Something in the water
This week I have started reading Gabor Matē's latest book The Myth of Normal. Like all of the best non-fiction books it is making my mind fizz and sending me off on voyages of discovery well beyond its pages.
He shares a brief extract from the late David Foster Wallace's 2005 Commencement Address at Kenyon College in which he describes how two young fish cross aquatic paths with an elder of their species, who cordially greets them with "Morning boys. How's the water?'. The two young fish swim on for a bit until one turns to the other and says "What the hell is water?'.
The point Wallace wanted to leave with his audience was that the most 'obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about'.
It seems to me that is true within all of the systems in which we live our lives: our families, our teams, our organisations, our national cultures and even our global ideologies. It is fiendishly difficult to see the water we are swimming in.
Put another way, our histories, upbringing, education, social conditioning etc create a belief system - an invisible lens through which we experience life and make meaning from it. As Anais Nin said "we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are'.
Foster Wallace is asking us to become a little more humble and curious - to become more aware of our 'noble certainties'. He suggests the work of becoming a self-aware, grown-up person is "learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience".
We can choose to stay in our heads, rehearsing the same comfortable narratives or as Roald Dahl encourages we can "watch with glittering eyes the whole world".
At an organisational level there are important leadership implications here. Think of organisation's culture as the water - the health of which determines the health and sustainability of the entire ecosystem. And when I talk about culture in this context I don't just mean how people treat each other - as important as that is. I mean the entire belief system of the place - the frames of reference used, often sub-consciously, to make decisions, execute strategy and evaluate performance.
The problem is that as Professor Peter HAWKINS says 'Culture is what you stop noticing after 3 months working somewhere'.
In a rapidly changing world leaders need to become highly adept at noticing the water they are swimming in...paying attention to the eco-system in which they are operating, both within the organisation itself and in their wider stakeholder world. It is not easy. It takes discipline and focus. Listening, powerful questions and robust dialogue are vital. And perhaps some team coaching too 😊
I attach the full transcript David Foster Wallace speech. It is wonderful, thought-provoking and worth a proper 'glittering-eyes' read. Enjoy
https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/this-is-water-by-david-foster-wallace