Wise Wednesdays

There’s one reason for burnout: our models of human activity are off. We're taught that more, better, faster – and constant growth - is best. Hello Success Trap . But that’s a linear, industrial, messed up model. It has nothing to do with nature or reality. Growth is not meant to be endless. It is cyclical. Everything dynamic in the universe has a pattern of being ‘born, growing, evolving, declining and dying’ before the cycle starts again. Humans do it. Plants do it. Stars do it. And so do organisations, projects and civilisations. It’s the principle of impermanence aka the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Endless growth is not normal. In medicine, we have a name for it: cancer. And even cancer has its limits. But how much activity is enough? How do you know when to stop and when to push? And what about procrastination and laziness? No one wants to fall into those and waste their potential, right?… These questions come up regularly in leadership and career coac...

  Have you ever had a colleague who seems to be involved in everything and know everyone? Perhaps they’re described as ‘ambitious’ or ‘determined’?... More importantly, they don’t seem to have much of a notion of boundaries and can accidentally help themselves to your resources or take credit for your work?... You probably don’t mind their big organisational footprint but it’s the encroachment on your work and opportunities that’s annoying?... Well, you might have been dealing with an ‘Empire Builder’. Or that’s how my friend D, an executive in tech, described the colleague who she wanted some Wise Wednesdays insights on. Empire Builders can be appreciated by organisations because they appear to get things done in the short term. But they can be a challenge for colleagues. They are playing a different game to the one you might be playing. What’s the difference? You might be playing a game based on collaboration whereas they’re playing a zero sum game of competition. Economists and ...

  Years ago, I had a colleague doctor who wanted to get more experience in the field and applied for a job in the military. He was asked how he felt about working for an organisation that killed people. He replied that he already did. We all know that healthcare systems don’t always serve their patients well. But it’s one thing to accept the inevitable probabilities of error and death, and another to watch people die because of lack of coordination, bad communication and poor leadership. This happens every day in organisations and companies beyond healthcare where the impacts of economic activity on communities and on nature are not felt by decision-makers because they don’t see them immediately – the impacts happen somewhere else, on another continent or in the distant future… IT’S NOT BURNOUT, IT’S MORAL INJURY In recent, years the phenomenon of moral injury has grown in prominence. I mention it in The Success Trap in the chapter on the Makings of a Career Crisis. If you’re routi...