Strangulation Of The Status Quo - Lessons from the 19th Century

In light of the recent unrest in Turkey, Brasil and the ongoing effects of the Arab Spring, I thought this was worth reposting...

If you haven’t seen the [new] Les Misérables movie you should. It powerfully portrays many of today’s issues: poverty, inequality and inequity, the struggle of self-organized groups versus command-and-control and liberty to name a few. Most profoundly, it speaks to the overwhelming and dangerous hold of the status quo on our minds and souls.

The battle between the new and the status quo is epitomized in the relationship between Javert, a policeman ingrained the life of Law and Order, and Valjean, a reformed ex-con who through grace and freedom has become a just and caring businessman in the community. Javert, unable to receive Valjean’s grace and freedom, actually kills himself instead of accepting a world where compassion and understanding counterbalance the rule of Law, a world most of us prefer.

So what does this have to do with business? A lot. On first blush, the lesson is the stranglehold of the status quo binding us to the present, and past, so we are unable to see the benefits of anything different. The present may not even be great, but we know it and how to deal with it.

Change is scary, threatening. We will have to learn new things and maybe we won’t be able to. Then what? It also means risk, risk means failure and failure is punished. None of these options are good.

So what do we, our people, our organizations do? We shut down. We show up, do our jobs, follow policies and procedures and check our hearts, souls and even minds at ‘the door’. We know what that does to growth, profitability and purpose!

On a deeper level, it highlights the death throws of a binary world so many of us cling to: yes and no, either or, good and evil, America vs. the USSR.

The new world is grey. It requires integrating disparate ideas, accepting paradoxes, looking for the And Both instead of Either Or, combining things in new ways. . . which leads to freedom, to innovation and growth and solutions to real customer needs and wicked problems.

It leads to loosening some of the harsh, unjust shackles of the Law through Compassion. Let’s face it, it’s much easier to live in a black and white world where we know the rules, we know what’s expected, the probability of failure is much lower.

That binary world doesn’t exist anymore and actually, never did. It was an illusion that lasted a century. Increasingly, we define our jobs, blur lines of responsibility, integrate once discrete disciplines (e.g., design and engineering), and experiment and iterate instead of perfect. While a grey world may be scary to some, it unleashes innovation and new ways to realize profits that can create meaningful outcomes.

Javert’s Suicide Soliloquy shows the glaring self-destruction inherent in status quo’s black and white world – a world so stark that Javert views freedom as another chain (“hold dominion”) and chooses death:

What sort of devil is he [Valjean] to have me caught in a trap and choose to let me go free…

Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life!

Damned if I’ll live in the debt of a thief! Damned if I’ll yield at the end of a chase…

How can I now allow this man to hold dominion over me…

He gave me my life. He gave me my freedom…

And must I now being to doubt, who never doubted all these years?

The world I have known is lost in shadow…

So what does this mean to us? Hopefully, none of us will hold so desperately to the status quo that’d we’d rather literally die than adapt. Make sure your organization's culture doesn't either.

This originally appeared in Tanveer Naseer's Blog

April's Top 5

May already! And finally some gorgeous weather! No surprise that in April's top 5 reads, Jessica Esch's post was tops again! (See a pattern here!) and, proudly, with only being up two days of the month, my daughter Chana's post was a top read as well! Thank you Dorie, Tanveer, Jessica and Chana for guest posting!

1. Dorie Clark's What's Your Leadership Narrative?
2. Tanveer Naseer's It's Time We Develop a New Relationship with Work
3. How to Stay Relevant and Have Impact
4. Jessica Esch's It's Obvious
5. Chana Scofield's Planting SEEED's of Innovation

It's Time We Develop A New Relationship With Work

I've been following award winner, internationally acclaimed writer and speaker Tanveer Naseer for a while.  His wisdom and insight, put into language we can all understand and act upon, is a gift.  He generously let me post on his site earlier this month and I'm privileged to return the favor.  You can find more of Tanveer's sagacity on leadership and the workplace here, follow him on twitter @TanveerNaseer, and keep up on what he's thinking here.  Thank you, Tanveer!

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It's Time We Develop A New Relationship With Work 

Have you ever noticed how when someone tells us how they've been really busy with work, we automatically interpret this as being a bad thing?  Certainly, no one associates having a lot of work to do with sunshine, love, happiness or any other positive experience.

In many ways, this is a natural product of both our schooling and work experiences, where we're not guided and supported to use our genius, creativity, and talents in order to do the work we should do.  Rather, what is the more common experience is being funnelled through a system that puts us into neat slots like gears in a complex piece of machinery. 

When it comes to work, we've come to accept the concept of 'no pain, no gain' as being the proper route to success and prosperity.  That we need to tough it out in the hopes that – someday – we might finally be able to do what we want to do because we've 'paid our dues'.

To make matters worse, even if we are lucky enough to do work we enjoy, that sense of satisfaction tends to be short-lived as we're rarely given the space to grow and evolve, with the freedom to make mistakes without being blackballed a failure and someone no longer worthy of development or the attention of those in charge.

And so, we inevitably hunker down, hoping that someday our ship will come in as a reward for all the sacrifices we've made, and we'll finally get to live the life we always wanted and do the work that we've dreamed about doing all those many years ago.

No doubt this is why so many insurance and retirement planning companies rely on images of retired couples lounging on a boat off some tropical island, or taking up salsa dancing lessons before enjoying a night on the town. 

In each instance the message is clear – we can live the life we really want . . . but only after we've committed to giving the best part of our lives today to doing work that might not be what we had planned or should be doing.

In this light, it's not too surprising why we've created a negative connotation around the word 'work', whether it's as a verb or a noun.

Of course, there's a truth that we need to come to terms with if we are to truly succeed and thrive – both professionally and personally – and that is that we're not making sacrifices.  We're making choices.  Bad choices.  Safe choices.  Choices that those around us tell us are the 'smart' ones to make, but are often not the best ones for us to choose.

I know I've made a few of those in my past – choices I made to help pay the bills while waiting for that opportunity that I really wanted to show up.  And that's where we fall into the trap, because while we may have accepted these choices as temporary, they soon become the work we do and the life we live because we stop looking for that path that we were meant to take; of reconnecting with the work we were meant to do.  We give up on such dreams in favour of pragmatism and familiarity; of sticking to what we know instead of what we need.

To be clear, this isn't about simply 'doing what we love'.  It's about learning to love what we do because it provides us with a sense of fulfilment.  That our work becomes more than simply a means of survival and living, but a way for us to employ our talents, our genius, and our creativity and drive towards something meaningful and purpose-driven.

While the growing levels of anxiety, fear and stress we see in today's workplaces are partly due to the prevailing uncertainties surrounding the global economy, it is also a manifestation of that disconnect between what we do and why we do it. 

And it's becoming clear as we move further into this century that this approach to our careers and lives is no longer sustainable; that we've reached a tipping point where people can no longer be expected to feel happy or fulfilled by working to live.  Instead, we need to shift the paradigm to one where people live to work.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the sole reason for our lives is our work; that answering the typical question 'what do you do for a living' serves to define the sum total of our existence.  Rather, it means that we need to be more mindful in ensuring that the work we do is aligned with our internal compass that guides us to finding our purpose and our ability to contribute meaningfully. 

That as much as we're helping our organization to attain its shared goals, we're also performing work that helps us to achieve a sense of purpose – that what we contribute matters and is meaningful beyond our sphere of influence.

In the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egyptologists have found carved in the stone blocks the names of some of the work teams that helped to build this monument.  The carvings were never meant to be seen by others.  Instead, they were made simply to demonstrate the workers sense of accomplishment and purpose that they derived from the simple, but back-breaking work of hauling these large stones into place.

Their example serves as a testimony that we don't need to 'have it all' to feel a sense of fulfilment or achievement.  Rather, all that's required is our willingness to no longer play it safe or waiting until later to commit our creativity, our passions and our dreams to that which not only creates meaning for others, but which also instills a sense of purpose and fulfilment within ourselves.

Tanveer Naseer is an award-winning and internationally-acclaimed leadership writer and speaker.  He is also the Principal and Founder of Tanveer Naseer Leadership, a leadership coaching firm that works with managers and executives to help them develop leadership and team-building competencies to guide organizational growth and development, while ensuring they remain focused on what creates a fulfilling sense of purpose in what they do.

You can read more of his writings on leadership and workplace interactions on his blog at TanveerNaseer.com.  You can also follow him on Twitter - @TanveerNaseer.