The End of Professionalism and the Rise of Human-Centric Values
An experience at eighteen years old left me wondering if I would ever stand a chance in the business world. I didn’t act professionally, I was told. I wondered why the clothes I wore left such a negative impression in the minds of those judging me. I had tried to create something unique, I had worked hard, and I had delivered on exactly what I promised I would do. That wasn’t enough.
Okay, I’ll admit, I’m still upset about the outcome of my high school senior project.
After many months of planning I selected an apprenticeship with the only software company in my small hometown. After shadowing software developers every week for a semester I had taught myself to write Javascript from a borrowed O’Reilly book and in my own time I’d created what I believed was the Internet’s first fully client-side ecommerce shopping cart. A rather unremarkable creation as I look back on it now, at the time I was convinced it was something special. To preserve the date of its creation for posterity the entire codebase remains printed on paper inside a postmarked envelope I mailed to myself in April 1999. It’s never been opened.
As history would have it, the very first of what would eventually be hundreds of live software demos over my career was conducted one Spring evening in my homeroom classroom at Smoky Mountain High School to an audience of guidance counselors, athletic coaches, and my English teacher. They were the judges and this was the final judgement of my thirteen week senior project effort. Since most students at the small town high school apprenticed with traditional trades we were asked to wear clothing consistent with the professionals we shadowed during our project. Jeremy wore protective clothing that welders wear and Charlie wore the same long pants and steel toe shoes he saw in the aluminum foundry. For my presentation I wore a t-shirt and jeans, the exact garb worn every day by the software developers I shadowed at the local software company. I explained my outfit with glee as my presentation began. I hadn’t picked just any t-shirt. I had borrowed the perfect one from my dad’s dresser drawer. It made a nerdy joke showing an emoji style face with small hands holding string on either side with the exclamation “mental floss.”
The live software demo worked flawlessly and my audience applauded as products were added, tax calculated, and payment totals displayed on the projected screen. My team sports coach rested comfortably in the attire of his profession - matching windbreaker and track pants - while my English teacher wore a traditional casual suit and heels. Weeks passed and I received my final grade. A-. For some context, I was a serious high school student and my high school wasn’t known for being particularly rigorous. I was fourth in my very small senior class at graduation and was not accustomed to anything but A+ from academic pursuits. I immediately looked through the scoring matrix to understand where I had fallen short. The only single criticism of my project from any of the judges was related to my unprofessional attire during the final project presentation. Jeans and a t-shirt, they thought, were not appropriate attire for any profession. “Too bad I didn’t own a welding suit” I thought to myself.
It’s a story I’ve had in my head for twenty years. Real professionals wear suits, and I’m not professional. That story is part of why I was never able to find my way into a real job. I never interviewed once. Since high school I’ve only worked for companies I started and own. I chose the life of an entrepreneur partially because it allowed me to determine my own dress code.
Yet entrepreneurs don’t operate in a vacuum. We must interact with partners, investors, vendors, and employees every day. Behind the need for clean pressed button-up shirts and shiny shoes made of dead cow skin is a representation of respect. Entrepreneurs dress up when meeting with an investor as a sign of respect for the possibility of a relationship with the investor’s money. Job candidates dress up even when interviewing - even at a startup - as a sign of respect for the people making a decision about whether their skills are matched for the position. I have had to dress up from time to time over my two decades as an entrepreneur.
But does nice clothing really deliver a message of respect?
Of course not. Respect is experienced when someone believes that the act of wearing nice clothes is a symbolic gesture of respect. Respect isn’t delivered, it’s generated in the mind of the person observing the nice clothes. In fact, the entire concept of professional attire is a myth that lives in our minds. Unfortunately, this myth has been around for a while. But luckily for people like me that despise dressing to meet others’ expectations, people like to change their minds like they change their underwear. In fifty years I’m sure we’ll all be wearing beach attire in the boardroom. I feel confident I’m on a pioneer on the correct side of this trend.
Rules of professionalism generally - dress code included - comprise an arguably useless meta layer of social agreements on top of a set of necessary rules people require to work together effectively. What that underlying layer is I’ll talk about in a little bit. A list of Ten Business Etiquette Rules Every Professional Should Know in Inc Magazine from 2016 shares some wits including “stop crossing and uncrossing your legs” and “don’t eat at your desk, eat in the break room” and “keep personal items off the table.” A list from Business Insider from the same year shares that we should “stand when being introduced” and “keep our fingers together when we point” and “never ask for a to-go box” at a business lunch. In the end these rules serve to keep outsiders out and reward insiders for their knowledge and compliance. Being born in 1981 myself, on the front edge of the Millennial generation, I can tell you if I lost a business opportunity because I asked for a doggy bag at lunch or pointed to a killer detail in my presentation with a single finger, I would say good riddance. Anyone who values pointless etiquette over reliable performance is not someone I want to work with. Luckily I’ve had the luxury of having some influence over who I do and don’t have to work with in my life. Not everyone can be so lucky.
It’s also worth mentioning the societal norms of our upbringing highly dictate how much we’ll need to learn in order to someday meet the requirements of professional etiquette. Growing up in a middle class family you'd be called crazy to leave half a steak behind when departing dinner. Cultures define even larger differences, especially when it comes to respect in communications and relationships. If American business culture has defined the rules of professionalism then we have a big problem in this world where 45% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.
A huge change in professionalism has been under way right under our noses for the last ten years in the form of corporate culture initiatives. Think about it, the proverbial sign of culture in clueless do-good organizations is the ping pong table. Just twenty years ago the idea of employees playing athletic table games within a corporate office setting would have been insanity. Now many startups feature free beer on tap in break rooms that keep even the ping-pong onlookers happy.
Things that directly violate traditional rules of professionalism are now being marketed as benefits to lure in high performers in an ultra competitive race for the smartest brains. The ability to personalize your own workspace was popularized by employee-centric Zappos who now urges team members to violate the “keep personal items off the table” rule. In the 2007 book The Dream Manager author Matthew Kelly argues the problem of employee disengagement can be solved by hiring a full time employee to be in charge of helping all employees “fulfill crucial personal dreams.” Kelly urges team members to share their personal dreams while in the office for the good of the overall organization. The fictitious Showtime series Billions depicts Wendy Rhoades as an in-house psychiatrist and performance coach at New York City based investment firm Ax Capital. Her days are filled with getting inside the heads of each team member. Often she finds the cause of work productivity issues comes straight from the most personal details of her colleagues lives. This is where she must spend here time in order to deliver the best results for Ax Capital.
Personal items on desks. Personal desires out in the open too. Where is all this change going?
I believe that along with the move to a global business environment enabled by the digital economy comes a leveling of the playing field for all humans. Or, at least all humans who have access to resources that deliver their basic needs plus an opportunity for education and the ability to use or purchase a digital device with a connection to the Internet. This net is significantly wider than the group of people who were provided an opportunity to be part of the global industrial business world fifty years ago. With additional variety comes less consensus around one central list of rules defining appropriate behavior. Previously where there were social incentives to keep certain types of people out of the business world and it might have been considered acceptable to not hire someone for asking for a doggy bag at lunch, today the free market system requires companies to do whatever it takes to bring the smartest minds - without regard to socioeconomic status or culture - to the table. The result is a shift away from traditional professionalism as we knew it and a move to human-centric values.
A 2018 article on Forbes shares tips for Creating a Company Culture that Embodies Your Core Values, opening with the observation that both “individuals and businesses operate largely under the guidance of values.” The author suggests companies include their core value statements in their corporate handbook to set expectations for how employees will be required to act. Values are the new etiquette.
The New York Times bestselling book “Who” by Geoffrey Smart and Randy Street introduces a process for screening prospective employees based on their alignment with a company’s core values. It even makes the case that team members with less than stellar job performance who diligently represent core values should be spared where high performers with poor value compliance should be removed immediately. Much like professionalism before, a new factor has risen higher in the ranks than base productivity. Values are the new professionalism.
Values offer us the opportunity to build teams where people work together effectively and treat each other fairly based on things that actually matter. The best businesses now focus on universal factors that unite us as humans instead of arbitrary rules that divide us into “us” and “them.” Differences in preferences and styles that come from diversity, it seems, actually make teams stronger. “A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean.” David Rendall, author of “Freak Factor” goes as far as to say that “what makes you weird also makes you exceptional. Are you embracing your inner freak, or are you hiding it in order to conform and maintain the status quo?”
It’s time for the idea of professionalism to die and for the rise of human-centric values to guide us to solve our biggest problems together.