In her film, Heart of a Dog, Laurie Anderson responds to the passing of her pet dog and her partner Lou Reed through music and words that identify death as the ‘release of love’. It’s a touching film about powerful moments where our concept of life becomes clearer through death. As Anderson describes it, she ‘expected to feel sad and lost. But I felt the opposite (…) How to open yourself to the world. And really appreciate it.” (http://www.waldemar.tv/, May 2016)
I felt a little of
the same after the passing of my mother at the end of November last year. I was working with organisations in Australia
at the time, and found myself returning home with a different set of eyes. The latest news from the charity sector and
beyond left me with a sense of detachment, as though the things I cared for were
suddenly disassociated from their meaning. I thought it was just because I was
sad and lost too. But I wasn’t. I was starting to see from a stronger perspective.
‘Opened to the world,’
I experienced a shift in what had value. The ‘laws of the universe’ became more
relevant to me than knowing the latest funding campaign or innovation programme. Death sharpened my bullshit detector. Looking back on 20 years of working in the charity
sector, I found glaring fault-lines in the narrative of progress to ‘end youth
disadvantage and homelessness’, or whatever the current terminology is. As the stats keep reminding us that
everything from street homelessness to health inequality is on the rise, it’s
easy to feel that we are stuck between knowing what ought to be done, knowing
what was done before, and our frustration to make things happen now. I began to wonder if there was an opportunity
in that ‘stickiness’ to shift how our various assets work to create deeper change.
Let me explain. It is a popular belief that we ought to be more ‘mindful’ in how we balance the stresses of work with our life. What if
it isn’t just the individual self we should be looking at though? What if the organisational identities we ‘do
good’ through are themselves a type of being whose means of production, culture and character can be
directly associated with the causes they and we seek to address? Look at the way people in organisations are
supported, people work, people are paid, people talk about each other, how decisions
are made, how things get funded, and you will often find examples where the
values of doing good are opposite to their functioning. Does it matter? Absolutely.
It’s in these things that we end up sticking with the patterns we wish we
could transcend.
In former senior roles, I used to go along with the idea that the end could justify the
means. It meant turning a
blind eye to some of the more negative human and social ripples organisations
create around them. The complexities of
the system we operate through might force us to work in high stress ways; where
we have no time from one meeting, communication, bid and report to the next; where
we are constantly too busy doing ‘things’ to care; where we big up ourselves
over the significance of others: but that’s all part of the bullshit we have
got used to. Many of us end up cut off
from taking responsibility for the actual world we shape in the shadow of over busy inboxes,
work goals, business plans, strategic visions and meetings removed from the
importance of ‘the now’.
The significance is profound:
disadvantage and inequality can never be addressed until we know how to nurture
their opposite through the ways we choose to do things – including, in particular, how we work.
Organisations with power to do good have a double responsibility: to meet the
needs of the people they are meant to benefit, first and foremost; but in doing
so, to also create ways of working counter to the root causes of disadvantage
they are passionate about. From how people are managed, to how they are paid,
to where organisations work together, to what they do, and what they
communicate in the world. It’s all relevant as part of the ‘asset base’ that
defines what a moment is and what it can achieve. If we don’t change how these operate, we keep
our fingers on the repeat button of things that keep on limiting collective potential.
Brian Eno addressed
a similar theme in a recent interview with Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian
(23 Jan, 2017), where he outlined his interest as a musician in ‘how you make a
working society rather than a dysfunctional one like the one we live in at the
moment – by trying to make music in a new way.’
For Eno, that meant trying to move away from the hierarchical model of
an orchestra to embrace ‘the more egalitarian model of a folk or rock
band’. What does that difference mean
for social organisations and how they operate?
I don’t think it’s a
simple case of organisations seeking to do good by switching from one mode of
production to the next. Inequalities
abound in any structure which is not fully aware of itself. We need to begin what I see as a gentle 'storm' in our perceptions, to keep a closer check on where the people and systems
within a structure are, and by doing so make sure our assets are more ‘alive’
and ‘now’ in the moment we are in. The
summary questions below are starting points for how these conversations could be led by staff:
· S: Are you Sharing the moment with yourself, and
with others? Do you have time to be
aware of the world that is happening around you, to experience that with others
you are working with, and to share in your work with organisations who can both
benefit from you and benefit you?
· T: Are you Treasuring this moment? Are you focused on the needs and
possibilities that lie in the here and now, as well as the ‘future good’ of
tomorrow? What can be done today that
should be started right in front of you?
Do you talk about your beneficiaries as ‘now’ rather than just a
possible future?
· O: Are you able to Orientate the significance
of what is happening now with the past and future? Can you understand the
causes to your present, build upon learning in the past to accelerate decisions
and impact, and recognise potential future effects from current actions and
decisions? And can you juggle between
them? Are you able to see your past and current plans reflected in the present
you are working in?
· R: Are you willing to Revalue how you do
things, as well as what you do? Can you reflect on how you do things, their
consequences and relevance to your social mission, while staying attuned to
developing fairer approaches and processes?
·
M: Are you
prepared to measure in the Moment? Do you
have the means to recognise, learn from and feedback in the here and now with
those involved, rather than just at a removed distance later on? Is the
practice of change as clear as your theory?
We don’t have to experience death to share the same insights
from Laurie Anderson’s film. But we do have
to be honest enough to invest in experiencing the world with eyes wide open. It’s
a position I call being on the 'inspireside’of now - in a conscious space where
individuals and organisations can embrace the responsibility to do good better. Think you are too busy to get there? Think again.
