Friday 29 November 2019

The BS Free Workplaces Manifesto podcast and post

Listen directly to the podcast version of this post here.

According to some we live in a post-truth world.

For me personally I’m more in alignment with Chris Katurna who says "Social media invites us to make a clear, historic choice: To declare that Truth is dead — or to resurrect it."

Watch Chris’ great 10 minute TED talk about this.

One place I know from personal experience that we can stand for and live our truth is the workplace. You may have to just start with your team.

My BS Free workplaces manifesto may help you. I first wrote this in September 2013 and I have updated it this month. It’s all one one page. Here's the PDF version.

BS Free workplaces - a personal manifesto by Ian Berry

The greatest nonsense, the biggest load of codswallop, the BS that is permeating most workplaces is seeing and treating humans as numbers, overheads, expenses, resources, assets, or capital.

My reason for being is to change this because we are none of these things. We are, every single one of us, a one-of-a-kind human being. When we are treated as such we respond in magnificent ways.

Creating workplaces free of BS is often hard, emotionally draining, exhausting work. We encounter self-serving, and greedy folk who think life is all about them. We run into fear, mediocrity and massive resistance.

For these reasons I can’t say that I have loved every minute of my work since I began my quest in 1991.

What I do love, with an abiding passion, is the progress and the results. 

I particularly love the defining moments I observe every week, often unexpected, usually a surprise to the person, when their light goes on and they bring their best selves (their essence) to their work.

There is nothing on earth as magnificent as a human being fully alive. When we remove BS, people come alive.

In workplaces where people have come alive people feel valued, live values and deliver value. Numbers are seen for what they are, results, not reasons.

Every business should make a profit. There is nothing evil about money. How we make it and what we do with it is what matters.

Profit is not a reason though for being in business, rather a result of being good at business.

Our reason for being in business is about how we have personally chosen to serve humanity.

The trouble with BS about people is that we have become used to counting the wrong things. Millions of people feeling that they don’t count is the sad consequence.

At the heart of all the world’s troubles is seeing people as things, as means to an end, rather than seeing one-of-a-kind human beings that each of us is.

End the BS about people in your workplace and instead start seeing and bringing out the best in people, including yourself.

Do Your Work.

Be remarkable.
Ian

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