Going Nowhere.
A rowing eight sits on the river.
Oars dipped in the current.
Each oarsman gently stroking the water while the coach speaks to them from the speed boat alongside.
Enough effort to keep them from drifting downstream or moving upstream.
Enough effort to go nowhere.
Like so many workers in so many organisations.
Bearing.
In the military, you hear the term ‘bearing’, usually paired with ‘dress’, as in ‘dress and bearing’.
A soldier with good posture, alert, aligned with her fellow soldiers when formed up in ranks, who marches in sync with them, is said to have good ‘bearing’.
‘Bearing’ is one’s orientation to the world around us.
‘Situational awareness’ is a related term, and a person with good bearing usually has good situational awareness.
Words matter.
Know When You’ve Got the Ball.
If you’ve got the ball, then you’re the decision maker. - Basketball coach
If you’ve got the ball, it’s your decision what to do next.
You can take advice from the bench, or those around you.
But it’s your decision.
Know when you’ve got the ball.
Something to Debunk.
Malcolm Gladwell proposed the so-called ‘10,000 Hour Rule’ that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill.
Since doing so, people have set out to debunk it.
If Mr Gladwell hadn’t planted his flag in the ground and claimed his theory and drawn his critics, we may never have learned more about the path to mastery.
It’s Terrific!
It’s good because the boss declares it to be good so we nod and smile and say ‘It’s terrific!’ and glance for the boss’s smile of approval.
‘It’s so terrific!’ we parrot, and therefore it IS terrific.
A passer-by peeks into the organisation, looks around, and thinks ‘This is NOT my idea of Terrific. But …I’m just a visitor so maybe I’m missing something that they know.
A new arrival joins the organisation, immediately thinks ‘This is NOT Terrific,’ and starts saying so.
‘You’ve not got the experience to know Terrific here,’ the sycophants rebuke.
So the new arrival pauses their opinion long enough to grow accustomed to the new Terrific.
Or leave.
Policies.
The path on the left is a Policy.
It’s a decision made for us in advance.
‘You can be assured that if you take the steps to follow this route that you will arrive where you want to be.’
The track to the right of the prepared path is where some people have deviated from the Policy.
An aerial view shows the alternative track rejoins the prepared path just beyond the rise.
The route down the middle is for those who trust their judgement over that of the experts Policy authors.
No journey is the wrong one if it advances you towards where you want to be, namely:
For those who take the prepared path, it affirms their submission to and confidence in the judgement of others.
For those who take the brief deviation, it affirms for them that the prepared path is always the best.
For those who strike out on their own, it affirms their agency and autonomy and adventure.
Transparent.
As federal and state officials investigated the attack, they said part of their focus would be on how the driver was able to barrel into the crowd. Gov. Jeff Landry said, “We intend to be transparent in assessing any defects that may have existed in the system so that we can address it.”
Transparency makes you vulnerable.
If your Widget is your Reputation or Ego, you will never be transparent.
Transparency exposes everything - including faux pas in choice of words (responding to a terrorist driving into a crowd):
“We’re aggressively running down every lead ...”
Leadership Training.
What most organisations call ‘leadership’ training doesn’t train to lead.
It trains passive people to pretend to be confident enough to subjugate confident people to be passive.
Each Post.
Each post is a deliberate mistake.
An arrow shot in the direction of a sense of a blurry target.
A lasso tossed out to a passing mooring.
A flare to briefly illuminate the darkness.
As We Wait for Death.
We are so arrogant that we think that when we remove everything there is only me.
Remove the world around us and the people in it and the noise and the light falling onto our retinas.
Until we sit in a dark room with only the sound of our heartbeat and blood flow in our ears.
After a lifetime (however long) of stimulus - we are reduced to waiting for death.
Alone.
Arrogantly alone.
Or so we think.
We can’t see that in that moment or those moments of aloneness - if they visit us in our life before death -
God sits with us.
Regular Doses.
13 years of school embeds in us an assumption that learning is linear and progressive.
That growth is made up of equal chunks of time called period, day, week, term, year.
That we graduate from one to the next; our mental maturing matched and affirmed by our physical and emotional growth.
Celebrated by assemblies, tests, certificates, grades, reports, graduations.
Applauded by teachers, principals, and parents.
Continuing on to university for some.
And at the end of our education:
Silence.
Days are the same, punctuated and marked perhaps by weekends and holidays and birthdays and marriage and travel.
Gone are the affirmations in assessments and awards and progress and the nod and smile of a teacher saying ‘Correct’.
Learning is no longer linear and assessed by others.
More failure and inertia than the regular and predictable doses of ‘success’ of school days.
Which is why so many seek a return to those days in their own children’s schooling.
Language.
Language limits us at the times we most need it.
‘Trust in God’ is interpreted as ‘Let go of the steering wheel and take no responsibility for your actions.’
‘God’ is whatever an adult first described God as being to us, which is whatever an adult described God as being to them.
Old man with a white beard in a cloud is most likely the description.
I would not believe in the gods most people say they don’t believe in.
Retreat.
“I will willingly accept, indeed I am bound to accept, what the Noble Lord has called the "constitutional responsibility" for everything that has happened and I consider that I discharged that responsibility by not interfering with the technical handling of armies in contact with the enemy.” Winston Churchill.
Space.
Purpose.
Equip.
Affirm.
The Most Dangerous Creature.
There is no more dangerous creature on the face of the earth than an unreasonable man.
The Local Flavour.
I would present my theories to the principals and they would dutifully nod and scribble some notes.
How much of the theory each applied after they returned to their desk was up to them.
Only the principal knows how much seasoning needs to be added to their local flavour.
The Universe’s Gaze.
We’re young.
We don’t see the Universe’s gaze.
We’re older.
We sense being watched.
We are the Universe.
So we run.
We’re older still.
The gaze.
Running.
We’re old.
We can’t run anymore.
We can only sit.
Under the gaze of the Universe.