Who invented the specialist?
Should we blame our corporate world, as the producers of that specialist spirit which prevent us from embracing that generalist mindset when we need it? I don’t think so, in fact it’s all around. Our office space just happens to carry on a characterization. There seems to be something, Mechanized or Specialized, that grows in us. A strength that sticks with us. And one too that take us to fear, so badly or cryptically, the idea of slowing down.
Something about that we seem to know. It may be observable in our educated world as we know it, certainly in our work spaces, in our families, and inside of us. Deep inside, we know it, somewhere from our regressions — the size of that monumental investment we took before that great walking far from the leg of our mother. And how it felt after we went back to her hugging and lovely smile. We went through our first exit, successfully. From that, we like it or not, we carried too that other knowing. The knowing about what it takes, that other monumental thing we need (from us or someone else,) before we do that other new thing ahead of us, that new movement. This may be the will to stick, if you will.
But a bit different from our parents who were trying to balance their part policeman and part therapist roles, the corporate world, policies if you will, might have added some fun to the whole thing. In particular, focusing on the “just do it” or “keep walking” element. Because “it’s fun to work,” isn’t it? Well, maybe not in all office spaces but certainly there is one that looks like an amusement park somewhere. Somewhere, remotely or closer to you, there is a modern bridge made of soda cans, now digitally mastered. There their builders can digitally scan their daily intake of cans and they can then see their own monster effort, in real-time, a reflection of their ability to build. This is much better than vanity metrics, they know. Because they can see effort, not prizes. So it’s honest, to some extent, and it is fun, and it is colorful, and the bridge looks like a rainbow.
A slight complication of this fun-to-work office space is that some new complications can’t be just brought up. For complaints, for things not so fun, it is not fun if one doesn’t know how to do. If an arbitrary cry escapes through these hallways, he or she gets a ‘whiner’ flair on her jacket. That is not a flair too big nor meant to hurt the body of work. This flair is colorful and to fun to wear. So they have invented a way to equalize — sometimes to silence in 9 seconds - potential complications, potential networked echoes. To be fair, that does avoid the big trouble — they know it — of that whole bridge falling apart.
But this humanized and resourceful force does know some other “therapeutic” tricks too. They know how to fade out that whinning channel and fade in the fun one so that the good beat is never silenced. In other words, they never lose their happy warriors, or happy dancers; the sky never goes gray. In other words, as soon as their heads count a few mouths crying outloud — that too many men, or too many people, are making too many problems — they make a call. From up in the sky, then it comes, supermanager. Wearing its heuristically-approved red shirt and a big and yellow M on its belly. And its cape is given, for holds all of those whiners still and comfy, pronto. Its hand, made of steel, pouring just enough of that sparkling-golden rain on that parade; but never enough to cloud the horizon from that rainbow and that fun-to-work office. This is how equilibrium is dispensed, or refilled, in this great and amusing park. It asks us to keep walking by wearing the shoes that just do it.
I don’t think that our corporate world had invented doing it or took us into that same walking, being specialists first, and to generally be fearful of recalling the generalist mindset. Perhaps our corporate managerial machine just added more toppings to that good ice cream.
This essay was produced on the way of the the writing work of Slow Down to Startup. Get in touch to help me launch this book.
