World vs. work
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the world is just a bit, well, bonkers at the minute. Not a day seems to go by where I don’t open the news app on my phone and find myself despairing of all humanity.
These stories often make us question who we are, what our purpose is, and we inevitably look to others for answers or help.
This inevitably affects how we show up for work. We simply can’t divorce the social culture within which we live, from the working environment.
Some companies have tried to do just that. Banning talk of politics, religion etc. from messaging channels, yet all this does is cause antagonism and makes people question what the organisation truly stands for.
The social culture in which we live is one of the most unstable factors affecting the way that work gets done. It’s mostly dominated by religion and politics. These two factors inform our morals, behaviours, rituals and the policies that dictate how we live our lives.
Our social culture is also shaped by technology, literature, music and movies. The term popular culture, refers to the set of practices, beliefs, artistic expressions, and objects that are widely shared, accepted, and popular within a society at a given time. These are the things that we talk about in work.
‘Have you read the new Thomas Harris book?’; ‘Have you watched the last series of Stranger Things?’; ‘Have you seen the new Stewart Lee show yet?’ and so on.
We group the stories and artefacts that shape our social culture into blocks of years. This provides us with the ‘generations’ that we are used to talking about. Each has its own social culture context, language and influences. And each generation thinks that theirs is the best!
If we truly want to understand the way that we work, we can’t ignore what’s happening in our world. It shapes how we think, behave and collaborate. It’s not as easy as just defining a ‘one team’ culture in a head office and telling everyone about it, because everyone lives it differently.
When those who have responsibility for building day-to-day working culture understand this context, not only can they build a set of skills that can have a positive impact on the way people feel about themselves and the work that needs to be done; they also gain a set of skills that can change the way they live their lives.
Whilst it might be easy to think about a separation between life and work, the two will always be intertwined.
You can read more about this in my whitepaper which you can download directly from the link below:
https://bit.ly/3LV9RZb
