Unlearning: Constant planning

In university, when the campus environment became ugly due to a pushback on a big campaign to deal with date rape, I spent hours lying on my dorm room floor with a big map of Canada and a black marker, plotting out my motorcycle trip across Canada. I did not have a motorcycle. Or even a driving license. But I lay there, calculating distances, choosing places to stop based on fun names, and planning what I was going to see.? Did the plan come to fruition? Nope.

But as you may be guessing from my imaginary motorcycle trip with my imaginary motorcycle and my imaginary driving license, I love planning. And I especially love planning change. ??Planning a change is the most wonderful distraction from having to think about anything that is currently happening.

When I consider my non-trip across Canada on my unowned motorcycle, I now realize that the planning of this potential change in my life was a coping mechanism. The university campus had some major issues around gender, with girls being told to walk home with a buddy or risk their own safety.

I did not know a single person at the university and my roommate was truly awful, bringing boys into our room in the girls’ dormitory without my consent or even knowledge sometimes. I would wake up to random guys in our room sleeping or doing other things with my roommate. The learning was also not what I thought it would be with some professors telling us to just write down what they said to pass.

My motorcycle trip planning took a great deal of time away from the ‘doing’ of my lectures and assignments. It also enabled me to avoid facing the hard reality that university was not the panacea of learning that I had been dreaming of for all of my life. I used planning change as a way to cope with an environment that I felt I had no control over.

And I have seen this happening in the workplace too, particularly in the past 5 years. I see the continual avoidance of ‘hard things’ in the workplace by leaders at all levels, all the time. Whether it is due to trauma, conflict avoidance, fear, or just simply not knowing how to handle the complexity of being a leader these days, the level of planning being continually introduced has organizations spinning in circles, and not progressing in what they say are their ‘goals’, ‘values’, or ‘priorities’.

Read more at Substack HERE

PS. Unlearn leadership with me! I am launching a 2 day Unlearning Leadership Intensive for you to examine, deconstruct and unlearn outdated leadership ‘norms’ with me! It’s in November. Don’t miss out!

Get more info and get on the waiting list HERE :)