A friend spent most of his time practicing karate.
One night he left a movie theater and walked down a dark street
toward his car. A hand came out of the shadows and grabbed his
shoulder. He turned and broke his assailant’s neck with a single
blow.
Except … it wasn’t an assailant. It was a friend trying to tap
him on the shoulder and say hello.
“You better be sure,” he said, “that you’re practicing what you
want to do, because when you don’t have time to reflect, what you
practice is what you do.”
Most of us practice what is rewarded and reinforced by our
organizational cultures. Many of those behaviors are a direct
result of leadership. CEOs often replicate their families of
origin in their companies. The way the CEO compensates for the
family’s flaws become blind spots in the corporate culture.
Years ago, a friend returned from the Viet Nam War. A language
specialist, he spent thirty days at a time alone in the jungle.
When someone needed to be interrogated, he was called by radio
and told where to show up.
He learned to trust no one but himself.
When he returned home, he tried to live with his wife again, but
had forgotten how. When a twig snapped on a walk in the woods, he
hit the ground. The enemy was everywhere.
“That’s my boss,” said a lawyer’s assistant. “He’s paid to win at
any cost. So he sees us — his staff — as people to defeat.”
Like writing and printing, electronic media initially create
greater distance between us, but also provide the means of
bridging that distance. Like this note.
Community is layered or nested like Chinese boxes, from the here-
and-now of CubicleLand to the digital world of virtual space. We
need it all to practice how to be human beings, using each other
as training wheels, learning how to ride.
