I was meant to be on-site training, but due to some scheduling issues, the sessions have been remote instead. I far prefer to speak to people face to face, despite the convenience of being able to use more tools and the freedom of three screens to manage the session. Personal connection is vital in my opinion, and although many shy away from them more and more, I believe that it is going to cause a lot of problems in the future.
And on this note, in the two sessions I have had so far, similar themes have come up, with the first being about how people today make "mountains out of molehills", making larger problems out of minor issues, especially when it comes to taking offence. Rather than assuming best intentions, people are increasingly assuming the worst and then "defending" themselves based on the perceived slight.
In the next session the client was talking about an audit process that is coming up and how he believes that despite there being no issues in the past, he reckons that with new people now, there is a far greater risk because they have become complacent. They don't have the direct experience of those who have prepared for the audit in the past, but because everything has gone well, they assume it will go well again.
Skills missing.
As I mentioned to them both is, what I see as part of the problem with many things today, where people don't have the direct experience, but have been given all the answers. I even ran a bit of a thought experiment where two children are raised, one normally, the other being spoon-fed everything, carried everywhere, etc. Essentially, one has to work for the answers, the other is given the results. What is the difference between the two?
And this is the issue, because while we might be able to get results cheaply, the value is actually in the working. It is pretty obvious that if a child is carried everywhere, their muscles will not develop, nor will they learn to crawl, walk or run. But, what most fail to understand is that the brain itself is a physical thing, even if the thoughts it has may not be. This means that the very structure of the brain is developed like other parts of the body, though usage. When only seeing the results, the brain doesn't develop the structure to create the working.
Similarly, the more controlled our environment is, the more sensitive we become. And what we have done is created a very controlled environment that is managed by the enduser. The user chooses what they consume and convenience and pleasure tend to be the driving factors. This means that skills that are developed in difficult and boredom, don't get developed. Moreover, the ability to deal with discomfort is lessened, making us more sensitive to variation, and more volatile in reaction.
Skills come in many forms but beyond innate talent, they need to be developed. To develop any skill, knowledge isn't enough, it requires practice. It doesn't matter if it is a physical skill like welding seams or surfing, a mental skill like critical thinking, or an emotional skill such as patience and reactivity. And then of course, there are the myriad social skills for interpersonal communication, that allow us both to transmit ideas, and receive them.
The way we have designed our environment has meant that some skills are far more developed than others. For instance, emotional sensitivity is high, but emotional management is low. If we imagine the same in terms of our body, it is like always skipping leg day. Brain function is similarly unbalanced, where we consume so many "results" but spend so little time generating results from our own thoughts, that we are losing the ability to problem-solve - which is one of the greatest functions we have at our disposal as humans.
The thing is though, that like the companies who are cutting costs to increase profit margins, without working out how to generate new revenue, we are using these tools to make our life easier at the expense of our skills, without working out how to generate additional value as a human. Our profit margin is the amount of convenience and entertainment we get, instead of what we are able to actually do.
I believe that most people who are leaning into getting "results" now, are going to make themselves worse off in the future. This isn't necessarily going to be noticeable to begin with, because being "efficient" gets rewarded, but eventually, efficiency without the ability to generate growth, means retraction. Many companies now, despite their business retracting, are increasing their valuation. This is a disconnection from reality, a bubble. But ultimately, people will keep chasing for fear of missing out, even if they know it is going to lead them to failure. We are weakening ourselves as a species across the board and the irony is, most of us believe we are strengthening.
Another irony is that even though we are so more emotionally sensitive, we don't have the experience or intelligence to recognise the folly of our ways.
The audit is coming.
Are you resilient enough?
Taraz
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