Step Past Control and Status Quo

Why is it that most people stick with the status quo? What are the results when someone at your workplace wants to try something edgy? You’d enjoy a cartoon at Scientific Integrity. Do you see your workplace here?

Seth Godin provokes our thinking about status quo in 50:1, a current snapshot of employees as they fit in to a workplace. Just think about it. Seth says that only a tiny number of people get fired for attempting to do something great. Interestingly, Seth contends that Carly got fired for challenging the status quo…Thousands of employees embraced comfort zones and got laid off.

Though Seth’s mailbox is full, he says that only about once a day does he get mail from a person worrying that she is too edgy, too willing to cause change and growth…or risk getting fired. He concludes, “I almost never get mail from people who figure if they keep doing the same boring thing day in and day out at their fading company that they’re going to lose their jobs in a layoff.”

Ellen Weber counters mediocrity as she considers results when organizations reward high-performance minds. Weber wonders why leaders say they hire for talent, and yet some facilitate and reward mediocrity. Does mediocrity result when folks are treated as if they have no contributions to make, or their ideas do not count, or expectations are part of a conservative status quo? How do mediocrity and status quo develop?

In some cases, a control culture leads to mediocrity and status quo. When you consider the feudal system or the advent of manufacturing in the industrial age, a few folks at the top made all the decisions and controlled every detail. Though today's workplaces are not that extreme, control cultures are still in place in many organizations… the Baron or boss’s way or the highway. Employees
suggestions are generally ignored. Why is that?

Two reasons…most frequently fear of the unfamiliar and a basal ganglia deeply embedded for hierarchy. Since your brain’s basal ganglia stores everyday routines, people know what is expected and easily fall into everyday patterns. Over time, routines are just plain comfortable…

When change comes, and you engage new tasks, you dip into working memory, that part of your brain which holds only a small amount of information… and the new easily spills out. For example, how well do you remember all the details when first using new software? To use working memory requires deep focus, problem solving and doing tasks in new ways. The more you do it, the easier it gets because you are rewiring your brain for the new. At times “living change” may seem burdensome and frustrating. It's so easy to push your feet into comfortable slippers rather than break in new shoes! Good news is breaking old routines helps you dance past the status quo.

Consider five MITA steps as a way to revitalize your organization in roundtables where all voices are heard.

QUESTION: All are free to ask hard questions…Questions to which the asker is connected.

TARGET: Employees consider possibilities and target improvements that bust barriers

EXPECT: Negotiate expectations together

MOVE: Move innovation using employees' gifts and talents

REFLECT: reflect to adjust and change.

Folks work together over time to renew. As a result, an organization builds a system for on-going change through collaboration, life-long learning and problem solving processes. Innovative processes replace former routines in employees' basal ganglia.

What is driving your workplace today – status quo or invention? What possibilities do you see?