“Start small. Start local. Circulate with unusual friends. Propagate better conversations.” John Paul Lederach
Did you know internationally renowned peace practitioner John Paul Lederach shared his reflections freely in a Pocket Guide on his experience across over four decades mediating and transforming conflicts around the globe?
I believe it is so relevant for current times that you go read the full ca 100 pages, I’ll add the link to his website where you can find the pocket guide as a source below.
I believe it is so relevant for current times that I am also sharing my own selection of key extracts in the attached document because I know many won’t feel there is time to read the full document. The extracts require some thinking – as tempted as I was to add the ‘key take-aways’ for you, I have not condensed it further. His wise words are clear.
Nothing he observed regarding how to shift away from violence and dehumanization is rocket science. His stories are about ordinary people. An improbable few – the critical yeast. With a whole load of curiosity, courage, and the willingness to persevere. It’s worth giving it a try right? To be the critical yeast.
There is a discussion guide provided to dig into the concepts and what they may mean for you, your life, your local area.
I will keep sharing different views on ways to stay in our integrity with hope, with curiosity, with courage. If you want to know more, please do get in touch for a chat.
Image: Artist Olaf Hajek 2003. Personal material from the Move On Weekend, Munich 2005, by The Boston Consulting Group.
“Denken ist handeln” takes me back to my first interaction with the large management consultancy I joined after my malaria PhD. That line, “Thinking is for action,” spoke to me. I love ruminating, researching, putting complex bits of information into a digestible big picture, spotting the inconsistencies, the patterns, the messages. I tend to hang out a little longer on the side of thinking than on the side of action.
Yet – today I ask.
What if our thought itself was incorrect?
What if our thought adapted to a world around us and is driven by external messages of “you are not enough until _____” and you fill that blank with an external validation: your school grades, your university, your job titles, your products, your material wealth, your nose shape, your wittiness, your number of likes and followers. A world that we have created and our brains told us this is the only way of doing things.
If there’s one thing that such thought does it keeps us pretty distracted, busy and insecure as our basic desire for worthiness depends on external factors. It turns our opinions into self-identities, as David Bohm writes. It makes conversations into dangerous battle-grounds, as differing opinions are seen as attacks on our inherent internal worthiness and right to belong.
It makes us distracted and complacent.
As I write this, the world is watching atrocities unfold in the Middle East. It feels a little like the final straw on the camels back. I observe we are in pain. Yet, I also sense a discomfort in a sense of how could this happen (again). And a sense of grief for what we realise we are losing. There is also an unsettling silence to not say a wrong thing.
For me this article in the Guardian by Patrick Wintour sums up what I believe is a relevant viewpoint and speaks in a broader sense on other topics such as the loneliness, the anxiety, the questions on how to care for each other and our planet better. His title captures it: “The danger of leaving things be”.
Can we break the cycle of complacency?
Can we channel the regret of what got us here today, into where we put our energy into action tomorrow?
From all the research into the topics of wholehearted, courageous leadership, moving from discussion to dialogue and ways of rethinking strategy and business, I land at these three areas of focus for myself:
Thought: Start with “you are enough”. Full stop. Then get really curious about a lot of other aspects of what we think of as normal and ‘has to be that way’. Ask yourself is it true?
Feeling: Seek out & soak in awe. You can find this witnessing moral beauty in others, music, dance, nature, art. Read words from those that inspire you, watch concert videos, go to an exhibition, dance in the kitchen. Awe connects when the world polarises.
Action: Shift from exploitation to exploration. I hold a deep desire to work with leaders and organisations (exploitation). That rarely allows real disruption and is slow, the logical consequence – it’s time to work with those leaders and organisations at the fringes (exploration).
Now here’s the thing – if we are feeling regret mixed in with all those feelings, according to Dan Pink we have three choices: Delusion, Despair or Action. Let’s choose action.
Sources:
David Bohm: On Dialogue.
Dan Pink: The power of regret
Dacher Keltner: Awe, The transformative power of everyday wonders
I have chosen a quote from 📚 Michael Bungay Stanier‘s fantastic and funny session on ‘how to work with (almost) everyone’, to sum up what I wish to share from my The_Dream business festival attendance: a quick win, a pay attention, a choice and a permission.
1) Less talking, more doing regarding our inner & outer ecology. It’s time to get the hamsters out of those wheels (alternatively we can use Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe’s reference to not be a Kafkan bug). Ie. how we want to work with each other, how we look after ourselves, how we build skills for wholehearted, courageous leadership. This can be a ‘quick win’ – it is known what can be done. Do it.
2) Speaking the truth – our planetary safety needs degrowth, our geopolitical safety needs growth. That means we have to really drill down into this paradox and align on a global scale to work on solutions. This is taken from Olivia Lazard‘s talk – the speaker who to me stood out most with her bravery, courage to look closely and her ability to grasp and look for solutions around energy transition and global situations. This is about paying attention – don’t look away from hard topics, chose where you want to invest your skill sets, your own behaviour.
3) Every time we invest in technology, we have to also invest in being human – our morality, our ethics, our communities. The messages were clear on how fast technology is moving, I took from it once more confirmation that we cannot expect to ‘teach’ technology ethics, morality if we are not investing similarly into these skills for ourselves and ensuring well grounded, alive human beings, relations and communities. To me this is a choice – let us link tech investment to human investments.
4) Do not mistake dreamers for not also being doers. I met the most amazing people – dreamers AND who have created businesses and institutes and art and graduate schools and new ideas. And who bring new ways of being to their leadership, teaching and interactions. Full of hope, curiosity, passion and desires to develop life-centered businesses. To me this is a permission – please dream, be full of aliveness, that is what our communities and work places need.
Back to that quote and stepping out from the busyness of a turning wheel – only with our aliveness can we tackle all these paradox questions around planetary wellbeing, shaping technological developments and doing so out of a deep care for ourselves and others.
Again, a thanks to the organisers and curators at House of Beautiful Business and all dreamers contributing.
Source: This post is reflecting my experience at The_Dream Business Festival, 2-5 June 2023, Sintra Portugal. Full details of the program is here: https://houseofbeautifulbusiness.com/thedream. I am happy to share more – get in touch.
I am convinced we require courage and caring; we require the ability to recognise what we have versus being driven by external wants; and we have to seek true collaboration based on our common vulnerability and a common goal to build “The Mature Society” – a term coined by Dennis Meadows.
Professor Dennis Meadows is not a name I was familiar with up until very recently. Also his work was not something I was aware of. That is the “Limits of Growth” research and work published now 50 years ago.
That is although I worked in management consulting advising business leaders on structuring their businesses. The job was not to be concerned with a full view and long-term thinking on people, planet, profit. It was a view on competitive advantage, profit and total shareholder return – that is excluding the occasional non-profit engagements. Dominant topics requested by industry to management consultancies were to cut FTE, benchmark and optimise sales numbers, find reasons to raise prices, perfect patient funnels or customer journeys, and outsource to somewhere (still) cheaper (globalised) where possible. More sales at higher prices, cheaper costs of resources, and consistent growth of the financials was the goal.
So back to Dennis Meadows and the original work in 1972. At the time an international team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began a study looking at the implications of continued worldwide growth. The findings: The earth’s interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology. A strong message – that got completely belittled and ignored.
It was the work published by anthropologist James Suzman that brought my attention to this report, as well as how it was received back then. So as my attention on the topic was raised, I grabbed the opportunity on the 7th June 2022, to watch a live transmission of Dennis Meadows presenting to The New Institute Hamburg titled “Reflections on The Limits to Growth at 50 & 80”. ’50’ being the years since his original presentation of The Limits of Growth in 1972 at the Smithsonian Institution and ’80’ being his age in 2022.
I took away three key messages and learnings shared by Dennis Meadows to reflect on:
Ignore your doubts and be persistent with your contributions
The findings of the model were accurate, yet were not addressed as they are “difficult, global problems”
Create a positive alternative and a goal to drive hope
1. Ignore your doubts and be persistent with your contributions. Dennis Meadows shared one of his main thoughts before going on stage back then in 1972. And it was this: “This is completely obvious“. His research and finding seemed to him to be obvious, and that it was not worth him telling the collected group of scientists and journalists. And yet it was not obvious. It was ignored. Did that make him give up on the work? No, he continued and 50 years later is still hopeful for our ability to take action.
2. The findings of the model were accurate, yet were not addressed. Dennis Meadows shared how simple the model was focusing on just five aspects: population increase, agricultural production, nonrenewable resource depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation. Yet from the scenarios the ‘standard run’ represents real-life happenings leading to where we are today 50 years later. He reflects openly on failure “We completely failed to achieve our purpose“. He then linked this failure to our (politics, business, societies) lack of ability to tackle “difficult, global problems” – that is problems, which generate returns in the long-term (vs. short-term) (that is ‘difficult’) and which require global solutions, so cannot be solved with local actions (that is ‘global’).
3. Create a positive alternative and a goal to drive hope. Finally, he talked about what is required for us to work together and find solutions, rather than moving in the direction of “less liberty, in exchange for less chaos” – based on the basic social law. In his perspective it links to first what is required for hope: “It requires a sense of humanity (collective ethics and values) plus tools to give hope“. And second Dennis Meadow explained what he would change “If I were to go back.. we need to offer a positive alternative“. His finish is a proposal for that alternative scenario to stimulate discussion and activity around this: “The mature society”.
I attended a further event on the “50 Years of The Limits of Growth” hosted by the Club of Rome on the 14th June 2022. Prof. Dennis Meadows shared the above learnings once more in his keynote and a panel discussion took place moderated by Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Co-President of the Club of Rome. I noted in particular following thoughts to pursue (I attempt to attribute these to the panel speakers, wording may not be accurate):
People are currently affected by the 3 Cs – Covid. Climate. Conflict. (Sandrine Dixson-Declève)
GDP is not measuring what is worthwhile measuring. (Tim Jackson)
A new business school is required. (Tim Jackson / Sandrine Dixson-Declève)
Care for place. Care for community. (Kate Raworth)
Have courage of our convictions. (Sandrine Dixson-Declève)
Look at positions of power: those who it suits well and do well in it will not change it. (?)
With Sandrine Dixson-Declève wrapping the overall discussion up well – saying let’s make Jane Goodall proud and use our intellect wisely.
Jane Goodall in a book written with Douglas Abrams lays out her reasons for hope: the amazing human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power of young people, the indomitable human spirit. “Let us use the gift of our lives to make this a better world.”
Hope itself is not an emotion – it is a way of thinking and is based on having three things: realistic goals, pathways to get there (not one but multiple) and agency – we believe in ourselves. “Hope is a function of struggle – we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort”.
How can the work on reimaging systems and culture towards the concepts of Daring Leadership, Abundance Mindset and Collaborative Narratives play a part in creating this “The Mature Society”?
These are the opportunities and contributions I see and will continue to work on:
Daring Leadership: Courageous leaders can handle their vulnerability, can lead from the head and heart. They can stay curious and generous, stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, and listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard. These are skills to be teaching at school, in business schools and the further development of current leaders.
Abundance Mindset: To slow down our consumption and increase our well-being, we have to move from scarcity-fuelled fears and externally-created wants to recognising what we have (and yes this may not be material wealth and rather go back to the roots of our mental, spiritual, physical wellbeing) as well as understand that we have enough to make a change, that is to give us that sense of agency.
Collaborative Narratives: It is imperative to move from competitive to collaborative thinking to address current challenges and particularly to address the ‘global problems’ described by Dennis Meadow. No one can ‘win’ alone, as then we all lose. An aspect of this is the ability to address paradox challenges and recognise the vulnerability we all have in common with each other and the planet.
In short it is about being Courageous. Enough. Together.
Sources:
Professor Dennis Meadows, Online Presentation, hosted by: The New Institute, date: Hamburg 7th June 2022.
Professor Dennis Meadows, Online Presentation, hosted by: The Club of Rome, date: 14th June 2022.
Book: The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams, with Gail Hudson
During this great resignation employees are leaving workplaces and listing ‘Uncaring leaders’ as their number one reason (source: McKinsey – Gone for now, or gone for good? ). People are desperate for meaning, values, purpose, kindness and leaders who care.
What if we have to go a step further, and consider that employees are desperately seeking both guidance as well as safe story stewardship for their longing for divinity and wholeness. And with no where else to go they are now searching for this in the workplace.
Let’s go a little back in time. Since I read the book “The Gifts of Imperfection” many years ago, I have had an ongoing quest in the back of my mind regarding ‘Faith’ – what is it to me, where do I find it, how do I cultivate it? This came as a result of one of Dr. Brené Brown’s findings in the book that the most wholehearted people cultivate faith in their lives, making her include guidepost #6: Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith. This has nothing to do with a religion and Brené Brown offers following definition for faith.
Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.
The Gifts of imperfection, Dr. Brené Brown.
More recently Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor talked in her book Whole Brain Living about how our ‘character 4’ on our right brain side already knows about the deep connection we all share. Also the work by Dr. Martha Beck explores how to let go of culturally-derived values, and follow the longing for warmth and yearnings to stay in our own integrity.
Now with Susan Cain just publishing her newest book “Bittersweet” (published April 2022), I have been provided a further addition to the thinking on our inherent longing for that more beautiful place.
I am an avid fan of the work by Glennon Doyle and how she has cut loose from culturally imposed rules of how things “should” be and writes about it so beautifully in her books (Carry on Warrior, Love Warrior, Untamed). So I was very excited to see that Susan Cain went into a conversation about the findings in her book Bittersweet with Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle on their podcast We can do hard Things.
It is a beautiful and stirring conversation – do listen to it yourselves – and it resulted in this post. They talk about how that longing or yearning that we feel in those moments of beauty and sadness remind us of the better world that could be, that it ideally makes us stretch together to build such a world even if we never fully reach it. It reminds us that this feeling of longing and bittersweet is a moment that connects us with each other. This really brought for me the point of faith or a longing for divinity together.
Ok – so that’s all great, but what about the workplace?
So let’s come back to the workplace – I wonder, did the time at home in the pandemic make us realise that we will not find divinity within our relationships? And so now we are off searching for it in our workplace? And that is why if we are not cared for, looked after, if we are made to feel morally compromised, constantly put in competitive situations to go against each other then employees are leaving or burnt-out or certainly not going to be in a best position for healthy striving.
Why is this important? Because we have to have conversations about it – and as it is even more ambiguous and wishy-washy and touchy-feely than even talking about emotions, I fear many organisations will avoid going there. And at the moment business schools are hardly building strong skills and competencies in this area.
For leaders ready to look at this a bit closer, we do have starting points.
The work by Dr. Brené Brown, published in her book Dare to Lead, showed that courageous, wholehearted leaders have in common that they truly care for and connect with their employees. In daring leadership I work to build courageous, wholehearted leaders and work cultures. And I continue to see this as an important first step for leaders – as it teaches what courage is, how to rumble with vulnerability, why values with behaviours are important, what the elements of trust are and how distancing from the stories our minds make up we can gain resilience. So it means skills to sit with uncertainty are built, there is space for the conversations and for being a learner, not a knower.
The Dare to LeadTM program includes how grief gets in the way of LivingBIG, that is the belief every person is doing the best they can, yet it handles the topic of grief with a lot of caution. And I see grief as part of sorrow and bittersweet, about something that is lost and what it may make us yearn for and stretch for with action.
This is where I believe we have to dig deeper and not shy away from conversations around the bittersweet, grief, nostalgia, beauty. These play a critical part of connecting us with our humanity, our longing, our faith and those emotions awe and wonder. It can put us in communion with each other. Taking from Brené Brown’s newest book Atlas of the Heart – we have to become more confident as story stewards to one another.
If you are looking for something concrete to do:
Develop your own thoughts, skills and awareness (you can start with books mentioned in this post)
Get leaders trained to enable safe workspaces, where vulnerability and uncertainty is allowed (eg. the Dare to LeadTM program)
Business schools – do include new programs so leaders come away with empathy and humility
Start incorporating and become aware of beauty in your life and workplaces
Although my thoughts here are around the workplace, I believe it is imperative that our education systems and our local governments step up in their responsibilities to engage and enable dialogue on our societies’ values, our moral compass, our desire for communion and connection with each other. As really I am not convinced we want these beautiful, soft issues of humanity to be cared for by large corporate conglomerates.
I leave you with some words from Susan Cain in her conversation with The House of Beautiful Business:
I think it’s possible to admit – not just admit, but embrace – all the bounty of what spiritual longing actually is. That’s completely consistent with deep agnosticism. But we’ve lost sight of that.
And if you wonder where I am with my personal quest for faith. I continue to rumble with it, explore, learn and give myself grace whilst doing so. Currently it rests for me around my gratitude practice, the mantra Martha Beck offers “I deserve to live in peace”, my reading of the Tao Te Ching and it’s call to Non-Action, and the Buddhist high virtues of: loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity.
(Clear is kind: I provide links so you can find my sources and find publications. I have no affiliation with any of these external sites or any return from doing so.)
The Great Attrition triggered surely by our collective recognition of our vulnerability and the finity of our lives has gained significant traction in the US and now in Europe. McKinsey ran a big study and recently shared these numbers, which caught my attention in the blog here.
“More than half of employees who left their job in the past six months did not feel valued by their organization (54 percent) or manager (52 percent), or they lacked a sense of belonging (51 percent). Additionally, 46 percent cited the desire to work with people who trust and care for each other as another reason to quit. Employees want stronger relationships, a sense of connection, and to be seen.”
It’s not about the office, it’s about belonging. McKinsey.com, 13th January 2022. Accessed 19th Jan 2022.
It is good to see our human need for belonging and it’s role in the Great Re-Evaluation, as Arianna Huffington calls it, get the deserved attention.
Small fixes as suggested in this post by McK are a good immediate step.
Yet if we mean the change seriously, I believe this calls for a real re-think of our societal and organisational cultures. Including slowing down, lots of self-awareness work to be able to show up as a courageous and vulnerable leader, and reframing our mindset towards one of abundance and collaboration.
That would include in organisations having to question our productivity and performance measures, including which behaviors and deliverables those measures really create and measure. Or questioning being so occupied with competition, profit, busyness and creating more wealth for the few beneficiaries right at the top of the current structures?
It’s a bumpy path and vulnerability is uncomfortable, we might have to admit some management choices we were part of for example to drive up productivity and consumerism weren’t so great. We have to look at our individual choices – how do we show up towards ourselves and others, what and from whom do we make purchases, what do we have to let go off.
It can also be pretty lonely if you are ready to start down this track, with various shareholders resisting any change and pulling you back when they can.
I am convinced those leading the way with courage will create spaces for people sharing their values in purpose, authenticity and belonging to join them and at some point that magic tipping point for others to follow will happen. In the same way I prefer to believe people are doing their best, I prefer to be part of reimaging a great place that our world is developing towards.
In this post I dig in to the term ‘Abundance Mindset’ and why I believe it is important at the individual leader level, and also at a cultural level for our societies and organisations.
“No problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence (Galbraith)” in J.Suzman. Work: A deep history.
Have you ever wondered why we believe time is scarce? Working long hours is seen as the way to create value? Material goods and money are the main indicators of our success? Competition and being the ‘winner’ is what counts?
Here’s the thing we live in a ‘scarcity-fuelled’ society. Scarcity meaning: “being in short supply or shortage”. We get taught from a young age onwards that we have to compete for the best grades and future jobs – this continues in adult life with performance rankings, material status symbols, the artificial desire for constant consumption. It has become our underlying mindset for our lives and the social and economic constructs. We are taught we are not enough, we don’t have enough and we don’t know enough.
I outline what living in scarcity does to our behaviour and creativity in the post on Daring Leadership. The work by Dr. Brené Brown shows that when we are in a scarcity-driven state of anxiety we are more likely to armour up and isolate ourselves further, rather than dig into vulnerability, creativity and courage to open up to new ways of operating. So being in a scarcity mindset is not going to be a great position to help us with the challenges around us and reimagining new systems.
An additional great piece in the puzzle as to where this ‘scarcity-fuelled’ way of operating may be rooted was provided in the recent publication “Work: A deep history, from the stone age to the age of robots” by James Suzman. As an anthropologist, James Suzman provides a view at a societal and economic level over our work history: from hunter-gatherers, via foraging, to farming, city-dwellers, the industrial revolution and finally our current times. I highly recommend reading the book to learn way more than I highlight in my summary and take-aways below. It provides a provoking insight. (Note: Direct quotes from this book are marked in italics)
James Suzman’s main conclusion is that we operate in a scarcity-driven system that originated in the agricultural period. Now, if we understand how our scarcity mindset originated it enables us to take a step back from our scarcity obsession and question if it is still a valid mindset for how we want to operate in our societies and businesses going forward. It allows us to recognise our own man-mind constructs, which means it is not fixed but up to us to change it.
If we move from a scarcity-driven mindset to an abundance mindset as the main notion underlying our activities, it will allow us to tap into creativity and curiosity. An abundance mindset is one where we focus on ensuring basic needs are met and beyond that the underlying notion is that we are enough, have enough and know enough. Of course we have to make sure basic economic needs are met globally and real scarcity is a thing of the past. Yet, I am convinced starting with an abundance mindset (plus daring leadership and a collaborative narrative) will play a key role on achieving more balanced distribution of the wealth and affluence we have.
As James Suzman highlights in his book, John Maynard Keynes called for an economics of abundance and that in such a scenario inequality would become irrelevant. Similarly, “Galbraith was of the view () individuals would relinquish the pursuit of wealth in favor of worthier work.”
So let’s dig into the case James Suzman builds around our work history and where scarcity originated:
James Suzman proposes that originally hunter-gatherers focused on meeting solely their immediate needs and established systems like ‘demand sharing’ with flat hierarchies. What they needed to cover their immediate needs was abundantly available and required limited amounts of their time to obtain, giving them time for leisure. In summary they had a form of affluence without material abundance as they had modest desires, which were easily met. In the consequent stage of foraging, foragers still enjoyed a form of affluence based on far greater material abundance. It is also the phase where people began to adopt a longer-term, more future-focused relationship with work.
The move to farming is really when the future-focused relationship with work and anxieties about scarcity developed and intensified. James Suzman summarises that climate changes led to a situation where the environment could not provide sufficient food year-round, so it changed the relationship with the land and work. Farmers had to focus on fewer but more prolific plants and also new farming techniques. Any gains in productivity were matched by growing populations. The situation led to an expansion into new spaces and to cultures based around anxieties about scarcity and productivity. “The sanctification of scarcity and the economic institutions and norms that emerged during this period still underwrite how we organize our economic life today“.
It is also in the farming period that the concept around money starts. “The origins of money lies in the credit/debt arrangements that arose between farmers – who were, in effect, waiting for their land to pay them for the labor they invested in it and the people who depended on their surpluses”
Later, when the industrial revolution changed farming productivity and with the continued population growth people started to aggregate in cities. Less people were occupied as farmers to work the land, and new specialist trades developed for organising how people lived in the larger populations and settlements. “This required bureaucrats, judges, soldiers, and those who specialized in keeping order and binding people together into urban communities with common values, beliefs, and goals.”
Furthermore, 20th century economic concepts and mindsets have contributed significantly to our scarcity and productivity focused systems: “Taylorism” – the focus to maximise efficiency with standardisation and assembly lines, it may have addressed a need for a while and certain industries, yet the issue here being “the right person for these industrial jobs was someone limited with imagination, boundless patience, and a willingness to obediently do the same repetitive tasks day in and day out.” “Consumerism” – producers and advertisers have been creating fears and artificial needs to keep consumption and growth up as well as “creating desires for material products would make people feel like they were moving upwards and worry less about inequality. “Talent” – a concept around a war for talent, has since been challenged for it’s issue that leads to “competitive narratives also amongst employees, overvaluing individuals, creating a corrosive culture and decreasing collaboration“.
Finally, yes wealth was created with this focus on scarcity and productivity – however this wealth has been highly concentrated amongst a few: “The richest 10 percent of people on earth own an estimated 85 percent of all global assets, and the richest 1 percent own 45 percent of all global assets”
So our relationship with scarcity are by-products of the transition from foraging to farming. James Suzman highlights how again and again it was observed by historians how people were losing their sense of belonging and purpose in these systems. For example, Durkheim was curious about the “malady of infinite aspiration” and he coined a term “anomie” as the feelings of intense dislocation, anxiety, and even anger in people due to their social isolation. We see today the concerns around growing isolation and it’s impact on mental and physical health. Already Durkheim recognised how creating safe working environments with strong relationships could potentially be a solution and when we today talk about daring leadership and purpose we are recognising the same. We are “A species whose evolutionary history has been shaped so profoundly by its need for purpose and meaning”. Besides the social cost, there is the environmental cost as we are aware and the mentioned wealth inequality cost.
No one can summarise how important this work is than James Suzman himself in the conclusion of his book:
“Recognizing that many of the core assumptions that underwrite our economic institutions (and notions of scarcity and a preoccupation with economic growth) are an artifact of the agricultural revolution, amplified by our migration into cities, frees us to imagine a whole range of new, more sustainable possible futures for ourselves, and rise to the challenge of harnessing our restless energy, purposefulness, and creativity to shaping our destiny”.
So are you ready to reimagine and start building our societies and economic models based on a notion of abundance? Start with this – you are enough, you have enough and you know enough to contribute to the change we want to see.
Source: Work – A deep history, from the stone age to the age of robots. James Suzman, Penguin Press 2021.
amdeans-consulting.com 