Burnt Out on Goodness

It feels a little like I’ve fallen out of the paradigm and I have a hard time finding my way back in.

There are so many deep beliefs in organizations that I don’t believe anymore. For example, I have a hard time believing that organizations follow a purpose or that they have “values”. I actively believe that they don’t. I also think individuals don’t. I think values and purposes are abstract and disembodied, confabulated justifications we tell ourselves.

But abstract, disembodied, confabulated justifications seem to run the show, on the left and the right. We go by what feeds the narrative of how to be a “good” organization because we also want to be “good” people.

But I’m talking about a space where you can’t be “good.” Realistically, being “good” has never been an option on the table but it’s even less so now. You have a phone? Forget being a good person. I have one too. I’m not a good person.

So let’s meet, all the not-perfect people.

My daughter asked me yesterday, “is chili healthy?” and I told her that it depended on the chili and on what else you eat before and after. It’s the same with frameworks to be “good” organizations or people. There are no good frameworks or values or purposes, it depends on what you do with them. What do you do with them?

I think “being a good person” is part of the control paradigm as well. Everything we do has consequences and impact. And even worse, we can’t control them. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. And to put the cherry on top, we’re still responsible for our actions. Ouch.

That’s an unpopular space, that not-knowing space without definite answers, while being responsible. My daughter doesn’t like it. She’d rather have a simple eat/don’t eat list and then blame me or the universe for all consequences.

Most of the vocabulary we use when talking about organizations feels like a foreign language to me, and I can’t re-calibrate my mindset to fit in again. “Leadership” as a concept, for example: leaders are the gap-fillers of our paradigm. Our paradigm doesn’t feel meaningful? Let’s have leaders who inspire and motivate. Our people aren’t accountable? Let’s fix it with leaders and control. Our systems are at odds with mission and people? Let’s have servant leaders then.

But instead of talking about “good leaders”, I want to talk about the contexts that require them. Imagine we all swim in a big lake together. Sure, it may be nice to have a person who swims in the front – our “leader” – if that’s ever useful. But I’m more interested in how we can get everyone across. Where in the lake is it safe to swim? Or where does the current carry us across? Talking about “leadership” seems like such a distraction given the real questions, so tainted with the control paradigm, so besides the point. Shouldn’t we observe the lake and its currents, and then practice our swimming skills? What’s this leadership talk supposed to help with? Our obsession with leadership just seems to point to a huge gap in context awareness, so we wish for heroes instead.

Our disembodied-confabulated-justifications approach has created a parallel universe, the wishful-thinking universe, where we are “good” because we have a purpose statement on our website, and values we write on slides. Where we are participatory because we use sticky notes. Sure, it feels “participatory” to have our own colorful sticky note on the miro board – but does it really help what we want to do? Or is it just participation theater, abstract words divorced from action so we can all tell ourselves how participatory we are?

Unpopular opinion: Wanting to enforce inclusion or create participation is also still a part of the control paradigm.

We love our solutions and we want to use them to be the good people. We are so fixated on the hammer in our hands, we don’t even look beyond it. Of course, hammers aren’t bad. We need agreements and (appropriate, life-serving) systems, frameworks, and structures. But they’re always just means within a bigger context, the bigger flow.

What is that river, that current of life between us, and how can we get to know it more? It seems like that deeper fabric, the ever-connecting context, that flows underneath our systems is what makes or breaks what really happens.

If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then who eats culture? And can we have it, please? Because culture in this paradigm sucks. What’s the undercurrent of why some systems work in a given situation, and why do some fall flat and feel like people just go through the motions?

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, but context built the kitchen and grew the crops.

I’ve been mentally walking upstream to find the leverage points. The more I walk, the more I’m shedding beliefs and convictions. I’m so burnt out on wishful thinking. Or maybe I’m just burnt out on thinking. And burnt out on wishing. Or maybe just burnt out.

When do wishing and thinking open our eyes to see more of reality? And when do mental frames just conceal what we don’t want to see, or confirm what sounds good in our paradigm?

It’s more like giving up altogether on “fixing” things as part of being in control. And instead of tuning into what’s actually there, in real life, between us and in our habits and actions, written and unwritten rules. Not in some abstraction-wishful-thinking, sticky-note, I-want-my-voice-to-matter land. But in a relational way. Where being woven into our world is the goal, not being the “good” person with the right “values.”

To focus on what’s here. Right now. For us.

Last week, I gave a sociocracy student a hard time for only teaching consent. Here’s why: teaching consent is the pleasant story of inclusion, all voices matter, and so on. Not wrong, but incomplete. The other side is hidden in sociocracy’s circle structure: decisions are distributed across different places. That means any given person will not be a part of all decisions. There will be people who will make decisions, and we expect you to follow them. And yes, that is also true when you are affected by the decision. (Of course, sustainable decisions would ask for feedback but that’s not my point here.)

Uncomfortable truth: In reality, it’s common that we are affected by things we have no control over. That we can’t consent to. We don’t consent to the weather, the oceans, life and death. The most important things in life, in fact, are the ones we don’t have control over. So I worry that the more we focus on having a say, the more life just flows away.

Sure, organizations need to be run by the people in them. Sure, people want agency. But I wonder if being woven into the context of the organization might be more important even than having a say. To be a part, within the bigger currents and flow. Weaving into life is the goal. Agency and inclusion, then, are mainly important because they increase the chances of better weaving into Life.

And once we see that, it’s like taking the mask off the organizations and seeing the being underneath. That collective being, the interconnected being that we’re all embedded in, that we all make up by being there: the fabric we build when we relate in our actions, with our bodies, with our care and presence.

Sure, there can be words here and there as well, but always making sure to stay tethered to reality instead of spinning off into wishful-thinking land.

That collective body that emerges when we stop trying to be good, when we open our eyes to see: that collective being wants to be taken seriously, wants to be seen, wants to be tended to beyond mechanistic terms. It’s the core, the essence of our relationships, operational and personal.

That collective body exists independently of our wishful thinking and our glossy value statements. It might not be what sounds good on social media. But it’s what’s real, the whole story woven into all of Life.