How to Punish Big Business

Having worked in both small and large businesses I’ve gotten a sense of how ‘business as usual’ operates.  I don’t like it.  I’ve found that greed and aggression function as the baseline rather than the exception.  There are notable exceptions like Ben and Jerry’s whose corporate charter reads like a crunchy granola how to be a nice guy and help people booklet more than a system of operations.  This is why they are respected.  Also they load up the milk fat in their ice cream which is an excellent decision.  But for every Ben and Jerry’s there are five Enron’s.  The Enron scandal is over ten years old now.  Kenneth Lay never was sentenced (he died in 2006 before that finally happened) and the fervor and outcry has died.  For those that forgot Enron cooked the books, lied to investors and self inflated their own stocks.  They simply changed the numbers to make them look they way they wanted.  They created shell organizations for further number manipulation and generally did some very naughty things that a few execs got a lot of money and then the business imploded and thousands lost their jobs.  This is problematic.

I suggest a better solution.  It’s not the business that should be punished it’s the executives.  The trigger men and women.  Closing the business punishes the employees and clients.  The average workers only have guilt by association and lose their wellbeing through no fault of their own.  They don’t know their company is hurting people.  The company made oodles of money than won’t be recovered properly and a good chunk of that money lines the pockets of the top management.  Fine the company something reasonable so it can do more than simply limp on and be poached.  But reserve further fines and nasty sentences for the C class executives.  The assholes with the initials (COO, CEO, CFO, etc).  They are the ones who defraud, the ones who lie and then they find a new job after the business implodes.  After, of course, a nice soft landing with their golden parachute.  So stop the cycle.  Charge the executives with a felony, fine them for the millions they stole, and put them in jail.  The real jail where there are shivs and intimate moments in the shower, not the club penitentiary.  These are not stupid people.  If there is a real punishment and follow up these corporate atrocities will end.  Until people find a new way to subvert the law and make money in a different immoral manner.

If you don’t punish them here is a glimpse of what happens.  The company is sold.  The new owners gut the place with massive layoffs.  Those lucky enough to stay do the work of three people maybe more.  They work extended unfair hours simply to keep up.  If they complain too much they are fired and replaced.  You’re a number to them.  Not Mike who is expecting his first child, or Jen who is working her way through her Master’s, or Lisa who supports her two kids after her husband’s accident.  The new team leaders really don’t care about true output.  They care about metrics and numbers.  They are looking to push the needle.  The numbers only grow because costs have dropped catastrophically. Morale goes south but in this economy people are scared to jump ship.  The bright stars leave immediately as they are picked up quickly.  The office becomes a dark swirl of negativity.  A toxic cloud hangs over the place as the vultures perch on the windows.  What’s left is the scared married thirty and forty something’s who really need this job, who have two cars to pay, a kid in daycare, and a mortgage to pay off.  The stock goes up though but no one wants to work there.  Maybe the scared finally get moved from their inaction and overwork and find a few hours here and there to start moving their resume out there.  But the flood of workers and the name of this half dead beast of a company weigh down their cv’s like lead.  The new team announces a sale.  The stock has gone sky high now.  The investors make oodles.  But the company is a husk, a lie.  The new owners bought a fantasy.  It’s in shambles but it’s the others guys problem.  Business isn’t the law of the jungle.  In the jungle you die quickly and don’t suffer in business suffering is slow and drawn out.

That’s why big business can’t be allowed to self-monitor.  That’s why big business cannot be allowed to by elections, to send millions funneled through pundits and special interests to control legislation.  The thing that strikes me is that in college the popular course in business gloss over items like ethics, like morality.  They focus on lean six sigma, they focus on strategy, on metrics.  But they forget a few keys things like not being asshole and how to motivate people beside the threat of firing.  Here are a few tenets I find lacking from popular business ideals:

• Treating people well is encouragement
• Treating people well does not mean they will take advantage of you
• Being nice is not a weakness
• There a things that can’t be measured that are important
• Paying a person is an investment in them and not an expense
• HR is more than handling paperwork and hiring people it is meant for growing the employee and the company

But the easiest thing to do to punish big business is don’t give them money.  Be smart with your money.  Don’t like it when people skimp on wages and cheat by hiring part time and seasonal workers?  Don’t shop at Walmart.  Yes, it’s convenient as all hell but it’s not worth it.  Don’t like it when clothing stores think being fat is a crime?  Don’t shop at Abercrombie and Fitch.  Like gay people?  Don’t buy from Chick Fil A.  The list goes on.

Money is what will change business.  Use yours wisely.  Every dollar you move away from the pockets of the immoral and to their competition the bean counters will eventually take notice.  And these people are the business of making money.  If treating people well becomes the standard by which you’ll give them money they will suck up their principles plaster on a fake smile and hand out raises.  They’ll hate it but they hate losing their bonuses more.

Ben