Why, I think, we are living through Purgatory?
Dear reader,
Thank you for staying with me.
These days, I am a bit disillusioned with the many methods we call, ‘work’. Some of my pieces reflect that disillusionment. But, I am an optimist. By writing these pieces I hope we are able to make some change, think about our existing practices and make them more harmonious.
This piece, is a take on the Divine Comedy and specifically Dante’s journey through purgatory (the in between world) - in between hell and heaven - a time I believe, we are now experiencing. My piece is somewhat literary, but mostly my version of the seven sins. Tell me what you think.
Nisha
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If you have read my previous piece on thinking short term vs. long term, you will realise we are moving too fast and chasing metrics that don’t matter (with a few exceptions). Especially startups that have raised venture capital (VC) investment (there are very few that have not). News of what is happening around us should not surprise you then. Take for example this piece I came across - as per a Hurun Research Institute and ASK Asset & Wealth Management report, only 17 of about 100+ Unicorns in India are profitable or news around layoffs that seems so customary, we do not even bat an eyelid, anymore. Approximately 11,000 employees have been laid off and it is predicted that 60,000 more will be (in India alone). These are not statistics, they are lives and livelihoods. People. Not machines.
This disturbs me and I cannot help but think of Dante’s Purgatorio (the second part of Divine Comedy that follows Inferno and precedes Paradiso). It is a poem that talks about the seven levels of suffering and spiritual growth associated with the seven deadly sins. For context, The Divine Comedy is considered the greatest works of world literature and is a narrative of Dante's travel through hell, purgatory and heaven. Purgatory is like the pathway to heaven, where the traveller repents their sins and seeks forgiveness. We, it seems, are currently living through this exact phenomenon. Having undergone a hellish experience with the pandemic and before we enter heaven and glorious times, we must repent. I do not mean it literally, but through our collective experiences. The optimist in me, wants to believe that this purge will help us transform into better versions of ourselves. But, like Dante, only the journey will determine our destination.
Illustration credits: Pinterest
Dante's seven sins to cross the mountain of purgatory were: wrath, envy, pride, sloth, lust, gluttony and greed. Let me try and rewrite the seven sins that we try to overcome during our times along with a possible path to Paradiso.
The sin of productivity: Measuring impact through productivity is counterintuitive. We are in the era of knowledge work and humans are complex beings. Earlier, productivity was a measure of output and time. But in our age, more time or output does not mean better work. Maybe 250 years back, it was - not today. Yet, our obsession for productivity continues. We want every second to count and if it doesn't we install apps that measure just about anything to give us instant gratification. Productivity, hustle and the burnout culture absolutely do not account for human emotions and hence are a sin of our times.
The path to heaven could be going the Bhutan way and measuring happiness, instead. The Gross Happiness Index, measures wellbeing and collective happiness and came into being approximately in the 1950s. The nine domains of Gross National Happiness (GNH) are psychological well-being, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience and living standards. Can our capitalist minds wrap around this concept and accept that life is much beyond ‘having 48 instead of 24 hours’ to work and be productive and more like ‘being productive is the outcome of being happy.’
The sin of workplace-wellbeing: Japan’s Okinawa Island is known as the island of longevity. Residents suffer from low levels of heart disease, cancer and dementia and enjoy strong local bonds. The key to Okinawans’ joy and good health is ikigai. In Japanese, iki means “to live” and gai means “reason.” In other words, your reason to live or your sense of “purpose.” Living with purpose — the ikigai lifestyle — is especially prominent in Okinawa, which comprises more than 150 islands in the East China Sea. It is not a concept unknown to us. Volumes of books and several TED Talks have covered ‘finding your ikigai’. However, we believe ikigai can only be found after retirement. No, heaven needn’t wait that long.
As Indians unfortunately we seek status and meaning through our work. Seeking pleasure and following our passions have never been thought of in conjunction with our work lives but either after we retire or as side projects. By extension, workplaces too commit the sin of wellbeing by promoting health and safety of their employees, while in reality, these initiatives merely tick the proverbial box. Employees continue to work 12-14 hours a day to derive status. Show me a single workplace that draws the boundary between work and personal hours or genuinely gives employees time offs for no reason. Overcoming the sin of wellbeing means promoting time for ourselves. Sounds like heaven?
The sin of over-hiring: In his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, Steve Jobs signed off with the now eternal axiom, ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’. A line he borrowed from The Whole Earth Catalog’s final issue, in the mid 1970’s. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message and a metaphor to pursue moonshots. Unfortunately, much like the sin of gluttony, staying hungry has now become an excuse for excess. Excessive hiring, excessive salaries. Sadly, gluttony only leads to excretion. Much like the one we are observing today. Globally.
Let’s go back to the Okinawans who live well beyond a hundred years - they have a concept called Hara hachi bu meaning “Eat until you’re 80% full. When the stomach is not entirely full, it has extra space. This allows it to perform the digestion process quicker. Similarly, companies can stay much focused if they avoided the sin of over-hiring and followed Hara hachi bu instead. Stay hungry, but not foolish?
The sin of measurement: OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) originated in Intel (by then CEO Andy Grove) in the 1970s. John Doerr, one of Google’s early investors and a current Board of Directors member, learned about OKRs from Andy Grove while at Intel. He went on to write the bestseller, ‘Measure What Matters’ and Google is its biggest exponent. OKRs are almost the singular metric every startup in the Valley follows and here is why I think this is a sin of measurement.
When goals are unrealistic, make different departments within the company compete and more than direction are a hindrance to true progress, the system has to be reconsidered. Goals should definitely be lofty, also evolutionary, but never ever-changing and purposefully hard to achieve. They do not account for two things 1) failures 2) experiments. They are cast in stone and do not provide for any kind of innovation or breathing space.
Before posing a suggestion, let me say two things. One, I am not against OKRs, I am just saying goals have to be more long-term and meaningful. Not mumbo-jumbo. Two, I am not obsessed with Japan (OK, maybe just a little).
Hoshin Kanri is a 7 step process of planning a company-wide strategy that is easily distributed to ensure its execution. It connects the long-term vision of top leadership with the projects implemented on the front line. Translated from Japanese, Hoshin Kanri means "compass management". A possible format of goal setting can be found in this image (disclaimer: take what is suitable to you and your business. I understand this cannot be the only method and there are many other more effective ones).
https://www.cascade.app/blog/hoshin-kanri-method
The sin of being overly-conscientious: Dante will perhaps not approve. But, having a conscience in the world (of work) today, is more sin than virtue. I can safely say this from experience. I will also stick my neck out to say that being overly-conscientious can sometimes lead to burnout. Being psychologically and emotionally invested in work is definitely a double edged sword one has to tread carefully. Striving for perfection can lead to anxiety and the feeling of being let down and after a point, it is only fair to question where to draw the boundaries. Someone recently said to me, ‘I envy the workers who are content doing the minimum acceptable, because they are probably happier (than us),’ and that line stayed with me. Perhaps doing just enough is enough?
Here, I do not want to offer solutions (or be judgemental). This is a ground for each of us to discover and introspect. It is afterall a matter of integrity, right and wrong (or our own definition of it) and the situation. The only bottomline? Doing the best for mental health should always come first.
The sin of templatised-leadership: Leadership cannot be learned in management school or twitter threads. One becomes a leader with experience and through failures. What really makes one a great leader? Taking people along. Unfortunately, the pandemic laid bare a gaping hole in global leadership. Being in a position of power does not equate to being a good leader; moreso when one has not even earned the spot. We witnessed haphazard leadership throughout the pandemic and I believe we have still not evolved. Whether political or corporate, leaders have become a templatised version of each other lacking original thought and intent. This is a sin; especially in times when the world needs a reset. Imagine what great leaders could have done if they were not reading twitter threads/ frameworks or leadership templates.
But, the bright side is that this is the easiest paradiso to achieve. Organisational psychologist and Wharton professor, Adam Grant has shared some leadership traits for an uncertain world. Thankfully, they can be personalised and account for human emotion rather than just ‘performance’ and ‘gains’.
Leaders, according to Grant must:
Embrace ‘better practices’ over ‘best practices’
Lead with humility
Read emotions like data
Think like a scientist
The crux of these traits recognise leaders as imperfect beings who are always learning. Leadership in paradise is always the beginning, never the end.
The sin of corporate purpose: Just like in the 1980s companies were challenged to have clear mission statements, so were they to articulate their purpose in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Taking from a Harvard Business Review article, ‘the role of corporations in the economy and broader society has many positive aspects, a risk is that speed, shortcuts and spin may take precedence over authentic action,’ and hence slowly it became imperative for companies to go beyond just mission or profit statements to define what their purpose/ vision or contribution to society would be.
A McKinsey and Co article states that only 7 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs believe their companies should “mainly focus on making profits and not be distracted by social goals". However, in a war room set up like some companies today, this statement can be questioned. Purpose, like love or care, is not something you talk about, it is something you demonstrate (especially when the going gets tough). Are we seeing it in action today? I will leave this to your imagination.
I’d rather say, paradise is when each is a master of their own intent and shows up as their most integral versions at work. In times like these just being respectful is good enough. Paradise, I strongly believe, is within us. Dante agrees too.
‘Clear was it then to me that everywhere
In Heaven is Paradise…’
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