King Midas should not only be known for the ability to turn everything he touched into gold, but also for being the inventor of the Phrygian cap, a garment that became a true symbol during the French Revolution, as Lacroix reflected in his famous painting Liberty Leading the People, where the leading woman covers her head with the mythical beret with a conical shape and bent tip.
What few people know is that the Phrygian cap receives this name because it originated in the Phrygian region (present-day Turkey) and that its creation is attributed to King Midas, who ruled the area in the 8th century BC. According to legend, the monarch despised the god Apollo in a musical contest, which cost him a severe punishment, since two large donkey ears grew on his head. To hide such shame, the king invented this hat that would end up being an aesthetic reference of the time.
Hiding defects with apparent virtues is a practice that we can also find in business management. A good example is the issue of time dedication that is required of people in an organization, even if they do not have managerial responsibilities.
And it is that hourly availability requirements are often overused, with the hackneyed formula of 24x7 (24 hours, 7 days) erecting it as a badge of professionalism, when in reality it is usually a Phrygian hat, which can hide deficiencies to three levels: social, business and personal.
On a social level, the philosopher Eudald Espluga explains perfectly that we live in an exaggeratedly "work-centric" system, where people build their identity based on their work life. “Work is no longer what we do, but what we are. When you fail at what you do, you can learn to improve. But when you fail in what you are, you fail as a person”, says Espluga. In this context, the border between the personal and professional spheres is blurred, entering a pernicious spiral that is difficult to solve.
At the business level, excessive working hours usually indicate a certain degree of organizational disorder. Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, in their book Peopleware, have already explained that there are corporate cultures anchored in the conviction that wealth is finite and that, therefore, one has to work harder than the rest to achieve greater profits. On the other hand, there are companies that understand that wealth is actually a variable value, and that it can increase thanks to ingenuity and excellence. So it is not a matter of working more, but better.
Finally, on a personal level, time availability runs the risk of being used at the service of individualism and posturing. This is the case of people who can spend the entire Tuesday with hardly any production, but on Sunday morning they send an email so that everyone can see how hard they work, without caring about the negative effects it may have on other members. of the organization. The best antidote to minimize these compartments are values such as empathy, good sense and camaraderie.
Although the Phrygian cap had an impeccable aesthetic, the people came to know that King Midas used it to hide his donkey ears. So it is convenient to remember the words that Carles Navarro, general director of BASF Spain, spoke at the last edition of the BNEW Congress: "Today's talent, like yesterday's, flees from toxic environments, chaotic organizations and meager leadership ”.
