Richard, as a guy who never worked in a corporate environment, but work on those environments as an "intimate outsider" consultant, you show me something that answers a question that I did not know I had. I realize that most people in the West have worked in a corporate environment have the sense that life is to be stable and consistent, that change is bad, and transition is occasional. My experience across a much broader spectrum than the corporate has shown me that transition is the norm, and change is an unrealized asset. Increasingly the security of a corporate job is becoming a myth. Therefore, learning to live in transition is one of the keys to thriving in a context of change. I once characterized this as equivalent to surfing. When the height of the wave and the frequency of them is just right, we are floating across the wave. Life is at its best. But when there is a storm out at sea, the waves get rougher and more dangerous. I see this as what transition is like today. As a result, we need to know who we are, know the limits of our capacity to respond, and be prepared to get off the wave, and head to the beach when chaotic change takes over. Really great writing Richard. Thank you.
It is a meter of how we choose to see the world. In a conversation with Sunil this morning he gave me this quote, which resonates:
But we do not ask. We want to be told. One of the most curious things in the structure of our psyche is that we all want to be told because we are the result of the propaganda of ten thousand years. We want to have our thinking confirmed and corroborated by another, whereas to ask a question is to ask it of yourself.”
Well said too, Ed. One of my clients has long invested in people's ability to surf and know when to head back to shore or rest in foetal position in the eye of the whirlpool, trusting that it will be spot us out intact when conditions are right. The last years felt like that second situation to me.
Richard, as a guy who never worked in a corporate environment, but work on those environments as an "intimate outsider" consultant, you show me something that answers a question that I did not know I had. I realize that most people in the West have worked in a corporate environment have the sense that life is to be stable and consistent, that change is bad, and transition is occasional. My experience across a much broader spectrum than the corporate has shown me that transition is the norm, and change is an unrealized asset. Increasingly the security of a corporate job is becoming a myth. Therefore, learning to live in transition is one of the keys to thriving in a context of change. I once characterized this as equivalent to surfing. When the height of the wave and the frequency of them is just right, we are floating across the wave. Life is at its best. But when there is a storm out at sea, the waves get rougher and more dangerous. I see this as what transition is like today. As a result, we need to know who we are, know the limits of our capacity to respond, and be prepared to get off the wave, and head to the beach when chaotic change takes over. Really great writing Richard. Thank you.
It is a meter of how we choose to see the world. In a conversation with Sunil this morning he gave me this quote, which resonates:
But we do not ask. We want to be told. One of the most curious things in the structure of our psyche is that we all want to be told because we are the result of the propaganda of ten thousand years. We want to have our thinking confirmed and corroborated by another, whereas to ask a question is to ask it of yourself.”
~J Krishnamurti
Well said too, Ed. One of my clients has long invested in people's ability to surf and know when to head back to shore or rest in foetal position in the eye of the whirlpool, trusting that it will be spot us out intact when conditions are right. The last years felt like that second situation to me.
I do. There's so much to go at here :-)
I agree, lovely writing Richard.
Do you know Mary Parker Follett's writings on community?
Spot on!