Feature:

Why is it that you can get a hundred employees to be on time but not succeed in getting your youngest to brush her teeth? Leadership is increasingly becoming a struggle and the big issue of the future is lack of energy and motivation.

We need a new defintion of success – from “more” to “better”.

Brian, a Danish comedian was interviewed by a magazine on parenting. He was asked to mention three words that described him as a Dad, to which he replied »not being there«. Personally, he found it really sad, that this was his trademark as a father figure. Brian got up in the morning while it was still dark outside, had about half an hour with his kids, left for work, got home when it was dark outside and had one and a half hour with his kids in the evening. However, »I spend a lot of time looking at pictures of them on my cell phone while I am at work«.

You get the desire to shout at the magazine »Go home, Brian«. But Brian is not alone in this surely. »Not being there« is really quite a befitting description of this decade as it ends and which doesn’t even seem to have a name. The zeros? It has been a decade in which money and lifestyle have dominated, numbers and statistics have claimed that quality is measurable in pie charts, where “autistic economists” have been allowed to decide the way of management, welfare and production. And we have had a blast. A semi-global, material and over-the-top New Year’s Eve, which was offered and paid for by people with magic money pants. But now the party is over. The universe has long since tried to tell us that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that we have arranged our lives.

Our point is, you get up at crap AM in order to go to work for eight hours doing something that the world really doesn’t need while knowing very well that your best is not good enough and that nobody cares, just to be able to cash in a paltry pay check, half of which goes to taxes that doesn’t even ensure decent frames for childcare or care for the elderly, a fact that you try not to think about, while the majority of the remaining sum goes straight into the bank, where it only manages to nibble a microscopic corner of your gigantic mortgage loan. For the rest of the remaining money you can queue up in supermarkets, gasoline stations or life style boutiques and buy stuff you’ll often get a greater kick out of getting rid of again than when you bought it. How great is that really?

The economist Thomas Friedman has written, in a column published in The New York Times, that now, NOW!, it is time for a new American president with his male authority to thunder against the population and say the only right thing in order for the American economy not to collapse entirely: »Go shopping!«. Even though it is probably true, it is also comical. Tragi-comical. To think that we, in the name of liberalism and commercialism, have created a society with no answers or solutions, except ones that champion materialism, available to take on universal issues. As Einstein put it, »You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created«. Moreover, if the problem is that we today are currently caught in a hamster wheel which has no direction and which, although it produces, does not question whether it produces the right things, then there is really no use in beginning to run in the opposite direction.

If you are one of those who come home from work and sigh, »Phew, it has been a busy day and I haven’t got one single thing done«, then you probably recognise this feeling: the feeling that something radical has to happen. What we really need is a new paradigm: A new way of thinking. Another attitude to life that doesn’t revolve around “more” but instead around ”better”.

Our 2 to 3 prior generations lived in a mechanical, industrial paradigm and it has had its great advantages. It made us think in terms of processes, systems, methods and administration. At the end of the 18th century, Frederick Taylor, the father of the scientific management philosophy, described how the best possible productivity could be obtained – he suggested that “the man on the floor” should not be encouraged to think too much.
Thinking is a “pure” discipline, untouched by practice and should be undertaken by leaders. So up there on the management floor you are worn up, while down on the floor you are worn down, but in the mechanical paradigm everyone gets used, abused and stressed. Because work is hard and leadership is a struggle. Promotions will often entail a removal from practical or manual work. For example, a nurse assigned management duties will get further and further removed from the patients because of the common belief that it is good and desirable to administrate in a back office. In the mechanical paradigm everything is measured in time and money, and success is automatically associated with being biggest, first, number one, winning or outdoing others. Why? Because that is just the way it is. The objective is growth above all, no matter the cost. It is always slightly comical to hear bosses placed in the mechanical paradigm talk about values: »Hmmm, respect, honesty, accountability? Is that something we should have? Moreover, this sustainable development, we wonder, is there any profit to be had from it? Is it really good business – or just a fad?«.

The mechanical paradigm does not leave room for those kinds of airy terms, even though we privately expect that accountability and respect are parts of being a good human being. Everything must be capitalized and quantified – otherwise it has no value and, therefore, those who are successful often end up having too much – too much money, too many employees, too many products, too many zeros. However, simultaneously, they are also alone (for example, male bosses past the age of 40 have, on average, one friend), they are in bad health and have a family whose names they can’t remember. They, too, have spent a lot of time looking at pictures of their children. They often have a lousy private economy because they are not able to prioritise in their own life – it simply gets too small and insignificant. They have it all but are missing the essentials. You can get a hundred employees to be at work on time, but you can’t get your youngest to brush her teeth. Because leadership is a struggle, and the big issue of the future is lack of energy and motivation. People have simply had enough. A recent American study has concluded that two thirds of the American labour force waste approximately two hours during working hours on small talk, Internet searches and on handling private affairs. They are present physically, but their potential is being managed badly.
We talk of a ‘knowledge society’, but there are still quite a lot of people performing production line work. Now it is just based on pushing paper instead of screwing nuts onto bolts. Furthermore, when you ask these people what the meaning of what they do is, or whether somebody would actually miss them if they weren’t there, the answer is »Uhh…«. In the mechanical paradigm, people have to be instructed and because nobody can see things as a whole, it is also relatively easy to cheat and deceive as long as you know how to say the right words and look like a success.

But what if we were to change our way of thinking? To a fundamentally different paradigm? A way of thinking based not on growth or production but on humans and well-being? What if humans were viewed in terms of potentials and not resources? What if we had a paradigm in which leadership is about vision, future, inspiration and enthusiasm, and where we dare to experiment, make mistakes and learn? What if we listened more to people with open minds and with practical experience instead of those whose knowledge stems solely from a book? In such a paradigm the leader would become a role model and the employees become the superheroes, and it will be the primary task of the organisation to get the best out of people. In the mechanical paradigm, the humans must adapt to the company’s style – they must think and speak in specific ways and must project a particular image. The new paradigm is much more organic and constructive – it adapts to its staff instead of trying to change them. It is a paradigm built on trust, relationships, consideration, intuition and passion. Here, the most important ability will be to be able to ‘listen louder’ and ‘let go’ – to let go of your prejudices, old habits and expectations. Because nothing new will arise until we get rid of the old. We don’t really believe that Brian thinks it is that great, either. In reality, it is only “the system” and our own attitude to work that force us, for example, to institutionalise our children and then spend time looking at pictures of them on the cell phone.

It is the way we think that limits us the most and decides what we see as problems and the way we construct solutions. Year 2009 was a year of crisis. 2010 wil be a year of fantastic possibilities; it is actually a civic duty to think positively. If we invest in human beings and their potential, then we might end up with a world more adult, more sustainable and with more respect for experience. If we end each working day a little sooner, but we had, at the same time, worked a little better, exercised a little more trust and created a little more quality, the we have had a good day. Moreover, the day will get even better if we demand the same from others. And when the universe calls out to us again, then we might be able to answer and say »yes, I am right here. And I am listening«.