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To research her latest novel, Adelle Waldman took a part-time job unloading and stocking merchandise for a large American retailer in the early morning hours. In the book, help Wantedthe team is called “Movement”, the result of a very plausible internal, consultant-led rebranding of the team’s former title of “Logistics”.
Barack Obama featured his novel on your summer reading list, so Waldman is probably a little further away from taking a temporary job in retail to make ends meet, as many of his characters have to do. But as she pointed out in a New York Times essay in February, precarious part-time work It is not an option for most. “It has become ubiquitous in certain predominantly low-wage sectors of the economy. [and] many workers cannot find full-time alternatives.”
help Wantedwhich Waldman dedicates “to all retail workers,” should be read in its own right as a funny and moving work of fiction (and if you haven’t read it yet, expect spoilers here). But at the risk of offsetting the Obama effect by calling it a management book, I also recommend it for its insights into leadership, motivation, the hidden world of work, and the disintegration of some of the certainties of the American economy.
It is sometimes read as a fictional mixture of JanesvilleAmy Goldstein’s excellent account of the ripple effect of a General Motors plant closure in a Wisconsin community, and MIT professor Zeynep Ton’s research (most recently in her book The case for good jobs) on how to improve worker happiness and productivity.
help Wanted begins with the store’s popular manager, Big Will, ready for a promotion. The Movement’s hated boss, Meredith, could replace him, if she weren’t so terrible at her job. The team members devise a plan to praise her, on the basis that the higher she rises, the less trouble she will cause them. The conspiracy sets off a chain reaction of unintended consequences.
As an anatomy of chaotic corporate decision-making, help Wanted It’s very credible. In almost every workplace, each staff member’s true motives are rarely visible, rumors and gossip abound, and bosses know virtually nothing.
How could managers best deal with this chaos?
“Radical candor” was once touted as a solution, but even where it once took hold, it has proven difficult to sustain. For example, the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates has admitted that frank feedback used to flow mainly from top to bottom. Netflix has recently qualified its own edict of transparency, which had become more difficult to comply with as it grew. The streaming company has also defended “dispersed decision-making,” when everyone has the discretion and ability to assume responsibilities.
A similar suggestion underpins Zeynep Ton’s proposal. “Good jobs” systemwas developed through his work with retailers such as Costco, Mercadona de España and, latterly, Walmart. Part of the approach she advocates is to encourage staff to come up with ideas for improvement.
Waldman’s novel conveys a weak but positive message about the power of purpose at work. Its epigraph comes from that of George Eliot. Daniel Deronda: “What makes life sad is the lack of reason.” In small ways, all Movement workers seek some intrinsic motivation in their low-paying jobs, whether turning unpacking the truck into a performance or folding laundry “as precisely as origami.” But they are no more in control of their destiny than the fearful advertising agency employees awaiting the ax in Joshua Ferris’ excellent 2007 office novel. Then we come to the end.
In many real-life workplaces, such as help Wanted — Managers do not know enough about their subordinates’ skills and knowledge to have the confidence to delegate decision making. Lack of trust and willful blindness prevent them from detecting, much less harnessing, their team’s latent potential.
The Movement team is sporadically excited to find solutions to shop floor problems that only they can see. Their commitment to the twisted plan to promote Meredith brings them to life. But when one of the store group’s senior leaders suddenly guesses what the workers have been planning, he dismisses the idea: “He narrowed his eyes: ‘Are they able to think that far ahead?'”