The people who care are having the hardest time - Johnathan & Melissa

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Photo by Jess Loiterton.

I’m pretty sure my problem is that I care too much.

We should start by pointing out that this isn’t actually a problem. Not in the true sense of the word. This isn’t describing an issue where resolution would provide considerable relief. The resolution to caring too much would be caring less. And in most situations, that’s not better. That’s worse.

When it came up the first time, it sounded less like a concern and more like a self-serving pageant answer. Like something new grads are coached to say when an interviewer inevitably asks about their biggest weakness.

I care too much.

But this wasn’t coming from new grads. The people worried about caring too much were decades into their careers. Skilled practitioners. Designers. Engineers. Creatives. People who somehow figured out how to take their favourite hobbies and turn them into long-running, fulfilling careers. This is a neat trick.

In fact, it’s such a neat trick that the oft-quoted adage "love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life," is simultaneously misattributed to Mark Twain and Confucius. How’s that for range? The quote is not "love what you do and you’ll wish you cared less." But that’s exactly what we’re finding. That the people who care the most are having the hardest time.

Inflammable means flammable?!

Businesspeople, we’ve entered a weird moment when caring about the organization and your craft is a liability. And when pressed for details on why caring less seems appealing, the answers are dark.

Care less because we’re on our seventh layoff and it’s just a matter of time before your name is on the list.

Care less because we’ve asked you and your colleagues to train AI to do your job and we revamped staffing plans against productivity gains that have yet to materialize. So you can either drive yourself batty trying to carry an impossible workload, or you can cut corners. And we mean, a lot of corners.

Care less because the org is shipping slop at every level and the justification is that every one of our competitors is doing it, too. As an industry, we all need to get used to caring less to stay competitive.

Care less. If the org is going in the wrong direction, let it. If the tech doesn’t work that way, pray you get packaged out before the clean-up begins. Keep your head down. Don’t make waves. Do what you’re told. Even if it doesn’t make any sense. Even if you were hired for your expertise. Don’t bring your expertise to work. Save it for your tinkering and your hobbies.

This logic is dizzying. If you got a headache reading it, please know that we have headaches writing it. It’s hard to imagine that this management nugget even needs to be said out loud but here it is. Telling your employees to care less and do a worse job en masse is not a competitive advantage. And that this passes for visionary leadership and is rewarded by the market is the surest sign we’re into some totally upside-down-face corporate groupthink.

This would be bad enough on its own. But worse, still, is when you try to point out how upside-down it all is, you get told you’re a doomer and you’re trying to slow progress that’s imminent and inevitable. Despite few signs of said imminence or said progress.

Care less is not the answer to a problem. It’s organizational inflammation. It’s sustained moral injury. It’s the absence of psychological safety. The undermining of high-trust, high-performing teams. It’s a gaping hole where judgement and quality and excellence go. And however bad this sounds, it’s about to get worse. Because employee engagement is a lagging business indicator.

This is a bad outcome

Look, even if you believe everything they’re selling. Even if it sounds uncomplicated and obvious to you that AI can unlock major productivity wins. That human-AI centaurs will gallop merrily through the productivity fields — humans thinking big thoughts while their AI legs scurry them hither and yon at super-human speed. Even if that all hangs together for you as a plausible theory of what might happen. At some point you have to grapple with the evidence of your eyes and ears, that it isn’t happening.

Disengaged employees are a bad outcome. They do worse work, collaborate less, and generate fewer innovative ideas. Their customer interactions are worse, their sales numbers are lower, they don’t grow or take on new responsibilities within the organization. The higher the proportion of your employees who are disengaged, the more likely you’ll develop what organizational psychologists call "actively disengaged" employees — the ones who deliberately undermine the organization. The ones who start fires.

A disengaged workforce is generally more compliant but that’s also a problem. Strong leaders at every level work hard to encourage a personal...