Employee Ownership Cynics

Anyone who has worked in an ESOP company, or any company for that matter, has worked with cynics. Dealing with cynics is essential to developing and maintaining an ownership culture. The Cynicism Challenge defines ideological cynics as those that "reject employee ownership at a conceptual level" and situational cynics as those who "support the idea of ownership, but not the way in which their company implements it." It states that, in a typical company, 25% of employees are situational cynics and 5% are ideological cynics, and discusses the performance of cynics:

"ideological cynics seem to work less diligently and with less mental engagement than the typical employee. Situational cynics work as hard as the typical employee, but they are less likely to contribute to the company beyond the boundaries of their job description."

The article also focuses on ways to respond to cynics and concludes that the best to minimize cynicism is to prevent it before it starts:

• Manage Expectations
  
• Focus on Middle Managers
  
• Education
  
• Communication
• Ideological Cynics

Steve Sheppard's latest post discusses the cynics he has encountered as he speaks at ESOP Association Chapter gatherings or at private company celebrations. He compares these cynics to the cynics he encountered when he was a part of an ESOP company:

"That's when it dawned on me that the feeling was the same one I had experienced from time to time in our own ESOP company, when a member of the firm somehow didn't "get it," failed to understand the critical messages of collaboration, personal commitment, contribution, entrepreneurial risk-taking, being part of something bigger than one's self, and how to maximize the unique ESOP opportunity. Try as we might, managers and co-workers were not always successful in convincing some people that the ESOP contained a greater chance at success than in many other firms. Such individuals were not to be won over."

He points out that winning over all the cynics may not be possible:

"As I lamented the unpleasant comments directed at my presentation, I realized that 100% is sometimes not realistic. There will be people in an audience who just plain don't care for the sound of your voice or the intrusions upon their own comfort zones. And the same is true in our ESOPs: some simply do not want to go where we are headed. We owe it to every member of our companies to describe the vision and the anticipated roadmap of where we're going. We have to encourage, entice, enthuse and educate in the very best way we can. But at the end of the day, individuals still have to make their own choices about whether they like the message and direction or not. When their determination is that the ideas don't resonate or motivate, it's best to move on, for both parties. I always felt badly about those members of our company who never seemed to grasp what we were trying to do and who therefore didn't fit, but I couldn't let those attitudes speak for the whole entity."