I have worked in a lot of different places—far more than my responsible friends have done. One of the things I have learned from this eclectic (some would say erratic) experience is that professional managers want people who work for them to keep their distance from each other. Individuals are easier to manage, and ease of management is important to managers of average skill. Managers are, therefore, anti connectedness. Thus they mock anything that would result in bringing people together.
Any effort to create personal connections at work is typically scorned as a ‘kumbaya’ exercise in cuteness. Wikipedia refers to the notion that connections between people at work are often perceived as “naively optimistic.” I can vouch for that.
I am proud to be naively optimistic about the value of human connections, including those at work. I know that the word kumbaya is corporate code for the belief that caring about people is superficial, unprofessional, and a waste of time. The underlying reason for this is that managers don’t know how to work with people who have formed meaningful linkages with one another. They want one-on-one relationships exclusively because they are easier to dominate.
With that in mind, I want to go one layer deeper in my efforts to offend traditional managers. Perhaps in the current disastrous business environment people will be receptive to alternative points of view. Our economic landscape is littered with corporate Humpty Dumpties that have fallen off the wall. Not even all of President Obama’s men can put them together again.
In my yoga classes we chant at the beginning of the 90-minute sessions, and at the end. It is a demonstrable fact that the the chant at the end of class is richer and more harmonious than the chant at the beginning. I’ve been doing this for nearly five years, and I’m not stupid. This is a real phenomenon.
Does this fact have some relevance in the work place? Of course it does. Connected people can run circles around unconnected people. If it is possible to connect people in 90 minutes of yoga, what could be done in an eight-hour day? The corporate manager is not interested in finding out. The at-risk employee, however, should be.
We are about as close to hell freezing over as I have seen in my life time. I suggest that we consider some new possibilities for joining forces with one another. The corporate model has failed. The symptoms of the old model are the isolated employee and the remote, detached executive who is wary of enthusiastic people.
You may never chant at work, but I invite you to reflect on the power of agreement among people. Get connected. Create a miracle for your own organization. This is no time to heed the cynics in the mahogany-lined offices who pushed Humpty off his wall in the first place.
