The Abandoned Alpha
A theory behind the corporate return to the office
I thought this was an interesting observation by a corporate consultant, although I strongly suspect that the interpretation is not so much incorrect as fundamentally missing the point:
During my time at Deloitte I was on the HR leadership team. We were actually looking at data about who wanted to return back to work. And it was disproportionately the senior male partners who wanted to be back in the office.
And we were like, hmmm, why is that? The best explanation seemed to be that they needed to be worshipped. Because in the office, they’re important and they march up and down, they sort of tell people what to do and everybody sees that they’re important. They sit in meetings and everybody laughs at their jokes. And then they go home, and it’s like, hey, can you take the cats to the vet, could you stop making that noise, that racket. And they’re just sitting there in a t-shirt, and they’re just another bloke on a Zoom call.
And so they want everybody else back in the office so that they can be worshipped. I genuinely think this is a big driver, it’s people who their identity is bound up with that way of being back in the office. And I think all of that sort of evaporated and left people feeling a bit adrift.
Now, this was related by a successful, obviously high-level consultant, whose tattoo sleeves, earring, and black t-shirt either signified Sigma or Lambda. And while I have no doubt that he’s correct about it being the senior Alphas who have a strong personal preference for dressing up and being the big dog at the office, I also suspect that he’s completely missing the point that only senior Alphas understand how going remote tends to a) weaken the hierarchy, b) empower troublemakers, c) demotivate Deltas, and e) further reduce the productivity of the already unproductive.
Now, I’m not criticizing remote work. I’ve spent nearly my entire career working at home; including the summers I spent working for my father’s company, I probably spent less than four total years in an office environment. And I am vastly more productive outside an office than I could ever be in one.
But I am not most people. And while most people don’t like working in an office environment for a thousand different reasons, most of them perfectly valid, the more one understands the hierarchy, the more one can understand why the flattening of the corporate hierarchy is likely to lead to serious problems for the organization.
How, for example, does the Bravo even operate in a remote structure? Where is the Delta going to find the approval that provides him with his motivational fuel? Is the Gamma actually going to be less destructive when there is no one around to give him a quiet word of warning and there are no natural limits imposed on his ability to reach out to people 24-7?
I don’t have any answers, but I’m not convinced that any theory that relies upon “well, men are insecure and just have to get over it” is likely to hold up well over time.
In other Sigma-related news, those of you who enjoyed the If You Had a Time Machine video might be interested in seeing both a) the updated version as well as b) a new work-in-progress at AI Central. One of the commenters here helpfully pointed out that given the theme, more of the object and less of the subject was in order, so I attempted to keep that in mind while addressing some of the technical infelicities.
Considering that many of the alphas in question are boomer bosses, I wouldn't be surprised if productivity was not their primary concern.
One thing I've found with boomer bosses is they want everyone in the office for the full work day, for the full work week, even if there's nothing else for the employee(s) to be doing that day. "Putting in the hours" and the full 40 or 50 hour work week, regardless of the actual workflow at a given time, is practically a religion to them. They seethe at the idea of people getting a job done and going home.
People wonder why companies are pushing back against remote work. I guess they forgot that a lot of them were going on social media telling the world that they were doing everything else but work while on the clock.