Reflections 19th May

on our obligations to ourselves, and getting to basecamp

Photo by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash

There is a vital discipline in reflection as a practice. One of the privileges of doing what I do is witnessing people and organisations in transition, even when they think they’re not.

I started these posts as a way of journalling in public - to see what the reaction was, what I was missing, what other people saw. An experiment in constructive failure. The practice has been a huge learning experience, for which I’m grateful, so now it’s time to push it further and see what happens.

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I notice something of the Grief Cycle about our relationship with change. Even as we try to sanitise and tame it with plans, models and confident projections of the future, we know that we are not in control of it. Whether it is something as momentous as climate change or as relatively insignificant in the scheme of things as our own careers, it takes a long time for us to embrace it. We go through the routines of denial, blaming others and justifying our inaction until we start to feel shame starting to eat away at us. Many of us check out and quit the game, although obligation kicks in for a vital few, and they take responsibility.

I’m sure that the water companies polluting our rivers and lakes and poisoning their customers while paying out dividends have a convincing internal dialogue to justify their actions to themselves. And while the rest of us are incredulous, the AI companies are mooting a form of Universal Basic Income to offset the impact of their technology on society and think they are being magnanimous even as many of us see it as positively feudal.

We are in an important time. What got us here won’t get us there. We are learning animals, and just making our lives more convenient based on what we know won’t take us where we need to be. We need more. Every day, we need to practice being open to new knowledge and new ways of using what we already know. We need to practice what we know in unfamiliar places and contexts and find places to exercise our imagination and curiosity.

If we don’t, we face domestication.

Later in these posts, we will creatively examine John Boyd's work, what his life’s work has to teach us about the observer and the observed, how we cannot understand the system we are in from inside it, and ways of orienting ourselves to advantage amongst the changes taking place.

For now, though, I want to stay with us as observers in a world where, in what feels like a remarkably short space of time, organisations have gone from being part of society to separate from it, and from custodians of careers and communities to regarding them as commodities.

Perhaps this detachment makes them insensate. While those of us in the workplace feel the pressures of climate change and sense the impact of AI, organisations do not. For organisations, “change” is something to be “managed” at a technical level, while for those they employ, it is something experienced at an adaptive level. Put another way, employees are experiencing a faster rate of change at a personal level than employers are at a management level, and the difference is giving us record levels of disengagement, workplace health issues and, for the generations entering work, disillusion and disinterest. The divergence of interests is unsustainable.

Of course, my point is not universally true. There are some excellent businesses out there that see things very differently and act accordingly, but they are in the minority. The mimetic pressure on “earnings” for those with remote shareholders is a powerful force, even as we recognise that “earnings” is a very poor metric when it comes to individual and societal health.

We are out of sync. Existing organisations will not change fast enough to alter our current trajectory. They will follow their own inevitable, accelerating arc towards failure as a combination of technology, hubris, and social detachment leaves them stranded. Closed systems that are immune to uncomfortable experiences.

If we want the sort of organisations that will alter the trajectory, then we have to create the conditions for them to thrive.

Ones open to new knowledge and ideas.

As the old story of the lost traveller seeking direction goes, “I wouldn’t start from here…”

I would start with a different form of exploratory practice, a far cry from the “evidence-based” workplace practices we have become accustomed to.

That is an obligation we owe to ourselves.

In the way that often happens when we keep good company, someone else bridges a gap in our thinking. This short piece from my friend

Johnnie Moore

does just that and is a great piece to bridge the gap into the part here for paid subscribers.

Offending the training gods