December 25, 1914 (Src 1) – the guns become silent. German soldiers leave their trenches and cross no-man’s land, calling out “Merry Christmas” in the languages of their enemy. They are unarmed. The Allied soldiers leave their trenches and shake hands with the enemy. They exchange presents – cigarettes and plum puddings. They sing Christmas carols. Some play a game of soccer.
In the worst of times, people and humanity have come together.
2015 is declared the best year in history to be a human being – violence, famine, disease, poverty, and child mortality are abating, civil and political rights and education are on the rise (Src 2).
December 19, 2016 – a truck is driven into a Berlin Christmas market. Twelve people die and 56 are injured by a rampage of metal devoted to an ISIL mercenary….a believer that there is no mercy in a war of cultures, religions, and geopolitics (to greatly simplify).
In the best of times, people and humanity have opted to tear each other limb from limb.
A battery has polarity. It has a plus sign – a positive. It has a minus sign – a negative. There is no energy until these two electrodes are connected into a circuit via chemical reactions with the electrolyte (the middle of the battery). I joke that there is nothing so opposed in its happiness and sadness as a lost and found box in a school. You get the idea; a catalyst creates the meeting ground that generates energy and solves problems.
Unfortunately this isn’t the way too much of today’s politics, organizational decision making – and world – works. Too many people are believing what they want to, closing minds to different perspectives, and intolerant. At the decision making table it too often translates to wanting 100% of a personal or political belief and not budging unless the 100% is achieved. On the global stage it results in outright conflict.
In the Town of Okotoks where I live, last year’s big community debate was about mandatory introduction of curbside composting bins. At the time, those who wanted them believed in building on the community’s environmental track record. Those who didn’t want them didn’t want to pay the additional cost. At a public meeting, the polarity expressed itself, with a publicized incident described as one person telling another expressing an opinion to “shut up.”
Face to face, conflict is harder. But it has become an easier path to travel as we continue to embolden ourselves with the technology around us and the anonymity of expression in our midst. Unchecked, lacking the beautifully messy back and forth of contact with real people, armed with everything from fake news to focus on only reading or associating with our own belief system, we have split into social and cultural front lines. We lob insults back and forth. How easy it is in the tinderbox for the things being lobbed to escalate into things much more dangerous.
There’s no way to romance our behaviour back to a Rockwell painting of gentle light and thoughtful thoughts exchanged around the fire. We have to forge a new path forward in the scrum of today’s complexity.
I say we start small, with one catalytic, attitudinal flip of the switch. Imagine if you could get 80% of what you want with much less battle – much less angst – and in so doing build the organizational dynamic to continue to make decisions that solve problems and elevate your mission. What if you or your organization stuck to solving problems by gathering people to accomplish one core mantra: negotiate pragmatic solutions?
We can. It’s called compromise – the middle ground.
A solution or an initiative may not be perfect, but nothing ever is. You don’t have to agree with all of it; 80% is pretty good. Add up a bunch of 80%’s and you have real progress that matters to people. Give people the deeper “why” you are doing something, and make progress on that pathway. Anything can be changed if it’s not working great. Too many have it in their heads that solutions needs to be immediately perfect. Progress is typically incremental.
If you simply want 100% of what you want, 0% gets done because humanity expresses its opinion and desires diversely.
Doug Griffiths talks about “lines in the sand” (Src 3) – the artificial construct of geographic boundaries, and boundaries in the mind. They are only that….sand. We can reach across those lines and build a better future in the middle ground.
1 Src: http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/christmas-truce-of-1914
2 Src: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/good-news-in-2015/421200/