Growing Into the Human Work

We write a lot here about the organisation, the team and the Superheroes. That we need to do something about the existent and ever-increasing HumanDebt™. That said “to do” is to distribute the needed work to the team level and let them fix themselves and then get into a groove of continuous improvement aka “the human work”.

And we have to keep writing about it because for such a simple and obvious concept, the above is so eerie to what Tracy Bannon calls organisational “muscle memory” that we’re looking at a long, long time of having to flog this horse before true change will happen.

And that change can not be lip service, it can not be painted on a pig, it can’t be the discreet occasional eye roll at the passing butt naked emperors and it can not be incremental. Instead, it has to be at the same level that we have had to do ourselves when we realised that we have to grow - a fundamentally gargantuan transformation of thoughts and beliefs so that they get realigned around humans and their wellbeing at work as the cornerstone of any technical performance.

Growing pains - there’s a reason growth is rarely hailed as pleasant - it simply never feels fun when it’s needed. When bones grow, they hurt. When minds expand, it’s with discomfort. When we change habits, it’s full of effort and it costs us. When we evolve in any way there’s shedding to be done, there’s breaking to be had and there’s shape-shifting that has to happen.

So why seek growth as an individual unless you’re a masochist? No reason.