jen briggs

Some of us have done a little time in corporations. This time doesn’t mean merely working in a business. The word corporate has come to mean something beyond the dictionary definition. In my business alma mater, New Belgium Brewing, people would have a type of mantra …. As long as we don’t become corporate. Now that I work with a broader spectrum of businesses, it’s like that mantra is on repeat. Employees fear exploitative practices. They are cautious about what euphemism of leadership is being applied. Check out the various iterations of corporate on the Urban Dictionary – for this piece, we’ll use: “An expletive used to describe anything that amounts to an investment without a return.” In other words, corporate has become synonymous with extractive or selling-out practices.

The expletive of corporate isn’t just about money. From a workplace perspective, it is about a dehumanization process. It’s about becoming a number. It’s about becoming human capital. Many leaders use human capital wording with good intention – meaning we value you. You are not a cost; you are capital. You have value. In the extractive corporate world – cost or capital – it is about dehumanization. From a worker perspective, the extraction concept comes with the feeling that the corporation extracts good ideas and hard work, replaces it with a wage, and calls it a fair deal. In the moment, it may be a fair deal, but as we have seen time and time again, that deal has turned in to exhaustion, burnout, and low-wellness lifestyles. Antiquated managers say, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” The reality check is that it’s not a race or a game; it is our lives. Some of us will find ways to seek refuge from this environment. We will find homes in businesses that seek and embrace a more dynamic approach.

Despite these negative corporate aspects, working in a larger business has many fantastic advantages. Depending on your level in the corporation, there can be a phat total comp scheme. There are systems and tools for the taking. There is usually an excellent training regime, good benefits, and career ladders. A hierarchy means that there is a ladder to climb. There are titles to grab. There is importance to perceive and achieve. There are a lot of great processes, projects, and ideas. There is a global reach to build a more nuanced perspective on commerce. There is the complexity that a large scale creates, bringing with it puzzles to solve and exciting challenges to face. The corporation hones and sharpens skills. There is a focus, a deliberateness, and a shrewdness. There is a business savvy and speed that is just different in a larger corporation that doesn’t exist in a smaller business. Also, the number of zero’s on revenue brings a different type of pressure. As with all stress – there is eustress and distress – and as long as you stay in the eu-zone, it is a positive challenge and where growth happens.

In our corporate roles, we learn how to ROI things to death. We learn how to choose statistics to get what we want and convince people that it is a “best practice”. We learn how to use ROI to stop interesting work that may have long term benefits, but is absent short term financial return (and might effect our bonuses). In our refugee roles, we know that ROI isn’t as quantitative as we make it seem, but there is a truth to be gleaned from the discovery that an objective ROI process brings. A corporate refugee can let go of the manipulative aspects of pitching projects based on ROI, but to use it as one of many business management tools in our intellectual possession. It’s not about the competition to get my piece of the budget away from someone else who has a better ROI. It is a part of hypothesizing, testing, deciding, and improving. It’s about positively impacting the organization, not my function winning budget dollars over another department. It can be about reaching for a longer-term horizon and making a broader impact. A good part of corporate life is the thrill of the chase and emphasis on winning. An unfortunate part of corporate life is that we sometimes apply that winning mindset to the wrong things.

To be a corporate refugee means that you have had the corporate experience and have developed the type of shrewdness to drive for results in a hawkish manner. This person has the skillsets and capabilities to access mental models where the exposure is more limited in smaller businesses. They talk the language of the MBA and other masters of commercial and organizational sciences. There is a type of code and linguistics that go along with the corporate leadership discipline. Certain people who get it can become a translator with a sophisticated approach to selecting and rejecting methods and approaches.

These leaders, potentially also called corporate hippies, put a premium on the value of the human element. Not in the context of the human capital phrase, but the actual humans themselves. They know to sweat the small stuff. Every interaction is an opportunity to build trust – intention, attention, and connection. For example, never putting an employee number on a security badge or portal for identification. Employee numbers are for compiling data and requisite reporting, but not for human identification. Humans are not numbers. Humans are humans with names, feelings, and potential. The corporate refugee knows to look a person in the eye and the value of a smile. This is not the celebrity charisma of some CEO’s, but the ability to be genuine.

Every interaction is an opportunity to build trust – intention, attention, and connection.

The corporate refugee knows that the business is a community of responsible adults. Every day they strive to reach aspirational values and seek refuge from the oversimplified, mundane, and superficially binary dynamic of “top-line” and “bottom line.” They know that there is a golden rule of reciprocity – not just in terms of dollars or wage, but in the value returned. They know that there are financial statements that reflect the financial health of the company (and they are important), and there are social-emotional accounts that also need to be healthy. They understand that the economic engine might get the attention (because we like quantifiable measures), but that it is indeed the social engine that gives power to the dollar. In other words, it is the qualitative that drives the quantitative. They know feelings do matter and don’t try to scrape emotions out of the workplace. Instead, they try to make it a place were positive emotions can be a source of energy and innovation to build connections to the brand and customer.

The corporate refugee can keep the scrutinizing deliberateness of the corporation and put a priority on cultivating and celebrating human potential. They see the social engine as a key part of business strategy and they also know that optimizing the social engine requires a unique type of prioritization. They know how to extract, but they choose to reject those principles and decide to build. It is the constant process of learning, growing, applying, and driving.

Sound complicated? It’s not.

In its elegant simplicity, it is about connection.