Are we a nation of zombies? People forfeiting their identity to fit in with the corporate world

Are we a nation of zombies?

March 14, 2014

James Adonis is one of Australia’s best-known people-management thinkers

Walk through most workplaces and what you’re bound to see is sameness. Dull and robotic sameness – people forfeiting their identity to fit in with the corporate world.

You can see it in how they talk, with ubiquitous phrases such as “blue sky thinking”, “going forward”, and “taking it offline” – all of them nauseating and demonstrating a desperate need to conform no matter how cringe-worthy the expression.

All of this is happening despite the massive push within organisations for diversity. 

You can see it in how they dress, with the corporate attire of men very similar to their male colleagues. Women are afforded greater flexibility in what they wear but the caution is still the same: don’t be too daring lest you’re judged as eccentric and inappropriate.

You can see it in how they act, with stooped heads bowing in reverence towards mobile devices to which they are addicted; by hurried footsteps as they quickly march from one meeting to another; and by the exertion of long hours they’re bound to regret when they’re old and it’s too late.

You can see it on people’s desks, many of them identical to the extent they lack colour and character and anything personal. This has been exacerbated by ‘activity-based working’, which means employees don’t have a desk of their own, further removing a chance for them to decorate a workspace with their identity.

All of this is happening despite the massive push within organisations for diversity. Sure, diversity in terms of race and gender and sexuality is widely accepted, but diversity is lacking when it comes to creating a safe space for a team’s palette of personalities to be displayed.

Oscar Wilde, an historical champion of individuality, argued the threats to it include the ownership of goods, the power of one individual over another, and the undertaking of manual labour. All three are evident (and arguably essential) in the modern workplace via the ownership of businesses, the hierarchies established within them and the need to work for money.

His views are clearly extreme and it’s no secret he was an anti-capitalist, but there’s truth in his view that “most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

The empirical literature suggests success – assuming you define success by how quickly you move up the corporate ladder – is more assured when you confidently assert your individuality.

An analysis published in the Applied Psychology journal a decade ago looked at the determinants of success among members of the Young President’s Association. This is a group whose members have acquired executive positions at a relatively young age. The researchers found one of the major factors explaining their rapid success was that they were independent and individualistic.

So, in essence, those who stand out get ahead, while their followers follow in every sense of the word. The problem is they’re emulating their colleagues as opposed to their bosses.

Perhaps this desire to conform has less to do with the workplace and more to do with society in general. The workplace is just one more manifestation of our desperation to fit in and be seen as part of a group, whichever group that may be.

This was nicely encapsulated in a South Park episode in which Kyle starts hanging out with the Goth kids who are proudly non-conformist. But, on joining the group, the group’s members force him to dress in black, sing sad songs, listen to industrial music, and drink coffee.

Even among non-conformists there’s inherent conformity.