There's no power in 'I', all our power is in 'we'

Tim Roberts explains how the focus on productivity and efficiency can be self-defeating and hostile. You can be shape-shifted in the minds of authorities from people to things. Whatever your rank or role you can have a huge impact on others by being more human and also re-personifying the places we work and organisations we share

When I was a sergeant, I remember the sadness I felt when I was told that two sergeant posts on our crime unit needed to go because of a divisional restructure and that mine was one of these.

I have always remembered how disappointed and sad I felt. I felt rejected, somehow betrayed, ashamed and humiliated, even though I still had the rank, job security and soon got another role back in uniform.

I also understood the logic behind the decision. The strange
thing is that although I felt those emotions, and carried them
heavily, I couldn’t express them clearly, even to myself. Not a
single manager asked me about how I felt. If they had, I don’t
know that I could have answered clearly.

The reason for this is that I was caught up in the group-think
of the police organisation at that time. This is natural when we are within an organisation.

As I look back on that experience I realise how pivotal it was
for me. It changed my identity and I questioned the management of policing. What I was really doing was beginning to question the managerialism that pervades organisations, although I didn’t know this until many years later.

From that time onwards my police career felt different and no
longer seemed to fit me as well. Had it been different, maybe I would still be a police officer because I relished “the job”.

I now see this kind of story play out in many organisations,
often with far more devastating consequences than my small
experience. Frequently, people shoulder the cost for business
improvement, streamlining or organisational redesign without
the support they need.

I believe that although organisations are necessary to our
current civilization, they can be enacted in a more humane
way – if only we chose to think differently. Here’s a basic set
of questions for you, gentle reader.

Why is being happy and caring for others and oneself no longer
as important to much of society as greed or money? Is it as important to you? More important or less important? Be precise
and don’t dodge the question. When you meet your maker, would you rather have dedicated yourself to being happy, or to money? Incidentally, you can have both, if you avoid greed.

The focus on productivity and efficiency can be self-defeating,
arid and, at times, hostile. This is because of the way humans
think. Unless we take care, human people like you are subtly
shape-shifted in the minds of authorities and workers from
people to things.

When others think of productivity they may think differently
about you because their frame of reference moves from relationships to things. This is part of fragmentation, the way thought divides things up that are not divided and then seeks to keep them separate.

Thought aims to keep things separate and to shape reality to
match this thinking because that is tidy. To be specific, it is the brain’s left hemisphere’s dominant influence on our thinking
that seems to cause this controlling and splitting approach.

The way we think can install defence mechanisms that make
it harder for us to empathise with others. People, just like
you, might be thought of as an abstract, a resource, a unit.
This is dangerously reductive because people are reduced to
a concept that seems, even in that two-dimensional state, almost an inconvenience and an irrelevance.

This is because it is fashionable at work to think about things such as key performance measures, systems and processes
and people come to be thought of and then treated as things. It is very easy – because of the way we think about things
– to think harmfully about others without even noticing and then to collude with harming them.

For example:
• Fred Blogs is a person and colleague with a family, feelings,
hopes, aspirations, worries
• Fred Blogs is a colleague with accountabilities like producing
what is measured by authority
• Fred Blogs is a worker who produces things like results.
• Fred Blogs is a resource to be utilised
• Fred Blogs is a unit of production
• Those units need to produce more because authority wants something to be different
• Those units are now redundant and need to be cut.

It is so easy in this simple process to notice how empathy
towards Fred reduces until he is marginalised and dehumanised.
I think this itself is wasteful and unproductive. It is quite easy to look at successful organisations that treat people as valuable people with care and, in so doing, get many more desirable“things” done.

A myth to explode here is that there are no authorities; there
are only people like us who choose how they relate to others. Choice is key here and so often overlooked.

To take this further, let’s look at the individual. There is no power in “I” and all power we have is in “We”. “I” alone cannot even make a cup of tea. We are so interdependent that a single and separate individual is largely powerless, insignificant, helpless, lost.

If I want to make a cup of tea I need the help of the people
who first cultivated the tea plant thousands of years ago and who maintained this practice over the centuries. I need the help of those who planted the tea plant that my tea bag came from. I need those who harvested the leaf, the people who buy and prepare the tea and ship it to my corner shop.

I need the shopkeepers, my employer for providing the money for me to buy the tea, my customers or stakeholders for allowing me to serve them to do my job to get the money.

I need the people who make the kettle, the people who provide
the electricity or gas to heat the kettle. I need the people
who set up the water system and allow me to use fresh and
safe water.

I may also need friends or family to drink my tea with. Then I
need the people who created and provided the washing-up liquid to wash my tea pot. I could go on – but you get the point.

Of course, I left out the indispensable role of nature, the sun,
the soil, the earth, the rain, the bees who pollinate the tea plant, the food that fed all the people who helped in my miracle of tea making.

The truth is that you can’t make a cup of tea or do anything
on your own. If you can’t make a simple cup of tea you certainly can’t work on your own, much less lead other people. We really need everyone.

The reality is, as professor Ralph Stacey points out, no one
is in control, no one is in charge. We all make endless numbers of choices that produce different kinds of relationships and their outcomes.

So what new choices can you make to help change the way
people are thought of? The biggest changes are often the
smallest. We can all take time to consider the people we affect
and to acknowledge them as part of a human “We”. The only
way we can achieve anything is through “We”.

When you hear people being marginalised, start asking questions that focus back on these individuals as people. More than anything else, start role-modelling care and dignity for others and for you. Take more time to connect with them and to build empathy.

Don’t underestimate how powerful this is. Whatever your rank
or role, you can have a huge impact on others around you by being more human and re-personifying the places we work and
the organisations we share.

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