This is essentially the message of Sam Conniff Allende in his book Be More Pirate. It tells how modern-day “pirates”, people like you and me, reject some rules and create new ones, and can really make a difference. He explains everything by drawing parallels with what the real pirates did during the golden age of piracy in the Caribbean between 1650 and 1730. I invite you to watch one of his very relevant speeches in the following video.

Why rebel?

To rebel is first and foremost to offer alternatives. By refusing a situation, one questions its relevance, its raison d’être. One wonders or realizes who benefits from the situation. And one finds ways to make the system serve us, people, better.

Now, probably very few of you have dropped everything by mere rebelliousness. However, I know of several people who have built their careers on a simple feeling of revolt against a problem or situation that they thought was unacceptable, and they made it their main battle. I’m one of them.

But in this article, I’d like to talk about small revolts. Those we can do every day. Those that allow us to move forward or free us a little more when the structures in places won’t allow it. Small rebellions that push causes one step at a time.

What does it have to do with the world of work?

Why talk about this here? Because the workplace is an ideal battlefield for small, more or less harmless, but important, and meaningful acts of rebellion.

A lecturer, whose name I do not remember, once said that 100% of absurd regulations exist because of 4% of people who abuse the system. Difficult to check this statistic. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to believe that a majority of unnecessary corporate rules exist because of a history of a few dissidents who once crossed the line, tried to cheat, tried to manipulate the system to their advantage.

The rather sad result of all this is that 100% of employees must comply with these rules that were created because of a few negative troublemakers, who sometimes have left organizations years ago.

What I suggest is to become positive troublemakers to rebalance everything and change things for the common good.

Stirring up good trouble

The idea is obviously to get things to go forward. To create a reflection, to generate a discussion, to help highlight what is intolerable, what hinders us, what infantilizes us, and to question its relevance. And even better, to offer alternatives and new options better adapted to our realities. But often, it must be done quickly, because organizations tend to stifle popular initiatives. As my partner would say, you need to act faster than the immune system of your organization.

Acts of rebellion with the sole purpose of creating problems are not constructive. It’s all about stirring up good trouble. Let’s be idealistic and constructive rebels, not for the sole purpose of derailing the status quo, but for the realistic and reasonable purpose of taking ownership our work environment for the good of the company (and, of course, ours).

To inspire you, I found many examples of small acts of rebellion. I was able to identify patterns in the different ways that people did it. Here are 4 rebellious strategies I could find in these multiple examples:

• Highlighting the ridiculousness of a situation
• Turning the arms against the system
• Creating a situation that inspires reflection
• Realigning with your own values

11 stories of positive rebellions

These stories are not necessarily related to life at work, but they are all examples where people have created small rebellions that have allowed instigators to inspire rapid change, create important reflection opportunities, or to realign with their values.

Strategy 1 – Highlighting the ridiculousness of a situation

I often say that few organizations make the effort to looking at themselves in a mirror. It is easy to ignore situations when you have developed the reflex of looking the other way. Some people, however, take pleasure in putting a huge mirror in front of the eyes of organizations, often accompanied by a big neon sign that says “HEY EVERYONE, LOOK HERE”.

In short, highlighting the ridiculous removes any possibility of ignoring the situation for very long. As all eyes are turned towards the organization that faces ridicule, it must act quickly to save face.

1. Flowers in potholes

A resident of Brussels was fed up with the number of potholes he found in his town, which grew faster than they were repaired. The 29-year-old Anton Schuurmans, equipped with flowers, soil and a bottle of water, started planting flowers in potholes.

This act did not go unnoticed, as he explains that at least 1 of the potholes was repaired 2 days after planting a flower.

Mr. Schuurmans was not the only one to have had this idea, or he may have inspired others. This is a trend that has been picked up around the world since.

Furious cyclist plants flower display in gaping potholehttp://t.co/oRUgFWios8 pic.twitter.com/tFEe9Qy3n5

— Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) March 30, 2015

2. Phallic potholes

A joker who calls himself Wanksy, in honor of the British street artist Banksy, has decided to push the ridicule even further. Rather than planting flowers in potholes, Wanksy, armed with a can of washable paint, draws phallic forms around the potholes of his city, to highlight the ridiculousness of the situation.

Although a representative of the city of Manchester stated that obscene drawings would not speed up the repair of potholes, the majority of those that received the phallic treatment were repaired in less than two days!

Anonymous activist “Wanksy” gets potholes fixed by drawing giant penises around them: http://t.co/BKTkoEv0eA #Smart pic.twitter.com/7WoxWYIiD2

— Lauren O’Neil (@laurenonizzle) April 28, 2015

3. Secret ninja exit

To my dismay, I do not remember where I had heard this anecdote. I once read the story of an office where a huge hole remained unrepaired on the ceiling somewhere in a hallway.

An employee who was tired of seeing that this damage was not enough to make the building management company react simply decided to print a poster saying “Secret ninjas exit” and install it next to the hole.

The following week, the hole was repaired. And while I searched for photos, I saw that he was not the only one to make this little joke!

Strategy 2 – Turning the arms against the system

It is sometimes effective, sometimes not, very often satisfying. Organizations that are so rigid in the respect of their rules can sometimes get beaten at their own game. These small rebellions make it possible to feel that we are doing our part to change things. Sometimes a person is not enough, but a mass movement can make a huge difference.

4. The high price of unsolicited advertising

We all receive advertising by regular mail. Often these unsolicited advertisements include a pre-stamped return envelope. It is no longer a secret that it is possible to use these envelopes to return the advertisement to the company. The pre-stamped envelopes are charged to the companies from the moment they are processed in the mail. Many websites provide ways to return the mail to the sender so that they pay for their own ads.

If a pre-stamped envelope costs $ 1 to a business, and 1 million people send all the ads back to the company, their marketing campaign may cost them more than what been budgeted! That’s the cost of polluting people’s mailboxes!

If 10% of the population began to do this in a systematic way, it is a safe bet that this practice would disappear rather quickly.

Meta-hacking of advertisement in a bus stop

Here I am not talking about computer hacking, but a more interesting form of hacking, which consists of claiming ownership of a system and giving it back to citizens / users.

A citizen of London has simply decided to appropriate a part of his city, more precisely an advertising space located in a bus stop.

In this little “meta” act of rebellion, the person replaced an advertisement with a poster explaining how to hack a bus shelter advertisement. See the result.

Tremendous.#adhackmanifesto https://t.co/BhuFksXjrv

— Owen Williams 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺 (@OwsWills) April 22, 2019

This act of piracy seems to be an organized and growing initiative. It is even possible to download the instructions in PDF.

6. The restaurant with 1-star reviews

In 2014, a San Francisco-area restaurant owner named Davide Cerretini decided he was tired of being at the mercy of Yelp reviews. At the opening of his restaurant, he kept receiving calls from Yelp sales representatives, and when he refused to talk to them, he noticed that freshly received 5-star ratings were disappearing from his restaurant’s Yelp profile.

Being of Italian origin, Davide knew this is exactly how the mafia works and simply refused to be a victim of this kind of machination. It should be noted that Yelp categorically denies allegations of removal of good restaurant reviews and points out its algorithm.

Davide realized that Yelp was completely controlling his reputation. To thumb his nose at the situation, he started using Yelp’s data to turn the system against itself.

He created a newsletter in which he compiled the worst messages he received from the Yelp elite (which he called the Village Idiots). He also made a list of the silliest questions received on Yelp.

Eventually, Davide realized that he could very well live by not caring about his reputation on Yelp. “What if I removed their power from me by making the situation worse?”

One day, he put a sign in front of his store: “25% off for all those who give us a 1-star rating on Yelp“. (Later, this discount is raised to 50%).

He knew it was against Yelp’s rules, and that’s exactly what he wanted. And that was fine because at that time the Court of Appeals had just ruled that the manipulation of ratings and reviews by Yelp was a permissible practice and that it was a form of “hard bargaining”, not extortion.

The owners of small businesses being furious with this news, they found in Davide their hero. Davide has been visited by an avalanche of journalists, fellow owners, and supporters. The same day, he did as much business as in a regular month. He even had to ask for help and had to pizza dough in nearby businesses.

The brilliance of botto bistro, the worst-rated restaurant on Yelp @jillkrasny http://t.co/46abq8pSrk

— Inc. (@Inc) September 23, 2014

Strategy 3 – Creating a situation that inspires reflection

Sometimes, provoking reflection can be enough to become an act of rebellion. Many people, probably all of us, do a lot of things without asking the question, “Why are we doing this, again?” It becomes a reflex, and we quickly stop listening to our original suspicions.

7. The toy that’s neither pink nor blue

When it’s the birthday of my godson or my niece, I still have a lot of trouble being inspired to find a gift. In general, I show up a toy store, and I seek advice from an employee on site.

But as these children grow older, it’s hard to ignore the pattern according to which that girls’ toys are pink and boys’ toys are blue. I know people who are much more militant than me about this. For my part, I wonder: what does it mean, what is being passed on to children by reinforcing these gender patterns, what impact will that have, etc.?

So, to derail this pattern, when I ask for help to find a game, I only specify the age of the child, without saying whether it is a boy or a girl.

The first time it happened, and this surprised me, the employee really wasn’t sure how to approach this. He suddenly had to find a toy which first quality was to be educational. I had feedback, however, that my gifts were much more original and interesting since I was doing this. For this reason, every year, at birthdays and Christmas, I repeat the same thing, and I make an employee suffer a little in a toy store!

8. The right to bare arms

The British Columbia Legislature made headlines last March, since the Sergeant-at-Arms had repeatedly asked women to cover their arms in the corridors of the legislature on the pretext that it was illegal to be bare-armed. He simply affirmed that he was applying the regulation dating from 1980.

This intervention did not fail to create an outcry that found its way into social media, thanks to the hashtag #barearms. And it did not take more for women journalists and other employees to come to work with bare arms.

The initiative failed to get more than a reminder of the dress code, but the reflection went beyond the walls of the legislature and was appropriated by the public.

Do we look unprofessional to you? Women in the @BCLegislature are being told our bare arms are unprofessional, do not constitute proper business attire for the halls of the House #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/1lJSWngP34

— Shannon Waters (@sobittersosweet) March 28, 2019

9. Ginette’s dress code

This is the story of a non-rebellion that really, really needed to happen. My partner Maurice was the one to instigate it as he was involved with a client’s business, and it prompted a lot of reflections. He noticed that several people were wearing a funny outfit in the office: pajama bottoms and slippers, jogging pants and running shoes. When he asked around, he was told “Ah! That’s Ginette’s dress code. “

He dug to understand a little better. The dress code was dating back to the 1970s when very short skirts were fashionable. It turns out that an employee named Ginette really loved to wear the shortest skirts she could find and preferred to walk barefoot. It was highly inappropriate in this type of business, so the owner created a dress code ONLY because of Ginette:

• Obligation to wear shoes
• Obligation to have your legs covered

For 30 years, this regulation was in place for ONE SINGLE PERSON, who had not been in office for decades, and this regulation was abused at will, to the point where, instead of using their judgment, employees wore whatever piece of clothing that allowed them to check both of these criteria. Pajamas and slippers. Let’s be honest, they looked even more ridiculous than Ginette at the time.

It will have taken an external consultant to start wondering why they were following this obsolete regulation that wasn’t made for them, and to resume the habit of using their better judgment.

Strategy 4 – Realigning with your own values

Sometimes, our rebellious instinct shows up for no other reason than because our values are constantly trampled by the structures in place. Human beings have a need to feel aligned and in harmony with their values. When this need is constantly denied, it becomes more and more suffocating, like a plant that lacks sunlight.

10. The non-ethical corporation

In doing my research on small acts of rebellion, I found a rather interesting short story. An employee working for a company that once had very ethically questionable behaviors could not agree to pretend that nothing had happened.

Since the company’s lobby had computers with Internet access, this employee made it a habit go on every computer and load an article about the company’s offenses, and the way it tried to hide or smother the scandal.

Now, this employee is probably playing with fire but still continues to work for this company. But he is certainly a little more in tune with his values.

11. A simple denial of the status quo

Again, while doing my research on small rebellions, I found a very refreshing testimony of a person who acts simply according to his values, even though they seem to be contrary to what is socially acceptable or encouraged in his entourage.

His small acts of rebellion consist of trying to look after the interests of others. Whether it is to hold the door for someone or to ensure that their interests are represented in a conversation where they can not be present but that concerns them. He tries to be fair to those around him.

It may not be a rebellion strictly speaking, but in a world (or a country) where it is everyone for himself, this person likes to believe that by showing genuine compassion and empathy towards his peers, he rebels against a cultural movement that encourages self-centeredness, entitlement, and hatred.

What lessons can we learn from all this?

NOBODY IS COMING TO SAVE YOU!

If you want something, in life or at work, you will have to get it yourself. And it is not always effective or possible to do it by conventional means.

Are there small rebellions that would be safer than an overthrow? What can you do to highlight the ridiculousness of a situation? Can you turn the arms against a system that slows you down or infantilizes you? What small gesture can help you generate a reflection or realign with your values?

What unnecessary or outdated regulations could you challenge? How do you and your peers claim ownership of your work environment?

It’s time to put your imagination to good use and to put in check your ability to tolerate what gets in your way.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

Employee empowerment has the wind in its sails, but it also has certain limitations. Agency, however, goes much further in the development of your employees.

Empowerment

Definition of “Empowerment“
In the sphere of management and organizational theory, “empowerment” often refers loosely to processes for giving subordinates (or workers generally) greater discretion and resources: distributing control in order to better serve both customers and the interests of employing organizations.

Empowerment, according to Wikipedia

The concept of empowerment is not new, but I have mainly heard about it in the last 5 years. Companies, seeing that the command and control approach is equivalent to accompanying each employee towards the door one performance review at the time, changed their mind and began to think that giving more room for decisions and responsibilities to their employees could have a positive impact on their motivation and therefore their performance.

None of this is false. If we trust Daniel H. Pink’s works, intrinsic motivation is composed of three aspects: mastery, meaning, autonomy. It is this autonomy that is aimed at when a company or a manager take initiatives towards the empowerment of their employees.

The problem with empowerment

The great problem with empowerment is that this increase in discretion and decision-making power is granted to employees by a hierarchically superior force. A manager can choose to move forward with the empowerment of his employees, usually with the goal of increasing motivation, growth, and performance. Corporate empowerment is often an initiative of management, which is spread across various departments via a management and training structure.

That being said, what happens if a manager who is a big fan of empowerment leaves and is replaced by someone who is quite less benevolent? No more empowerment. The organization decides that it does not work? No more empowerment. The organization is bought by a multinational corporation that “does not believe in these things”? No more empowerment. And the fallout from these change of minds will be dangerous. One does not take back the freedom of motivated people without suffering the consequences.

In short, empowerment exists in a relationship of power. And the name says it. “I elect to give you more power.” I empower you. Captain David Marquet explains this problem very well in his book “Turn the Ship Around”, but through leader-follower relationships.

He argues that many leaders have the reflex of empowering their collaborators, but the consequence is that this further strengthens their own leader status, as well as the follower’s status. If the leader must be there, and must voluntarily and consciously confer more power to his followers, their empowerment is directly dependent on the will of the leader.

So, basically, empowerment consolidates, strengthens and maintains the status of followers of your peers, because they can not give themselves these powers. It will never turn them into natural leaders. Here lies the limit of the concept of empowerment in businesses.

Agency

Definition of “Agency”
In the social sciences and philosophy, agency is the faculty of action of a being; his ability to act on the world, things, beings, to transform or influence them. In sociology, agency is the capacity to act, as opposed to what the structure imposes.

Structure and Agency
In social sciences, there is an ongoing debate about the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behavior. Structures are sets of devices that influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. Agency is the ability of individuals to act independently of social structures and to freely make their own choice.

Agency and Structure and Agency, translated from French on Wikipedia

Agency is the ability of a person to make decisions and act on their free will, and to influence their immediate environment. It is more natural in some people, less in others, but it is something that one can work on and develop.

We can’t remove the agency of a person, unlike empowerment. You can certainly prevent someone from exercising agency, however, at our own peril, it would be like depriving a plant of air, water and sun. A person who takes a lot of initiatives and innovates shows agency. Limiting this person’s agency basically means turning him into a pawn, an executant.

Hierarchical and corporate structures are not always tolerant of people’s agency. As defined above, agency is the ability to act as opposed to a structure. But employees with a strong sense of agency will be those who stir good trouble. Those who question for the common good. Those who will go around or bend a few rules to create new ones, or bring value in a way no one would have ever imagined. Those who will take over part of the structure that does not work for them to improve or adapt it to their reality, resulting in the optimization of their team’s work and its efficiency. And all of this without asking permission.

Now, imagine an entire team that demonstrates an increased sense of agency, and that receives the research and development mandate in a company. The potential of such a team will be dangerous for the competition.

The advantages of agency according to GoPyrate

In our workshops, we like to tell the participants that we are there to help them develop their super powers. Because our goal is always to increase the agency of a team. The techniques taught are all meant to involve more the team in their own work as well as in business processes. 

This is also the reason why we push to use real cases that the team is (or has been) involved with. It helps ground the teachings their own realities. Every company is slightly different and, as trainers, we can’t cover every variant. But your own realities can. We don’t even adapt our teachings to your realities, but we help the team do it. That way they own what they learn a lot more, and their agency develops as their confidence with the material grows and as they can directly sees how all theses ideas relate to them in a very concrete fashion.

It’s all about growing their agency.

By capitalizing on agency development, teams become more autonomous, more engaged and more innovation-driven. They also learn to communicate more with management and become more involved with business goals instead of just executing orders.

You pay your experts quite a lot, better make sure that they can contribute to the best of their abilities.

Our training is very freeform. The first thing we’ll do will be a small retrospective: We look at what they tried so far and how did it go, what are the things that they’d like to improve at work, what are the greatest challenges. From that short session, we’ll have all the priorities of your team, and all the material we need to improve on what they learned as well as what new ideas to introduce.

That’s the key with our workshops : It’s all about you, your team, your company, your needs. 

It works well with engineers, but also with managers, salespeople, HR people, etc… Most of our clients are teams of managers.

Training a team takes time. In fact, it takes quite a lot of time outside the time we’re there. We’re just the tip of the iceberg. We aim to teach principles rather than hard techniques. We want people to understand how this work and what is the value for them, and then we let them experiment over weeks. That’s good for any company.

You need people that are curious, stimulated, and bent on improving. When the employees stop being alive, the company itself is moribund. Good training is stimulating and give them a jolt. 

If you’d like to know more about GoPyrate services, visit www.gopyrate.com

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

This post is a follow-up to “How to turn Purpose and Meaning into happiness”. If you haven’t yet, go check it out!

Meaning is an essential part of our lives. We can’t stay sane without it.

And yet, these days we tend to drown ourselves in noise rather than looking at the dearth of meaning that surrounds us. We are surrounded by meaningless work, done for meaningless organizations, and listening to politicians who’s discourse is utterly devoid of meaning. As our existence seems all too often to be meaningless, we drown ourselves in meaningless entertainment, meaningless escapes. 

“But Maurice,” I was recently told, “I have a family to feed with my meaningless work. I have no time left to find your stupid meaning, and even if I did, I’m too bummed out to do it.” Yes, yes, that’s my point exactly. 

Human beings are social creatures. We first organized in tight tribes where everyone has a part to play for the survival and prosperity of the group. Being an active, productive and meaningful part of a group is an essential part of what makes us human. 

This social organization allowed to prosper beyond what most animals can achieve. It also gave us free time to explore our world, discover new techniques, and imagine ways to apply them to push back the upper limit of our tribal organization. 

As our societies became larger, individuals lost their impact on the big picture. We created processes to run our sizeable social organization, and we elected ourselves as those processes’ servants, to maintain them and make sure they stayed on track. Because of that scale, our leaders became so removed from people’s lives that they ended up seeing humans as resources and created more processes to manage them. See where I’m going? 

In the post “Why is changing a company so difficult?”, I explain organizations, such as companies or societies, are complex distributed systems. When there’s a power imbalance in favor of the central system (the brain, who favor high-level information) over the local systems (the appendages, who gather and analyze tons of minute local data), a lot of speed of reaction, initiative, and useful information is lost. This means that when you have a boss who says what to do and executants who have to shut up and obey orders, information is lost, and the expertise of people is wasted. To keep the body analogy, think of a brain who decide to shut off all of the body’s sense because he’s the one in charge. 

This brings us to another issue that has been reinforcing the problem: we have gotten used to sell our time to an employer, rather than to sell the value of our output. Essentially, we have accepted indentured servitude in exchange for a paycheck. Liberating ourselves from the 9 to 5 grind isn’t easy. After all, we all need to eat, pay the bills and support our families. Finding understanding within the organizations that employ us isn’t easy either, merely because they “paid good money” for your time. 

This isn’t a simple or easy problem to solve. 

There are a few ways to make it easier to turn our Purpose into tangible Meaning. 

Find a job that aligns with your Purpose. 

Having a job which Purpose align precisely with yours is by far the simplest way to reach Purpose/Meaning alignment as your workdays are dedicated to your Purpose.

Many people have to make do with a full-time job to makes ends meet. They look for Work/Life Balance, or work that will leave you enough time to live and that is ready to make a concession for your life’s responsibilities (like a bit of remote work for when the kids need to stay home). Work/Life balance however, is a fallacy. We have one life, not two. The idea that we need to suffer for part of it only to make the other bearable and that the secret is finding the right balance is ridiculous. It’s like arguing that torture is good because it will just make you appreciate more all those times where you aren’t being tortured! When work is necessary, we shouldn’t suffer through it, period! Take on jobs that align with your Purpose.

Finding such a job, however, is far easier said than done. Few workplaces put any thought at all about creating meaningful jobs (other than for marketing purposes). Finding one where you will be able to apply your Purpose meaningfully is mostly a matter of luck. 

This situation might seem only natural at first. I’ve heard many company owners say that their employees’ happiness or fulfillment is none of their concern. This show a lack of perspective: happy, fulfilled employees are shown to be more engaged, more productive, more loyal and an overall much better value for an employer. Arguing that they are paid to be engaged, as productive as possible, loyal to a fault and the best value possible at all time no matter how they are treated is delusional at best. You get what you give. 

An increasing number of companies do realize their own interest in providing meaningful employment and treating people with respect. They don’t necessarily do it for the goodness of their hart either (although some do): the benefits are measurable and tangible. We can argue all day about the importance of doing it for the right reasons, but societal change takes time, and I’ll take any improvement I can get. 

If you want to create a meaningful job for your organization, merely ask yourself: how does this job have a positive impact on the world. If it does, then make sure to specify it in the job posting to get applicants who will be motivated by that impact. If it doesn’t, then it’s not meaningful. If you can’t find meaning in the jobs you need to be done, maybe it’s time to ask yourself what is the purpose and meaning of your company. 

Stop selling your time. Sell the value you produce instead, and make that value a product of your Purpose. 

This is a path favored by self-employed people, even if I believe that this should be the way we all should earn our income. 

An excellent first step is starting to see ourselves as an independent product or service providers. It means that you need to offer something of value, such as expertise, rather than just selling your time. Even if you are not an expert this can work: I know several teens who get their first proper job on nothing else than being reliable or diligent. 

This attitude can help you better understand your own value and better position yourself by knowing what differentiator you bring to the conversation. Model your offer (and resume) around that value your offer. Keep in mind that this value will evolve or change with time. The critical thing to remember is that this value needs to be tied to your Purpose or, if you haven’t found it yet, to the path where you think your Purpose will lie.

When you have determined the value you offer, don’t compromise it. See any employer as a client, not an owner. Choose your clients carefully, as their actions and stances will reflect on you. 

Always ask yourself how you can turn your offer into something that will not tie you to a 9 to 5 job, how to compress the value you deliver. For some, it will be evident, and they will embrace the self-employed (or entrepreneur) life from the get-go. For others, it will require a bit more exploration. 

The whole idea is to take control of the value you deliver, and earn your income in a way that will increase the dedication to your Meaning rather than diminishing it. 

This is the path I’ve chosen for myself. I’m a practical researcher of sorts. I test new organizational ideas by using my own companies (I risk my own money first), and then turn that experience into training and coaching for other companies who want to try those approaches. This allows me to earn a living while billing clients only a few days every month, dedicating the remainder of my time to my purpose: how to help people, organizations and institutions evolve their outlooks and dynamics to prosper and find Meaning during the changes brought by our new industrial and social revolutions.

Learn to live with less and use your free time for Meaningful purposes. 

I feel this one is a bit of a cop-out. It requires little change from what you currently are doing, but it does need from you to make sacrifices. 

The idea of living with fewer wants in order to need less and have more time to dedicate to your meaning is kinda cool… when it’s actually a choice made possible by having few commitments and responsibilities. It’s a great path when you are 20 something and unattached. This, however, isn’t the case for the rest of us. 

For some, it isn’t really about choice. Many will always opt to take care for family members who need its: a sick person, children or an elderly relative. It’s a calling, not really a choice. They know that sacrifice will be part of the game, but some things are more important than any sacrifice they’ll have to make. As a society, it is a shame that we don’t give more consideration and support for this kind of dedication. 

There is no easy answer here. As a society, we need to ask ourselves why do we need to work that much to avoid abject poverty, and how can we change that. When we find those solutions, even if they are not perfect, we will give solid, decent options both for people reducing their work time to search for Meaning, and for those who have found it and are now required to free their time. 

Remove the need for an income and dedicate yourself to your Purpose. 

This is the easiest way to achieve Purpose/meaning alignment. Just become rich and do whatever you want. Simple enough, right? 

Jokes aside, this is not entirely out of the realm of the possible. Building passive income streams, with mostly automated and/or delegated effort, is doable after you took the time to create them in the first place. It still not a reasonable path for most. 

For those who can consider it, try to align your Purpose with your passive income generation. It will take time, and end up as a mixture all the approaches listed above. For example, turning your Purpose into a communicable experience and then write books or creating online classes about it will allow you to pursue your Meaning while gradually increase passive income. 

I wish I’d have more advice about this path, but I still need to explore it myself. There’s a lot of literature for that out there, usually written by people who haven’t made it yet so, you know, grain of salt and all that. 

New models are needed

All of the paths I mentioned here are little more than duct-taped solutions to allow us to look for Meaning in a society that uses models that don’t see the need for it.

I harbor no illusion on that, but it doesn’t mean I have to accept it. Someone needs to come up with a better plan.

Hivernité, one of my companies, has a workgroup dedicated to coming up with new organizational models that will offer alternatives to paying for people’s time, have built-in approaches on creating meaningful positions, betting on employees growth as an investment, and getting rid of bullshit jobs and shit jobs alike. 

But we can’t do it alone. Everyone of us needs to start the discussion and make sure it doesn’t die before we have forged a better path. The is tangible value to finding one’s Meaning, regardless if we’re talking about a person, an organization or an institution. 

If you want to get involved in the discussion, if you are looking at how to bring meaning to your organization or if you just want to spread those ideas, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca

As human beings, in our current society, we tend to be a little lost.

Our world can be a bit dreadful, between running it into an ecological wall, treating workers as indentured servants, putting hateful liars in charge and looking at a bleak future.

It is no surprise that the QUEST FOR HAPPINESS is such a big business at the moment. Happiness is this fantastic stuff! Happiness is those amazing experiences! Happiness is within you, and I’ll show you how to reach it in my new book/course/seminar now on sale…!

This isn’t going a blog post where you’ll have to read a long, mostly pointless generic rambling tempting you with revealing the secret to happiness at the end, which turns out to be in your heart all along. Instead, I’ll start by giving you the “secret” right away:

Happiness is a byproduct of knowing one’s Purpose and applying it in a tangible way providing Meaning to one’s life. That’s it. 

Happiness is not a superior, mostly permanent state of being. It’s an emotion. It is fleeting, like all other intense emotion, because no one can hold any kind of fierce passion for very long. It would be exhausting and pointless. 

Happiness, and it’s less intense cousin contentment, are naturally occurring when we have a well-enough defined Purpose and Meaning. Knowing who we are, why we are here, and the impact we have on the world is crucial for a human. 

Why are Purpose and Meaning important to us?

My dog is happy every time I get home. Why? Because a dog is a social animal who needs its pack to socialize and feel secure. 

We humans aren’t that different. A bit more complex maybe. We are also social animals, but since we have constructed a society for ourselves, we feel the need the know our place in it. That’s our Purpose. 

We also have a deep need, so deep that it’s quite possibly genetic, to have an impact on the world around us. You can see it in babies: no baby is happier (not merely content, but deeply happy) than one who has willingly done something that has a visible impact on its environment. It could be as simple as pushing a toy and make it fall. If the movement can be repeated with a similar result, look at the expression of pure, unadulterated joy on the face of the baby. They have a “pleasure at being the cause.” Over a century ago, German psychologist Karl Groos linked that trait with our passion for games, little make-believe worlds where we can have a significant impact without real consequences. Our ability in impacting the world around us makes us real. That is the power of our individual existence, our Meaning. 

Finding your Purpose

“Why are we here?” An important philosophical question, and one loved by stoners everywhere. It is also the wrong question. Why are we here as a species? No reason. We are a transient life-form evolved from an earlier one and slowly evolving into something else. There is no Purpose for us as a species. We just happen to be here, now. 

“Why am I here?” is far more appropriate a question. Humans, as a species, is good at creating structures. Those structures allow us to build social groups far larger than the 150 people or so we are individually able to maintain meaningful relationships with. Grouped together, these structures are called “society,” and an individual role within it has always been important. Our Purpose is our contribution to society. We must have a role to play, a use, a function, within this “society,” or be branded a parasite and shunned.

Historically a much wider range of occupations was considered purposeful, from artisan to artist, from warriors to clergy, from child-rearer to wise old person. Even vagabonds could have Purpose, from bringing news from afar and temporary workforce where and when needed to social observation and espionage. 

These days, Purpose has mostly been redefined from “contributing to society” to “contributing to someone’s wealth and power.” Where once our role within society and often the main source of income was an easy access to a Purpose, for most people it has stopped playing the same role. There is no easy access to Purpose anymore, as we have stopped serving society itself as a form of employment. We serve companies, bureaucracies, or the interests of powerful individuals, all constructs rather than our fellow men.

Nowadays we find remarkable when people actually find their Purpose. It makes us dream. “How lucky they are,” we say. But anyone can find a purpose for oneself. Everyone should try to do so. 

My colleague Olivier Fortier has recently written two excellent articles on the subject of finding one’s Purpose (Part 1 and Part 2). The gist is that a Purpose is not about you but about others, it’s a calling that’s greater than you, and that you can find it at any age. 

Purpose is about others and is greater than us. This makes sense since it takes its origin in our function within society, all the way from the role we played in helping our hunter-gatherer tribe survive. The Purpose is our service to others, to the tribe, to our society. 

My own quest with Purpose started early when I was still in high school. I found out that I was happy when I helped friends shine. For most of my life, it was a small pleasure of mine: helping someone find their path, opening a new opportunity, giving a chance to someone who needs it, making someone realize their own potential and go for it. I called that unlocking people. Few things were more satisfying for me than that, so when a reached my point of no return with my career, I decided to turn that Purpose into my new career. Now a few years later, that Purpose has continued to grow and refine itself through practice, and I now set my eyes on a more significant challenge: unlocking societies. This isn’t an uncommon path for Purpose: it starts small, you realize how important it is for you and how it defines you, and you see it evolve over time. Some people have their Purpose clear as day from a young age. Others will only find it late in life.

Purpose is an essential ingredient for the happiness formula. As social creatures, we can’t really stand being useless, worthless. We need to belong, we need to be useful, we need a Purpose. 

Now, understand me well: If you merely find your Purpose then do nothing about it, it’s not happiness you will find. It’s misery. 

There is nothing worse than finally understanding who we are and letting that revelation and all that potential going to waste. You need to turn that Purpose into action, into something tangible. Only then can we find the second part of the happiness formula: Meaning. 

Creating Meaning

If Purpose is the answer to the question “Why am I here?”, then Meaning is the answer to “How can I matter?”. 

Meaning is how you let your mark on the world. It doesn’t have to be big, but it has to be there. It makes sure your life, well, meant something. We can find Meaning in several ways, but the practical application of our Purpose is a solid one.

Nowadays we, as a society, accepted a redefinition of accepted roles that really isn’t to our advantage. We define ourselves in large part by our jobs, which is similar enough to what it was before as to remain familiar, but change the “contribution to society” part by “increasing the wealth and prestige of someone else.” We exchanged the satisfaction of trading the product of our efforts and excellence to trading our time, basically selling ourselves as indentured servants! Our expertise and our output aren’t important anymore, but that our employers own us for the time they paid for is. This explains the rise of bullshit jobs, as brilliantly decried by David Graeber In his book “Bullshit jobs,” where people are stuck doing busywork utterly devoid of any value just because they have been bought for a certain amount of time. The Purpose in these jobs is empty, prevent us from creating Meaning for ourselves. 

Purpose without a way to apply it and use it to make a difference in the world around us leads to frustration and despair. Being aware of our calling while being stuck in a purposeless occupation or, if we’re luckier, a useful profession that merely doesn’t align with our Purpose, is nothing short of soul-grinding. The remedy is to apply our Purpose to something Meaningful. 

Making the switch toward a life of Meaning aligned with our Purpose isn’t always an easy one. This is especially true if your Purpose is about something that our current society doesn’t attach much value to. Helping the homeless isn’t known as a reliable path to a stable income. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it, it just means that you will need to find compromises with your time to help them while avoiding their predicament for yourself.

I have written a companion piece to this post discussing various ways to reclaiming enough time to dedicate to applying our Purpose and create Meaning. 

We can find Meaning in other ways than relying on our Purpose. Having children is one. Whether it’s your Purpose of not, any parent worth its salt will find Meaning in raising a child. It’s important. Children need you for survival, guidance, and care, both physical and emotional. But unless Purpose and Meaning are aligned, no source of Meaning will consistently deliver happiness. 

Meaning can be selfish (“But it means something to me”), but it’s actually much easier to find when it’s altruistic. Having other people recognize your meaning in the world is a fantastic feeling of accomplishment. 

Better humans for a better future

The QUEST FOR HAPPINESS starts making more sense at a society level when we realize that its components are not about ourselves, but about others. 

If you want to make the world a better place, the secret is by finding happiness, not for ourselves, but by becoming better versions of ourselves and improving the lives of our tribe and of society as a whole. In turn, doing just that will make that feeling of happiness a lasting one. 

Remember: Purpose + Meaning = Happiness, and a better society to boot. 

Like this piece? There’s a companion to it looking at ways to reclaim time to devote to turning our Purpose into Meaning. Go check it out!

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca

You hired talented people, and yet, no matter how exhaustive and precise your work orders are, they keep delivering results that are unexciting, limp, mediocre?

Have you thought that maybe your highly detailed work orders are what’s to blame? That a bit of vagueness, that breathing room is what your talented people need to deliver bottled awesomeness?

Unleashing creativity

In “change by design,” Tim Brown discuss that briefs handed down to designers. He argues that an exhausting list of granular requirements will more often than not result in a mediocre product that’s little more than a wrapping around the specifications. Instead, giving the design team as a set of goals and a few constraints as boundaries, then working with the team to refine them during the process, has in one example led to 350 concepts, more than 60 prototypes and 3 ideas brought to development.

In “Connected Company,” Dave Gray make a similar argument for using boundaries. His organizational model called Podularity use a platform, a boundary composed of constraints, support, and shared information, in which teams plug into. They have the freedom to tackle work and emerging situation as they see fit, as long as do so within the boundaries of the platform. This strategy allows the team to react faster and find more creative solutions since most of the decisional power reside in those closest to the situation.

In both cases, the idea is to give talented individuals the freedom to use their abilities in the best way possible, while making sure they don’t go too far off track.

Using such boundaries is an excellent way to foster intrinsic motivation within employees. In “Drive,” Daniel Pink explain that in most occupations, especially more creative ones, extrinsic motivation (i.e. carrots and sticks) end up being detrimental. Intrinsic motivation, based on a desire for mastery, autonomy, and purpose, creates engagement, a high level of satisfaction and creativity.

Creating the right kind of boundaries

The boundaries you create need to unlock creativity, not continue to hinder it using a different approach. While it is entirely possible to create boundaries so well defined that there’s little to no deviation from your expectation possible, such boundaries are not going to help you much.

The best boundaries allow breathing room. They should define the extent of your tolerance, a clear message not to go outside those bounds, but as long as the team stays inside, they are free to explore solutions.

Creating empowering boundaries is not very difficult. Start by asking yourself a few questions:

• In broad strokes, what do I want?
• In broad strokes, what I want to avoid?
• Why do I want or don’t want these things?
• What’s my budget?
• What’s my timeline?
• What data or reference material can I provide to the team?
• What data/reporting do I request from the team?

Answering those simple questions will open a discussion with the team. They will want some enlightenment, some guidance, some opinions on ideas. Keep in mind that you don’t need all the answers. “I don’t know. Show me something.” is an acceptable answer and a powerful one at that. Such an answer is a request for suggestions.

Boundaries must remain alive. They will change and evolve over the course of the project, through a back and forth between you and the team. Ideas get refined, constraints get refined. It is a necessity especially when there are several great concepts to choose from.

Keep them on track

Even teams used to boundaries can sometimes get lost in their explorations and creativity. But that possibility can be avoided by simple framing constraints.

Regularly requesting new prototypes or at least seeing the constant advances of a working and evolving solution will do the trick. Not only this will give a regular update on progress, but allow for discussing the solution(s) presented, progressively refining the boundaries.

Sometimes the team will struggle:

On more straightforward work, this situation will identify a flow problem. The use of a kanban board eases the identification of such flow issues early so you and the team can address them rapidly.

On creative endeavors, it can be trickier to identify struggling as progress is not necessarily linear. It can take a bit longer before realizing that the team is chasing its tail, or lost in too many possibilities. In the first case, identifying if any particular constraint is the problem will give you the information needed to provide additional support. In the second case, a team lost in the possibilities will benefit from an additional constraint or two to bring back focus.

Boundaries invigorates relationships

Working with boundaries rather than a full set of specifications will change your relation with your team. Depending on the nature of the work, it might mean for you to more involved or less involved than before, but the dynamic of the relationship will be different.

You will see genuine collaboration emerge with your team rather than a hierarchical rapport. You won’t simply be the person who assigns work, and then either micromanages the team or nearly ignore them. You will be a partner, who’s opinions and resources will be tapped by the team to provide you with what you need.

If this seems intimidating, maybe a workshop on modern leadership, like those from Management 3.0 (that we offer), would help. As work dynamics changes, leadership must evolve to address those changes better and make the most of these new relationships.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca