Panera’s founder says “therapists belong in the C-Suite” and can help CEOs understand workers’ motivations.
Is this a joke?
It’s clickbait
Actually a fairly enlightened take if you read beyond the headlines.
“No employee ever wakes up and says, ‘I’m so excited. I made another penny a share today for Panera’s shareholders,’” Shaich told Business Insider in an interview. “Nobody cares. You don’t care whether your CEO comes or goes.”
He goes on to talk about how therapy helped him better empathize with himself, customers, and employees.
The ‘today’ in the headline I think is the click bait and something the author is indirectly putting in this guy’s mouth.
Unless he actually then improved his workers conditions (at the very bare minimum, which he hasn’t, instead it looks like they’re cutting staff to boost “productivity” in preparation for going public because, you guessed it - that’ll make more money for the shareholders), that statement is entirely hollow, and is there for no other reason than to make him feel better.
Fuck the CEO getting “enlightened” from all the therapy he can afford if all he does with it is state what’s already obvious to those who can barely afford rent, let alone therapy.
If they’re not public already they don’t have shareholders as that term is typically used. They may have investors who are forcing them to go public because they don’t want a simple loan payback, they want the bonanza of an ipo.
yeah that makes a difference. he was not saying it like nowadays but that its never been the case.
Maybe give people stock options. I’m going to make over 100k a year for the next three years just in stock options because of shareholder value.
That also may give them votes. They basically become their own bosses. Has helped a lot of companies.
I’m a huge fan of stock options or stock. Everyone should get some skin in the game.
As much as people want to whine. We are all shareholders if you have a pension or 401k.
Why I’m a fan of the old ceo of Costco. Not only did he create growth in the stock. He treated the employees well. He felt the two went hand in hand. He looked at long term goals and not short term market shifts.
We have to many executives look at short term goals.
As someone with a master of I/O psychology degree, there are some organizations that hire individuals with a psych background to assist in creating a healthy, psychologically safe, workplace environment.
That said, in talking with others in the field the “make our employees mentally healthy,” quickly devolves into “use your psycho head games to make our employees do what we want.”
I’m having a hard time imagining that creating shareholder value was ever a motivation for those working on the floor.
The guy quoted actually said ever. Today I think was click bait on the part of the author.
And I went in expecting to find another asshole CEO tbh
You did find that, you’ve just been convinced otherwise by his own bullshit spin…
You’re not wrong but it is encouraging to read a sensible take from someone like him once in a while. It gives people hope to keep fighting.
Did anyone here read the article?
He’s not saying “those lazy peasants should know their only purpose is to make me richer and be happy about it”, he’s saying “obviously nobody will be motivated by making some rich jerks richer while getting paid peanuts”.
Unfortunately in the second half he goes into out of touch CEO mode, but the quote on the ragebait title is actually very reasonable
It’s kinda crazy that this is such a business-world revelation. Wow. Deep thoughts, my guy.
C-suiters really need therapists to explain working class life to them so they can learn the capacity to empathize.
Sorry, neo-feudalist-gilded-age-run-by-socipaths-says-what?
