I feel like a number. (Bob Seger)
A long time ago, in high school, I devoured math classes. Interesting, even very cool, numbers fascinated me. I still love the trigonometry of sailing - though usually with my instruments turned off so that my senses and my instincts are turned on. I use labels, yet posting myself as President of my one-man company is done with a big smile. On the other hand, I value labels for bins in our basement. But if I confuse labels for people, I am on a slide to heartlessness. Numbers are labels, not being.
If you treat people like things, you'll piss them off. (Bill Taggart)
The tumor-like offspring of the marriage between the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution is the dehumanization revolution. We have become job titles, degrees, percentiles, our performance measured in increasingly minute data points that suck our spirit and replace it with reports.
"Well, my dear daughter. I just downloaded your monthly performance indicators. For this quarter, it looks like — despite our coaching and assigned reading — you have lagged well behind your standardized age/gender/knowledge/accomplishment metrics. I'm afraid we have to let you go. Your mother will escort you to your room and watch you while you pack your things. Please turn in your keys as you depart. We wish you the best of luck in future endeavors."
We, each and every one of us, are responsible for this crutch of thingness and can help it be gone. I am not a number, and you are not a category. Instead of "What do you do?" for a social question, how about "Where have you been and who are you becoming?"
Remember the little height marks you had on a doorway at home when you were little, becoming bigger? Fun numbers. We don't make a mark and say "If you don't reach this pencil mark by November, you better get to work on your CV, son."
We mistook measurement for understanding. (Ascribed to Pliny the Elder)
I am a big fan of learning, less enthusiastic about grades and certification.
I have my share of letters after my name. Without some of these, I could not offer the services I provide. On the other hand, credentials indicate accomplishment, i.e. the past . Consider the possibility that they may or may not indicate much about capacity. They do not measure curiosity, willingness to take risk, imagination, or a feel for empathy and community. How we are going to engage forward may bear a loose relationship to how we have before.
Things need care, people need help. (from Humanity at Work)
Can we make the turn to qualitative measurement? Can we risk building relationships and organizations without the nail gun of labels? Above all, can we embrace the ambiguity of possibility, create a place for the messiness and delight of humanity rather than the illusion of the thing machine?
Things need care - changing our car's oil, for instance. People need care as well, but, more important, we need each other's help.
Please drop in on two pro bono projects that are ongoing and forward-looking: the back2different podcast and humanity@work.
Thanks for your help.
