Shoot or Ill Stop
Did I get that backwards?
Unfortunately, the answer is that in many cases we act faster
than we think. We act before we deliberate on what could
perhaps be better courses of action.
The concept of slow
deliberation and contemplation has given way in much of our
culture to the desire to act fast
to call in the next 15
minutes! We want to get what we want, or think we want, with
the greatest possible speed.
We seize the Latin phrase
Carpe Diem and apply it by adding the word
fast to many of the actions we take or we value in society.
We eat or overeat at fast food restaurants. We abhor
waiting in lines in doctors offices and in banks or, God
forbid, the post office or DMV. We complain too quickly if we
do not get what we feel is our entitlement. We are fast to
blame and slower to accept personal responsibility and
accountability.
A first cousin to acting
without contemplation is a perceived inequity. I am a victim.
I whine. It is all because of what other people did or failed
to do, rather than what I did. Perceived inequity, by the
way, is one important characteristic of a threat assessment
related to enhanced risks of workplace violence. That behavior
can also be extended to violence and bullying in school yards
or in our own homes in the form of domestic abuse.
With the base desires in our
culture to have it now, have it my way, blame others and
whine incessantly when things dont go as I feel they should,
comes the availability of popular tools to help me get it
now!
Highly popular among them is
the omnipresence of lawyers. We are less willing than in prior
generations to resolve our differences by direct and positive
interactions in getting to know our neighbors, learning about
other cultures and other languages. Rather, it is easier
to dial 1-800-LAWSUIT. This might well explain why America
is not only the land of the free but is the home of the
attorney.
We have about 5 percent of
the worlds population but about 70 percent of the worlds
lawyers. Spend a quiet few minutes or a few hours
painstakingly thumbing through the many, many pages of lawyers
in the phone book in case you have any doubts.
When you watch state
legislators pass laws that say its okay not to wear a helmet
while riding a motorcycle, or that its okay to carry a gun in
the car at your workplace no matter what the employer feels is
proper on employer property, you gain additional ammunition,
if you will pardon the expression, into the kind of
decision-making that seems to fit the mold of act fast, worry
later about minor details such as long term consequences,
debt for the next generation and what might be needed for a
long-term civil society. Instead of a long-term vision
about what could be, we opt for a short-term, immediate
gratification model of what is.
Without getting into an
argument sure to lead to more arguments about the freedom to
have the wind blow through your hair as you head to the
pavement in a motorcycle spill or the right to keep and bear
arms to protect America in the parking lot of Disney World, it
is important to point out that making it easier to take
irrevocable actions in our lives is often not a good
thing.
In making decisions as
leaders in local government organizations, within families and
within communities, we also come to choose, consciously or
unconsciously, a style of decision-making which, if left
unattended, will tend by inertia toward action now rather than
more quiet deliberation.
The American leader is
praised for being a person of action rather than the quieter
person living at Waldens Pond or in Innisfree. In American
history, the default to action has served to shape the
character of the country and of its people. We have come out
well on the whole. In the 21st century, however, in the
way we work in business and governments, and the way we
interact in society, the HR Doctors experience suggests that
the balance between thinking before acting as opposed to
acting before thinking will have to be reconsidered and
readjusted.
The consequences of
continuing to act in certain ways involving our use of energy,
our style of eating, being sedentary rather than moving around
and in how we choose to use our precious life moments (e.g.,
watching television instead of participating in the lives of
our children and our spouses) will not be positive.
Contemplation and nurturing of long-term positive outcomes
becomes more important every day in our world. Nurturing is a
form of action whether we see it that way or not. Action
without serious contemplation in a complex society will create
disruption in the office, in the neighborhood and in the
world.
Phil Rosenberg The HR
Doctor www.hrdr.net
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