Morale

Morale – the elusive jackalope of managers, rumored to exist among the predatory snarks, the snarling sufferers, corrigible complainers and witless whiners in the wilds of corporate America.

/>Can’t find it, can you? You’re not alone.

/>Neitehr can the military, most times. Or the government. Or, for that matter, the Democratic party. They’ve all been struggling with this search for years – throwing parties, organizing committees, surveying employees, going on budgetary shopping sprees. It’s always about fixing some problem, in some straightforward way. “Problem X needs solution Y!” the consultants cry (all the way to the bank), but that’s not right at all.

/>There will always be problems as long as there are people. Clamp a lid on a behavior, and it’ll simply surface in another way.

/>What correlates with morale is not the lack of problems – but how much members and employees feel they’re being taken seriously, and have something to contribute to fix the problem.