It’s Terrific!
It’s good because the boss declares it to be good so we nod and smile and say ‘It’s terrific!’ and glance for the boss’s smile of approval.
‘It’s so terrific!’ we parrot, and therefore it IS terrific.
A passer-by peeks into the organisation, looks around, and thinks ‘This is NOT my idea of Terrific. But …I’m just a visitor so maybe I’m missing something that they know.
A new arrival joins the organisation, immediately thinks ‘This is NOT Terrific,’ and starts saying so.
‘You’ve not got the experience to know Terrific here,’ the sycophants rebuke.
So the new arrival pauses their opinion long enough to grow accustomed to the new Terrific.
Or leave.
Policies.
The path on the left is a Policy.
It’s a decision made for us in advance.
‘You can be assured that if you take the steps to follow this route that you will arrive where you want to be.’
The track to the right of the prepared path is where some people have deviated from the Policy.
An aerial view shows the alternative track rejoins the prepared path just beyond the rise.
The route down the middle is for those who trust their judgement over that of the experts Policy authors.
No journey is the wrong one if it advances you towards where you want to be, namely:
For those who take the prepared path, it affirms their submission to and confidence in the judgement of others.
For those who take the brief deviation, it affirms for them that the prepared path is always the best.
For those who strike out on their own, it affirms their agency and autonomy and adventure.
Transparent.
As federal and state officials investigated the attack, they said part of their focus would be on how the driver was able to barrel into the crowd. Gov. Jeff Landry said, “We intend to be transparent in assessing any defects that may have existed in the system so that we can address it.”
Transparency makes you vulnerable.
If your Widget is your Reputation or Ego, you will never be transparent.
Transparency exposes everything - including faux pas in choice of words (responding to a terrorist driving into a crowd):
“We’re aggressively running down every lead ...”
Leadership Training.
What most organisations call ‘leadership’ training doesn’t train to lead.
It trains passive people to pretend to be confident enough to subjugate confident people to be passive.
Each Post.
Each post is a deliberate mistake.
An arrow shot in the direction of a sense of a blurry target.
A lasso tossed out to a passing mooring.
A flare to briefly illuminate the darkness.
As We Wait for Death.
We are so arrogant that we think that when we remove everything there is only me.
Remove the world around us and the people in it and the noise and the light falling onto our retinas.
Until we sit in a dark room with only the sound of our heartbeat and blood flow in our ears.
After a lifetime (however long) of stimulus - we are reduced to waiting for death.
Alone.
Arrogantly alone.
Or so we think.
We can’t see that in that moment or those moments of aloneness - if they visit us in our life before death -
God sits with us.
Regular Doses.
13 years of school embeds in us an assumption that learning is linear and progressive.
That growth is made up of equal chunks of time called period, day, week, term, year.
That we graduate from one to the next; our mental maturing matched and affirmed by our physical and emotional growth.
Celebrated by assemblies, tests, certificates, grades, reports, graduations.
Applauded by teachers, principals, and parents.
Continuing on to university for some.
And at the end of our education:
Silence.
Days are the same, punctuated and marked perhaps by weekends and holidays and birthdays and marriage and travel.
Gone are the affirmations in assessments and awards and progress and the nod and smile of a teacher saying ‘Correct’.
Learning is no longer linear and assessed by others.
More failure and inertia than the regular and predictable doses of ‘success’ of school days.
Which is why so many seek a return to those days in their own children’s schooling.
Language.
Language limits us at the times we most need it.
‘Trust in God’ is interpreted as ‘Let go of the steering wheel and take no responsibility for your actions.’
‘God’ is whatever an adult first described God as being to us, which is whatever an adult described God as being to them.
Old man with a white beard in a cloud is most likely the description.
I would not believe in the gods most people say they don’t believe in.
Retreat.
“I will willingly accept, indeed I am bound to accept, what the Noble Lord has called the "constitutional responsibility" for everything that has happened and I consider that I discharged that responsibility by not interfering with the technical handling of armies in contact with the enemy.” Winston Churchill.
Space.
Purpose.
Equip.
Affirm.
The Most Dangerous Creature.
There is no more dangerous creature on the face of the earth than an unreasonable man.
The Local Flavour.
I would present my theories to the principals and they would dutifully nod and scribble some notes.
How much of the theory each applied after they returned to their desk was up to them.
Only the principal knows how much seasoning needs to be added to their local flavour.
The Universe’s Gaze.
We’re young.
We don’t see the Universe’s gaze.
We’re older.
We sense being watched.
We are the Universe.
So we run.
We’re older still.
The gaze.
Running.
We’re old.
We can’t run anymore.
We can only sit.
Under the gaze of the Universe.
Harness the Entropy.
Like all schools with young children, this school operated a ‘Kiss and Drive’ – a system where parents queue to drop or pick up their child. The Kiss and Drive is supervised by several staff in high visibility vests who monitor and enforce the heavily regulated process of ensuring that students make it into their parent’s car and out the gate without being killed.
Five minutes later those same students, under the care and authority of their parents, are alighting in the local shopping centre car park or outside their home and in an hour, many are dropped off and picked up at sport training or music tutoring or at a friend’s place. Not a high vis vest to be seen.
That same school pays and organises student excursions to an organisation that runs simulated safety sessions where students walk around a simulated streetscape with tablets simulating how they make safe choices in traffic situations.
Why not harness the entropy of the Kiss and Drive to teach the children (and their parents) the same thing?
Blissful Ignorance.
Long after that bad boss made a bad decision that is affecting one or many, there is no way to directly communicate back to that fool the consequences of their stupidity.
They’re still making bad decisions in blissful ignorance.
Where are the Humans?
When you face a grey area problem at work, you should work through it as a manager and resolve it as a human being. - Joseph R Badaracco
In most organisations, HR works through a problem with a mechanical, catch-out-the-freeloaders management mindset.
But there are no human beings adding their resolve.
Timely Access to Reliable Information.
According to Richard Janssen, Commercial Director of SMIT Salvage, the greatest challenge in any salvage operation is gaining timely access to reliable information. “Until we get people on board to assess the condition of the vessel itself, it is difficult to get an accurate picture of what we are dealing with,” he says. “The stability calculations we receive from the class of the vessel, combined with analysis from our own team, can make a big difference in how we approach salvage operations.”
The first job of a leader is to define reality.
The Experts.
One of the most important uses to which authority is put in organization is to bring about specialization in the work of making decisions, so that each decision is made at the point in the organization where it can be made most expertly.
Administrative Behavior - Herbert A. Simon
Before a boss can ensure that each decision is made where it can be made expertly, the boss must know who the experts are.