Where did the organisational soul go?

A Manifesto for Connectedness.

We have in some ways moved vast distances since the early work on scientific management of FW Taylor at the beginning of the 20th Century, and yet in so many ways the workplace is still obsessed with scientific artifice, something that has been nurtured by the information revolution. In Taylor’s day he was laying the ground for the segmentation of tasks so that the assembly line could become dominant. His work led to the car factories developed by Henry Ford. Today, that assembly line is increasingly either run by robots or by people barely earning the minimum wage.

For those of us in offices, we sit at desks communicating with each other by e-mail, and somewhere in all of this, the souls of individuals are lost. The communication at soul-level within organisations falls on deaf ears.

We are as close to Carl Jung’s observations now as we were when he referred to the “general neurosis of our age” as a “loss of soul”. Jung spoke of the maladies of the age being instances of a lack of spirituality. He was deeply suspicious of organisations as in his view they damage the individual. His comments seem to take on greater import as we find ourselves increasingly caught up in virtual worlds, distracting ourselves from overwhelming loneliness and isolation. The longer journeys to work, the fragmented nature of modern organisations, the loss of the extended family as a support mechanism, all contribute to this alienation. We see something of the ‘loss of soul’ in organisations as we walk through the entrance hall of buildings which betray the ‘mood’ which the people who work there absorb and reflect back.

We need to place greater emphasis on the need for connection. Our own search for meaning is worthless unless we realise the fundamental connectedness of us all. Organisations – which are the means by which to bring people together to achieve that which cannot be achieved in isolation – need to address the work of actualising. They need to support the quest for purpose, the sense making that we are engaged with throughout our lives.

Information technology can be a barrier to this, but it can also be an incredible conduit through which we can build communities, find connection and shared purpose. These can be and should be exciting times that we are living in. We need to take a longer view…

(November Challenge 14/31)

Also published on Medium.