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Keep calm but dont carry on
Posted on: Wednesday, December 30, 2009
As another year passes I find it worth pausing to think about our inability to mobilize and act to solve some of our challenges.
When it comes to the economy we seem to have decided that our imagination is better applied finding ways to cope with crisis rather than challenging their very existence.
We have stopped thinking of creative ways to destroy a broken system preferring instead to salvage what we can personally hold on to.
As for the environment, we are still unable to value the planet that sustains us preferring instead to get caught in spurious arguments on the value of reducing over consumption (the word ‘over’ should have acted as a hint!).
So much for the power of burning platforms leaders seem so keen on. Let’s forgive the distasteful analogy (clear to anyone connected to the offshore oil industry) and agree once and for all that whilst our platform may well be on fire we seem willing to roast.
So why does the starkest warnings lead to inaction rather than massive change? Why when faced with the choice, change or die do we choose death? ‘Why’, in the words of photographer and movie maker Yann Arthus-Bertrand ‘do we refuse to believe what we know to be true?’
Let me just offer two reasons to start the conversation:
Crisis of trust
Conflicting information is coming thick an fast. Experts contradict each other. There is so much information and so little time that we find it impossible to make sense of it. And even when an overwhelming majority of experts agree (as is arguably the case with the environment) we are still looking for an underlying conspiracy theory rather than accept they might be agreeing because there is something to agree about. Have you notices how the word expert is now more often than not prefaced with ‘so called’ as a sign of our cynicism.
It’s not hard to see why. Remember Y2k? How about the MMRI vaccine in the UK - is it safe for your kids to have it? How about swine flue? But so what. of course experts can sometimes be wrong. Bu who knows whether they were wrong or whether their warnings helped us put measures in place that avoided the disasters they predicted.
The problem is that instead of finding ways to engage stakeholders in a conversation based on expert insights, leaders find it more expedient to create a burning platform. We have come to believe, wrongly, that fear is a powerful motivator to fast action.
But even my children know this is a dangerous assumption. They call it ‘the little boy who cried wolf’. We have cried wolf so often that trust is broken. So whilst I do not assume that our intent isn't pure, for the sake of all the little boys who need protecting from bad wolves, can we just declare 2010 a burning platform free year and find ways to restore trust.
Crisis of existence
I have had to pause long and hard before naming this one. I wanted to call it an existential crisis but thought you might accuse me of being overly French and philosophical (two things I would be delighted to admit but that’s because I am French and therefore value philosophy).
The problem with the crisis we face is that they not only touch our way of life, they question it to its core. The issue we have to face is are we prepare to define our own lives in a different way from the way we define it today? It’s a simple cost benefit calculation. How far are you prepared to change before you decide that the costs of being alive outweigh the benefits.
For you to be prepared to change, the vision of what life could be has to outweigh the costs of change. And as far as the economy or the environment we are still struggling to paint a picture of a life attractive enough for people to let their existing one go. I am not saying that change has to be painless but at least it has to be worth it. This is why we need the best of our imagination in action. We need to re-imagine what life is about. That, to me, seems a worthwhile endeavour.
My wish for the new year is that we apply our imagination and intelligence to fostering real change through engagement and vision. I wish we can find the strength to build on the hope we briefly felt in 2009 and move forward together. We have become so cynical that even the words peace and love have been devalued. But as we move forward it is indeed peace and love I wish you all for the new year.
Thank you to all those who have spent some of their precious time reading my thoughts over the last year. It means a lot to me.
By the way if you re looking for something to read my must read of 2009 (apart of course from own Leadershift) has to be Enough (see link below). Enjoy.
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