Mean is the New Nice
By Jonathan Littman,
Co-Author of I Hate People!: Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job
When historians finally get their hands around the lost decade that wiped out our 401k’s, looted our nation’s treasury and battered our economy, they will likely arrive at a simple conclusion.
Playing nice was bad for business.
The last administration sold itself as the “let’s be nice to business” school of thought. It was a philosophy that spread throughout entire industries and our greater economy.
Nice was a forced smile, a phony front for those who wanted to put one over. Most of the seemingly nice results generated by all this nice turned out to be frauds. Those seemingly generous mortgages peddled to new homebuyers blew up into balloon payments that rendered thousands bankrupt and homeless. Wall Street was nice to investors for most of the decade, delivering fabulous returns on investments nobody understood — until the bill for those bad mortgages came due. Bad investments had been stacked upon bad investments in this nice new financial instrument called the derivative that nobody understood until it helped to wreck our economy. The nice, regular returns offered by Mr. Nice himself, Bernie Madoff, was a gigantic ponzi scheme that cost investors $60 billion.
During the orgy of niceness, those entrusted with policing the purveyors of phony nice were way too nice. The SEC and FBI were incredibly nice to thousands of scam artists who went on a financial crime spree. Accounting firms were very nice to lots of companies that didn’t really earn money or ship as many products as they said, which ended up costing lots of jobs.
It was a genuinely nice age to steal billions from everyday Americans and corporate employees.
At the pinnacle of our nationwide nice delusion, two advertising agents wrote a sugary 119-page treatise, The Power of Nice, How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness. It was what everyone wanted to hear. Donald Trump (a client) loved it! The book became a Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestseller. It was in short, a very nice time for business.
How quickly the herd changes direction.
Nice is now a four-letter word. Companies have been falling over themselves in trying to prove that that they are no longer suckers and anything but nice. Top corporations that have had strong fiscal quarters, or even increases in earnings, have coolly laid off thousands of workers. Smaller firms have even boasted of record earnings — while announcing massive layoffs. Those banks handed the free lunch of our billions of tax dollars have not been very nice to individuals and businesses desperately in need of loans. Congress is on the verge of making it nearly impossible for anyone under 21 — young workers and college students struggling under debt — to get a credit card.
The New Nice is Mean.
Today, thousands of corporations are marching in lockstep to prove how nice they are to their company bank account, which has the trickle down effect of being mean to the people who do the work. Firms are paying employees for four days a week but demanding that they work five. They’re slashing benefits and perks. They’re laying off men and women by the thousands.
They’re being nice about it.
Consider Microsoft, which recently put out an official e-mail from CEO Steve Balmer, announcing the firm was “Eliminating additional positions across several areas of the company. While job eliminations are always difficult, we are taking these necessary actions in response to the global economic downturn.”
See how nicely they did it! They’re only eliminating positions. No talk about firing people.
Mean is the New Nice, and just as the age of Phony Nice ruled America for nearly a decade, we are now headed for some serious mean.
Don’t worry. They’ll be nice about it.
©2009 Jonathan Littman, co-author of I Hate People!: Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job
Author Bio
Jonathan Littman is co-author with Marc Hershon of Little Brown’s I Hate People! and the business blog, IHatePeople.biz. A contributing editor at Playboy, he co-authored the Ten Faces of Innovation and the Art of Innovation.
For more information please visit www.IHatePeople.biz