CEOs: You Don't Get a Vote

CEOs: do you truly want your company to be seen as Fair by your employees? Honestly?

If so, then you'll have to throw out one of the most cherished of 20th-Century values, the concept of tacit consent.

The Fallacy of Tacit Consent goes like this: "If a person does not agree with something, they'll speak up." At work, it plays out thus: "If employees are silent about management decisions, they obviously agree. Silence = buy-in."

I was raised on this ethic. My parents taught me that to agree or speak up were valid choices. To disagree but remain silent was not. My experience tells me that most leaders buy this logic. But as the term "fallacy" implies, the logic is faulty.

Here's the thing: how many of your employees are ready to quit or risk being fired right now, today? Especially in today's still-moribund job market?

...So what happens when leadership makes a decision that employees find unfair?

1. They can protest, and risk being fired, or at least being blacklisted for future promotion.

2. They can quit immediately.

3. They can update their resumes and leave when the time suits them.

4. They can remain on your payroll, but stop caring.

5. They can suck it up and go on as before, realizing "You win some, you lose some."

Your most valuable workers will choose one of the first four options, each of which means you will lose the very thing that gives your company its most essential competitive edge: your talent! Know who will opt for number five? With very few exceptions, it will be your leftovers, your least-valuable players.

Seriously - you're a leader, which means you're a winner, right? What would you do?

Take this scenario: you are promised a performance bonus. You perform. Your company comes up with a loophole to keep from paying you and others in your situation. This loophole has been right in the rules all along, so top management tells itself it's fair.

But you and the rest of the company - those directly affected and observers as well - know better. And now you realize that you can't rely on the company to pay out future performance bonuses, either. Incentive pay has become disincentive pay.

You're a winner. Which of the first four options do you choose? I can guarantee, you will not choose option 5. My guess is you're going to land on option 3: you'll leave as soon as it suits you. Am I close?

...But meanwhile, to your CEO and other top executives, the scenario looks much different. Because they lack the immediate feedback of eighty percent of their workforce walking out the day an unfair decision is announced, they miss their people's reactions. Because they are victims of groupthink,* they convince each other that everything is fine; that their decision was fair. Because they believe in the Fallacy of Tacit Consent, they think their reasoning for the unfair decision has been accepted by their workforce. The company will muddle on, hemorrhaging its most talented staff and accruing more and more leftovers all the while.

How can a 21st-Century leader get around this mess?

It's painfully simple, and it's incredibly hard. I don't expect many current leaders to follow this advice. Which is fine. Champions do what the masses find too arduous. I only want to help champions.

CEOs: the way to make sure your company is seen as Fair by its workers is to ask them.

And to shut the hell up. You don't get a vote. Your opinion is completely unimportant. You can no more convince your staff that you are indeed Fair than you can convince a person to change favorite colors. People have an innate sense of justice - it's part of being human. You can assuage your conscience with excuses, you can surround yourself with sycophants who tell you how beautiful your new clothes are (Mr. Emperor), but you with can't convince the rank and file who are running your company for you that you are being Fair when you are not.

*****

This is third in a three-part series on being Fair at work.

Part one is Be Fair... Or Be Left Behind.

Part two* is Unfair Workplace? Here's Why.

Please note: not everyone will agree, on any topic. It's impossible. But if you honestly try to lead a Fair company, and strive for continuous perfection, that's a pretty good start.