Friday Food for Thought

In a past life, I used to write a weekly note to our people managers called “Friday Food for Thought”. It hit me the other day that I missed connecting in this way, so I thought I’d restart them. All the cool kids are using substack, so it was the obvious choice for where this little project could live.

The goal of Friday Food for Thought is really just a stream of consciousness from me on what I learned in the realm of leadership during the past week. It often led to bigger conversations and hopefully a pause to reflect on why we do what we do.

I listened to something this week that I have been thinking about a lot. It’s an episode of The Curiosity Shop, Brené Brown and Adam Grant’s podcast (for those of you that don’t know, I’m a HUGE Brené fan girl), and their guest is Aaron Sandel, a primatologist who spent more than a decade studying the Ngogo chimpanzees. He was there when one of the largest chimpanzee communities we know of split into two factions. He watched individuals he knew, by name, turn on each other. (To be clear, I did not go looking for a leadership lesson in chimpanzees. It found me.) The conversation is about friendship, conflict, hierarchy, and belonging. How a community fractures, and what that does to the individuals inside it rather than to the group on paper. Brené and Adam keep pulling it back toward us, toward polarization and how quickly “us” turns into “us and them.” It’s really interesting how individuals respond when in a place of fear and uncertainty, especially when we live in a time of extreme change, fear and uncertainty.

I have been through a work change, transformation, reorg or two..or three…or more in my years in corporate…and I have never once thought about it as a community splitting. I’m not sure if that’s the right frame either, but it’s a more honest one than “new structure, effective Monday”. I do not subscribe to the statement that work is a family, but it is certainly a community, and an incredibly important and impactful one at that. It can be really easy (and frankly, more comfortable) to compartmentalize change as an org chart exercise rather than a community impact.

Shifting gears, and about as far from chimpanzees as you can get…

Sahil Bloom published a piece this week called It Was Just a Game of Catch. It’s about a father and a son playing catch, the same simple game, across decades. That’s it. That’s the piece. And underneath it he makes an argument I keep turning over, ordinary moments get their meaning from the fact that they’re temporary, and being present is the closest thing any of us has to control over time. Thinking about all of the ways I try to maintain control of life, and how having control is truly an illusion. Sahil’s comment that being present is the closest thing any of us has to control over time really stood out to me. What a powerful simple thought. Be where your feet are.

Pause and reflect

As we head into the weekend, take a minute to reflect on a few things:

1. 01Where have you watched a group split, and what did you actually do for the individuals inside it, not the org chart?
2. 02What ordinary thing are you rushing through this week that you’re going to miss later?
3. 03What’s one thing you can do this weekend to be present?

I’ll leave you with this one line from Sahil’s piece that resonated:

“Time goes unnoticed, until it’s the only thing you notice.”

Have a great weekend!

Andrea