Compliance & Culture Newsletter

Although booksellers might label it a New Age/self-help book, The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace, by Don Miguel Ruiz, makes some powerful points that I believe apply to the workplace. Ruiz cautions that since birth we have been fed a never-ending series of “stories,” many of which are based on lies. Because “we want to believe,” and thus “own” these stories, we also end up owning the lies that come with them.

For example, one of the stories running around your workplace might be that work means drudgery. This is based on the lie that we somehow leave our souls behind when we show up to work. What if the story were otherwise? If we focused our attention on our souls when we did our work, how could it possibly be drudgery (even if we were forced to do the same thing, over and over again, day after day)? In fact, millions of people worldwide who do the same thing over and over again find the “dharma” in it. They are “present” when doing their work; they relate to it and to those around them. Like Cool Hand Luke and his fellow chain gang members, we choose to make our work drudgery — or otherwise.

One reason that Service Master has become the world’s largest janitorial service is because they encourage people to bring their soul to work. They generated a new “story” and provide service with a capital “S.” As Martin Luther King stated, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” Go to http://www.servicemasterclean.com/ut/aboutus.asp and you’ll see what I mean.

What are the stories and attendant lies circulating around your workplace or the work you perform? That the bosses don’t care? That the salespeople are manipulative? That the only people we can find to do this line of work are losers? That you need to be a real jerk to be a litigator? That only women can be good nurses or men good forklift operators? What if we questioned these often silent belief systems and painted a different story? Suppose that we became artists with a new awareness?

To avoid the trap of “stories” in our personal lives (and, by extension, in our career and working environment) The Voice of Knowledge recommends a two-step approach:

First, don’t believe your own lies about who you should be and what you should be doing. Begin to accept yourself for who you are and what you are doing. Fear no judgment except that of a higher power.
Second, don’t believe anything that anyone else says, either! They’re just projecting their lies onto you. When you don’t live up to their “story,” it causes a dissonance that makes things “feel unfair.” As a result, they’ll begin to act as victims and blame you for their circumstances or (even worse) become hostile to you and justify any harm that they cause.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that somebody working for you is performing below par. Begin by questioning this assumption. Perhaps they’re performing up to par — theirs, not yours! Break All The Rules and other recent management books warn us not to project onto others who we think they are and what they’re capable of. A savvy manager needs to get clear about who they are and perhaps even test and assess their skills and personalities. For example, you might want your secretary to perform just as well as the previous one. But if their typing skill set isn’t the same, projecting your image onto them all day long doesn’t mean that they’ll perform up to your standards.

As we move forward, many of our assumptions, stories, and lies will come under intense scrutiny. The organizations and individuals that survive will be those stories.