I think I’ll leave this one to the great poet Mike Tyson who once said:
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
In this famous quote Tyson wittily points to the fultility of pre-conceived plans in the face of the unexpected. This also reminds me of the Yiddish saying… “when man plans, God laughs”.
Rather than relying on the misguided notion that leaders have the God-like ability to strategically plan for the future, Frank Barrett points out in his marvellous book Yes to the Mess that it is in the context of the unknown… “even crises, that learning comes most alive. When there’s a breakdown, managers have to do what jazz players yearn to do—abandon routines and respond in the moment.” For Barrett, it is in these circumstances that leaders have to “respond from their gut, sometimes discovering skills they never knew they had and solutions they had never previously imagined.”
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Published by gohbyname
I am a ‘People Practitioner’ who has, over the years, been swept up by the tidal wave of change that has seen my profession go from being called Manpower Management to Personnel Management to Human Resource Management, and now back, well sort of… to Systemic People Management. I came up with the last phrase because I find myself increasingly uncomfortable with working within the confines of the ubiquitous neo-liberal approach to categorising and organising people. I believe that people are people, not merely assets, human capital or resources. While we do find fulfilment from PRODUCTivity, we are ultimately human beings, not human doings. I would like to transcend who we have become and becoming in a marketized, monetarised world and leave the corporatist worldview that reminds me so much of the allegory of Plato’s Cave.
I love God, my family, playing guitar, following Arsenal, travelling and taking and editing photos. This website is a celebration of all these things and more.
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