Profits vs. People: What’s Your Bottom Line?

Profits vs. People: What’s Your Bottom Line?

Posted on July 24, 2024

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Microsoft or any of its affiliates. This post is intended for informational purposes only, based on my personal experiences and insights. For all my posts, I ensure that names, positions, titles, timelines, and incidents are kept generic to respect the privacy of individuals. I also use my imagination and creativity to make my examples more compelling. My goal is to share and learn from these instances and behaviors, not to criticize anyone.

Take 1, Scene 1-

It’s morning 8 AM, and I was feeling anxious, why? I needed to dial into this meeting, where I am expected to justify how many headcounts I need and what I am doing with my existing head counts. It should NOT be a tough sell, as my team was already delivering far more, both in terms of results and future growth prospect. But for some reason I was feeling nervous, I got on the video conference call and see ten more people joining is, some at same rank as me and some far more senior than me.

John, a senior VP (fictious name), started with a gloomy statement “we need to cut down on our budget”, dead silence on the conference call, nobody responded. So somehow, I managed to ask “John, what you mean? Are you saying we will not be funded for our new projects or you are saying we need make cuts on our existing projects as well”, John look at me (even though I know he was looking me from a camera, I felt shivering down my neck!)? He said “No not just the projects alone, we need to cut people too”. I was in sheer disdain. I told John our teams are already “Slim”, if we cut down more, how you expect us to get the work done, it seems like John did not care, to him we were just a number and he needed to match some number in his head to make look “Good” on his spreadsheet, so he can go to his leadership and tell how much he got the cost savings done!

I felt down, dis-heartened, shitty, unfair and dis-engaged.

Take 2, Scene 2-

It’s Monday very busy day for me but I was excited. I was hoping to get promoted and I was going to have discussion with my manager. Around 11 AM Markus called (my boss! fictious name) and He said something came up last minute and he need to push my one-o-one to next day! Boy I felt sad another day! I would die with curiosity did I made it not made it what I would do to pass next 24 hours.

Then a good thing happened one of senior engineer called and said he wanted to get my feedback on his design he was doing for a high-profile customer I was like great! let do that it will give me a chance to think of something else other than “Promotion”.

Next day Markus directly came to my office he asked if I had few mins I said “Off course” (Now who would say “No I don’t have time for you Mr. Boss!). He entered and smile a little I could see his smile and understand something was not right. Markus is a guy who is very upfront honest and never sugar coat anything that why I really like working for him. He straight forward came to the point he said he had to made a difficult decision. It was uncertain time and our department had low budget so he had to make a tough choice either to layoff some engineers or hold certain project and promotions. He chooses the latter! he was very clear on his choices and reason he made those choices; he mentions that all 8 engineers reporting to him had done outstanding work and even though he could not get me promotion he was still able to secure entire team a “decent” bonus and rewards.

I felt grateful, happy and satisfied!

As a leader, tough choices are inevitable. While profits are essential, focusing solely on profits can harm people.

In my 20+ years, I’ve worked with various leaders. The best leaders I have worked with are able to align hearts and minds of many. These leaders are inspiring and make their employees resonate with the company’s mission, while other leaders push for results at any cost, showing a different path to success.

Visuals help me express my thoughts. From a network engineering background, diagrams have always been my go-to. Here’s my take on the “Profit without People” in business.

Often, we hear phrases like “Our bottom line is profit,” “Our #1 priority is customers,” or “Our #1 responsibility is to shareholders.” While all are important, I don’t resonate with profit as the sole bottom line. Profits alone can’t be the bottom line. Customers, employees, and shareholders are all people. Therefore, the bottom line should be “People + Profits.”

Think of profits as the tip of an iceberg admired by all. But it’s the massive, unseen part—the people—that make the real difference.

(Image Credit: Iceberg Royalty Free Vector Image – VectorStock)

Would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this. Please share your story on “What your bottom-line”, Thank you for reading! – Gaurav

Read the full article on LinkedIn