Signs of the Times

I’m going to violate my own conventional practice and quote in full an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Suzy Welch, the widow of former GE CEO Jack Welch, and a management prof:

To everyone who sent me the article reporting General Electric’s sale of Crotonville, the longtime learning center that was the pride and joy of my late husband, Jack Welch, I’d like to thank you for the ugly cry. It is indeed the end of an era: one when companies and employees were on the same team.

That’s done and over, isn’t it? Today, companies and employees are each in a boxer’s crouch, glaring across the ring.

I wonder sometimes what Jack would make of my M.B.A. students—not to mention Generation Z in general—who view every employer with a gimlet eye. They aren’t only thinking, “How are you going to help my career?” or “How much will you value my ideas?”

They’re thinking, “How fast are you going to chew me up and spit me out? Because that’s how it works now.”

In too many cases, they aren’t wrong. No one works at one company for very long anymore; that’s a given. We all know the reasons: changes in tech, economic shifts, demographic trends, the zero-sum zeitgeist. A friend, a Sloan graduate, just hit nine years with one company, a big e-commerce platform. She told me she’s considered a lifer and something of a freak of nature.

Crotonville was a shrine to such “freaks,” people who so bought into the company’s values that they considered it an honor to be invited to an off-site program where they got to talk about those ideas even more than they did at work.

Crotonville was based on the notion that you could love your company. And your company could love you. I remember those days with bittersweet nostalgia myself, but this seems like a laughable notion in 2024, doesn’t it?

Early last semester, I invited Emily Field to present to my class at New York University on managerial skills. She’s a McKinsey partner and a co-author of “Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work.”

During the Q&A, a student asked about motivation. After Ms. Field’s reply, which I agreed with, I added, “Look, what Emily is saying is that managing people is hard, because to do it right you have to authentically care about them. On some level, management is an act of love.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Ms. Field said. We both looked up to see 60 mortified faces. Hands shot up.

“You need to keep boundaries at work.”

“You can’t trust your boss.”

“Companies don’t love you, they use you.”

For a few minutes, Emily and I were like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. We stood our ground, but I left class shaken. For the rest of the semester I continued to make my case—that companies and their people are one and the same. Or they should be. Work is better that way—more productive, interesting, effective, enjoyable. Jeepers, it’s more fun.

Yes, fun at work. Imagine that.

Gen Z can’t, it seems. Work is what you do when you can’t be doing what you want.

Handshake, a job site solely for college students and recent grads, recently conducted a survey of 2,500 undergraduates. When asked for their definition of career success, 78% of Gen Zers named sustaining a work-life balance as their top choice. Dead last was “advancing to a senior role,” at 40%.

This trend has reverberations through corporate America. At Brunswick, where I’m a senior adviser, we’re used to clients presenting all sorts of strategic problems. Lately, “employee engagement” has topped the list again and again. Here’s another data point: In 2023 a Gallup poll found that Americans are unhappier at work than they’ve been in years.

Crotonville wasn’t built for times like these. That would have made Jack sad.

I thought you might find it interesting. Did Crotonville close because it was no longer useful, because it was too expensive, or GE’s management no longer saw the use of it?