Set a New Direction

It's the journey we're all on.

Societies are globalizing. Globalization means intense and dynamic change. Over the past two decades, individuals and businesses everywhere in the world have been forced to deal with the increasing diversity and change that comes with globalization. It's a challenge at the personal and professional level.

All change – even good change – involves loss. We might not think about it much - but we certainly feel the effects of so much change in the world. It's hard to keep on track.

Just consider some of the effects we experience in our individual lives and our work teams:

• Fragmented personalities
• Feeling torn and empty at a core personal level
• Job insecurity
• General uncertainty
• Stress, alienation and limiting bottlenecks in the workplace

It's not easy navigating the "permanent whitewater" today. New strategies are needed. A new mind-set is required.

Are you an individual:

• returning from cross-cultural work?
• returning military?
• young and just starting out?
• in mid-life malaise?
• just arriving here as a new immigrant?
• looking for an exit strategy from your present work situation?
• looking to make your present work situation better?
• See here for your next step

What about the workplace?

Work is such a key social context. It's where the individual, physical, mental, spiritual, and bottom lines intersect. Over 50% of our entire lives are spent inside work organizations. However it hasn’t always been a validating, positive experience. And today, the whole person needs to be encouraged to come to work.

“To crush, to annihilate a man utterly, to inflict on him the most terrible punishment so that the most ferocious murderer would shudder at it beforehand, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character. Fyodor Dostoevsky (died in 1881).

“The routinized worker is discouraged from using his own independent judgment; his decision making is in accordance with strict rules handed down by others. He becomes alienated from his intellectual capacities, work becomes an enforced activity”. C Wright Mills (died in 1962)

Cog!
cog = carbon based unit
cog = drone
cog = instrumentally connected
cog = interchangeable part to be swapped out
cog = checking the personality at the door
cog = warm body
cog = beleaguered misfit
cog = unhappy automaton
cog = putting on a harness - being less than who you are
cog = getting your pink slip on 'purge' day (true story)

Yes, there's certainly a need in the workplace. It can be better. I unpack it here.

It’s time to bring Personality back in. And Purpose. And Meaning. And Understanding.

Let's Set a New Direction in our individual lives and in the workplace.