The Big Baby Generation

The report reads like corporate boilerplate. It is chock full of the latest in vapid psychobabble, and declares that the new approach, involving care and nurturance, equity and inclusion, has made a company like the consulting firm Accenture into a new Mommy. 

Strikingly, the new Accenture feels more like a nursery than a competitive playing field. Management wants to show care for employees, to nurture them, to make them feel wanted and appreciated for their unique individuality. 

They tout the virtues of their new mommification, without remarking that the young hires who respond well to this treatment are basically a bunch of big babies. Everyone calls them Gen Z, but it might be more appropriate to call them the Big Baby Generation. 

Naturally, the great minds of Accenture have bought the tripe about bringing your authentic self to work. You need not conform to company norms; you need to be a unique total individual. 

The reductio ad absurdum of this silliness would lead each individual to speak their own personal and private languages. As was discovered in Babel, multiple languages ensures that nothing ever gets donw.

In truth, the notion of the authentic self is pure psychobabble. The only person who loves you for your uniquely authentic self is your mother. Once you join a corporate team or even a baseball team, you are expected to overcome your childish ways, to subsume your individuality and to embrace the corporate culture. 

However, that same research found that only 24% of US employees feel like they truly belong and bring their authentic selves to the workplace.

Notice the language. The new work environment should be nurturing, like a nursery. Has anyone ever suggested that you will become a better football player if you feel properly nurtured?

… an opportunity for company leaders to create more satisfying and nurturing work environments.

So, Accenture has broken down the wall between home and workplace, which is also the wall between church and state. It has allowed the workplace to feel more like a home, the better to welcome a group of young workers who have overdosed on therapy. Naturally the CEO touts his capacity for empathy, another quality that is especially well developed in young mothers. 

Jimmy Etheredge, CEO of Accenture North America … explains in the podcast, Can you be your authentic self at work?, leaders first have to walk the talk. “People should feel at home while at work. That starts with leaders being open, empathetic, and really tuning into meet people where they are. Authenticity can’t be faked, and when you’re really listening—and treating people as you would like to be treated—people pick up on that.”

It’s not about competing. It’s about showing how much you care:

“I think it boils down to something pretty simple…make caring your calling card,”

The company is no longer devoted to competing in the marketplace, to making its employees into teammates. It wants to be a safe haven, like a nursery where you are treated like a helpless child:

No longer just a place to punch a clock or climb a ladder, work today is expected to be a safe haven for the authentic selves of employees and an exciting way for them to contribute value for their companies, themselves, and the wider world around them.

It is not about being a good colleague or a good teammate. It’s about being a unique individual, a self-indulgent big baby:

The workplace is an arena where individuality has at times been snuffed out. Uniformity was prized over cultivating personal strengths, and appearing to have all the answers took precedence over lifelong learning. Today, more industry leaders are seeing the value in authenticity—an awareness of who you are and what you stand for and expressing yourself honestly and consistently to the world.

And if you cannot do the job, at least you can rationalize your salary by saying that you are bringing something unique to the operation:

Bozoma Saint John, a Hall of Fame-inducted marketing executive, author, and entrepreneur, “Why am I there if not to represent my specific and unique point of view? Culture. Language. Attitude…now, if I hide any of that or if I massage any of that tone…then we all lose. Because then I’m not able to actually affect the work the way that I could.

So, companies are adapting to the Big Baby Generation. It is sad. It is philosophically incoherent. It has made the workplace into a giant nursery.

Accenture insists that it is the latest and greatest in management. In truth, it is adapting itself to a generation of big babies who are unfit to compete in the world. It is going to be a cold day when they discover that the new nurturing workplace cannot sustain itself against international competition.