Umair Haque writes about better organizations. I’ve really enjoyed Umair’s writings on medium, I suggest you check him out.
If all people are there to do is be cogs on assembly lines, then the only goal of an organization is to control their every action, thought, and behaviour. And fear is humankind’s most potent tool of control. If you can make someone afraid — of losing their livelihood, purpose, dignity, relationships — then of course they will be clay in your hands.
Our challenge today is building systems that liberate people. Really free them to realize their truest, noblest, highest selves, their timeless and enduring qualities. Unless we can build such systems, we have little hope of solving the world’s great problems. Because those problems — inequality, climate change, stagnation, indignity, and so on — depend not just on the small things love unlocks, curiosity, creativity, empathy, but also on the big ones — a sense that every moment matters, that destiny is something to be taken in one’s hands and molded, that each life holds uncountable possibilities, that every action resounds with urgency and brims over with responsibility, too.
Imagine if our organizations did that. Really cared for well-being, elevating and expanding it. Then they would have to do what we all are desperate for them do — solve real problems. After all, in the real world, “expanding well-being” simply means “problem-solving”. But of a special kind — putting the big, enduring, and most urgent problems first.
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