3 Simple Steps to Alienate Your Employees and a Nation

Even though Wall Street spent billions on bonuses, New York firms squeezed rank-and-file executives harder than many companies in other fields. Outside the financial industry, many corporate executives received fatter bonuses in 2008, even as the economy lost 2.6 million jobs. According to data from Equilar, a compensation research firm, the average performance-based bonuses for top executives, other than the chief executive, at 132 companies with revenues of more than $1 billion increased by 14 percent, to $265,594, in the 2008 fiscal year. - What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses, NY Times (blog-friendly link)

It's that simple. It takes only three steps.

1. Drive your company into bankruptcy; drive our economy into recession.
2. Reward yourself with record bonuses
3. Issue paycuts or pinkslips to those who followed your orders.

You hear much talk about the lack of loyalty among employees for their employers. The flipside of that discussion is...this.

Granted, responsibility (blame, guilt, finger-pointing) is plentiful, as it should be. We all face accountability for our actions and cooperation with decisions we agreed to implement.

And with a failure of this magnitude of leadership and responsibility comes a lot of learning. There are millions of former employees and millions of current employees who won't stand quietly now as they see their rewards and the rewards of their colleagues vs the rewards of their leaders.

That ultimately will be a good thing. This painful experience is creating a generation of leaders, inspired to take ownership of their integrity,  their decisions, their company...their life. Generation here won't be defined by standard demographics other than the experience of seeing the impact of this brand of corporate 'leadership' on our nation. All ages, all ethnicities, both genders will fuel this new leadership as they, we, have all shared in the experience described above.

If there's anything to celebrate in this colossal failure, it's the slight breeze of openness and transparency that's bringing these excesses to light, to our light. It's outraging, purifying. We'll learn from this, our, failure. As long as the leaders of yesterday keep rubbing our noses and the noses of our friends, colleagues, family and neighbors in this mistake....we can't help but learn.

So, thank them for their arrogance. They're insuring we move quickly to correct this situation.