Scrolling through LinkedIn, I see bad ideas held up as ideals, e.g. promoting overwork, or violent battlefield metaphors, or managers as somehow superior, or quantifying humans, or coercing people to work, or marketing spin as a skill. And many more.
Reading some posts, it seems it is ok to treat people worse in the workplace than we would socially. We can sit in judgement over them; punish, coerce, berate, and manipulate them. We can ask more of them than is reasonable,and drive them beyond where they are comfortable.
It sounds like it is fine for one group of people to attempt to destroy the livelihood of another group: to make business a zero sum game. They can be objectified, dehumanised as an enemy.
Less overtly stated, but we still get the hints that it’s alright to deceive suppliers or customers: to withhold information, omit, mislead, conceal, cheat, and outright lie.
At Teal Unicorn, we like the Laloux cultural colour code. It’s flawed, like all models, but it also provides shorthand language and a usable approximation of reality. I’ll put a link in the comments.
So much written on LinkedIn is red, amber, or orange. It’s about force, power, aggression, rules, bureaucracy, battle, competition, ruthlessness, deception, machismo. I don’t see enough green, and any teal discussion is most often aspirational not actual.
It’s a bit sad. it shows how far we have yet to go as societies. (As if we needed any reminding this week.)
In our books, articles, website, and posts, I tell you about how we unlock work with better ways of managing.
Or our Open Sales model that strives for winning by lifting the game. (So far only in Vietnamese).
Or our clients who blow performance numbers out of the park by being nice to people.
Or how we love our tribe and they love us.
Please lift up your eyes, and help those around you, to look to higher ways of thinking at work. Let’s try to restore and reunite the Transcendentals of truth, beauty, and goodness. Teal Unicorn’s motto is “Make Work Better: better results, better lives, better society”.
I really do believe societies advance. In lurches, with backsliding, and blunders. But looking back over the last millennium it’s pretty clear we got better. So let’s keep the advance going, and see what this century can bring.