The story of the janitor helping with the moon landing oversimplifies and idealizes the work experience of many front-line employees. This promotes an ivory tower perspective which ends up disregarding the real needs of front-line workers. Instead of inspiring them with grand ideals, companies should focus on improving their actual work conditions.
Chances are you’ve heard the inspiring talk about the janitor who makes rockets. This embellished version evolved from a story about President Kennedy’s visit to NASA at the start of the space program. As the story goes, he walks up to a janitor and asks what he does. The janitor responds, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” Since then, there have been all sorts of bloviating speeches, posts and even a research article about “meaningful work”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well-intentioned, but you know what they say about good intentions and their paving abilities.
But would that janitor’s perspective be the same today? The prevailing nugget of wisdom from this story is that all employees should strive to take great pride and joy in their work, no matter how small the role. While there are exceptions, thinking that the experiences on Dirty Jobs is typical is like thinking all pawn shop owners live like Pawn Stars.
Every time I hear the janitor story referenced, I can’t help but conjure up images of smug authors, sipping cappuccinos from in their air-conditioned offices, being giddy about some turn of phrase they used to re-tell the same story. So, here’s a dark thought: what if deep down, this perspective is more about making academics/businesses feel better about themselves rather than truly seeking to understand front-line workers?
The more I dive into this, the more I’m thinking that could be the case. Just looking at recent articles by employee “experts” or consultants, I see the term “desk-less” as the new way to describe the front-line. Well, that’s a corporate-centric way of thinking, if I ever saw one. What if instead, we described office employees as “tool-less”, “Non-Operationally Critical” or how about this gem: “Non-Revenue Producing” workers? (ouch!)
Companies with front-line populations truly live in two worlds and those companies would be best served to acknowledge the distinctions between their office-based and front-line workers. So rather than trying to “fix” the front-line because some New York Times bestseller said so, perhaps it is ivory tower thinking that needs to be fixed.
If you are unsure your company may be struggling with “Ivory Tower Thinking”, here are some signs.
Your company…
- Designs systems without formally including or prioritizing the front-line experience
- Uses lots of “business speak” in your communications or uses office-centric language
- Schedules townhall or leadership updates from 8 – 5pm with no on-demand options
- Thinks there can always be joy and pride in doing menial, hard or dangerous labor
- Lacks a communications or technology strategy for your front-line
- Assumes motivation tactics or performance management is the same for your front-line
- Has the same benefit and development programs for all front-line and office employees
- Struggles making a distinction between jobs and careers
- Does not account for rotational, shift, or after-hour schedules when collecting feedback
- Is still trying to solve front-line low participation rates in after-hour activities
If one or more of the above is true, don’t fret, there is hope. It just takes some intentional effort to try to consistently look through a different lens, change this mind-set and put it into practice. It’s been over 50 years since we’ve landed on the moon (or staged it, according to some), and while the story could be true, it’s hard to think of a single program or company today that is doing truly history-making work.
Sometimes a job is just a job, and that’s ok. Rather than trying to inspire your front-line with lofty ideas and missions to create “meaningful work” for them, perhaps time is better spent on making their work experiences safer, easier, better paying and more inclusive of their input.
Twistymind 
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