This seems to work when companies are growing or after a restructuring period when they have a future before them (for what the word “future” is worth as a time unit), which means that there is a wish to be involved, to participate and to build up something. In this case, the above listed items work. You can invent any motivating tool (and especially believe in it and input energy) and things will take form and be activated. The things that do make a difference.
In the film “Batman Begins”, in a scene where Bruce Wayne encounters Rachel (his friend from childhood) who blames him for not having changed, for being the same, dedicated to fun and with no wish to work (obviously she does not know that he in fact is Batman), Bruce replies: “Hey, Rachel, this is not me”, and then Rachel answers: “The things you do matter, Bruce, not the things you say”. In short, the difference lies in action, in all activities connected to what we do, rather than what we say.
What happens in moments of crisis? Easy, nothing of the above works. The working place is hell and who cares! My colleague with less talent than me manages to emerge and who cares! The company organizes a seminar on team building and who cares! So many sacrifices and so much money that has been thrown away! If we had considered saving before, maybe we would not be in this situation now.
Try Thinking more
If just for your own sake The future still looks good And you have got time to rectify
All the things you should
The same company, the same people, the same environment. So what? You feel an urge to explain that in moments of crisis, great opportunities arise and one characteristic of a crisis lies in its generating opportunities. You say so, but what do you do? You ask yourself if there is something to do. The answer is simply: nothing or almost. Bureaucracy takes over and spreads like mud around everything, covering all initiatives and wishes to act. Wait is the keyword! And there is always a part of bureaucracy to support this attitude. “Think for yourself” George Harrison sings!
What has then caused this change (because we are really talking about changes) and which is the element that produced the
transformation? That is, you ask yourself what things
have become.
If one has a camera and adds a
microprocessor, is the result still a
camera? And if you, apart from the
digital components, were to
include a network
connection, what does it
then become? If you
insert a
microprocessor in a
refrigerator, does it remain a
refrigerator? And if you add a network
connection, do we still have a refrigerator? The
true issue here is when a thing becomes
something else? Where goes the subtle
boundary?
What are the energies to introduce in the company
system so that it becomes ANOTHER company? What
are the technologies to make pervasive so that a company
may become another company? What do we have to add to a
company in order to make it become something else? What makes
companies change?
Companies, awareness (the things I do are useful!) and optimism due to unawareness. And then the company becomes to transform, just as a
refrigerator.
Another marionette performance, other motivations, other approaches that are almost opposed to that of Don Quixote! But let us proceed in an orderly way.
Pinocchio goes to school full of good intentions: “Today in school I want to learn to read immediately: tomorrow I shall learn to write and the day after tomorrow I shall learn to count. Then with my ability, I shall make a lot of money, and with the first money I earn, I want to buy my father a coat of fabric”. He is attracted by the puppet theatre and in order to get the money for the ticket, he decides to sell his spelling-book. Right on his first day of school, Pinocchio cannot resist the temptation to enter a theatre to watch a
marionette play that fascinates him. Postponing and trying to combine duty with pleasure lets Pinocchio feel less guilty (“There is always time to go to school”). The postponement is very short anyway.
This situation repeats itself several times during history. The tendency to escape one´s responsibilities to give in to the allure of playing and having fun (first the Great Puppet Theatre, then Toyland) constitutes a distinctive attribute of the character together with the tendency to conceive projects that cannot be realized.
We annul our fears in nothing
We let faces appear from the dark
We fill instants with little absurd
Fragments that we call memories in life In the eyes, we look for new colours that we know can give us the motivations
To see roses wither and with them our good intentions.
The two attitudes are closely connected: just because they think that they can obtain everything easily and it is enough to dream about things to conquer them, the puppet very easily postpones his first commitment and does not hesitate to sell the precious spelling-book to enter the Great Theatre – allured, or rather attracted by the acute intelligence of temptation. On the one hand there is a continuous postponement of our commitments or our decisions to make (they will settle automatically, time will make everything right) on the other hand there is the dreaming (dreaming, not activating) about change (you shall see that things will change). That kind of change is only thought, drawn up in thoughts, but maybe never really wished for. Maybe the “game” of let us see what you can do, I shall wait for you to fail, I told you so, I knew things would end up like this: grunts interpreted in a continuous manner and with the same script and screenplay. Marionettes among marionettes: they act under a dictatorship with phrases that are always the same according to the plot made up by somebody else.
Pinocchio enters as a spectator, but he himself is only a puppet watching a puppet show. And in fact Harlequin finds himself in a dramatic scene on stage and exclaims: “Come and embrace your wooden brothers!”. And Pinocchio, who does so and finds himself among brothers, is received with a frenetic joy: the puppets recognize one another and feast; they are all happy except for the audience which complains about the interruption of the show. Puppets are in fact there to amuse the audience and the spectators; so what about the feasting then? Why are they present in the script? What does this insurrection, this joyful moment mean? Who dare they disobey the rules? “Then the puppeteer came out, such an ugly man, who made you fear him only by looking at him”.
It´s no joke, it´s no game
Stromboli is coming
He controls and moves all threads he makes the puppets dance
Stromboli the puppeteer is a metaphor of power that controls everything and knows everything: it is there to remind everybody that he is in command and that anyone who does not obey the rules, ends up badly or is labeled a lunatic. This is the fate of those who live inside and only inside the Great Theatre.
And where are we? Are we trying to hide? For how long? In time, our peers will recognize us, in one way or the other we will return to stay with our likes. And if the force, courage and minimum appearance (often unexpected) of the current puppeteer is not sufficient to control our minds, there is nothing left to do for the spectators, but to act before a public just like actors do. Only one
hinder lies in the way: memories and regrets… Not being spectators (nor puppets) does not mean to be on one or the other side of the stage; it means attributing a sense to the world around us and cultivate this world, this inhabited earth, with interest, enthusiasm and wisdom, but above all with engagement and fatigue to protect the collection. The collection of our
experiences, our values: protect them