Business people who are skating on thin ice now have only a couple weeks to get off it – around a third of the time they had as recently as 2005
“Twenty years ago you had at least six weeks to get your act together,” says business modulator Dr. Felicia Wringley of the Cookings Institute. “But with temperatures rising every year, now you can’t even count on two.” She believes that if the situation continues unchecked, by 2031 this will shrink to one week or less.
“People skating on thin ice need time to develop their improvement strategy,” she says. “The faster the ice thaws, the more they panic and the more they make poor decisions.” It’s therefore essential, says Wringley, that companties provide the support employees need to get off the ice more quickly.
Toledo, Ohio brokerage Markington/Mallings is doing just that, through an initiative it launched late last year. Reports Jack Doakley, HR vice president: “We combine the traditional improvement seminars and tutoring with more direct techniques like shaming, screaming and withholding of food.”
In just three months, he says, the company has reduced average thin ice time from 33 days to under 15 – with many getting off in just three or four days.
“And once you’re been skating on thin ice,” says Doakley, “you have a tendency not to want to do it again.”
More companies need to follow Markington’s example says Wringley, for their own sake and their employees’.
“To the average worker, melting polar ice caps and dried up farm fields are just vague concepts,” she says. “But for those skating on thin ice, the concept of falling through, losing ones job and drowning isn’t vague at all.”.\\
