The Exercise of Imagination

Ursula Le Guin | Do You Believe The Change? | Factoids | Elsewhere and Elsewhen

Photo by Linus Nylund on Unsplash

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Quote of the Moment

The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are, because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary.

| Ursula Le Guin

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Do You Believe The Change?

It’s a constant in the work literature: anecdotes, surveys, and interviews are strongly canted toward the perspectives of management — or aspiring management — generally referred to as ‘leaders’.

I am not disparaging leadership or management when I say that much of that bias is not helpful.

Still, this insight from NOBL (the boutique management consulting firm) about change ambivalence focuses on an interesting conjecture.

I suggest you read it with Stowe’s-colored-glasses (see what I did there?), and as you read the following, try to replace ‘leader’ with ‘worker’, ‘person’, or people and the advice might hold more generally. After all, in an emergent organization, change can be initiated by everybody, not just those anointed as ‘leaders’, and ordinary people are just as likely to feel ambivalent about change.

The early stages of change trigger an enormous amount of ambivalence (i.e., conflicted feelings) not just across the organization, but also within leaders themselves. Yes, the very people who planned the change question it (oftentimes, enormously). If you’re a leader, you know this firsthand.

Moreover, the ambivalence is loudest in the early stages of change. On one hand, you’re beginning to feel the benefits of the change, which bring optimism and a genuine sense of possibility (“I never knew we could really work differently”). On the other hand, for the first time you have a sober perspective of how much work is ahead, how dysfunctional your current reality really is, and just how big the barriers might be. And on top of both, you feel increasing pressure to champion the change and perform for others as their leader. It’s no wonder why so many large-scale transformations fail at this stage. It’s not just that the organization bucks against the desired path, it’s that the leaders themselves struggle with the stress of it all and defect (walking away from either the change or the role itself). It makes one wonder how many transformations failed not because of the stated reasons (e.g. wrong idea, wrong time, wrong people) but because leaders suffered a crisis of confidence.

There’s other evidence that change ambivalence is widespread. Cloey Calahan looked into this through a bunch of surveys:

We dove into data from Capterra’s recent middle management survey, Gartner’s HR leaders’ priorities for 2024 report and ongoing research from McKinsey to better understand the state of middle managers today. 

82% of HR leaders agree that managers are not equipped to lead change, and 77% report that their employees are fatigued from all the change. 

Also according to Gartner, one in five wouldn’t be a manager if given the choice, which is part of why they’re not equipped to lead change when they don’t even feel passionate about being in their role in the first place.

“Managers are so critical to the success of every other priority that an organization has,” said Brent Cassell, vp, advisory for Gartner’s HR practice. “When I first saw the data, I was like wait a minute, managers are more important than recruiting in this economy, they’re more important than technology and to change management.”

So, as I suggested at the start, it's not just senior executives who are unequipped to lead change or even keep up with it. It’s everybody.

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Factoids

AI will eat freelance work first

Freelance work has changed since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, according to some data from Upwork. There’s a clear drop in writing and customer service gigs, but graphics and video work are still going strong.

| Azeem Azar

I laugh when I hear economists and work gurus who say AI is going to create more jobs than it will steal. As soon as AI becomes competent, business managers will employ it to the maximum extent possible, leaving those customer service, translation, and writing workers looking for new work. And no one will pay to train them. The only answer to slow this devastation is regulation or, in the absence of government action, more unions and more union opposition.

See Elsewhere, below, for more on this topic with Yuval Noah Harari and Betsey Stevenson.

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Carbon Removal

Texas could someday employ more people in carbon removal than it does today in oil and gas drilling.

A report Thursday from the Rhodium Group think tank found that under existing policy the U.S. could roll out enough direct air capture infrastructure to pull 84 million metric tons of CO2 from the air annually by 2035, up from close to zero today. Building and operating that infrastructure will likely create hundreds of thousands of jobs, the report concludes — especially in Texas, where the existing oil and gas industry is poised to play a major role in scaling up carbon removal and sequestration.

| Semafor

Maybe those unemployed writers, customer support staff, and translators can move to Texas.

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Who gets laid off first?

A new analysis of two million white-collar jobs found fully remote employees are laid off 35% more often than their peers who work in-office or hybrid roles.

| Business Insider via Dense Discovery

I wonder if AI was involved.

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Astrology is Bunk

A team led by MIT professor Jackson Lu [scientifically tested astrology and personality]. They recruited a massive sample—173,709 people. They correlated their zodiac signs with their scores on the Big Five personality traits. And they found zero correspondence.

That’s right… none. Knowing someone’s zodiac sign reveals nothing about their personality.

| Adam Grant

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Elsewhere and Elsewhen

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