As much as I believe in the current and future potential of the people I work with, the clients I serve and the students I mentor, humans conform to systems whatever they are.  We can’t help it.  Once we encounter a system we are confronted with a choice:  conform or rebel.  Perhaps their is a nuanced approach (there always is) depending on the severity of the system, but at the extremes there are ultimately only two options over the long term – conform or rebel (in a good way).

I see it on a daily basis – whether it is a system to manage payments in a shop that is demanding and that reflects distrust or whether it is a system of control, like signing in and controlling people’s movement, we are confronted with systems that influence our lives.

Organisations seem to forget that systems are not neutral or passive, they are normative.  They carry the values of those who created them.  When putting a system in place it can empower individuals to make their own decisions, encourage cooperation, streamline the business or it can hamper progress, encourage dissent and destroy morale.

If you are a leader and have influence over the systems in your organisation, big or small, you have the power to enforce survival or help stimulate life.  Can you hear a small voice calling, becoming louder, questioning the faults of the system? You are better than this.
You can do better!
You can step out!
You have more potential!

How will you answer?
Softly first?
Then loudly?

Then what will you do?

Who will join you on your quest to create?

Go from survive to alive!