It’s a poems of two lines
‘Jamesian’
By Thom Gunn (1929 – 2004)
“Their relationship consisted
In discussing if it existed.”
That’s it.
I don’t need to remind you how many meetings, how many discussions, how much analysis of pros and cons, how much brainstorming are like the ‘discussing around the existence of the relationship’. But, do we have a strategy? Do we know our mission? Are we a team? All legitimate questions. As are the adolescent questions: Are we friends? More than friends? Or what are we?
Intellectual recycling is practiced across many organizations every day. Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) discovered the Law of Conservation of Mass. It says that matter can change form, mixtures can be made, but the total amount of mass remains the same. A more popular version says: Matter is neither created nor destroyed; only converted.
Being in the mode of “Their relationship consisted in discussing if it existed’ ensures that recycling of ideas and of issues is permanent. It’s our Management Law of Conservation of Irrelevant Topics.
Incidentally, something that Lavoisier, the father or modern chemistry, did not managed to conserve was his head. He was guillotined in Paris at the age of 50 during the French Revolution.