Emma’s dilemma is a modern-day story of how American beliefs and myths collide with a personal sense of what’s important. Long before the discovery of the human genome and gene-editing technology is a story of America’s DNA and its impact on the nature of work.
From Sea to Shining Sea
Let’s start with American beliefs. The Puritans arrived on American soil with something to prove. They believed that if they demonstrated their individualism through hard work, persistence, thrift, delay of gratification, punctuality, and diligence, they were predestined for a favorable life in the eyes of God. As a result of their efforts, many began to accumulate wealth and property, creating a connection between hard work, economic success, and social status.1 It was German sociologist Max Weber who put a name to the emerging belief system—The Protestant Work Ethic.2
Beyond its impact on new settlements for religious and economic reasons, the spirit of restless self-determination pointed settlers westward, ultimately to pitch tents, pan for gold, and swim in the Pacific Ocean.
Within this American belief is a sense of entitlement, something that writer John L. O’Sullivan described as “manifest destiny.”3 If the original settlers were predestined to good fortune through hard work, why would new settlers not share that sense of destiny, a battle cry for the justifiable and inevitable movement into “unsettled territory.” The motivation within the American psyche was just heating up. America was on a roll, and as history shows, pretty much flattened anyone or anything in its path.
In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner characterized America’s expansion as the insatiable need to move to the frontier, the line of demarcation between what is and what could be.4 There’s something very American about the pursuit of more space and personal autonomy. Onward and upward is as much a belief as it is a rallying cry.
American Dream or American Myth?
The American Dream, first used by writer James Truslow Adams in 1931, was “a dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.”5 Dreams are powerful motivators, images of hope, and devoid of logic and reality. Something about this image of the “American Dream” captures the imagination of historians, writers, and people wanting to do whatever it takes to get here, that coming to America is worth it. America is a land where hard work and opportunity create hope and prosperity, diligence and persistence reap economic rewards, and freedom and autonomy fuel personal growth and geographic expansion.
However, the longing look back “depends” on where your ancestors arrived from and if they came as passengers on the main deck or as property crammed into steerage. The American Dream was not the mindset of a group of 20 enslaved Africans who arrived in chains in 1619, at Point Comfort, Virginia, one year before the Pilgrims arrived and 11 years before the Puritans. Point Comfort? You must be kidding. For the thousands of slaves that followed them, and from the legacy of slavery, the American Dream is a measure of what is not, not what is. The Dream and Climbing the Ladder are intertwined, and we will see the damage done when the Dream and the Ladder are barriers, not promises.
The Longest Running Revolution in America
Nathan Brenner came to this country during the wave of migration from Eastern Europe which started in the late 19th century. He was my cousin’s grandfather, a family symbol of hard work and resilience that was so common during that era. He lived in Lowell, Massachusetts, and worked up until a month before he died at age 84 in 1974.6 He was not around at the time of the American Revolution, but he did participate in the ongoing aftermath from another Revolution—The Industrial Revolution—which began with the opening of Slater’s textile mill in 1793.7 This was about 150 years before Cousin Nathan first began his daily routine—an hour commute by train to Boston and off to his job as a meat cutter every weekday for 40 years. Laborers who once worked the plough in colonial times were replaced by workers who cut meat some three centuries later in a steady, methodical, day-to-day routine.
One of the biggest impacts of the Industrial Revolution was how it split the work ethic in two—the value of hard work from the work itself.8 That split is yet to be restored. What once was the freedom to do “God’s work” were now supervised tasks. This so-called “scientific approach” was the brainchild of Fredrick Taylor.9 The process was to take work and divide it into tasks. Then, assign a specific job to Cousin Nathan, give him a set of knives and an apron, and make sure he did his job as directed. Repetition and uniformity created efficiency and productivity. As the work grew larger, people grew smaller, valued at best as organizational assets.
How much about the nature of work has changed since Slater Mill produced cotton yarn, or Nathan Brenner put on his butcher’s apron, to the day I met with Emma? Not much. Maybe your job is more sophisticated, more technologically oriented, and more intellectually challenging than those of a hundred years ago. Maybe the trains run from Lowell to Boston more frequently or the drive is more harrowing. But still, what awaits you is a slice of work chopped from larger pieces, handed out and supervised, judged, and rewarded based on your ability to get results. If you’re good at what you do, you could be rewarded with bigger chunks and the right to look over the shoulders of former team members—you, the judge, rising from the judged.
Since the 1980s people have begun to think more about work–life balance and the price for success.10 Organizations are well-aware of the rumblings, especially as the best and the brightest leave when they don’t see a meaningful future that make staying “worth it.” Gallup continues to measure the extent to which people swipe their key cards with gusto, motivated to take on the challenges of the day.11 As that engagement figure continues to hover in the mid-30 percent range, the big losers are employers. Like it or not, they must contend with the circumstances that for roughly 70 percent of the workforce, the reaction to the workplace is personal, not business. To bet that organizations have the capability to reverse the damage created by more than a century of scientific management looks like a long shot. Not because organizations don’t care, but because changing the thinking and practices to engage the workforce takes an all-in, 100 percent commitment, which most organizations and their leadership are not capable of doing.
No. Your sense of success is not something you want to leave up to your organization to figure out. It’s too important. This is your career and your life we’re talking about. The challenge you face is the result of years of playing two games that create tension between personal meaning and work-related success. This struggle will continue until you adopt a different mindset and approach to the world of work. What are these games all about?
Food for Thought
As you read through these statements, think about what they mean for our society today and what we have to do—what actions do we need to take—to reconcile the contradictions and treat everyone with dignity and respect.
1. The American beliefs in the Protestant Work Ethic and the American Dream have shaped what many believe are the core drivers for who we are, what we do, and what makes this country exceptional.
2. Given that shiploads of Africans arrived on our shores as property challenges the reality of American values, raising important questions about human decency, equity, and fairness both in our society and the workplace.
3. The concept of manifest destiny and the allure of the frontier add to the mystique that, as Americans and as a nation, we are destined to move forward, only limited by our capabilities and drive.
4. The Industrial Revolution introduced a separation between people and the work they performed. Scientific management, introduced at the end of the 19th century, atomized work into smaller pieces and introduced oversight. These changed the nature of work that continues today.
5. In conjunction with the nature of work, American traditions have created a laddered organization structure that equates Climbing the Ladder with success.
6. Today, organizational leaders are taking a harder look at the people engagement side of the business rather than task performance. To what extent are there indications that things will be different?
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