Waking up

“A person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.” ― Christine de Pizan

I’m not much of a consultant these days, at least not to organisations. For the past two years I’ve rarely crossed the thresholds of corporate UK, being very selective in my choice of client. I’ve stopped believing that I can change organisations, certainly any organisation that I am not an integral part of, which today being self-employed, is every single one.

I am still committed to organisational change though—or to avoid such trite phrasing and be truer to self: I am still committed to thoroughly undermining the corporate status quo, committed to bringing down hierarchies, committed to raising the collective consciousness and giving voice to the common worker, committed to the request/response model over the command/comply model, and ultimately committed to dialogue over monologue.

I won’t go into corporations, and I want to change corporations. It sounds like an unresolvable dilemma, but it isn’t. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. My efforts over the past two years have been focused on personal awakening. I don’t know if this causes change, but I do know that you cannot change anything if you are asleep, so a good beginning is to wake people up. My belief is if enough people become aware of the oppression they live under in the corporate world, the more likely change will occur, and it will be grass roots change, exactly where it really needs to happen.

To cause this awakening I offer open, public workshops. Some, like Speak Truth to Power, are clearly a confrontation of existing structure. Others, like CSM, appear on the surface as compliant, corporate-sponsored certification, and for some a piece of paper and three new uppercase letters on their curriculum vitae is all they leave with. For others though, and I like to believe for most, they depart with much more than that, maybe even with more than they want. Awareness of ones responsibility can be a terrifying thing, especially when awoken abruptly, and unexpectedly. Each workshop I offer, each clinic, each interaction is designed to help people acknowledge their essential citizenship, and embrace the personal power embedded in that idea.

We do well to pay heed to the words of Paulo Freire, “The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.” If you disregard your essential citizenship you become prey to the insidious leadership myth.

This fashionable trend towards Leadership-with-a-capital-L repels me today as it has done for many years. It utterly misses the point. Change can never occur when a small group of people hold power, no matter how benevolent, spiritual, Teal or Agile they are. Empowerment, dished out as it always must be to fulfil the actual meaning of the word, can only ever be a temporary reprieve to oppression, only really a facade. In times of turmoil, or maybe just through impatience, or fear, power will quickly be taken away again to live once more in the hands of the few.

When power is dished out to you, you can be sure it is limited power: power that serves the need of the person handing it out, not the need of the receiver. Nor does it serve the need of the system, of the community, of the greater good. It is cynically disguised command/comply. Don’t allow yourself to be empowered — it’s a trick, a leadership sleight of hand, and of course, yet another form of control. Resist!

Organisational change, real change, i.e. the dismantling of oppressive power structures and the reinventing of how we work, will not come from creating new leaders. It will come from individual workers recognising what they are being sold — what they are unquestioningly buying — and saying no. Or at least saying, wait — hold on a minute! It will come from individual citizens reevaluating their relationship with the powers that rule them, and figuring out new ways to respond. It will require a quest for egalitarian dialog in a world where equality is only ever paid lip service; it will require new ways of seeing, new ways of relating; and it will require great personal courage.

To make such profound change in the world each of us must be fully, and gloriously awake.