These are the symptoms. Indicators, red flags, culture makers. If you have more than 5, you are in trouble. 6 to 10, it’s serious. 11-15 life threatening. More than 15, you need a big shake up, earthquake, shock, a battalion of emperor-with-no-clothes hunters, bubble punching at a scale. A revolution.
Resist shallowness. Life in the shallows is not worth living. We can do better than this. Resist. Work could be remarkable. Seriously. Get out of your Plato’s cave. Life is short.
Critical test:
- Innovation is catching up with everybody else in the world
- Group presentations are permanent after dinner speeches but served any time
- Panel discussions are a parade of platitudes in 10 min slots praised as profound contributions.
- External speakers are entertainment
- Discussions are monologues occasionally crossing each other
- Management talk is clichés + jargon + airport bookstore book
- Lives are calendars
- Continuous learning is watching a TED
- People develop severe back and neck pain of pandemic proportions by constantly looking up to the top leaders for approval, nodding, Oracle revelations or marching orders
- Teams are meetings
- Diversity is the number of women on the Board
- People refer to management as ‘they’
- Presidents drop the P
- Work-shops are word-shops (and occasionally war-shops)
- Mission statements are created by word permutation software
- PowerPoints have neither power nor points
- Critical thinking is asking for more information
- New Idea is one book
- Mediocrity is rewarded
- Not even members of the Leadership team can remember the list of values on the wall.
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