It’s about choice
Monday, November 26th, 2007I was exploring the sociology department at Harvard a couple of years ago when I overheard Martin King Whyte teaching a seminar.
Marxists and Communists in China, Whyte said, thought that abolishing ownership of property would solve society’s problems. But ownership, we know now, isn’t the problem.
Centralized totalitarian planning in China gave control of property to a small group of people. They may not have owned the property, but they made decisions about it. They controlled it.
Nowadays, a few people in China decide that cities with millions of people will be relocated to make room for a new dam or rerouted river. Whereas in democratic capitalist countries, it’s up to those millions of people to decide what they’re going to do, and act together.
Every time a big power plant isn’t placed in your neighborhood, or huge districts in your city aren’t rezoned from residential houses to highways, that’s because of the democratic process — people who live in a neighborhood and are close to the work going on, choose what happens.
It’s not about ownership. Ownership is only one way to control things. Marxism and Communism replaced democratic capitalism – ownership of property by some people – with totalitarianism — control of property by even fewer people.
It’s about choice.
Are you making choices about what you care about? Or do people you work with say about your workplace, “It is how it is,” or shrug, “Well what can you do.”
That’s what feeling controlled is.
* * *
[Coaching isn't for everyone. Obviously I don't know your situation, because I'm writing this for anyone. But this was useful to one person I coached yesterday, so I figure it might be inspiring.]
So what can you do?
You might start by saying, “I have certain defined responsibilities expected of me at work. But I also have influence which goes beyond my formal responsibilities.”
You might then ask yourself, “But what do I do? When will I have time to do it?”
“Instead of wasting time bullshitting or complaining with coworkers, which can take hours, I can ask myself, ‘If I could change one thing at work, what would it be?’ And then if that excites me, I can start reaching out within my circle of influence, expand my circle of influence, and make this thing I care about happen.”
With enough influence, you can even switch your company from command-and-control mode over to organizational democracy mode.
“Or, if changing things at work doesn’t excite me, I can spend the time I usually bullshit or complain, on something that does excite me, maybe a big exciting goal I’ve had for a long time. If I could do one thing over the next year, or ten years, and didn’t have to work, what would it be? I can start doing that in my spare time at work.”
[Credit: The "circle of influence" stuff is influenced by Stephen Covey's books. Covey writes about a small Circle of Responsibility inside a big Circle of Concern. Bigger than our responsibilities but smaller than our concerns, we have a mid-sized Circle of Influence -- what we can reach out and affect.]
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