Andreas Gruber - The Power of Being

If life really could be planned, it would lose a great deal of its value.

A lot of people say they love sitting in a cafe just watching people. If you are one of them, can you see, that for a great deal of the time, many of them are actually not there? Their mind is gone, maybe already planning and experiencing the next weekend or the next vacation, although it may never happen like that. Some seem as if they don't want to be there. I'm one of them, although a lot has changed for me in the last ten years, but it is a gradual process since the habits of the mind are resilient.

The trade of the wise is not to know, or to expect, only being aware in that very moment, that is called now, and therefore, they know.

Just as a person in Greenland would make a fool of himself, if he would aspire to control nature, we may become the same fools if we try to control everything. Just that for us, it's not so obvious at first. Often we only find out when we look back on our lives and then it may be too late.

Companies have different ways to do things. We call that corporate culture, and it is a thing not to be tampered with. At least, that's what they say. It's about dos and don'ts. The don'ts come in two categories, where the first is open and the other concealed. We often call the latter taboos. All together they tend to be like our personal habits but on a corporate level. Coming from one corporation to another, you probably notice them, while people who have been there many years may not be aware of them anymore.

Although, some of them are rather unproductive, we tend to accept them as part of the furniture. This conglomeration of habits come as guests and before you know it, they have taken over your house. Similarly with habits, you can’t get rid of them, but you can substitute old and unproductive ones with new ones.

Some of the games we play at work are kind of interesting. They seem to originate from a social context, where it is about defining position, influence, and power. Here are just a few random examples:

If I fear to be dethroned, I had better hire a wimp or a nerd, while head hunting a genius.

The big boss looks for a top man. The job description is breathtaking, and actually, everybody knows that person does not exist. All too often this is another way of saying how incredibly good the boss is. Especially if we take into consideration that it is very rare that a leader employs someone who is smarter than himself. There are at least six consequences that can be derived from this. 1) These rare and almost nonexistent people are hard to find. 2) Because they are so rare, they cost more regarding head hunting as well as salary. 3) This dynamic is likely to decrease the average IQ of the company over time since the boss represents the intellectual roof. This means many leaders do not have the courage to employ people above their IQ unless it's obvious that it's a nerd and that he can never become a threat. 4) Since these people are so rare, they often come from far away, and that implies higher uncertainties regarding adaptability. 5) It leads to overqualified employees who tend to be demotivated because a proper challenge and learning opportunity are missing. 6) This leads to shorter employment periods because these overqualified people tend to keep on looking for a really challenging job.

We tend to like people who say what we want to hear. Expensive consultants who deliver final reports that are congruent with our opinion are excellent. Employees, as well as members of the management team, who agree with our plans, are perfect. Our personal problem is not likely to be ignorance, but attachment to own ideas and principles. Many logical consequences can be drawn from this, like 1) losing touch with reality, as the needs of employees and customers are not always taken seriously unless the boss personally happens to have heard of a problem. Only then it may be accepted and will have top priority. This misleads companies and departments to operate in emergency mode. 2) People partly stop informing the boss, because they pretty soon figure out, what the boss wants to hear and what he doesn't. Professors at universities tend to train us to behave like that. If you tell them precisely what they want to hear, you get an excellent grade. 3) This may reduce the brainpower in a meeting to one single unit, and even that is not functioning properly because a person who is attached to his ideas and principles is practically in a stuck state. 4) Corporations end up running in circles with some problems until the leader finally gets the point all on his own, or if the matter is vital until he's replaced. Privately we act in more or less the same way. And since everybody tends to have that inclination, we are likely to accept it, even if we know it's counterproductive. If this wouldn't be such a wide spread phenomenon, we would probably declare the boss to be mentally insane.

Which facts would you liketo have statistically verified for today's meeting?

Many times have decisions been taken by a highly qualified management team, where common people wonder; what were they thinking? Decisions that seemed so right in the boardroom, given all the "facts" that were presented. Most people who have worked with statistics for a while know that you can use one and the same statistical material in many ways, proving more than one truth.

We are too busy to think, and that's the way it is these days.But luckily we have time to brush our teeth. Otherwise, we would get fired.

You are so busy that you don't have time to think, not to mention reflecting on what matters to you or the company. One appointment chases the other. You complain about the stress, but actually, it mostly thrills you. Time is very precious; you are valuable and important. If you look closely, however, you are either controlling others, micromanaging or having a slight lack of priorities. You live under the illusion that you can lead others to success. Chances are, you are just creating hot air and that you are often not even able to manage your own time and priorities.

The facts always seem to be in our favor, until we fail.That's when the real thinking starts.But, not until we crash does the reflection begin.

These are only a couple of examples of situations in corporate life, where we may be fooling ourselves. It may give us the feeling of remaining in control, but we are losing in the long run. Needless to say, that habits like this, where we may be mindlessly fooling ourselves, are not a sound basis for honesty. And therefore, integrity and authenticity are far, far away. It's not an option, for you to have integrity as a leader, it’s a must. The only reason you get away without it would be that there are not many others around applying this quality. However, times are changing. And it may be a lot more convenient for you if this book represented a wake-up call, instead of harsh reality knocking on your door.

When in Cambodia, I stayed in a small town off the beaten track for a couple of weeks. I used to shop for food and snacks just around the corner, and there was always the same charming young lady working in the shop, no matter what time of the day I came. At times, 8 am or on other occasions 10 pm. So, one day I said to her, "You must be working many hours, you are always here." She replied with her tender voice and a genuine smile, "But I live here." It didn't seem to bother her at all. She seemed happy there in the house where her family lived. However, what we see in bigger cities worldwide, and almost generally in the west, is that work and life have become two things that are separated from each other. This creates some serious imbalance at times. Not to be motivated or to be unfulfilled has become the standard, while stress is becoming a big issue. We seem to have forgotten how to relax and recover. We add further activities in the hope to find peace. Unsurprisingly, talking about the burn-out syndrome has long been treated as taboo, but the question is if we can afford this in the long run.