Corporate splits should make us happy

I have been working for a living for more than 30 years and one of the things I have noticed along the way — in others and, from time to time, even in myself — is that holding down a job can lead to deep feelings of unhappiness.

Many of you undoubtedly know what I mean. You might even be one of those workers measuring their lives out in coffee spoons, dreaming of the mermaids singing in the sea and wishing that the Tylenol would kick in so the throbbing in their temples would go away.

As a result, it gives me great pleasure to report that a growing number of the world’s biggest companies are embracing a strategy that could offer real relief to long-suffering souls who find themselves lost in the labyrinths of our modern business bureaucracies.

Under pressure from investors who have lost their loving feeling for conglomerates, some of these behemoths are opting to become smaller.

Two weeks ago, Hewlett-Packard said it would split its personal computer and printer business from its software and corporate hardware arm, the Blackstone investment company moved to spin off its financial advisory operations and Symantec revealed plans to separate its security and information management arms. Just before that, eBay, the online retailer, said it would spin off its PayPal online payments system.

Even the corporate dinosaurs are slimming down. General Electric, which used to think that it could Six Sigma its way to success in every endeavour, sold shares in its North American retail credit unit in July as part of a plan to exit the business entirely. Citigroup is preparing to spin off its subprime lending arm as it grows more like the bank that John Reed led before he joined forces with Sandy Weill to form the financial services supermarket of the future.

It is as if corporate America is singing from a new hymnal — and it is Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of Steve Jobs. If we turn to page 359 of the United States hardback edition, we will see that when Jobs made his triumphant return to Apple, his management mantra was “Focus”.

Note the capital letter. The icon who gave the world the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad began that particular word with an upper-case “F”. That’s how much he meant it, man.

CORPORATE FOCUS

The sad sacks and the Prufrocks of the office water cooler stand to benefit from this emphasis because more focused companies are more likely to have more focused workers — and more focused workers are happier people. That is not only my opinion. There is actual research to back me up.

The New York Times presented polling data a few Sundays ago that showed one of the biggest reasons people hate their jobs is that they feel unable to concentrate on what they really need to do.

Based on a survey of about 12,000 mostly white-collar workers by the Harvard Business Review and The Energy Project, a consultancy, the negative factors most frequently cited by respondents were a lack of time for “creative or strategic thinking” and a shortage of opportunities to “focus on one thing at a time” and “do what is most enjoyed”.

Like Jobs, the workers of today want to focus. But the research shows they are finding it hard to do so in the modern corporation — which really should not come as much of a surprise, given the relentless pace of business consolidation around the world in recent decades.

With the help of their Wall Street advisers, corporate leaders have created ever larger enterprises in the often mistaken belief they would yield cross- selling opportunities and other “synergies”.

As a result, large numbers of workers find themselves having to serve bosses who know little about what they do — and often have neither the time nor the inclination to find out.

The lack of common ground breeds frustration on both sides. The work environment — as well as products and services — can only suffer as a result.

Pared-down business organisations will be better equipped to align the intellectual interests of employees and employers. People designing computer printers might have a better chance of working for folks who are interested in computer printers. Subprime loan officers could find themselves being managed by executives who know from first-hand experience about the risks — and tricks — of that perilous trade.

Whether this improved interaction will produce the financial returns investors desire is hard to say.

After all, big companies have advantages, too, ranging from lower cost of funds to a greater ability to conduct research. It is also the case that making businesses more focused will hardly solve all the world’s problems.

Slavery flourished on plantations in the southern US that concentrated on the production of cotton. Dirty work will get no cleaner in a smaller company, and dangerous jobs no safer.

The biggest rewards of corporate Focus with an upper-case “F” will probably go to workers who earn their keep with their heads.

With employers who understand what is going on in their world, these people will have a better shot at ordering their thoughts and doing “what is most enjoyed” — which is still, for many, a job well done. THE FINANCIAL TIMES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Gary Silverman is national editor and US deputy managing editor for the Financial Times.