Are You Listening?

Saturday, June 14th, 2025 (No comments yet)

Are You Listening? – The Geek Professor

Employees are allies, not the adversary

Inside the US’s most secretive spy agency, dedicated employees protect our national security interests while suffering a level of toxicity that could send nuclear lizards tap-dancing through downtown Tokyo. From multi-million-dollar boondoggle contracts to therapy-inducing tools and processes, employees stood silently by while the agency measured waste in seven+ digits.

"But why? Why – when managers and execs are authentically doing everything they can to be open and approachable – do employees insist on keeping their distance? Why do they stay silent on critical issues until it's too late? And how do they then justify scoring leaders down for 'communication' on the company survey year after year?!"

The answer is simple: if you had succeeded in building a culture of collaboration… one where employees feel invited and safe to openly raise objections and issues, then they would.

In Are You LIstening? I explain how easily despair and dysfunction are overlooked when leaders – no matter how personable, charismatic, and well-intentioned – assume they've made every reasonable concession to an endlessly demanding workforce when, in reality, their efforts create an "us vs them" gap so wide, it could draw paying tourists (and waste enough dollars to fill it back up again).

Using stories and examples cultivated from 16 years with the National Security Agency, I will demonstrate the difference between what is and isn't listening. I will share the significant consequences of treating your workforce as an adversary instead of an ally.

Part of our dysfunctional culture is that dissent too often is regarded as form of disloyalty, of not being a team player. Yet to say nothing is tacit consent. Those who desire deep and durable change in our “corporate” culture need to gain the mature understanding that sometimes one’s most harsh critic is one’s most sincere friend.

–E. Writer

Sign up for mail updates for the publishing of Are You Listening, Lessons in Waste, Abuse, and Mismanagement from the Agency that Doesn't Listen and get a complimentary copy of my promotional mini-book, Reflections on an NSA Career!