We had a presentation at our weekly staff meeting from Emma Harrison today. I liked this a lot! Key messages:
- HR, finance and legal and the ‘forces of evil’! Keep them all in careful perspective
- Everyone is a leader, management is only a badge, don’t be afraid to lead
- Don’t be afraid to say so if you see something that you think isn’t right
Wonderfully iconoclastic streak in her philosophy! I’ve been reading her blog which I like a lot too. I’m a fan, definitely 🙂
I can well imagine, if you are one of the ‘forces of evil’, you might regard the presentation as trivial, a distraction from the serious issue of running a business. Maybe I would too, if I was running a business. But it seems to me what she’s really saying is that her measures of success are different – that the really important things are community, support, openness to growth and change, and just plain listening to one another. And that these things satisfy the deepest human needs to be loved, understood, accepted and forgiven. The problem with the forces of evil is that they tend to forget these qualities, or at least wrap them up in outputs, matrices and processes. The difficult balance is attaining these qualities AND making money. She’s perhaps lucky to have found something that offers both.
If you can tell me where the bit in italics is from, I’ll buy you a beer and listen. Very carefully 🙂