From the President’s Desk: Work isn’t about waiting for the cake anymore
Once upon a time, in the name of capitalism, it was customary for citizens to sell their souls to corporations to keep the wheels of society turning.
Does that sound like some far-off fairy tale? It’s not. That mindset shaped much of the last 100 years. And if you go back further, , when there were no laws to protect employees, it was even worse – but that’s another story … by Upton Sinclair. This was the way work used to be.
In this Old Way of Work, if you dressed the part in your interview, you’d be hired at the company’s starting wage. The dark closet or dark corner of the warehouse where you worked would be yours and yours alone – “open floor plans” had yet not yet become fashionable in Fortune magazine, despite Frank Lloyd Wright's "Great Workroom."
If you did a great job in your closet and kept your head down, you could be promoted to a closet with its own light! This meant you could stay late on the job and show up early, whether the sun was out or not. You’d start doing more paper-pushing and less actual work, beginning a separation between you and the un-promoted. This didn’t happen after you accomplished a certain amount of work, but instead after a fixed period of time. Say, 10 years.
If you kept at it and made your boss’s life easy, you’d eventually move up to a cubicle. The gray (or beige!) soft-walled pen was not called a “cube” by accident. Its angular design allowed companies to cram as many employees as possible into the space, all in service of getting more production out of the same footprint. Your move to the cube didn’t typically happen after you reached any particular amount of development or career growth, but after a fixed period of time. Maybe 10 years.
If you kept your head inside your cubicle and didn’t make waves, you’d one day be asked to move into an Office, with a door you could close for privacy and your name printed across it in clear, bold letters.. It served as a place to get more work done, away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the workforce, and as a status symbol to those who had yet to reach the “Dream.” The door wasn’t usually granted to you when your contributions to the company made a significant impact, but after a fixed period of time. About 10 years or so.
One day, the Powers That Be would make the ultimate decision: it was your time. This wouldn’t be based on your impact, potential, or accomplishment of your own goals, but after a fixed period of time. Something like 10 years.
After 40 years at the company, you’d have an office crammed with paper and a desk crammed with knickknacks. You’d have given up four decades, sacrificing school plays, workouts, sports games, and travel for the good of the organization. That’s when they’d bring out the cake.
The cake was your sign that it was time to pack up. On the day of the party, you’d clean out your desk into a box, your workmates would show up to share the dessert, and you’d usually get a parting gift in the form of a trophy, bejeweled watch, or a gilded tool off the line. Aside from what was in your box, you’d leave everything behind and move into a new chapter. After almost half a century, you’d be ready to start a new life – your real one.
I know many people who built long careers this way. Some are colleagues, and some are family. They all have great stories to share, and I have a great deal of respect for what they gave to their work. In many cases, their work may very well have made the world better. What I hear less often are stories about how that work, and the systems around it, made them better in return.
When Bryan and I set the course for Connico’s future, we made a conscious decision to move beyond thinking that has shaped work for the last century because every era brings new opportunities – and new responsibilities – to do better by people.
From the beginning, our aim was to build a company where fulfillment was something people experienced FOR 40 years, not only AFTER 40 years. That meant putting people first and measuring success not only by financial performance, but also by how our team members were growing and succeeding.
This was something entirely unprecedented: a mission to rewrite what meaningful work can look like.
In 2022, when I shared this vision, you could sense tension in the air. For many of our team members, this was a different way of thinking about work than what they had experienced before. I was telling them that financial performance would NOT be the first priority? Was I crazy? Could work really have meaning?
Our vision statement, which we drafted back then, perfectly illustrates our goal. It mentions nothing about a goal to be the premier consulting firm in our space or to work on the most projects. It has no language about the future of our industry, the size or scale of our team, or our target markets.
Infrastructure (which our team has more than 600 years of combined experience in), aviation (which has been our bread and butter at more than 500 airports), and reports (which we assemble to an industry-leading quality standard) all go unmentioned. Our vision is “To Be the Best Place to Work.”
We realize this is radical. It’s a journey that might last a lifetime, but that’s more inspirational than discouraging. We are fortunate that each of our team members believes in this vision because they are the ones bringing it to life!
Stay tuned for more from Connico and more about the future of work. We hope you’ll join us on this voyage to leave behind the dark closets of the past and move into a bright future of inspiration, possibility, and fulfillment!
P.S. Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Great Workroom” was designed to bring people together in a shared space, not to maximize efficiency or pack in as many desks as possible. Somewhere along the way, we kept the layout and lost the intent.
