A Core Problem Of Work Has Always Been What Execs See As “Fluffy”

“Engagement? You mean like my daughter Brooke, to that asshole Dan?”

I’ve written about this general topic 9,120 times, so I won’t belabor it too deeply here. The core principle is that executives and regular workers think about work in much different ways. To executives, work is unabashedly 100% a form of validity, and they view it in war-like, utopian terms around deals, relevance, competition, beating others, grinding, etc. They view work as a place where real stuff, often real man stuff, gets done. Most average workers want a relatively-fair check in order to live their life. They might want to be seen as “successful” or “competent” within a job, of course. But it’s not always life or death or legacy-inducing for them. For many executives, it is.

There’s a kind of idea between “hard” and “soft” here. For the upper ranks of an organization, most of whom have huge potential financial victories if the organization performs well, they want to focus on “hard” things. “Business-y” things. There’s a huge subtext here that most organizations are run by men, and this notion of “soft” being a bad thing work-wise directly corresponds to the quality of their erection as they age. We don’t say that out loud, but it’s true. “Soft skills” are often scoffed at. “I need biz…