Great resignation or great reshuffle or just a writer’s block

Many companies have lost number of “resources” in one Qtr what they used to lose in a year. Yours truly is also part of this phenomena what few advanced thinkers have described as great resignation and evolved CEO’s have called as great reshuffle

Certain things are so personal that they become universal, and one personal/Universal phenomena was the suffering most of us went through for last one and half year

Part of suffering could be imagined and exaggerated while part of it could have been self-inflicted, but suffering was universal, whether it was losing a loved one or dealing with cranky children or watching waist sizes create new records. Unfortunately, none of this could be wished away by coping mechanisms that we all had perfected before new normal hit us.

Coping mechanisms were essentially the stories we believed in, like suffer at work to get to corner office and wield power, live in small houses for the charm of big cities, don’t buy a pet as who will take care of it when you go on holiday, wear perfume/Deo as that may attract opposite sex…. you get the drift.

So, what replaced the stories that everyone believed in after all nature abhors vacuum, and here the answer moves from universal to personal, but the need to prove that the suffering had a meaning remained universal.

Lot of people in my circle brought dogs, few brought coffee machines fit for Starbucks, some brought big SUVs, some took sabbaticals, while some took to baking, essentially attempting to draft a new story that can give meaning to what one had gone through

But what if lot of your suffering (real and imagined) was work related that can’t be made meaningful by expensive coffee or a cute dog. How do you give meaning to never ending virtual meetings and a mind-space completely occupied by work?

That’s where the old stories started to fail, lot of people started questioning why live in an alien city when all your work can be folded in 13-inch laptop screen, what does a slog at work amount to when it gives you a salary that you can’t spend..

you couldn’t see cabins where you would aspire to land into, you don’t see friends that you can share a cup of tea, you vaguely remember concept of team spirit or seat with your name on it. A project closure, a sales win or breakthrough idea is just an email.

An old story which is still relevant today is promotion or title inflation, but everyone can’t be promoted (organizations can introduce another level and promote everyone). So which stories are companies selling to average employee, with above average suffering who didn’t buy a dog, or a coffee machine that can give him/her meaning?

Well, they are re-telling old stories, like “you have a bright future here” which seems someone is robbing a happy ending from his story of suffering. Compared to that a new job, a new role is like a logical conclusion to his story  

Even same work in different organization is equated with a chance to re-draft the narrative. Just like a new year resolution, you know it’s only a change of date but still it feels like an opportunity to reshape one’s life.

All bosses must do is figure out a good story for the employees who are suffering from a writer’s block, else employees are dreaming of drafting their own stories outside the boundaries of company’s laptop.

Ending this rambling with two lines from great poet Mir describing the mindset some of employees are expressing

 

जिसको तुम आसमान कहते हो,

सो दिलो का गुबार है अपना