Saturday's post was based on the idea that the different perspectives of the employee and management create a significant tension within any organization. When I thought about other examples of this tension, I was reminded of a thought I heard recently about a society and its relationship to food.
An individual who must throw away food almost always feels wasteful. Next time, the individual resolves, I’ll eat the food before it goes bad! However, the society in which this individual lives probably throws out ton after ton of food on a daily basis. This is because ‘food waste’ for a society is an abstract concept that doesn't translate down to the individual level.
This is because a society must only consider food waste in the context of starvation. If a society is wasting food, it probably means there is a low risk of any individual starving. When a society loses this practical focus and decides to allow individual qualms about minimizing food waste drive decisions at the aggregate level, it does so understanding that minimizing food waste means increasing the risk of starvation.
To put it another way, if a society opts to minimize starvation, there will be food waste. If a society opts to minimize food waste, there will be starvation. The tension felt by an individual anytime he or she throws away wasted food is reconciled if the individual understands that wasting food is society’s way of guaranteeing everyone has enough to eat when it is next to impossible to predict how much everyone will need to eat tomorrow.
It works in a similar way within organizations. The organization must decide what negatives it wishes to minimize and must do so with an understanding of the consequences. If an organization opts to minimize employee abrasion, there will be lost market opportunity; if an organization opts to maximize market opportunity, there will be employee abrasion. The tension is reconciled when the employee understands how their negative experiences serve the need of the organization around them. And whose job is it to reconcile this tension in the organization? The manager, of course.
