OK I ADMIT
I am a bit scratchy at the moment, this Christmas Spirit I am meant to be feeling is really tiring and seems to be a one way thing. Clients haven't got into the swing, in fact they are trying to cram as much into the next few days as humanly possible.
Which has brought me round to that silly saying about the half full, half empty cup and how we see it....
RUBBISH
Its not how full it is but how thirsty you are that makes the difference, and so it is with life. We are constantly being defined by how we view things and made to feel that this is who we are.
Psychometric assessments, personality type, you name it we are forced into believing we are this single layer of shallowness that makes us easy to put into a convenient box.
Well I have had enough of convenience this Christmas, and my new years resolution is to encourage people to start being complex again. Women have an advantage over men in this area as men fail to understand women when they are asking even a simple request. And men are simple beings and would enjoy being seen as a bit more complex, they are just not sure how to go about it.
SO HERE WE GO
Lets ban sports heroes, you know sporting achievements splashed across the front pages and on nearly every other page of our news papers. it's time to replace them with people who achieve things for the betterment of our society. All we are doing is lowering the bar and teaching children that you aren't worth anything unless you are physically tough.
Lets also open up avenues for children to tell teachers what they are interested in. How many self help and management training books call for people to identify what they are good at and work from there. Yet we teach children to be wrong about things that they have no interest in. Once again showing our education system is 100 years out of date.
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE...
Our politicians continue to rort the system that feeds them, teaching everyone about the two tier system of wealth and power and privilege vs the rest of us. And why do we let them get away with it?... because we are dumbing down our society to a level where simple sound bites constitute debate. Mass media has become the tool of influence and propaganda the message.
As this world becomes more complex people crave the simple life of their childhood and that brings about the nostalgic view that things were better "in the good old days" which of course is nonsense. People have been struggling to live since the beginning of time and nothing has changed, except that tools and opportunity change with advancement. And so at last the meek have indeed inherited the earth and they rest are struggling to understand what happened.
And herein lies the problem, we have over the years been forcing people into boxes for the convenience of employers and guess what..... now they don't fit.....
THE NEW MODEL
In a complex world we need complex thinkers and speed of thought and change is embraced, no longer is it alright to work in the "compliance model" where as long as you ticked the box your job was safe. Now we expect people to make a decision, be accountable, understand risk... be an entrepreneur.
And this is where the Personality "type" Psychometric assessments etc fall over, if people are judged on how they feel about things what they understand currently, how good they are at sums etc it bears no relevance to their complexity.
I am Dyslexic and never read books till I was 40 years of age, I started writing when I suffered a depression. Now I love reading and here I am writing blog posts, my point is that I am still the same person I always was it's just my experiences have shaped how I behave.
So if we take this thought to its.....
LOGICAL CONCLUSION
What we need to do is get people to have MORE experiences, teach them how to enjoy challenges, teach them how to question not how to answer, support their mistakes, and get them to experiment with life.
In other words get them to experience to understand and most importantly ENJOY this complex world we live in. If we can do that then being a TYPE of person wont be important as entrepreneurs know diversity is what leads innovation.