Burnout and Knowledge Workers

Frederick Taylor, the godfather of scientific management, recognized the problem of physical fatigue among laborers.   He was able to demonstrate that laborers are most productive when they work at a steady and comfortable pace, take a break from physical activity about every two hours, and work no more than eight or ten hours a day.  Pushing laborers harder than this causes a permanent depletion of their reserves and, ultimately, lower productivity.

However, the same principles have not been applied to knowledge workers – those whose work is intangible and often defies quantification because their work product is entirely mental.   It may take hours of thought to discover a solution, solve a problem, or create a plan – but the only evidence of this work occurs when the thinking is done and documentation takes place.   That is, the results of many hours of thinking may be expressed in a diagram or report that takes fifteen minutes to execute.

Just as physical exertion fatigues the muscles, so does mental exertion fatigue the mind.  This is most often in work that requires close attention, as errors are evident in the work that are blamed on carelessness, but are actually the result of mental exhaustion.

The evidence of mental fatigue is unnoticed because it is largely unnoticeable.   A physically exhausted person movers more slowly, breathes harder, and shows other visible signs of being overtaxed.   A mentally exhausted person may give no external signs, other than seeming a bit distracted or inattentive.

Meanwhile, the effects of mental exhaustion are far more devastating: a person who is physically tired may still be able to work at 80% of their capacity.  A person who is mentally tired may be unable to work at all – though again, because knowledge work defies quantification, it may not be easy to observe that a solution is only 80% as effective as one that might have been created if the worker was rested.   The most common symptoms – absenteeism and attrition – are usually unnoticed until they have come to crisis.

My personal experience with manual labor (working my way through school) was that management was very attentive to physical exhaustion.  Breaks and lunch were mandatory, and anyone caught working through them would be reprimanded.   The shift went no longer than twelve hours (multiple shifts ensured this).  If a worker handled heavy cargo such as salt or bleach on the first half of his shift, he was moved to handle light cargo such as foam trays or paper towels for the last half.   And if someone showed signs of severe fatigue, they were put on light duty immediately.

I have seen no such vigilance in the white-collar world.   Workers are informally discouraged from taking breaks, meetings and work sessions are scheduled through the lunch hour, and people are encouraged and praised for spending long hours at the office and taking lunch at their desks.    Taking a scheduled break, an hour for lunch, or leaving at a reasonable hour have become so rare as to seem ludicrous.  

And at times I wonder if the performance of companies is quite what it should be, or could be, if the issue of mental fatigue were more thoroughly studied and considered.   Though it is impossible to measure the results that are not being achieved because of it – and what cannot be quantified is very often ignored.

Employees as Stakeholders

Employees are often mistaken for assets of a company - "human resources" to be bought and sold as chattel of the corporation with only a modicum of regard for their personal interests.   However, it would be more accurate to consider them as stakeholders in the organization, whose continued involvement with the firm is contingent on the satisfaction of their interests.

The bilateral obligations of the employment contract are easily set aside by firms that consider themselves to be in the advantaged position in negotiation for human capital - when  the labor market has a surplus of exactly the kind of workers that are needed,  companies can show callus indifference to keeping their part of the bargain - and find themselves in a precarious position when the market shifts and their best people leave for other firms.   Such a perception is inadvisable, but likely inevitable.

This begs the question: what are the employees' interest.  Traditionally it was assumed that the only interests employees have in a firm is the income they will derive from doing so.   However, income isn't at the top of their list of interests.   In particular consider the following:

• Employees enjoy practicing their trade to the best of their ability
• Employees seek challenges that enable them to learn and grow
• Employees value the social interaction they have with colleagues
• Employees gain a sense of purpose in contributing to a mission
• Employees wish to belong to something greater than themselves

Each of these items is listed as being more important than compensation in various surveys of employee satisfaction and job-seeker interests, so there can be little argument that people work only for pay.

That's not to say that pay is not a critical factor - take away the paycheck and most employees would need to find work elsewhere.   But that is to say that they would "need" to do so, not that they would "want" to do so.   It is not merely fear that keeps them in their places, but the desire to have and retain these benefits.

In this sense, organizations and mangers are held responsible by their employees to ensure that these needs are fulfilled, and if it is their desire to retain their staff, rather than constantly hire and retrain more individuals whose interests will inevitable lead them elsewhere, firms would do well to give greater attention to holding up their end of the (implicit) contract.

This is especially important when a change takes place that impacts the interests of the employees.  When there is a reorganization or a merge, or even a dramatic change, the employment contract will be re-evaluated.  And while companies may assure employees their jobs, hence their income, are safe they must recognize that the change will impact the other factors that employees value more than money.

Any change to the status quo threatens the interests of employees.  Even in the best of cases, at least some of the workforce will consider the change to be unacceptable (in terms of the work they will do, the people they will work with, the mission they serve, etc.) and will therefore consider the firm to be in breach of contract, or at least reevaluate the terms of the agreement and determine whether the changes are acceptable to them.   Should they expect to be dissatisfied, they will begin the process of changing to another firm.

And again, firms who are callously indifferent (or carelessly ignorant) will adopt an attitude of "let them go, they are easily replaced" - but will soon find that hiring and training new employees is both a financial burden and a negative impact on performance, and that a great deal of institutional knowledge leaves along with the people, going to a competitor who values it more and will promise, at least for a time, to be better servants of the employees' interests.

Immigration and Innovation

I'm prefacing this meditation with a disclaimer for the folks who may have stumbled in from a search engine: this is not a political blog and I prefer to avoid the subject entirely.  This is a consideration of the (positive) effects of immigration on the development of new and revolutionary ideas and comments of a political nature will be excluded.  That said ....

I heard the most gorgeously half-witted thing today: someone claimed that America is a highly innovative country because of the diversity of the nation.  Don't get me wrong - diversity is a good thing and has been positive for America in many ways, but I don't think it is the cause of the innovative spirit in this country - however, the process of immigration likely is a cause ("a" and not "the") for the aggregation of innovative people, for reasons other than cultural diversity.

Giving Diversity its Due

I do not entirely dispute the positive effects of diversity on innovation.   When people from different cultures come together, they meet people who do things differently to themselves.   And in so doing, the rational reaction is to give fair consideration for the ways of other cultures, taking an objective position in considering if "their" way might indeed be better than "our" way.  Though most people likely have a more emotional reaction, shunning and resisting anything that is different to their culture, the rational is not entirely quashed and will win out in the long run.

Nations that have a long-standing domestic culture are often resistant to change - and it is in this sense that America and other new-world countries have a distinct advantage, in that there is no long-standing domestic culture to be defended.  Though there's is much disagreement about what culture ought to be, there is no historical record to back one side.

Those areas where culture has been static, or without immigration and diversity to any significant degree,  do not gain this perspective simply because everyone has the some culture, does things the same way, and is never given a cause to question whether "the" way (in the absence of "them") is the best alternative.

But I don't think that this creates innovation - it creates change, and if anything that change is done in the interests of normalization.  Perhaps in some cases a third way is discovered, not theirs nor ours but some fusion of the two that yields something unprecedented in both cultures.  But in most instances I suspect that one or the other is better and is therefore adopted.  Society as a whole benefits all the same.   But this is imitative rather than innovative in that nothing new is created as a result.

Immigration, Not Diversity

Rather than the mere diversity of population that resulted from immigration of people from different lands, my sense is that the innovative spirit became concentrated in America due to the individual liberty that it affords those who live here: the right to pursue one's own definition of happiness, the right to use one's person and property in ways that others may find objectionable, is the chief driver of innovation and advancement.

That is to say that people in other countries who were visionaries were discouraged or prevented from pursuing their vision in their home nation because there was a uniformity of culture, but in the multicultural of the United States there is no formal "Department of American Culture" in government, and the structure of government was such that enforcing a singular culture was contrary to its stated purposes.

Specifically, diversity did not create innovation, but it created a condition in which people who already had innovative capacity were able to exploit it without discouragement or punishment, and with a great deal of reward and encouragement.   The net result is that people did not become innovative because they had moved to America, they came to America because they already were innovative and felt that pursuing their vision was worth leaving their homeland.   And this is where I think the person who assumed that diversity alone caused innovation got it entirely backward.

Innovative People as Resources

While it was likely not the intent of those who designed the government of the United States to create a beacon for innovation, it was the net result - and the rapid progress of the nation and its speedy rise to world dominance was a consequence of that.   While being entirely unaware of it, the Founding Fathers changed the nature of competition among nations.

Prior to the industrial revolution, and likely for several decades afterward, the struggle for power among nations was for the control of resources.  One tribe would attack another to seize its food, one nation would attack another to seize its land, timber, minerals, and other factors of production.   The competition was essentially about getting things from somewhere else, or things that could be used to make other things for the benefit of one's own citizens.

The new basis of competition is not over the control of things, but over the control of ideas.    Seizing the land and resources to manufacture something and enslaving people to participate is only of value if you know what to do with the things you have stolen.   There is much greater and sustainable power in having possession of the people who are knowledgeable and visionary enough to make good use of those resources, and it's not being fought among nations, but among corporations.

At the risk of straying into politics, conflict among nations in the present era is a conflict among ideologies: those traditionalists who want to stop new ideas from entering the old village have become more proactive in resisting the change that is proposed by other ideologies, and both sides feel their way is best and that others ought to play along.   In essence, it is a conflict of tradition and evolution - a battle for or against innovation - with America and the West leading the charge in favor of change.

The Competition for Innovators

The competition for people is not the same as the competition for things.   A thing, once seized, can be used as one sees fit - but this requires the user to know how to make use of it.   A person, once seized, can be made into a slave - but a slave does not innovate, but merely obeys a master - and the master must decide to know how to make use of the slave. That is to say that controlling people, whether through outright slavery or merely manipulation, gives one the use of the person's body, but very little access to the capabilities their mind.

It also stands to note that "countries" are less relevant now than ever before, given that many corporations are multinational, the parts of a company that happen to be located between arbitrary political boundaries are generally not self-sufficient.  An American company may have a factory in China that makes machine parts - but nationalizing the factory would give the government of China the ability to make only what is already being made, which will soon become obsolete as better parts and better machines are invented outside of its borders.

As such, the competition for innovators is a competition between companies rather than nations - whether those who provide the ideas that fuel economic growth are citizens of one nation or another is immaterial. Both the innovators who create profit and the investors who profit from their innovation are also spread among multiple nations, and the physical assets of the company are of decreasing importance to its profit potential when compared to the value of its innovative employees.

Where Was I Going With This?

I have the distinct sense I'm meandering at this point - but perhaps it's because the point has been made and I'm now chasing after loose threads: that the concentration of innovators in a country or company is the result of making itself appealing to those who wish to innovate, to attract rather than seize the creative potential of human resources.

My sense is that the value of this lesson is nebulously understood by companies - the sense I get from the current literature is that companies recognize the need for innovative people to remain competitive, but do not fully grasp the reasons why, nor the means by which they can do so.   Perhaps somewhere in all this nattering is the thread of an answer?

Smart People Are Difficult

I was listening to a webinar about managing knowledge workers.  The main thrust of the presentation is that management practices were developed in a time when a company consisted of one "brain" and many hands to carry out the work - but in the present day companies require people to be creative and innovated, yet they still manage them like drudges.   As such the most valuable people have a deep sense of dissatisfaction, do much less good than they are capable of, and leave to find greener pastures.

All of this is good and well, but most of the presentation was about the "problems" that mangers face when dealing with smart people - and it came out as a long litany of complaints that are ... well ... maybe at least a little bit fair fair.   I wanted very much to deny it, but the speaker had a lot of things to say that were entirely undeniable.   While smart people are very valuable to organizations in the present day, they can be very difficult at times.

That is likely an understatement.  Considering the litany of complaints below, "difficult" is perhaps too gentle a term.


How Smart People Feel About Their Work

• Smart people are very attached to their ideas and are deeply disappointed when their ideas are not implemented exactly as conceived.   If any of their ideas is rejected, modified, or set aside, they are inconsolable.
• Smart people are sensitive and possessive about the projects they work on, and they remain tenacious about completing a project even if they sense it is not leading anywhere, ever hoping that it might have tremendous value that won't be realized until it's proven out.
• Smart people are attracted to intellectual challenges.  They will devote the majority of their effort to a problem that is hard to solve and are less interested in problems that are easier to solve even when the return on investment is higher.
• Smart people will be drawn to a solution that is elegant, intricate, or unusual - even when there is a simple, straightforward, and unglamorous solution that would fix the problem better and faster.
• Smart people have little tolerance for the mundane and tedious necessities.  Any activity that is not using them to their full potential is making them worse, or at least rusty, at what they do best. 
• Smart people care about status and recognition, but not in the traditional form of money and titles.  Instead, they seek the respect for their capabilities as demonstrated when their ideas are given resources and support.  
• Smart people are immune to compliments.  Vague expressions of praise from someone who doesn't understand what they are doing is disingenuous and a bit of an insult.   Regardless of how they behave they never think their work is perfect and lose respect for those who can't see its flaws.

How Smart People Feel About Their Managers

• Smart people hate being managed.  They feel they are most effective when given a problem and are left alone to solve it, and find attempts to "assist" or "collaborate" to be wasteful, controlling, and intrusive.
• Smart people are attuned to subterfuge and suspect it, particularly of management.  They readily recognize the tricks and tactics of manipulation, and are offended not only at the attempt to control but the presumption that they aren't smart enough to see through the act.
• Smart people are never happy about having their work approved or controlled, particularly when those who approve their work are traditionalists who seek to squelch innovation in favor of keeping to business as usual.
• Smart people resent a manager's demand for them to "show" progress to others.   They spend a great deal of time thinking and researching before they take action, with long periods of quiet time between short bursts of activity.
• Smart people resent being reminded of the bigger picture.   They are perfectionists who will often delve into the details and feel that the bigger picture will take care of itself if all the little things are done correctly.
• If a manager shows support of smart people, it will make them all the more aggressive in promoting their ideas.   If the manger doesn't support them, they will shut down and look for an exit.  There is no middle ground.
• Smart people have an ambivalent relationship with managers, expecting to be supported without any interference in their work.   For the same reason, many smart people make very poor managers from other smart people because they cannot step back from the work.
• Smart people are not impressed by rank and title and very often have contempt for those who have been elevated in an organization for playing politics.   They care about what other smart people think of them, but do not regard managers as particularly smart people.
• Smart people are loyal to their work but not to their bosses.  They recognize that a manager has his own agenda (generally of self-interest) and recognizes that a manager's priorities can be shuffled at any moment, so long-term loyalty is not advisable.
• Smart people expect to be recognized and rewarded without having to beg for attention.  They believe that if someone is a good manager, that person will be aware of their value without needing to be told.
• Even when a smart person has a good leader, he seldom recognizes it, and is more attuned to leadership mistakes than successes.   The highest compliment a smart person can give a supervisor is that "you're not getting in the way too much."

How Smart People Feel About Their Companies

• Smart people seldom mention the place they work to others.  They are identify what they do, but feel that the company they work for is incidental - their pride is in doing something, not in belonging somewhere.
• Smart people want to pursue the ideas they are passionate about.  They will reluctantly attend to the mundane and administrative duties, but would prefer to spend their time solving problems and achieving goals than dealing with corporate necessities.
• Smart people are highly independent.  While many require the resources of a company to pursue their work, they feel that it is their work alone and resent the tendency of the company that provides these resources to wish to control the work. 
• Smart people believe themselves to be unique and indispensible to their companies, but consider their companies to be commoditized and easily replaced.   Any firm in the same industry would value their ideas just as much as the one they happen to be working for, and some firms would value it more than their present employer.
• Smart people also recognize that not every idea will pan out, and expect that their companies are quicker to punish their failures than reward their successes.   They believe their employers thing they're "only as good as their last mistake."
• Smart people challenge the traditions of their companies.  Anything "old" is automatically assumed to be wrong and they will quickly fall in line with an opposing position by default.
• Smart people seem socially awkward but are highly organizationally savvy.  They see a company as a system, with people and functions and rules.  While they prefer to focus on work and avoid political games, they are not at all naive and can be quite dangerous.  They are expert gamers.
• Smart people care little for climbing the corporate ladder and often place their reference points outside of the organization, seeking mentors in those who have been successful elsewhere (and with whom they are not in direct competition).
• Smart people may appear to be loyal because they are not looking for work, but they expect that work is always looking for them.   The best employer is the one that most values them, and if their own firm takes them for granted they believe that there are others who will be aggressive in recruiting them away.

How Smart People Feel About Dumb People

• Smart people abhor "dumb" people - they do not have any respect for those who are mundane an institutionalized, who like routine duties governed by rules and procedures, and who prefer to stick to business as usual.
• Smart people take a deep pleasure in breaking the rules and succeeding, because it proves to the mundane sort of person who believes in procedures and standards that such things are entirely unintelligent and counterproductive.
• Smart people do not like teaching others or sharing knowledge.   They cling to the notion that "knowledge is power" and feel that those who want to access their knowledge without rewarding them for it are stealing what is most precious.
• Smart people are blunt and candid.  They feel they already have the best idea and discussing anything else is merely a waste of time until the other person recognizes they are right, which is inevitable.

How Smart People Feel About Other Smart People

• Smart people want to be connected to other smart people to share knowledge and discuss ideas, but are more drawn to people who are smart in different ways so that they can benefit from collaboration between different subject matter experts rather than competing to be the most esteemed expert on the same subject.
• Smart people are very competitive with one another, particularly those who are smart in the same subject areas.   They can admit that someone is smarter than themselves, but not without grave resentment.
• There is no greater feud in the workplace than occurs between two smart people who are convinced of mutually-exclusive ideas.   They are convinced that they are right and anyone else, no matter how smart, is utterly wrong.
• At the same time, smart people begin to doubt the intelligence of anyone who fails to argue with them at least a little but, before ultimately accepting their ideas.

How Smart People Feel About Themselves

• Smart people feel "they are their work."   When a smart person introduces himself, he will tell you what he has accomplished or what he is working on, right after their name (which they may not even mention).
• Smart people never feel that they are adequately valued - though "value" is not always about compensation alone, but the resources and latitude provided in support of their efforts.
• Smart people are not bystanders.  Even when they are not taking action, they are carefully observing, figuring out how "the game" works and how they can win should they decide it's worth their effort to enter the arena.
• Smart people tend to be ungrateful.   When they are recognized or rewarded, they generally feel that they have earned it and likely feel that they should have been recognized more generously and sooner than they were.

***

I would like to argue against all of this as a stereotype of smart people, but at the same time every one of these points is valid to some degree about the smartest people I have known - though admittedly, most of them seem conscious of the "smart" stereotype and try to avoid it.   Meanwhile, quite a few not-so-smart people I have encountered play out these characteristics in a exaggerated manner as they are attempting to appear to be smarter than they are.

In the end, I have to fall back on an old adage - "there are no stereotypes without prototypes" - and if this portrayal of "smart people" is a gross caricature, it is not entirely without basis in the real behavior of real people.

Building Respected Companies

I was pleasantly surprised by Jordi Canals's book Building Respected Companies: Rethinking Business Leadership and the Purpose of the Firm - most authors who address corporate ethics seem to take the perspective that a corporation is the means to other ends, primarily as a milk-cow to provide funding to various social causes that are irrelevant and sometimes hostile to the interests of the firm itself or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, that the firm is merely a money mill to generate returns for the stockholders by any means possible. Canals took a different and surprisingly rational approach.

His principle thesis was that a business is an organization that is created with a purpose in mind, which is generally expressed as a mission to sell goods and services to the customers. Even if it does nothing more to demonstrate its social responsibility, a firm is creating a benefit for society, as the customers who purchase the goods or services of a firm derive some benefit, as evidenced by their willingness to pay for it.

In that way, a business is likened to most other organizations: a nonprofit or governmental organization delivers some benefit, usually a service than a good, to its beneficiaries - the main difference is that beneficiaries of a non-profit or government organization do not value the good with which they are provided enough to voluntarily pay for it - but they'll gladly enjoy the benefits if someone else is made to pay the bill. (Conceded: there's some argument that the beneficiaries "need" but cannot afford to pay - which is sometimes valid, though far less often than some purport.)

A second segment of society that is served by firms is its employees: in the salary they draw, the immediate non-cash benefits they receive, and the personal growth they derive from their profession. There's the sense that a firm can profit by exploiting its workers, but firms that take a long-range perspective must provide adequate compensation and opportunities for development to retain their personnel in a competitive environment - or else a competitor who sees their value will hire them away.

It's interesting that the importance of employees is considered at least to some extent by classical economists such as Adam Smith, who indicated that industry creates goods by leveraging labor and capital (they also separate "land," but it's always seemed an odd distinction, as land is just a kind of capital) - but the current-day perspective of companies seems to grant an inordinate amount of the reward (profit) to the suppliers of capital (investors) and undercompensate the suppliers of labor (employees). But I suppose that's just the effect of the present economic situation, where there is a glut of supply and a dearth of demand in the labor market. When the situation is reversed, and labor is in short supply, firms are brought to the reluctant admission that labor is a valuable input.

On the topic of shareholders, this is the third segment of society that companies serve, by providing a fair return on their investment, supplying the requisite capital without which the firm would not exist. Canals didn't explore the needs of this group in much detail, as firms already seem to recognize and over-emphasize the degree to which investors deserve to enjoy the financial rewards of the firm, and quite often support their interests to the detriment of other stakeholders whose claim to a share of the reward is just as valid.

But there is a significant point to be made about the nature of investment in the present age: it seems that many people still cling to the notion of investment being the realm of individuals who are already quite wealthy and were simply seeking to become even more wealthy, but participation in investing has become far more widespread: the vast majority of investment funds in these days comes not from a small handful of billionaires, but from the great multitude of middle-class workers who each have a small stake in pension plans and retirement accounts that, in aggregate, amount to trillions of dollars. This, itself, constitutes a problem because the individual with a few thousand dollars in a retirement fund is far more callus and indifferent to the firms in which he invests, and far more interested only in his financial returns, than the plutocrat who own a sufficiently large propotion of a firm to feel personal interest in and accountability for its behavior.

The last, and least important segment of society that companies service is consequently the one that is most often the very same that those who misunderstand ethics believe that the firm should primarily serve: the community at large. Canals's take is that most philanthropy by business is a dodge - a firm that conspicuously donates to charity is likened to a pimp who donates to the church: they give some small fraction of what they have extorted from others to charitable causes in order to appear to be magnanimous, and it's disappointing how readily the public falls for it.

That's not to say that companies have no interest in being charitable, just no moral obligation to provide financial support to organizations that are indifferent or hostile to their own interests. For a firm that operates in a given community to donate to educational establishments is well in line with its purpose - it creates more knowledgeable customers and more capable workers, some of who will buy from and work for the firm itself and contribute to its primarily social function: to render a good or service that delivers a benefit to its customers.

It's been a long meditation and has likely only scratched the surface of the book, but it's a worthwhile read and likely the most reasonable and rational approach to corporate ethics I've read in many years - much more to come on this topic, I expect.

Employee Pathways

Some of the ideas expressed in a few recent posts have collided with a workplace incident that leads me to a few observations about effective resource management and employee empowerment - it's not a topic I consider very often, but worth jotting down a few notes to bring things together should I shift my interests in that direction:

The workplace incident is a coworker who is struggling to get the equipment and software that he believes will enable the design staff to be more efficient and effective in their work. This is more of an ongoing situation, as I've run into the same issue before where a request for software was declined or obfuscated to the point where I've given up trying and come to accept that the culture of my current employer is a night-and-day difference from my former one. I think we would disagree on the exact number of times a person should bash their skull against a brick wall before accepting that it's not going to give - and I do try to be supportive than discouraging of his efforts, as my naive streak of optimism hasn't quite been crushed by the corporate machine and I'm genuinely hopeful to see someone else succeed where I have failed.

This takes me back to a previous meditation on the notion of the ethics of a person who purchases goods for use by others, and the degree to which they seek to use their power of decision to compel the ultimate user of a product to accept an option that's not quite sufficient for the sake of saving money. The satisfaction that a user derives from the consumption of a consumer good is highly subjective, and easily dismissed as being unimportant - the person who expects better quality is merely being unreasonable and fussy and should be happy with what they get.

But when translated into the context of an employee who claims a need for tools to do his work, it would seem to be a more objective case - that the benefit of having better resources is not merely the personal satisfaction that can be gained merely from using them, but in the satisfaction that comes from a job well done - having the right tools to do things the right way results in a better outcome for employer and consumer alike.

And yet, the authority of those who control corporate budgets places them in a position to decide what tools others "need" to do their jobs - without any understanding of the work that they do, and an understanding only of the cost of the tools. It doesn't help that people in such positions are often encouraged to cut costs and do things as cheaply as possible. But such is the nature of things.

This also calls to mind a more recent post about user pathways, in which I reasoned that a better user experience could be achieved not by restricting consumer behavior, but by accommodating it. This also seems to have some relevance to the employee who seeks to do his job in a different way than the employer prescribes it should be done. In effect, by preventing a user from choosing his own path, the company is forcing them to take a less efficient route. When a customer comes in contact with a vendor with such an attitude, they generally are frustrated by the experience and are likely to seek another vendor. When an employee comes into contact with an employer who takes the same attitude, they are likewise frustrated - and while, in times where the labor market favors the employer, such employees must be content to middle through, they will eventually consider the possibility of finding another employer that encourages and enables them to do their work.

Ultimately, the consequence of "employee experience" has a significant impact on customer experience - especially in cases such as this one, where the workers in question are those who design the user experience. The employee who lacks the tools and resources to do their job well necessarily does a poorer job for want of them. Because the employee is seeking to be more effective and efficient in his work, greater consideration should be given to the possibility that he is not seeking personal satisfaction from a consumer good, but to achieve benefits that would have a positive effect on the company, as the efficiency and effectiveness of the worker yields a better product for the consumer.

All things considered, I don't see that this meditation offers any valuable insight as to what to do as an employee of an organization that takes a "make do with what you're given" attitude toward resources needed to be effective at one's work - but it does, perhaps, hold a lesson in leadership and resource management to be less dismissive of the expressed needs of employees.