Scroll down and see this week's Balloon - "Thirty Trillion Occupants"

Welcome

We'd like to invite you to help us in creating a humane workplace.

Each week we feature a balloon. This week? "Thirty Trillion Occupants" from the AzaLearning Newsletter

You can grab a copy of Humanity@Work right here

About Us

Scientific Management was a movement that flourished during the previous turn of the century. Though the idea of efficiency seems sensible enough, it spawned the contagion of people-as-things. Cogs. Replaceable parts. Clinical model profiles. Work cubicles. Windowless offices and schools. Maybe it’s time we revisited the bottom line. If that line crushes any part of our emotional and spiritual well-being, we need to generate a different work. When onboarding new employees, why not ask ‘what can we do?’ rather than instructing ‘here’s what you’ll do’. And we now have the data to support the value of engaging humanity at work.

Here are questions we asked ourselves, as well as lots of other folks, that generated this project:

What about work is most important?

Money? Engagement? Dysfunction? Pain? Misunderstanding? Servitude? Satisfaction? Happiness? (Self)Respect? Retirement (this got the most laughs)? It seems like the work rules include a formula that too often stifles our spirit and our sense of community.

Who says? Is there some grand commandment that sets the rules for work? Well, Yes and No. We've been operating under manacles generated by the motors of efficiency, profit, and power. Barry Schwartz, one of our contributors, opens some possibilities in his book, Why We Work:

" Forty years ago, the distinguished anthropologist Clifford Geertz said the human beings are 'unfinished animals.' What he meant is that we have a human nature that is very much the product of the society that surrounds us. That human nature is more created than discovered. We 'design' human nature by designing the institutions within which people live. So we must ask ourselves just what kind of human nature we want to help design." (p. 9)

So that leads us to - - - If we want to change the pain and gain formula about work so that we can move toward something better, we can be very, very clear about what it is now and what it could be. Let's do that.

How about if work felt more like purpose and less like a sentence?

This week's balloon? "Thirty Trillion Occupants"

Thirty trillion occupants

Bill Bryson is a marvelous writer. And a blazingly curious thinker. The Body: A Guide for Occupants, has kept me from sleep more than one evening, as has all of his work. Here's one of his nuggets: It seems that the human body contains about 30,000,000,000,000 living cells. That sounded like a lot to me so I tried counting to check his math. I could only get up to about 250 when I lost track and had to start again, so I'll trust his research.

Though there are misfires and miscommunication from time to time, and a continuous, mind-boggling turnover of personnel every second, these thirty trillion cells, this community, works through what I like to call a declaration of interdependence. Liberal cells don't hate conservative cells. Red blood cells and white blood cells may or may not be fond of each other and go to soccer games together, but when it comes to survival, it's we, not them.

Affiliation

And this is a forced affiliation, btw. As far as I know, cells don't get to say, "I'd rather be part of that body down the street, or "I'm not comfortable in a Swedish liver; could I please emigrate to a liver from Sri Lanka?" When we choose an affiliation, e.g. a spouse (for most of us, anyhow), we may have a difference sense of attachment, but the need for interdependence is no less. By the way, affiliate comes from a Latin word meaning, 'adopted as a son.' We work together better when we connect as if we were family. Functional Family.

Breakdown and the pathogen

The homeostasis of our bodily systems faces lots of challenges. Everything from too much pizza to infection upsets the community. One of the most insidious of these upsets is when our immune system's ID process goes haywire - autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. And Lupus. The sentinels of our body that attack invaders instead attack other members of the community. Instead of affiliation, we experience a civil war.

The jury is out on the cause of autoimmune disease. There seems to be a collision of genetic and environmental factors that triggers this implosion of community. So far, no one has isolated a pathogen - a virus, bacteria or protozoan, for instance - that causes it. We do know, with certainty, what causes the social version.

The pathogen that causes socioautoimmune disease is the sum of all of us who turn away. Away from possibility. Away from empathy. Away from the human family. We infect the community of humanity when we abandon the inoculations of common sense, compassion, and courage. When we would rather run from the resource of our differences and substitute "Them" for "Us."

The antidote for inflammation

When I feel the Shingles-like itch of resentment cropping up, I get to ask myself a question: "Who am I choosing to become that I fan my fear by pointing it at other people?"

It takes courage to face our fears. We can take that tiny bit of emotional inflammation upon ourselves. We can treat it with acceptance and compassion. We then carry the antidote: forgiveness. It must take root within first, then be shared with every cell—every person. Resentment inflames, forgiveness heals.

Please stop by and give the back2different podcast a listen. It's totally pro bono and carried on Buzzsprout, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Stitcher, Pandora, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Pocket Casts, Deezer, Listen Notes, and Podcast Index.

One more pitch, also a pro bono enterprise, any proceeds from which benefit Doctors Without Borders: Humanity@Workfeatures many voices from around the world in conversation about improving this thing we call Work.

This is already fun and will continue:

We have published Humanity@Work , bringing in perspectives from all over the world. We will be focusing on changing the way we think of, imagine, and show up for work. We are seeking exciting contributors with new ideas, ANY FORMAT. The foundation is an ongoing project, the book a milestone, not an end point. We currently have art, music, videos, research articles, blogs, podcasts, animations and cartoons.

If you have an idea, an insight, a brainstorm, a story, we'd love to hear from you. This project is ongoing - anything that can add to all of our work journey so that the formula of work = hell with pay can start to disappear.