What kind of 'Force' are you?

As many people have, I’ve been thinking about this week’s speech by Prime Minister Theresa May on ‘Brexit’, the reaction from Europe’s supposed great and good and the Davos delegates and the inauguration of President Elect Donald Trump.

I’ve been considering how what I have learned and experiences about organisations and people over the years is being played out.

Daily events impact our sense of security, belonging and moral compass. It never fails to surprise me the breadth of reaction to change and events; submission, to subversion or compliance, to aggression, to general apathy; all identified as stages of grief, although not necessarily in that order.

Teams, cliques, clubs and, importantly, our work environments provide sanctuary in meeting our personal needs. Many people who promote themselves as ‘individuals’ are always in a club of sorts. Introverted individuals might find solace in lone activities yet may find a collective sense of well-being within an on-line community.

Without referencing anything in particular, collections of people with shared values are generally accepted to be catalysts for change and provide some necessary inertia and momentum. History is littered with positive examples and there is a long list of less than positive cases.

There are libraries worth of theories on group dynamics to describe their intricacies and idiosyncrasies and how and why they succeed or fail.

What many have in common, to me, is that physics, albeit in not so many words, plays a part. Consider Newton’s Laws of Motion:

1. “An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”
2. “Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass (of the object being accelerated) the greater the amount of force needed (to accelerate the object).”
3. “For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action.”

The ‘object’ is the scene, the context, the group, the ideology, the value set (not an exhaustive list) and its outputs. Many things have to be pondered to make a choice. What will also play a part are external factors. What has changed around the ‘object’ since it has been at rest or moving? Has the environment changed politically or ideologically?

Look at, if you will, each ‘law’ and what you see going on around you in the world. I see many similarities. Are you an unbalanced force at rest or the object in motion, an internal or external force? Are you part of the acceleration force or the mass? Are you part of the action or the equal and opposite re-action?

Sometimes a group might need to be broken up to create a more agile smaller group or evolve a larger group or maybe not. The Brexit vote decided the EU ‘club’ needed to be broken up with the intention on making improvements. We are still part of a larger group, Europe, which is also important because this is less tangible and about belonging.

Finally, consider an asteroid; it isn’t a problem unless it is pointing squarely at our planet and until that point we might leave it alone or do nothing.

Sometimes it might be necessary to test new ideas and technological advances in preparation rather than wait for impending doom, sometimes not.

I may get splinters from sitting on the fence and obviously this is only my view.