Nostalgia to Now-stalgia!

Nostalgia to Now-stalgia! / 125, 22 June 2024

These articles explore self-development in the context of Management and Leadership, and are based on my personal reading, reflections, and experiences.

Reference sources are cited. Views are strictly personal. Feedback is welcome!

Last week, we explored the 3Cs of management (Creativity, Continuity, and Change), and some of you wrote back that the third C (Change) was the most difficult one for leaders to adopt & implement. Today we explore this general reluctance to change, especially the part that nostalgia plays in it.

Nostalgia – in business – is the collective yearning for the happiness of a former place or time, usually when things were simpler. In reality, nostalgia holds back leaders and organisations from making changes before they become necessary.? But why is change so difficult for many of us? Some part of it could be evolutionary because we flourished as a human race by building communities and settlements, which improved familiarity while reducing variability. Today this manifests in little ways like taking the same route to work, keeping our office things in the same order, or even sitting at the same spot in a meeting room or canteen. Collectively in an organisation we seek the familiarity of processes and of management. A new process or a new manager can cause ripples of nervous discussion around the water cooler.

But when we look back objectively, we will realise that nothing great was ever achieved in business without great upheaval and disruption. The great technological advances made since the industrial revolution began, like Steam Engines, Electricity, Telephones, Automation, Computers, Internet, Mobile Phones, all brought great upheaval and disruptions in their wake. Thousands of professions were disrupted, and yet, many more thousands of new professions did emerge. We know all this subconsciously, and yet we get nervous around even small changes at work and tend to get nostalgic about the good old days.

Nostalgia is great for simple things like missing the simple joys of childhood or remembering our time as students. But when it comes to businesses, it is an inherently bad address to be at. In any organisation there is always a tension between Now-stalgists (people who seek change) and Nostalgists (people who avoid change). Let us look at some of the flashpoints between the two:

• Why Change when the going is good: There is some truth to this argument by the Nostalgists. But the reality is that the stone age didn’t get over due to lack of stone! The Now-stalgists will say there’s always room for improvement, and it’s better to fix the roof when the sun is shining.
• It will never work: This is a favourite plank for Nostalgists, who ignore the possibilities change can bring. Banking employees used to stage protests against computerisation. Now-stalgists will point out that thirty years since, banking has grown massively and is unimaginable without computerisation.
• We are losing our values: This is the last bastion for Nostalgists, and a corridor of uncertainty for the Now-stalgists. Are we moving away from our core values with all the change? It is a difficult one; and the key question here is – are we confusing values and tradition with accumulated habits? If yes, change is better.

To summarise, nostalgia is nice, and a great tool to remind employees and customers about a great legacy. But it is never a great place to linger on. A line from Mahakavi Tagore’s Gitanjali, “…where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit…” is a great reference point to distinguish between Nostalgia and Now-stalgia. Together, both Nostalgists and Now-stalgists must strive to create something new, retaining the essential spirit of the old.

I hope you enjoyed reading this one and look forward to your feedback and thoughts as we build a conversation around this topic.

Warmest regards, Krishnakumar.

Image courtesy:

https://www.scoopnest.com/user/Singtel/661437709437829120

Reference Sources:

Nostalgia marketing is powerful. 'Nowstalgia' might be even more compelling. (bbc.com)