He knows the vocabulary, the audience, when to lower his voice and when to shout — how to produce the emotional response that makes people believe something important has happened.
The false corporate intellectual operates the same way.
- The vocabulary is different.
- The microphone has become PowerPoint.
- The congregation has become the executive committee.
- The sermon has become the transformation initiative.
But the test should remain the same:
What happened afterwards? What became better, faster, cheaper, safer, more reliable? What did we build? What problem did we solve? What customer became happier? What employee became more capable? What value did we create?
If we cannot answer those questions, perhaps we should stop being impressed by the vocabulary.
BRING BACK THE WORK | Make Making Pots Great Again!
Organizations need culture. They need empathy, collaboration, excellent HR, people who understand human motivation.
But these things must orbit the purpose of the enterprise — not replace it.
The workplace should once again become a place where human beings bring their knowledge, experience, curiosity, craftsmanship and judgement together to accomplish something worthwhile.
A place where reputation follows contribution — rather than contribution being inferred from reputation.
A place where the quiet engineer who fixes the recurring problem matters as much as the executive who speaks beautifully about transformation.
A place where the person asking the clever question is eventually asked an equally important one:
What have you actually done?
Because ultimately every organization, no matter how sophisticated, is still that ancient workshop.
Somebody is making the pot.
Somebody is buying the pot.
And if the pot is no good, eventually all the corporate intellectualism in the world will not save the potter.
Never forget the pots.
Obi Akaraiwe | Don Kenobi
#BigAgendaAfrica
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