Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs
Nov 17, 2022
Discussion#3 How should business leaders deal with life-floating employees who have no aspiration and no goals?
Blogs from The Third Way Working Group
- Floating could be triggered by apathy that is usually caused by the environment and the company management.
- Floaters are adults. So, at the end of the day, they need to pick up themselves again. What company leaders can do is limited.
- Experiential learning is the best method to teach adults real lessons. Let those floaters learn by facing the consequence of floating such as being laid off, failure, frustration and unhappiness etc.
- However, managing out someone and hiring a replacement is always more costly than educating and engaging the existing employee. So it should be the business leaders’ best financial interest to do something about floating employees and help them perform better.
- Floaters are not necessarily low performers. In fact, there are many hard-working floaters as well. If we define floaters as those who do not have a clear purpose and goal of their own, the majority of the Japanese workers may be defined as floaters.
- Floating is usually associated with an image of comfortably floating in a peaceful lake or a warm sunny swimming pool, but the floating of the Japanese are almost like floating in a rapid current. But they are still floating as they do not have any direction of their own and just flowing down the current.
- It was ok to float in Japan as Japan was a floatable society for a long time. You could still live a decent life by floating. Even if they were floating in a rapid current, it was a warm comfortable water. But that time is over. Now the Japanese society and economy have started a long serious decline. So it is like floating in a rapid current of ice-cold water. It’s no fun, painful, energy-draining, and a lot of self-sacrifice is involved. Also, it looks like there is a cliff and a massive water fall down the river. So it’s time for the Japanese to stop floating and start swimming in their own chosen direction if they don’t want to fall off the cliff.
- The first step is to raise the awareness. We need to wake them up and let them know that it is dangerous to keep floating.
- The second step is some kind of interventions. Most Japanese corporate employees have no clear self-identity and no personal vision. They keep floating in the rapid current of the ice-cold river because they have no other destination. And also, the peer pressure of everybody else doing the same thing in the company has a tremendous force pushing you down the river with a powerful rapid current and it is difficult to swim out of it. We need to find out a right kind of intervention that would help people find their own destination and develop the strength to swim out of the rapid current.
- The third step is to place them in the right position/environment. Once a person finds one’s own goal and stops floating and starts swimming in the chosen direction, companies should give him a tail wind by placing him in the right position and providing necessary support for further development.
- Next week, we will discuss what kind of intervention practices business leaders can actually arrange to help their floating subordinates.
- Floaters are adults. So, at the end of the day, they need to pick up themselves again. What company leaders can do is limited.
- Experiential learning is the best method to teach adults real lessons. Let those floaters learn by facing the consequence of floating such as being laid off, failure, frustration and unhappiness etc.
- However, managing out someone and hiring a replacement is always more costly than educating and engaging the existing employee. So it should be the business leaders’ best financial interest to do something about floating employees and help them perform better.
- Floaters are not necessarily low performers. In fact, there are many hard-working floaters as well. If we define floaters as those who do not have a clear purpose and goal of their own, the majority of the Japanese workers may be defined as floaters.
- Floating is usually associated with an image of comfortably floating in a peaceful lake or a warm sunny swimming pool, but the floating of the Japanese are almost like floating in a rapid current. But they are still floating as they do not have any direction of their own and just flowing down the current.
- It was ok to float in Japan as Japan was a floatable society for a long time. You could still live a decent life by floating. Even if they were floating in a rapid current, it was a warm comfortable water. But that time is over. Now the Japanese society and economy have started a long serious decline. So it is like floating in a rapid current of ice-cold water. It’s no fun, painful, energy-draining, and a lot of self-sacrifice is involved. Also, it looks like there is a cliff and a massive water fall down the river. So it’s time for the Japanese to stop floating and start swimming in their own chosen direction if they don’t want to fall off the cliff.
- The first step is to raise the awareness. We need to wake them up and let them know that it is dangerous to keep floating.
- The second step is some kind of interventions. Most Japanese corporate employees have no clear self-identity and no personal vision. They keep floating in the rapid current of the ice-cold river because they have no other destination. And also, the peer pressure of everybody else doing the same thing in the company has a tremendous force pushing you down the river with a powerful rapid current and it is difficult to swim out of it. We need to find out a right kind of intervention that would help people find their own destination and develop the strength to swim out of the rapid current.
- The third step is to place them in the right position/environment. Once a person finds one’s own goal and stops floating and starts swimming in the chosen direction, companies should give him a tail wind by placing him in the right position and providing necessary support for further development.
- Next week, we will discuss what kind of intervention practices business leaders can actually arrange to help their floating subordinates.
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