22 karma · joined February 1, 2014
Managing a distributed workforce, definitely has challenges. From what I have seen, onboarding new employees can be particularly awkward. It may be different in hip, new startups, but in my experience with less fashionable, old school organizations, it makes accountability, knowledge-sharing and organizational-political navigation more challenging.
And given what a terrible record the US has in neglecting veterans of all backgrounds, it isn't surprising that the brave men of the USAFFE were treated so poorly.
We should also remember that this was the era of the asinine anti-Asian immigration policies, another shameful topic only lightly covered in American history books. Effectively they were good enough to die for us, but not good enough for us to honor our promises to them.
Open, factual discussion has been my approach. It may bruise some egos, but in my experience, the alternative may be just as bad as rubber-stamping and that just isn't compatible with my ideals.
I also think that people will learn to respect the results of the approach in the long run and that is infectious, promoting real growth.
But there is something to add to this, I got burned out, took a mini-sabbatical and came back a rockstar with a pay raise.
I guess the invisible work became visible in my absence. :-)
An additional side-benefit, I became human again.
I would add a third motivation to the list that was best articulated by Ernest Becker:
“For man, maximum excitement is the confrontation of death and the skillful defiance of it by watching others fed to it as he survives transfixed with rapture.”
I highly recommend the work of Ernest Becker to anyone interested in this topic. It is amazing how well the theory of Generative Death Anxiety explains human behavior.