Why the Inverse Yak Theory is bad for business by Susanne South
Unraveling the Inverse Yak Theory and Its Impact on Business
Hello, I'm Suzanne South, an agility lead at JP Morgan Chase, and a proud Wyoming cowgirl and Navy veteran. Today, I will shed light on an issue that struck a chord within me - the Inverse Yak Theory. A theory that is significantly flawed for business and could contribute to what is termed the Great Resignation.
Understanding the Inverse Yak Theory
The theory takes root from an interesting conversation I had during my weapons class at the naval academy involving a metaphor on yaks' protective behavior in the wild. In the face of a threat, yaks organise themselves in a circle around the most vulnerable, horns facing outwards as a protective shield. The Inverse Yak Theory flips this natural protectiveness on its head, exposing the most vulnerable to danger and seeing if they make it back to the herd. This forms the basis of the theory. Essentially, it is about abandoning the weak to fend for themselves—an approach no one should tolerate in any business environment.
Why does this matter?
The ongoing Great Resignation provides a stark illustration of the impact of the Inverse Yak Theory. In 2021:
- A staggering 47 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs.
- 20% of women left their jobs, with half attributing their decision to childcare issues.
- 31% of these women secured jobs with at least 30% higher compensation.
This mass exodus from the workplace can't be attributed to a single factor. Dissatisfaction, lack of loyalty, or gender pay discrepancy are just a few reasons. But what stands out is the issue of management attitudes towards their employees.
Managers and the Inverse Yak Problem
Managers often prioritize work over their workforce. This lack of empathy, combined with short-sighted hiring practices and constant managerial shifts, contributes significantly to job dissatisfaction. Such an approach leads to a lack of consistency and a loss of institutional knowledge, causing companies to incur time and cost penalties when new employees must be brought up to speed. Feeling disrespected, lack of flexibility, excessive work hours, and absence of promotion opportunities all trace back to the inverse yak syndrome.
Solution: Embracing the Yak
I advocate for a return to the spirit of collective protection, or embracing the yak. Notwithstanding your position, as an individual contributor, team member, manager, or leader, your primary goal should be care.
- Care about personal and professional development of your team.
- Care about their lives, struggles, and needs.
Rather than focusing on microscopic issues like being a few minutes late, look at the bigger picture and consider the challenges your team faces daily. Initiate succession planning, not just at the topmost levels, but right at the work base. Build a longer-term vision for your company, team, or department, and ensure your team members see it too. Equip them to face the ever-evolving tech environment. In essence, be a leader, not just a manager.
Thank you for taking the time to enhance your leadership journey and for stepping up the plate to embrace the yak. Your team, your company, and ultimately, you will be better for it.
Video Transcription
Hello and welcome to Why the inverse yak theory is bad for business. My name is Suzanne South and I'm an agility lead with JP Morgan Chase.Although I am an employee of Chase, all the content and my discussions today are solely my opinion and it does not represent Chase. I'm also a prior member of the US Navy in the military. I do not represent them or the government in any way. All content and discussion today is solely my opinion and does not re represent any of them either. So as an agility leader at JP Morgan Chase, I love my job and I want to share with you today my journey and my opinions on what we can do better in the industry. My life started in a very rural part of Wyoming and I am a true cowgirl at heart. I have always loved nature and animals and stuck with me throughout my journey. Anytime I hear something with a metaphor or something related to animals, it sticks in my head. I have always loved horses. I definitely have still have them. And I spent many years as a farrier helping to fix horses with very severe foot problems. And of course, my family, my journey has led me to my wonderful daughter Gwen.
So what is the inverse yak theory when I was in the naval academy? One of my professors started out our weapons class with a conversation about yaks. All of us kind of looked at each other and said we're talking about yaks and weapons class. What is this all about? He was also in charge of giving us leadership development and skills before I can talk about the inverse yak theory. I need to talk a little bit about what yaks are and why it matters. Have you ever felt like you've been thrown to the wolves? I definitely have about 10 years into my career. I was sitting in a conference room after a miserable weekend of being up late every single night trying to implement something into production. My mind was focused on what do we do next? How do we make this better the next time? And the manager came in, sat down and then pointed at me and said, Suzanne is the reason why everything went wrong this weekend. I was amazed that she had just thrown me to the wolves and it was totally undeserved in my opinion, there were so many people involved in especially command decisions that nobody took responsibility for. So back to the yaks. What is natural yak behavior in the wild when a herd of yaks are threatened, they put the most vulnerable of the herd in the middle and then they surround them with the horns facing out to protect those on the, on the inside of the circle from the threat, whatever that threat may be.
So the inverse yak theory, you take the circle of yaks with the horns pointing out, but then you throw the most vulnerable to the wolves and you wait to see who survives and then only the strongest get let be let back into the herd. This is the basis of the inverse yak theory. It's not that far of a stretch to go from the inverse yac theory to anti yak behavior. But you don't just throw them to the wolves, but you attack those that are weakest amongst the group. I submit to you today that this is not a good way to run any kind of business and it is not the position you should be in as a leader. It is not behavior that you should ever allow to happen in any group or company that you work in. Why does this matter? And how does this impact today and what we're doing today? We are in the middle of the great resignation and it has had an amazing impact on women. I don't think it's any surprise that in 2021 47 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs. 20% of women quit their jobs in 2021 and 50% of those women quit because of childcare problems in doing research on the great resignation. It is not a real simple reason. There's not just one thing that has impacted why people are resigning their jobs.
Some people are just not comfortable or happy with their jobs, they're doing, their job is just a job, but there's no loyalty to the company. There's no loyalty to their team or, or in some cases, they're just not happy but it hasn't been enough to push them to leave the company. One of the things that I think we are all aware of is that women's pay has is still lagging behind men and of those women who quit in 2021 31% of them got at least 30% higher compensation when they took another job after leaving. And of the top 10 impacts that were reported in the data for the great resignation, childcare issues is number four, the pandemic has just increased. All of the issues women have with childcare and you may ask, what does this have to do with? Yeah, behavior and leadership. In my decades of working with different companies, I have seen many managers who have great empathy and take care of their people. And I've seen a lot of other managers who just manage the work, they don't care about anything else. They just want to get the work done. And if you're not taking care of your people and understanding their life and if not really being and stepping up and being a leader, then your people are not going to want to stay.
Another consistent problem I've seen throughout my career is that many managers hire for the job that needs done right now. And managers change so frequently within some companies and some groups that there's no consistency over time and those managers don't build a pipeline of people that can take the job when somebody leaves, you end up with silos of people who can take that smee knowledge with them when they leave.
And that is a huge impact to companies in having to retrain people. So what is yak behavior mean in this great resignation, inverse behavior out of the top 10, these are the four that I I feel align very closely with my inverse theory, feeling disrespected at work, lack of flexibility in hours, excess of expectation of work hours and no opportunities for advancement.
These are some of the top 10 reasons why people have left companies in the recent years over the past two years. This in my opinion is a lack of leadership in many places, is a lack of managers, being leaders and it's a lack of sometimes the senior technical people within a group, being willing to step up and be a leader even as an individual contributor to the work. So what do I recommend? I want everybody to consider embracing the yak, take care of your people, whether you are an individual contributor, a team member or a manager or if you see yourself as a leader, make sure that you are taking care of your people and create a pipeline of people that you are trying to train for the next step in their careers.
If people don't have a clear picture of what advancement means within your company, if they don't have a very strong understanding that their, whoever their manager is, cares for them and about their lives and isn't nitpicking. Oh, you're two minutes late for work today and not even listening or considering that maybe your babysitter quit and you had to scramble at the last minute to find somebody to take care of your child or maybe you had to work from home that day. Those are very important things. A leader needs to consider. Not just the exact number of minutes, somebody sitting at their desk every day planning for the long term pipeline, making sure that you're not just hiring for the current job we're doing right now, but that you're planning for the long term, who's going to take your place when you advance to the next role.
A lot of companies have succession planning at the very high levels within their company. Very few have succession planning at the work level of the teams. If you have 20 teams coding every day, is there a plan in anybody's mind for who is going to replace them as they advance there's a lack of planning and a lack of coaching for people to understand where are they going to go in their career and how do they get there? If the senior leaders are not training their managers or the training is not available for the next layer of people to understand what succession planning is. And if managers are just hiring for the senior roles and not making sure there's a plan and training in place for all of their junior people to also make progress through their career in that same area, they're going to have to leave in order to do what they need to do for themselves in their career.
Embracing the yak also means building a vision. What is the long term plan for the company, your team, your department and how are you going to get that talent? How are you going to make sure that they have the opportunity to get the training and skills in this extremely fast paced environment of tech where new technology comes along? It feels like every second you have to make sure your people have the time and be a leader, not just a manager. Thank you very much for listening to my talk today. Thank you, everyone.
