Tag: change

Farther away

FabrizioLeave a comment

When a system is broken, there is no patch, no tool, no framework, no novelty that can fix it. All of that can make it work for a while longer, and a little more, but in the end the system will still be broken.

So, if you are serious about making it work, the only way is to take a step back and have a look at the system itself.

It is painful, because it means that what you have done so far might have taken you somewhere you were not supposed to be. Yet, the alternative is to end up even farther away.

Your choice.

In search of meaning

FabrizioLeave a comment

I talk about this a lot, and for as much as it is a difficult practice, it is one I am committed to.

You can have an impact today. You can give others what you want others to give you. You can show a different way. You don’t have to fall into despair if the world around you is not the way you’d like it to be. You can be present, here and now, learn, grow, and take others with you along the way.

[…] people who are preoccupied with success ask the wrong question. They ask, “What is the secret of success?” when they should be asking, “What prevents me from learning here and now?” To be overly preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where learning and growth takes place. To walk around asking, “Am I a success or a failure?” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to an answer is to say that everyone is both a success and a failure.

One way to renew an obsessive preoccupation with success is to alter the idea that the present is a means and the future is an end. The problem with this way of thinking is that, when the future comes, then it too becomes just another present that is yet another means to yet another future.

Karl Weick, How Projects Lose Meaning: The Dynamics of Renewal

P.S.: thanks to Ed Batista for this fantastic article about the topic.

More important

FabrizioLeave a comment

The moment you realize you care more about the outcome than about the process, is the moment you have to reassess how you spend your time.

If getting likes is more important than taking pictures.

If cashing the bonus is more important than the work you do.

If growing your audience is more important than writing.

If being acclaimed is more important than what you have to say.

If hitting the goal is more important than how you get to hit it.

That is the right time to look at the second half of your sentence, and honestly answer the question: “Am I enjoying that?”.

Most likely, you have mistaken a dopamine hit for actual pleasure and accomplishment.

It can happen, and you can do something about it.

Concerted

FabrizioLeave a comment

Imagine you meet with some peers. The purpose of the meeting is to decide on changes that will impact many. You keep the meeting secret, and secret are also the follow up conversations that aim at defining the details. You go about it for a while, and then you and your peers go public with a big reveal. Now that the change is public, you go back minding your own business, expecting that everyone else will adapt and adjust accordingly.

I wonder how it would end.

I also wonder how common this situation is in organisations all over the world.

Your effort to promote change is failing because you want change imposed rather than concerted.

What makes us miserable

FabrizioLeave a comment

Acceptance is not about taking what makes us miserable, shutting it in the closet, throwing away the keys, numbing the feelings that inevitably it will keep us giving, and pretending as if that does not exist.

Acceptance is taking what makes us miserable, understanding it, putting it front and center for a while, making friend with it, finding a way to go about our days despite it. Until eventually it will go shut itself in the closet by itself.

The former approach will make misery expand and take new forms. The latter will make it go away once and for all.

Two different ways. Two very different outcomes.