Are We Entitled To Be Entitled?
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Where did this pervasive sense of entitlement in our culture come from? I hear top business executives proclaiming an entitlement to huge bonuses while failing, startups feeling entitled to venture funding without a good business plan, and regular people crying for their entitled home ownership, pension, and health care.
As a society, we seem to think we've evolved to the point where we can fashion a large portion of existence according to how we wish it to be. We notice what we like and what we dislike, so we work to make society match our dreams. Somehow, these dreams and wishes have morphed in many people’s mind to an entitlement.
Also, smart people are very good at rationalizing their entitlements, especially when the fantasy serves to make them money or give them power. Here are three rationales some Wall Street executives offered recently in the media when pressed on this:
- "We made money. We deserve to be paid since it was the other function that failed." Sorry, fellow. That’s not the way capitalism works. Ask the guy who just lost his job installing seat belts in GM cars. He was really good at that, but since the sales guy failed, he’s out of a job. Being really good at what you do doesn’t matter if your firm is broke, and your firm is broke. It’s now on taxpayer supported life-support.
- "We didn’t use taxpayer money to pay the bonuses." This is the most ridiculous idea ever. Money is fungible. If you use billions to pay bonuses and then need to ask the government for money to stay alive, you are using taxpayer money to fill in the hole you dug by paying the bonuses.
- "We’ll lose all the greatest people if we don’t pay them." Oh really? Where will they go? Who, exactly, is going to hire them? Also: so what? That’s how capitalism works. Failing firms that cannot afford to pay for talent lose that talent to successful firms. That’s an important part of market discipline.
Entitlement beliefs that are left unchecked leads to selfish, even more entitled expectations. Most psychologists believe that entitlement comes from a deep inner belief that the world is not fair. In millennials, this feeling seems even more common, perhaps derived from a life where their parents gave them everything, and they now expect the world of business to do the same.
How much entitlement do you walk around with in your life? I can see a fair amount of it in mine. I feel those "I deserve" feelings more often than I want to admit. Even in small things, I can see the problem. When I hold the door open for someone, I feel he or she owes me a "thank you" and I get disappointed, even upset, when I don't get one.
The painful truth is that we are not entitled to anything on this planet. We are not even entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," despite what the authors of the Declaration of Independence had to say. Nothing is our birthright!
The answer lies within us. We all know nothing is free and that tough decisions have to be made. It's well past the time to remind ourselves and our leaders of that undeniable truth. If we don't, the fault is ours. We are not entitled to be entitled. Get on with making your customers’ lives better, and we all win!
~Marty Zwilling
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March 25, 2009 6:43 pm
This post was a welcome reminder to myself.
Thank you for writing this. It's very strange how people spin their words or arguments to try to justify possibly damaging behavior - such as receiving bonuses in the midst of a terrible financial crisis.
March 25, 2009 7:34 pm
Very nicely stated...I agree with your comments, Marty; thanks for saying it so very clearly.
My one area of question is: "We all know that nothing is free and tough decisions have to be made."
I'm not sure everyone does know this. With proper modeling and environments, this is a belief that many people know to be true because it stems from our earliest learning. But there are family environments (government programs), education environments (tenure), government environments (bail outs) and business environments (politics) that do not support this and actually support the opposite. All in the name of efficiency or safety or 'the good of the whole." While beliefs may be hard to change (shift), positive and negative reinforcement from all of our life institutions over a period of years including peer support makes the shifts subtle yet real. The paternalism that is so pervasive in our institutions seldom encourages independent let alone courageous thinking. "Doing what you think is right" has taken us to whistle-blower (legal) protections because 'right' invites retaliation.
I'm not offering this as an excuse--I believe it's critical to recognize that we can make it difficult to do the right thing...and so it behooves us to look not only at ourselves but also at our institutions and see what messages they are sending, what values they support. Often the values that are 'walked' are not those that are 'talked' and posted for the world to see. Each of us starting with ourselves is the only way to get the values aligned so that the institutions we live within support the values we practice.
Thanks again for a thoughtful commentary.
March 25, 2009 7:55 pm
I half agree and half disagree. There is certainly no self-evident, inherent right that anyone has to anything. However, I have a lot more sympathy for the guy who's work was good and deserves a bonus than for morons who drove not only a business, but an economy into the ground and still expect to be paid out. Indeed, the world isn't fair though, and it's often the guy at the bottom of the food chain who suffers with total irrelevance to his job performance.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from entitlement, many people never get anywhere in life because at heart they don't believe they deserve success so they fall victim to self-sabotage. A certain degree of "I deserve this" is healthy and necessary to achieve goals. I think where we run into trouble is when the attitude turns into "I deserve this without providing value in return."
March 25, 2009 8:10 pm
@Jamie, thanks for the positive feedback. In their own mind, most people justify all their own activities, just so they can live with themselves.
&Janine, your point is a very good one. Through our culture, I think some people really believe that that they are entitled to certain things, and they were convinced by our own institutions. In the long run, we have to change that or the culture will implode.
&Brian, I certainly agree with your last statement, which really says that people should have confidence in themselves. People who are not confident in their own ability are most likely to "rationalize" and compare, resulting in a self-conviction of entitlement.
March 26, 2009 8:37 am
Somewhere along the way people forgot the true definition of the word "bonus". The definition is "an unsought or unexpected extra benefit".
March 26, 2009 9:20 am
Kimberley just nailed it!...It's not called an entitlement its a BONUS!
March 26, 2009 9:30 am
great commentary and very timely given the ridiculous "bonuses" for execs who seem to think they should be awarded for failing. I don't know about anyone else but I have always worked at firms where bonuses are given based on MERIT only.
It's sickening that people who get to the top seem to lose all sense of reality and think they are God.
March 26, 2009 9:57 am
@Kimberly - the problem is that many companies pay less than market rate and promise to "make it up in bonuses." Using bonus money that way played on people's greed in the good times because they would get more if profits were good. Now, however, they are getting less - sometimes substantially less - than the market rate for their position. That's when it comes to feel like an entitlement.
March 26, 2009 11:58 pm
I agree with Kimberly, and would like to add one other point. I don't know anyone at AIG, but I've been in bonus plans and administered bonus plans to employees in two big companies. Bonuses are usually set based on pre-agreed "above-and-beyond" targets for that individual. When a person makes his personal bonus targets, it's hard to deny him the bonus because "someone else" in the company failed, causing poor company results. Would you want your bonus to depend on overall company results, or your personal results?
March 27, 2009 9:19 am
It is true that companies sometimes lower your base salary, and compensate it with a bigger bonus down the line, so it feels like people are entitled to it when things go sour. However, at the end they always have a choice, and a bonus is still a bonus - it's never guaranteed.
Personally, I think Wall Street workers make enough as it is... Yeah they probably work too many hours though heh.
March 29, 2009 11:01 am
"We’ll lose all the greatest people if we don’t pay them." Oh really? Where will they go? Who, exactly, is going to hire them? Also: so what? That’s how capitalism works. Failing firms that cannot afford to pay for talent lose that talent to successful firms. That’s an important part of market discipline.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, and I would add that there is probably always someone else who can do that job just as well, or maybe even better, for less money. Competition for those roles is steep and I bet there are thousands of people from all generations who would almost kill to switch places -- and not expect a bonus at the end of it all. (Especially Gen Y)
March 29, 2009 10:30 pm
One interesting point Marty has was that entitlement comes from the idea that people feel life isn't fair and so they deserve something to in return. But isn't this sense of "that's not fair" exactly what is coming to fruit on this comment thread? The bankers made a lot of money and no one needs that much money so their losses are deserved. No. These people worked, many times, 80 hour work weeks and slaved on weekends and made an hourly rate far south of your accountant or lawyer and they did this for their bonuses. Yes a "bonus" is probably a misnomer, but it was their agreed upon payment plan and while AIG is an insanely egregious example, the majority of banks should still give (somewhat reduced) bonuses. The economy can't pick up without spending and in NYC, London and other finanical centers...those bankers provide cash and therefore jobs, to their doormen, gyms, bars and Benz dealers.
Yes, the entitlement has to change. Yes we need to challenge businesses to be smarter and better. But we also need to realize that our current crisis will only be resolved by people spending within their means, not sitting on money and cutting pay. We all over extended and over spent and had a reach that extended far past our grasp. Everyone needs to look at their own culpability and not lay the blame on the richest target.
April 1, 2009 10:56 am
@Martin @Brian Great thoughts. I frequently get caught up in abstract word-mashing on this topic. When do I catch myself confusing the terms, I always comes back to this:
-Confidence is a belief in your capability to EARN rewards.
-Entitlement is a belief in your God-given right to have rewards handed to you.
Meritocracies (such as the American biz enterprise is designed to be) thrives on confidence, and is destroyed by entitlement. I think this aligns with the Dec. of Independnce, too. It's easy to overlook "the pursuit of..." part, which doesn't mean that happiness itself is a birth-right. It means only that we are guaranteed the freedom to PURSUE happiness (i.e. go out and EARN it).
April 1, 2009 11:01 am
@Sarah Absolutely! The personal responsibility part of this equation has been dramatically overlooked. The D.J.'s about kicked me off a radio interview I was on last fall for merely suggesting that each of us with any credit debt has a hand in the crisis. It's so much easier to play pin-the-blame-on-the-evil-corporate/political-devils, than to accept responsibility for our part.
April 1, 2009 11:11 am
"There's only two kinds of fair in this world - county and state."
April 1, 2009 11:11 am
I've only worked for one employer who offered bonuses. I could earn a bonus based on my performance IF the company met its overall goals. If the company didn't meet its goals, there were reduced (or no) bonuses. But if there were bonuses, what I got depended on what I did.
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