Dangerous Ideas
Over The Rainbow
After I left corporate life, I began to explore the world of self-development and, latterly, the world of organisational and leadership development. They have much more in common than you might at first imagine, in both good ways and bad ways. Good, inasmuch as the self-knowledge and inner work of self-development is an essential part of leadership development. Bad, in the hucksterism and punting of simplistic solutions by a plethora of ‘gurus’ and self-promoters.
So what we get from both worlds is a stream of beguilingly simple, seductively powerful ideas that are very ‘meme-able’ and can be explained in a TED Talk. They are ‘silver bullets’, the missing piece of the jigsaw, the one thing that is the key to unlocking your personal nirvana.
I’ve fallen for their siren voices only to be drawn onto the rocks. After swimming away from the wreckage, I realised they are not just wrong, they can be dangerous, toxic and destructive.
So let’s start with one that’s done a ‘species hop’ from individuals seeking enlightenment to organisations seeking eternal profitability - Purpose.
When I left corporate life in my dazed and confused state, I didn’t really know who I was or what I wanted to do in the world. Those had never been significant questions in my life before and I didn’t know how to answer them, much less so after having been through the corporate wash cycle a few times. I was told the solution was to find my purpose. Once I had done that, it would all fall into place.
This was a very popular idea at the time, there were many voices singing this particular song, so off I set to find my purpose. I did lots of questionnaires, I journaled, I reflected, I pondered. I spoke at length to others who were also seeking their purpose. I did lots of profiles, read lots of books. I looked high and low.
Dear reader, I did not find my purpose.
And there’s a perfectly good reason for that. I don’t have one.
The idea of a single, guiding purpose that you have through your life, a one true calling, is lovely but false.
We have multiple purposes. They shift in priority. They have different time spans and they change as we experience life.
Looking for ‘the one true purpose’ distracts you from discerning what your purpose is now, in this moment, in this context. It prevents you from looking deeper into the multiple drivers you have in your life, the various purposes you are pursuing in the different roles you have (more of that later).
Oh, and purpose in organisations? Pretty much the same. They may have a guiding purpose and that may be helpful but it’s not essential. It certainly won’t be something decided by the board, or the HR department, or by marketing.
I don’t think they need a purpose but they do need a conversation ABOUT purpose, one that engages the whole workforce equally. Purpose has a place, it can evolve and develop, it can be a guide, it can inspire and motivate. But if you go looking for it, you won’t find it. And if you stick it up on a wall, you’re delusional.
The Real Me
Next up is ‘authenticity’. Like purpose, this promises simplicity, clarity and certainty. It’s a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card for those who want to escape the mental struggle of being human and wrestling with your identity and the uncertainty that entails.
‘Be Authentic’, find your ‘one true self’ and life will be simple. All self-doubt will disappear, you’ll always know exactly how to be and how to behave, you’ll always be at peace and feel totally connected with yourself.
What could possilbly be wrong with that?
So off I went to look for my authentic self. It was not unlike looking for my purpose. Lots of advice, courses, questionnaires, profiles, books, TED Talks (are you getting the picture here?).
Trouble is, my authentic self was hiding. Hiding behind that grumpy prick who snapped at his family. And that bolshie git who got into heated arguments about politics. And that idiot who went out with his mates and got trollied.
Blimey, maybe my authentic self was actually quite unpleasant.
Oh no, I remember now. There was also the person who helped people in times of trouble, the compassionate, listening ear for those in struggle. The one who spoke up for social justice and supported the underdog, The husband, father, brother, friend … they were all good guys.
Shit. So who am I ?
Well, I’m all of them. There is no ‘authentic self’. There is no one true me. I’m all of these selves (and many more) and they are all part of me. Even the ones that are ‘inauthentic’ (and we all have a few of those, even if we don’t like to admit it). I am different versions of me in the different roles I play, and we all play many roles.
Guess what? Looking for the one authentic self stops you from exploring your multiple selves, coming to terms with that multiplicity and learning how to inhabit those selves to best effect.
That’s a lifetimes work, so stop sodding about and get on with it.
(I’m not even going to talk about ‘being authentic at work’, which is not only impossible but often an incredible dangerous thing to attempt. Just don’t.)
Don’t Kill My Vibe
Moving more into the organisational realm, next up is the idea of corporate culture. I’ve already written a newsletter on Culture, so let’s cut to the chase here.
It’s perhaps not surprising that both ‘Purpose’ and ‘Authenticity’ figure in the lexicon of ‘Corporate Culture’. As I put in my Linked In post this week, ‘Culture’ is the bucket that all the silver bullets get thrown in.
So why is ‘Culture’ a dangerous idea? Because it’s a smokescreen that diverts attention from the deeper issues (there’s a bit of theme developing here, isn’t there?).
Leaders spent huge amount of time energy and money on ‘Culture programmes’ to avoid addressing their own behaviour and doing the hard and necessary work on developing themselves.
Talk about culture often replaces the open, honest and sometimes difficult conversations about individual experiences and feelings.
Focus on over-arching culture programmes often stops more direct, smaller scale action being taken to address known and immediate problems.
And then once you have defined a ‘culture’, you start looking for people to fit into it. ‘Cultural fit’ screens out diversity, leading to a monoculture and the deadening group think that it produces. It narrows the variety of viewpoints, experience and capabilities and that makes the organisation less creative, less innovative, less adaptable and less resilient.
It leads to people being made to fit into the culture, rather than the culture being a product of the people. That’s not good for the people or the culture.
The Man Machine
Which neatly brings me to my last ‘dangerous idea’, that the organisation is a machine.
This is such a pervasive metaphor that we often don’t even realise we are caught in it. A hangover from the industrial age, it has permeated our language and our thinking. It even has a modern variant, the organisation as a computer. That’s why people witter on about ‘changing the organisation’s Operating System’ as a way to transform, which really gets on my wotsits because you can’t ‘transform’ into the same bloody thing!
And where do we sit in the machine metaphor? We are the replaceable cogs. Expected to manipulate ourselves so we fit into a cog-shaped hole and rotate at the required frequency. That’s assuming we’ve passed through the ‘cultural fit’ sieve, which really just checks that we are mallable.
How do we develop the organisation if we continue to think of it as a machine, if we continue to see it through this one fixed lens? How can we see other perspectives, other possible realities, other ways of being?
And how can we develop ourselves if we have to fit into these restrictive and suffocating moulds? How can we evolve and grow?
Metaphors are helpful but if we mistake them for reality, they become prisons. We are forever locked in the present, unable to imagine how things could be different. This dangerous idea imprisons us in a system that no longer works and is becoming more dystopian by the day. It has to go.
So, there you are. Four very common, popular ideas that are extremely dangerous, that divert us from the real challenges. Beguiling fairy tales that lure us into a make-believe world and stop us from seeing and experiencing reality. Everyday fictions that are doing us harm and preventing us from evolving at a personal, organisational and social level.
There are just the ones that came to mind, there are many more. What would you add to this list?