I don’t believe in silver bullets. Especially when it comes to the complicated problem of building teams and organizations full of motivated and engaged individuals. Folks being folks everyone has different motivations, or to put it differently not everyone is a werewolf.
So, we do one of two things, either we ignore the engagement monster, and hope things turn out for the best or we grab a handful of our best weapons and do our best. Sometimes we get lucky and find a weapon or two that works most of the time, sometimes we don’t.
Because I don’t believe in silver bullets, long ago I decided the best approach was to be like Batman and build myself a utility belt of tools to tackle these sort of problems and as a result spend a lot of time listening to audiobooks and podcasts, and watching Ted talks and Master Classes.
While a Batman style utility belt is super cool, and useful, it’s not what makes Batman such a great crime fighter, what makes him great is, Batman knows Kung Fu. Over the years he was able to take the punches and kicks he’s learned, along with gadgets in his utility belt to come up with his own style of Kung Fu. As a result he’s been tackling all kinds of villains and monsters. He of course started with a preexisting form of kung fu to develop it. That’s what I’ve been searching for, a starter kung fu style to help me organize all the tips, tricks, and techniques I’ve learned over the years into a coherent, and usable form.
Batman, in the Christorpher Nolan timeline anyway, got his start training with the League of Shadows. If you aren’t up on your Batman lore, bad ass, in not misguided ninjas. I on the other hand got mine in a book about parenting. In the book Never Enough, Jennifer Breheny Wallace talks about how kids that are in highly competitive schools and as a result are laser focused on grades and achievements. As it turns out, that kind of life actually sucks for a kid’s long term mental health. It’s never win at all costs, it’s when at what costs?
Her solution wasn’t for kids to drop-out and be slackers though, her solution was instead of having the kids focus on grades and achievements, it was focusing on making sure the kids felt like they mattered. Sometimes it was parents shifting relationships, so the kids know that they were more than a GPA, and fancy college acceptance letters to their parents. Sometimes it was cutting the competition back, and making sure they had a set of friends that mattered to each other, and sometimes it was making sure some of their activities mattered to the community.
As I was listening to the book, I couldn’t help but think what a simple, and elegant framework to see the world through. When you boil it down at the end of this life, what anybody wants to say is they mattered, they made an impact, they were here. Some folks chase it through making money and having fancy things, it’s their way to keeping score. Others want to build things that last, while others chase this by attempting to make an impact on people’s lives. Whatever the form it comes back to wanting what they do to matter.
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