“That’s What The Money Is For,” He Said, Mistakenly

Probably the best-known scene in Mad Men happens during 2010’s Season 4, Episode 7, “The Suitcase,” where advertising whizzkid Peggy Olsen (who was loosely based on advertising legend Mary Wells Lawrence) confronts her talented but sociopathic boss, Creative Director Don Draper, about his lack of appreciation. She complains that she always goes the extra mile and yet he never offers any semblance of a Thank You.

“That’s what the money is for!!!” Draper hollers back. “I pay you, you give me ideas, that’s how it works.”

Complete balderdash, to put it respectfully.

Business Insider polled their readers about how many of them would take a salary cut if it meant more loyalty and security from their bosses. A large number of people said that they would, gladly. Why? For the same reasons people move back home to Western Pennsylvania after a decade in New York: though they make less money back home, should something go wrong, they have much wider support networks besides cashing paychecks and not getting laid off.

The only surprising thing about this survey is the idea that anybody would be surprised by its findings.

Leaders tend to think of their organizations in terms of assets: labor, capital, assets, etc. But, as we know, what holds companies together is their people. 

And we’re driven not by physical assets, but by emotion (fortunately or otherwise). 

The Don Drapers of the world must figure out how to stop treating salary like emotional duct tape.

Because compensation has always been just one piece of the puzzle.

People don’t just work for money.
They work for momentum.
For identity.
For belonging.
For pride.
For the feeling that their effort folds into something larger than themselves instead of vanishing into a spreadsheet like a sacrificial goat tossed into a volcano of quarterly earnings. 

We are meaning-seeking creatures long before we are utility-maximizing ones.

Plenty of companies pay well. The winners are the ones that understand a deeper truth: humans will always yearn for the sense that somebody would notice if they disappeared tomorrow.

That’s what people are actually starving for.

So yes, Don Draper was wrong.

The money gets people in the door. Meaning is what makes them stay.