A CHRISTMAS STORY

A CHRISTMAS STORY

　

It was 40 years ago today, Christmas, that I wrote my first essay. I was on duty at Camp Casey Korea, 10 miles from North Korea, Viet Nam was getting into a full blown affair, and I was reading about Peace on Earth. Something struck me about that great contrast I was observing and I penned my first, rather rough, paper about the fact that we wish for peace and practice war. Little did I know, that I would spend the most part of the next 40 years trying to understand why that happens that way. Probably the most significant thing I have learned is that we humans are good at preaching/dreaming/discussing the future “should be” of the world but really have little awareness of how we actually work.

This crystalized in my work on organizational change. I found executives were good at discussing how the place should run, but were at a loss as to the actual operation. Before we go on, it is a useful exercise to vision the future or go to a world class operation to see that things can be quite different and better, but that is the tip of the iceberg in creating change. The only real point of that stuff is to break the fairly common mind set that “this is the way it is and will always be”. If that is the mind set, then any effort of improvement is futile. But again, looking to future is a momentary exercise at the best. The real work comes at looking at current operations.

Most managers would say at that point, “I know how it works, and that is why I want to change it.” Then we would go out into the factory and actually look at the physical plant. They would immediately point out some problem and complain about it. I would ask “and how long has it been that way?”. Forever, they would reply. Then I would ask, “why do you keep supporting it then?”. That would usually slow them down and they would deny that they support it, claiming to be out there inspecting and threatening all the time. I would ask a series of questions that revealed how the overall system they have totally supports this dysfunction for the most part. At that point, if the manager was curious, I had him/her hooked on realizing that they did not know how things work. To quote from Persig’s book “Zen and the Art…..” , if you do not know how the motorcycle works, don’t work on the motorcycle!

So what am I saying in this brief slide in the world of manufacturing, since I am not trying to teach you anything about that. To begin to understand how things/we work, you must go and observe the actual happening with a NON-JUDGMENTAL approach. Judging will distort what you see both internally and what people will reveal to you externally. The physical happening is where you start and ask questions (without judging) about what supports that happening in terms of information, training, or other data coming into this event. Then you ask the deeper question of how does the broader system and culture support this event. Then, if you can, you ask what is the thinking behind all this info, system, and culture support. With that, you begin to understand how the factory works. This is totally true with our own life.

I am so bored and tired of religious folks talking about how we should live according some rules, sacred books, lists of commandments, ethical values, etc.. I have yet heard any one of them that showed me that they understand how we work. Likewise with the politicians who want to tell us how they want to create some economic, judicial, social, educational, or what programs that will make life better for everyone. Then there are the inspirational/motivational self help folks who preach being all you can be, empowering your inner being, letting go, reaching out, or what other high sounding blah blah. They all do not want us to see how we actually work. Their intentions are wonderful and they pave the road to hell quite nicely.

There is really nothing you have to do to improve. But you have to know how you work. You have to observe yourself in actual practice without judgement. You have to inquire into the internal and external support systems to that behavior, the culture of friends and family you surround yourself with, and finally to see the thinking (beliefs, values, frameworks) that are behind all of it. Then you begin to understand how you work. From that view, you will see that most of the world works this way and that you are the world in that process/system sense. Then you will be quite different with that awareness. And that brings us to why I write so much about awareness. It is the key to all this understanding.

Let me go back for a minute to the organizational stuff. I once worked with a senior executive who inspected everything and was very judgmental. I challenged him on this and he claimed it was doing it for the good of the organization and the people. I began to show him the actual behavior of people around him and how there were systems of deceit to hide problems and a cultural gamesmanship to avoid being caught in the critical eye of the top guy. He looked at me and said “you are saying that I am the problem!” I said, part of the problem, but now it was much bigger than you. But to change it, he had to become AWARE of his process of inspecting, judging and the anger he showed at disappointment. By him altering his process, the company changed in a small but important way. He would not do it for long, I left and the problems persisted. Without awareness of his own process, he was simply mechanically reacting to the things that did not fit with his elaborate ideas of how everything ought to be.

Awareness is that quiet place of observing that has no judgement, has no emotional attachment, has no need to fix, has no pride or pain. It is only for clarity of understanding and once you gain understanding the change has already happened. So if you wish peace in the world on this Christmas day of 2006, then become the peace by going into your own awareness and begin to see how you work, how the people around you work, how the world works, without any judging or comparing to the way it is supposed to be. In that you will have changed the world for you will be different and you will see that you are the world. You will see that there is no more need for admonishing some better place in the future. It is all here right now. Peace. Tom Lane 12/25/2006