The name “quiet quitting” is problematic because the phrase implies that something nefarious is going on—namely that an individual has checked out and is dead weight to a company or team. The phase is unnecessarily sensational and leads many to jump to the conclusion that quiet quitters are detrimental to company performance and team morale. In my opinion, we need to quickly relegate this phrase to the historical annals of corporate and popular vernacular.

If trust is nowhere to be found, if no one knows what their colleagues are doing, if waste and entropy abound, and if the customer is a mystery, then achieving an organizational flow state is highly unlikely. I’m not saying that it’s impossible, but to find flow in a large, toxic, chaotic organization would be a real oddity.

By being clear about what the company does and its differentiator(s), the average individual change management curve gets shorter and individual morale/competence improves–all else the same. Since the average individual curve shortens and individual outcomes improve, the organizational change curve (aggregated curve) gets shorter and overall outcomes improve.