One of my favourite quotes:
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
— Albert Einstein
Most of us are accepting that our actions can have an effect in solving or at least mitigating a lot of our current challenges. And our collective challenges are broad. While we may not immediately think that problems far over in that corner of the world affect us, often, the connections are not too hard to find. This is becoming increasingly obvious with climate change and especially when you consider, as International Alert puts it, “the consequences of the consequences”. For example, climate change leads to shortage of resources which leads to competition for resources, which makes it easy for people to instrumentalise difference, which can lead to violent conflict, which can encourage large-scale migration, which can lead to hundreds of thousands more immigrants for countries in the West to accommodate… and I’ll let you complete the story from there.
Often, solutions are perceived to involve sacrifice and loss – rarely, do people buy the idea that in fact, we are being presented with opportunities. I believe that this perception, this fear to embrace the unknown and unthinkable only leads to inertia or at best, looking for old solutions to new problems. Rather than take a chance to dream of what could be possible, people try to milk what they have (with all of its shortcomings) because it’s familiar (though not necessarily still, if it ever was, effective).
A lot of things I have come across in the past few weeks illustrate this well. Henry lent me a copy of Seth Godin’s Purple Cow which affirms that the only way to succeed in business is to be remarkable. Professor John Wood of Goldsmiths came in the other day and talked about the transformative power of vision.
And I found this Hugh Macleod illustration:
Rather than business being about ‘work’ a term that in wide interpretation connotates dread, burden and something to get out of the way quickly. How about if work was why we got up in the morning? And I’m not just talking about finding a more enjoyable job here, what if your life’s passion was your work? What if you could be employed (or not) to do what you were going to do anyway? What if indeed, business was all about creating a space to share your work and mutually exchange ideas to help each other get closer to achieving our goals?
What if we made this possible? Happier, more productive people. Not having to work on work-life balance – it would simply just be. And everyone practicing rational self-interest could lead to a better world for all … couldn’t it?
— posted by Lulu
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