Life
is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
--Confucius
|
Some
Friends And I Started Talking
--by Margaret
Wheatley, syndicated from mindful.org,
Jan 07, 2014
Have we
become suspicious about anything that isn’t difficult? Margaret
Wheatley, author of Leadership
and the New Science, discusses our complex society and the
conversations that simplify everything.
Living a
simpler life has become a prevalent theme in the past several years. Ideas and
methods abound for how we might achieve a simpler life, ranging from how to
simplify day-to-day routines to how to decrease the demand for resources we
place on the planet.
I meet
many people who would like to simplify their lives, yet the world grows only
more complex. Complexity has taken over how we attempt to get things done in
organizations, communities and governments. We can’t seem to do anything simply
anymore. Making a decision, creating a plan, holding a meeting—all of these now
involve complex and time-consuming processes. A once-simple process, like
neighbourly conversation, has become a “technique,” an “inter-generational,
cross-cultural dialogue,” perhaps. We become exhausted by the intricacy of these
processes and frustrated by the lack of productive
outcomes.
As much
as we’d like to leave behind the impotence we experience with these processes,
it’s extremely difficult to reverse the movement toward complexity. As soon as a
simple process becomes a technique, it grows only more complex and difficult. It
never becomes simpler. It becomes the specialized knowledge of experts, and
everyone else becomes dependent on them. We forget that we already know how to
do simple things like thinking, planning and holding a conversation. Instead, we
become meek students of difficult methods.
In the
presence of so many specialized techniques for doing simple things, we’ve become
suspicious of anything that looks easy. And those of us who have technical
expertise are especially suspicious. I’ve seen myself pull back from simplicity
more than once because I realized I wouldn’t be needed any longer. These are
useful moments that force me to clarify what’s more important—my expert status
or making sure the work gets done well. (I haven’t always chosen the nobler
path.)
There
may be another reason why people hesitate to believe in simple solutions: it’s
always hard to acknowledge that we’ve wasted our time. If something’s so simple,
why have we invested so much time and money in learning a complicated method? We
stay invested in what’s complicated just because it took so long to learn
it.
But
simplicity has a powerful ally: common sense. If we reflect on our experience,
we notice that good solutions are always much simpler than we thought they’d
be. Everyone has had this experience, many times over. Scientists are taught to
seek the best solution using the rule of Occam’s Razor: when there’s a choice
between two possibilities, choose the simpler one. These simple solutions are
called “elegant” in science. The beauty of the universe expresses itself in
simplicity.
This
being true, people often laugh when they finally realize there’s a simple,
common sense solution to the problem. It’s a laugh of relief—and of recognition.
We remember all those other times we were surprised by simplicity. But I also
think we need to give ourselves credit for our struggles with complexity. Oliver
Wendell Holmes said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of
complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of
complexity.” We can laugh now because we’re on the other side of
complexity.
In my
own work, I’ve been advocating conversation as the means to restore hope for the
future. This is as simple as I can get. I’ve seen that there’s no more powerful
way to initiate significant change than to convene a conversation. When a
community of people discovers that they share a concern, change begins. There is
no power equal to a community discovering what it cares
about.
It’s
easy to observe this in our own lives, and also in recent history. Poland’s
Solidarity began with conversation—fewer than a dozen workers in a Gdansk
shipyard speaking to each other about their despair, their need for change and
their need for freedom. And in less than a month, Solidarity had grown to 9.5
million workers. There was no e-mail then, just people talking to each other
about their own struggles, and finding their needs were shared by millions of
fellow citizens. At the end of that month, they acted as one voice for change.
They shut down the country in a general strike.
Whenever
I read about new humanitarian relief efforts—some of which have earned the Nobel
Peace Prize—I find they are born from the power of conversation. Somewhere in
the description of how it all began is the phrase: “Some friends and I started
talking…”
It is
always like this. Real change begins with the simple act of people talking to
one another about what they care about. Did they notice a dangerous street
crossing near their child’s school? Cancer increasing in a neighbourhood? Deaths
caused by drunk drivers? It only takes two or three friends to notice that
they’re concerned about the same thing, and then the world begins to change.
Their first conversation spreads. Friends talk to friends. They talk to others,
and it grows and grows.
A
Canadian woman told me this story. She was returning to Vietnam to pick up her
second child, adopted from the same orphanage as her first child. She had seen
conditions there on her first visit two years earlier, and had vowed this time
to take medical supplies. “They needed Tylenol, not T-shirts or trinkets.” She
was expressing this to a friend one day, and the friend suggested that the most
useful medical thing she might take would be an incubator. She was surprised by
the suggestion (she’d been thinking bandages and pills), but she started making
phone calls, looking for an incubator. Many calls and weeks later, she had been
offered twelve incubators and enough pediatric medical supplies to fill four
40-foot shipping containers! From a casual conversation between two friends, she
and many others organized a medical relief program that continues to make a
significant difference in the lives of Vietnamese children. And it all began
when “some friends and I started talking.”
Stories
like this are plentiful. I can’t think of anything that’s given me more hope
recently than to observe how conversations in which we express our fears and
dreams can give birth to powerful actions that change lives and restore hope for
the future. It’s all very simple.
Be
The Change:
This
week try to simplify your life, and bring what you really care about to your
exchanges with others..
Margaret
Wheatley's new book is So Far From Home: Lost and Found in Our Brave
New World, published by Berrett Koehler. She is the author of six other books
and works globally as a speaker, teacher, and consultant.
