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Creating the Utopian Environment | |
Hello ColleaguesWelcome to Creating the Utopian Environment. In an era when the consummate personal skill must be a capacity to manage uncertainty, the notion of Utopia finds a forum. Utopia, as originally conceived by Sir Thomas More in 1516, stood for folly or human hope, depending upon his ideas of Eutopia, which means ‘the good place’ or Outopia which means ‘no place’. The deliberate ambiguity may have kept More on safe ground in such an unpredictable era when it was not always wise to speak too plainly. This monthly E-ZINE adopts the former definition as its platform. From that place it traverses many of the personal and relationship dimensions of human life in the workplace, education, families, groups and children to create a vision of Utopia that is reachable. Utopia is the personal, social and corporate ideal for which we strive. “Anyone who is capable of love must at some time have wanted the world to be a better place…those who construct Utopias build on that universal human longing.” (John Carey). The risk, however, is the dilemma that confronts all utopian projects – to aim at the ideal we must destroy parts of the old order of things and remove ourselves from the status quo. But how and what to change is endlessly controversial! I invite you to come with me on a journey to embrace the controversy and find ways to create the Utopian environment. I am personally committed to the pursuit of meaning and the bettering of individual lives.
So what does The Utopian Workplace look like to you? What challenges prevent you from obtaining yours? Here’s what it looks like for me. In short, the Utopian Workplace is a paragon of both technical excellence and human virtue. It is both a data and product processing system and a human system; it is both a company and a community. It is a place where state-of-the-art business strategy, e commerce and technical excellence is second to nothing except the unleashing of the potential of individual workers as they seek community and pursue their quest to find meaning in life through their work. The latter is a deceptively simple premise: the notion that individual workers, put as the centre of an organization, will become all that they can become in their place of work and grow the organization exponentially. In an era when chief executives collectively feel that every part of their businesses is under threat, the underutilization of human resource can no longer be ignored. Michael Chaney, Managing Director of Wesfarmers Limited comments that “we assume every dollar of profit we make is threatened and that you constantly have to find ways of replacing it” (The Australian Financial Review, Dec 4, 2000). Lynda Gratton, author of Living Strategy (2000) suggests the answer is to put people at the heart of corporate strategy: “quite a few organizations become profitable through cost-cutting but eventually you get down to the bone. If they want to win market it will only be through the enthusiasm and innovation of the people they employ”. Individuals in The Utopian Workplace are truly transcendent. They thrive on becoming the best that they can be. They create vision and pursue it passionately. They ground their personal power within them and refuse to give it away to any external such as a recalcitrant boss, a sycophant work colleague, or a presentation to the board. They are highly self-aware and their poise and equanimity, even in trying circumstances, gives others tacit permission to be the same. They are productive and they build profits. They live creatively from their inner world to the outer one, not reactively to what is external. They have humility and their purpose is to serve. They are altruistic. They love deeply. They reach for the sky. They are CEOs, leaders, managers and staff. They are what makes the difference. They are both the building blocks of The Utopian Workplace and its product. These individuals are truly successful. They value their contribution so much that if their workplace does not support their growth they will leave it, find one that does or create their own. My thesis is that the world of work must take all the benefits of the Knowledge Age move into the Intuitive Age, in which organizations will experience an increase in productivity in all domains including personal, relational and financial. Is this Utopia or is it, to use a metaphor, tantamount to footprints in a stream. Critics will come from the right and the left and this is necessary to keep our thinking honest. But scepticism must be based on knowledge, not ignorance. The example of Mondragon should challenge the sceptics. The allure of the Utopian vision lies in dissatisfaction with the status quo and might well rouse us from complacency. As Frederic White observes “it is the inspired disgust with things as they are that creates the literature of Utopia” (1981). Transcendence in the workplace is the challenge for each of us. In our next Bulletin, we look at practical tips for creating The Utopian Workplace. With kind regards
Dr Cynthia Davis B.Ed, Grad. Dip. App. Psych., M.Sc.,
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Clinical and Corporate Psychologist Ph: 61+(0)3 9654
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We hope you
enjoyed this edition of Creating the
Utopian Environment! | ||
