A story about the trouble caused when we can’t talk about shame and anxiety in organisational life:A global retailer struggling to meet the expectations of the markets, brings in a new measurement system for its stores, with more than sixty targets to meet.A daily ratings table of stores is published internally, naming those meeting the targets and those falling short. It’s described as a logical move to increase performance in difficult times. And at the same time, it allows the board to deny the anxiety they’re feeling: “we’ve done everything we can do, and we’ve responded in a clear and rational manner to market conditions”.Meanwhile, the ratings system has very effectively pushed the anxiety onto the store managers, where even respected, skilful, long-serving managers are reduced to a daily jostle for the top few spots. Unable or unwilling to challenge the system itself (after all, it’s apparently a rational response to the current difficulty), they start to put pressure on their department heads for the daily delivery of the targets. And, unable to start a conversation about how all of this feels to everybody, the department heads – fearful of being shamed – look for whatever they can do to hit their targets.This is where the real trouble begins.Because in the face of unnamable anxiety and the unbearable threat of shame, even respected, diligent department heads start to look for ways to game the system.Numbers are fiddled. Statistics reinterpreted. Orders are left piling up in the warehouse because nobody can keep up with the new standards for shelf layout. Items in the store are relabelled so that products look like they’re available when the mystery shopper team comes around. Staff members are taken off other important duties to work on the tills when queue-length is measured, but the queues are allowed to reach enormous and frustrating lengths at other times.The target numbers are, frequently, met – aside from for those few unfortunate store managers who aren’t wily enough to play the system – but standards drop relentlessly across the group and customers start to take their business elsewhere.Public shame, skilfully dealt with. Skilful gaming of the system, denied. The organisation becomes a system for avoiding anxiety rather than serving customers. Nobody talking about it – “it’ll open a can of worms”.You can see this same drama played out in hospitals, whole health systems, schools, retailers, service industries, transport, government, with huge and debilitating effect.And in most places nobody’s talking about what’s really going on, because we’ve made mood undiscussable.If we’re going to deal with all of this – and we must – we’re going to have to wake up to the fact that organisations are always made up of people, and people are always caught up in moods that shape what can be seen and what’s possible. Our insistence on understanding people as detached, strictly rational parts of a well-oiled machine is not doing anything to address these difficulties.And without the courage to do this, we’re going to condemn ourselves to a future of looking good while we undo our best and most important efforts.
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This morning, after swimming, I overhear a conversation between two men who are sitting by the water. One has lost his sunglasses on an earlier swim and is quite distressed.'They were expensive. Armani.' he says. 'I paid a lot of money for them. And they are the third pair I've lost this summer'.He is too agitated to be present with his friend who, after some minutes of listening, says 'You seem really shaken up by this, too shaken up even to really be interested that I'm here with you. You're saying the same thing, over and over again. But,' and here he pauses, 'tell me something. Did you enjoy having them? Did they bring you pleasure? Because although you've now lost them, for a while you did have them too'.For a while, you did have them.And at that moment it occurs to me that this is true for everything, and for all of us. We wail and fret about what we lose, and rightly, because our loss is so often a source of suffering for us. But we will all lose our sunglasses, eventually, just as we will lose all our possessions, our friendships, our bodies, and everything we know.And because losing is terrible and difficult to bear, we can spend our lives fretting about what's yet to lose, and clinging madly to it, or becoming consumed with longing or remorse for what we've lost.And all the while forgetting that, for a time, we did have all of this, and missing the wonder that there is anything at all - sunglasses, friendships, work, life - worth having enough that its loss matters to us in the first place.
This summer I have taken up wild swimming, in the beautiful and tranquil swimming ponds on London's Hampstead Heath.It has been quite a practice in releasing myself into the unknown. The water is cold and murky and deep. It's impossible to see more than a few centimetres below the surface, and so entering is an exercise in letting go, in welcoming what's here, in giving up control.Once in the cool water, eye-line level with that of the ducks and birds that frequent the pond, I notice how quickly any sense of inner pressure subsides. There is really nothing to do here, nowhere to get to, and I start to see how much my own inner life is still dominated by assessments that are often invisible to me.Am I doing well enough? Being responsible enough? Getting enough done? Taking enough care? Being smart enough? Kind enough? Successful enough? I notice how often I feel sad, or deflated or frustrated because of an inner judgement that I'm falling short. And how often I rely on an equal and opposite assessment - that I did something well - in order to feel joy, or satisfaction or that I have anything to offer.But here, in the coolness and stillness of the water, I am struck by my inner quietness and expansiveness. Held in a body of water that is vast and calm I am vast and calm too, my sense of separateness from the physical world dissolving as standards and self-assessment dissolve.For a while I am the water itself, the trees, the birds and the sky. For a while I just am, and my beauty and value is the simple fact of being alive. And for a while I am reminded that I am not my assessments, even if I often live, quite unaware of it, as if they are what is most true.
When we divide what's 'inside' us from what's 'outside' as if they were separate from one another we cause ourselves all kinds of difficulty.In much of our culture we treat working with what's 'inside' as if it's irrelevant, an indulgence, soft, a waste of time when compared with the hands on world of making, doing, deciding and acting. And we can become equally convinced by the opposite position - that we can't act until we've completely resolved some feeling or inner difficulty, or until we've studied and understood a subject from end to end.But inside and outside are a continuum, different aspects or angles on the same world. It might be most helpful to think of 'inside' primarily as that corner of things of which each of us has a particularly special, privileged view - and part of the world nevertheless.And so it is the case that the way I relate to others is very often the way I'm already relating to parts of myself. And that the way I struggle within myself is the self-same way I struggle with other people.And it's often the case that powerful 'inner' work is done 'outside' - for example by developing skill in relating to others I also develop skill in relating to myself. And that there are many riches to discover about the 'outside' world by the much undervalued art of listening attentively and with deep curiosity to the inner experience of others.
It's one thing to have good intentions about your relationships with others.You also need good practices to bring them about,
The story you tell about this time in your life isn't the only story. And the vantage point from which you're looking is not the only vantage point.Looking forwards, it might seem clear that you're on the way to a great success, or an inevitable defeat. Maybe it looks like life is all sorted: you've arrived and there is not much more for you to do. Or perhaps, from the depths of your confusion, it appears that you're lost and can never find your way back.Life is so much bigger than each of us, and so much more mysterious, that any story you have is at best partial. Looking back, what feels now like inevitable defeat may turn out to be a time of building strength: the strength you'll need to break out of the constraints that have been holding you back. What feels like being crushed by life could be the birth pangs of a new beginning. Maybe the solidity of your success so far turns out to be everything that will be taken from you.As Cheryl Strayed writes to her despairing younger self in 
As we encounter each of life's difficulties, we get to choose:Consider ourselves cursed or mistreated, as if we are owed freedom from hurt, pain or confusion. As if life owes us happiness. As if we are meant to be in control of everything. This is, essentially, a fight against life as it is.Or draw on difficulty as part of life's path, an opportunity to turn more deeply into life rather than away from it.And while, with each successive difficulty or joy, we find that we understand life's movement less and less, perhaps this way we learn to live it more and more.