The Changing Contract/The Increasingly Elective Relationship Between People and Organizations

Until roughly 25 years ago, a career could be a lifetime of reciprocal commitment between employer and employee: a person might join the company in their 20’s and stay until the gold watch and retirement party. They’d give their all to the company, and the company would take care of them in return. It was workplace paternalism, and it was a source of great security for millions of workers.

A Change is Coming: Phase One 

That reciprocal commitment started to fray in the 1980s and 1990s, when short-term shareholder value drove downsizing, restructuring and the elimination of pensions. Technology made it easier to outsource and offshore work, and consulting, contracting and freelance work became the norm. Loyalty fell, opportunity became more transactional, and turnover skyrocketed.

Still, while tenure at a given organization might have been shortened by the dawn of the 21st century, information and power continued to cluster at more senior levels of management and leadership. Progressive levels of management typically held greater levels of knowledge and control than those below them. Being at a lower level in the organization meant you had less information, fewer tools. You were reliant on the people higher up to tell you where to go, and because they knew and you didn’t know, you generally followed along. The power and persuasion built into that knowledge made it easier to drive change and control the narrative around it, even though the relationship between employee and organization had become more transactional.

The Change has Come 

The internet age has flattened that knowledge and control hierarchy, and the influx of AI tools has pancaked it altogether.

Today, hierarchy and information don’t work in organizations the way they used to. Sure, bosses have authority and power, but the combination of tech-driven access to information and research, and the de-paternalization of organizations means that individuals have a much more elective relationship with their workplaces and the decisions made there.

Because of the democratization of information, it doesn’t matter where you are in the organization. You have information access; you have some understanding of your organization that’s a lot more sophisticated than it used to be. You don’t know everything that’s going on, but between the rumor mill, what’s public, and the powerful search tools at your disposal, it’s a lot more democratic. As a result, people at every level in an organization have more agency now, and don’t see themselves as beholden to the whims of the organization in the same way.

It’s no longer enough for leaders to tell, cajole, or explain their way into employee action; leaders need to invite, engage, and partner. Everybody can make choices in a way that they previously weren’t able to. Consequently, they need the tools to do that.

Implementing Change 

This is particularly the case when it comes to workplace changes. Most of the change management models commonly used today were designed between the 1940s and 2000s, before many of the current workplace relationship disruptions arose.

It’s not that those models no longer have value; they do. However, many change models rely on a power dynamic that no longer exists. Therefore, they need to be augmented with an approach that acknowledges the autonomy and elective engagement of the people expected to carry out the change.

It doesn’t matter where you are in the organization, you have a choice about whether you’re going to follow along with planned change. The model I’ve developed is a “step zero” of change that gives people the space to begin with themselves, to clearly understand the change and their place in it, so they can then work with existing change management processes to successfully execute it.

What I’m inviting you to do is explore. Rather than go on autopilot, lead from where you are; don’t assume that you just have to follow. Ask yourself: What does it mean for me to participate in this change in a way that helps make it successful, so that I can be successful, too?

Here are a few thought-provoking questions, designed to explore your relationship with work:

• How would you characterize your relationship with your employer? Family? Team? Transactional? Something else?
• How has your relationship with work changed over the course of your career? What role have the internet and AI played in those changes?
• How have the internet and AI changed communication, knowledge, and power dynamics at work?
• What relationship would you want to have with your employer? Family? Team? Transactional? Something else?

Written by Steve Salee.
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