Curating the external environment helps, but there is far more work to be done in ensuring the mind is free to think, imagine, and implement
When we walk into our workplaces every morning, it is not uncommon to mentally switch to a mode of automation. We greet colleagues without always registering their presence, while running in our head the checklist of things to accomplish in the day. By the time we have settled at our work desk, we have firmly put on our work-hat that moulds us into behaving in a way that is different from our mannerism at home or leisure. We have clearly left our ‘real selves’ at home, as we go about our work day at the office.
How did we reach a point where we agree to spend the larger part of the day behaving in a fashion that is not our authentic selvesIJ It is exhausting and helps neither the employee nor the organisation.
The process of acquiescence to this system probably starts in early childhood at school. Boxing young children of varying aptitudes and interests into a classroom of 40, to teach them all the same content in the same manner, is a sure-shot recipe for producing adults who are devoid of authenticity and programmed to think like their neigbour.
When a four-year-old is told to apply the colour of his crayons within the boundary lines of the drawing in his colour book, or that he needs to wear a uniform, walk in queue, and greet his teacher “good morning” without quite knowing the meaning of it, he is learning important lessons for life. A few years later, he is asked to learn by rote answers to questions, where instead he should have been taught to ask questions for answers he seeks. No matter where in the world — except the Scandinavian countries — education is well prepared to create an army of clones. It probably worked for the industrial era when we needed like-minded workers who would obey without questioning. But in the knowledge era, especially in a country like India that wants to establish itself as a knowledge economy, furnishing the economy with zombies will not work.
And then, one of the first things we are taught as a young adult is the concept of ‘work culture’. We are made to understand that we need to spend a large chunk of our day to earn our living. We are told that the socially accepted way to do so is by getting a ‘job’ (rather than be a sportsperson or artist, for instance), and dedicating our life towards adding one line at a time to our curriculum vitae.
We give the entire process a name — career. The interviews for jobs have a fairly standardised and expected set of questions — for instance, I have never come across an organisation that asks a candidate to draw or paint. If successful at the interview, our mentors advise us that the mantra for a successful career is to acutely understand the work culture of the organisation we are joining, and then adapt to it.
When star employees switch jobs, they are applauded at their stellar capability to unlearn all behaviour patterns imbibed to adapt to their previous organisation, and observe and correctly adapt their mannerisms to their new environment. Further more, there is an industry agnostic best-practice at large organisations for having human resource teams dedicated to establish a homogenised work culture and ensuring employees adhere to it. The system is thus in place for killing authenticity or, for that matter, the creativity of individuals at the workplace.
Amidst this factory-style attempt to generate output from individuals, there are a few organisations that have chosen to offer their employees a creative work space that they hope will allow employees to think freely. About four years ago, while visiting my brother at his offices in the technology company Google’s Zurich office, I remember being awed by the ‘activity rooms’ on each floor of the seven-storied office building. Every activity room had a special theme to it — the music room had every music instrument I knew placed there for us to play, the water park room had water slides and bath tubs, the jungle room had trees and tenting camps with conference phone facilities inside. My own office when I worked at the World Economic Forum in Geneva was highly creative. We had Star Wars-inspired standing pods lined up in open work spaces, and a Japanese garden as well as the lake side we could use in lieu of meeting rooms.
But such creative work spaces are not a novelty anymore. In fact, lately, it is a concept that some companies have taken to the extreme.
Yet I truly doubt that offices with whacky spaces really make employees creative. At best such office spaces may help in keeping the work force in the office for longer hours, rather than allowing it to be free. Young pre-school children have unbridled imaginations which reside in their mind, even when they are in the garage or in their play room. Curating the external environment helps, but there is far more work to be done in ensuring the mind is free to think, imagine, and implement with others new innovative plans.
This is why, I believe, that parents, educationists, and employers each on their part need to make an effort to shape individuals who are empowered to think freely. At the crux of it, we ourselves need to be less wary of the chance that we or other free-thinking people will upset the societal structure and destroy the system. Because there is no point restricting the mind while in an office playpen.
The writer is Chief Sustainability Officer for the group of companies, Jindal Steel and Power ltd.
She is a Global leadership Alumna of the World Economic Forum. miniya.chatterji@jindalsteel.com