Who Will Deliver Us from Severance?

First a spot of bragging, my People Before Tech book got longlisted for CMI's Management Book of the Year Award and I am truly chuffed because it means so many more people will read how we have to bridge the HR/IT gap if we want to distribute the human work and start with Psychological Safety to get happy teams that super perform and maybe that will mean less HumanDebt? for someone somewhere.

Secondly, this will be one of those “I’m sorry team, but I don’t know what the intersection is between the newsletters and maybe you already read this” articles as I have spent the week obsessed with Severance. If you’ve never read the other articles you’re in luck, this may be a tad less boring but you can find them here - “The (Semi)Dystopian Answer to the Work/Life Balance Question” and To Be or Not to Be Human at Work

This will be my last article on the topic, promise, but here’s why I’m obsessed with Severance: it touches on all the big themes. Command and control to the extreme; workers’ right to respect, happiness and free will; thinking versus feeling at work; indoctrination; human dynamics in teams and the overarching ethical context.?

I do wonder if it speaks “louder” to some of us and if those are the ones with more to deplore and bemoan. I do wonder how come I didn’t even understand the double-entendre behind what they call “the break room”. I wonder how come Hollywood types had enough insight into the office drama we live to have concocted this theme and if that means that command and control is now visible to society at large in a more glaring fashion than before. I also wonder how come some people saw the series and haven’t been as up in arms about its genius as we are here, despite being all about the HumanDebt in general themselves. I wonder if we’re ever truly safe from that future with the position we are getting our own selves in.?

That’s the main win of it really, the way it’s made me wonder and I suspect, the way it’s made many people think.?

To recap the premise: workers of a corporation undergo a surgical procedure to sever their personal lives from their professional ones in that they don’t recall the other version of themselves when they are in either of the environments. This is supposedly done to protect the privacy of the work they do and -supposedly- so they become more productive.?

Not a lot is revealed by the series as to the intrinsic motivations of the people electing to do it but they suggest they all had things in their personal lives that they could do with forgetting so it’s fair to assume their investiture is in the peace-and-quiet of not having to recall trauma which gives them a respite while they’re at Lumon - the evil corporation that has severed them. Horrible as what is happening to them may seem to the external observer, there is no evidence to suggest they were coerced in any way, all these people have voluntarily, adamantly -and sometimes even militantly- chosen this life and they often re-clarify their position so there’s no doubt they aren’t being forced into subjugation but have elected it.

Insane isn’t it? To voluntarily, every day, go and work at a place that you know for a fact is utterly uninterested in you as a human. To elect to be seen as just a human doer of a business function with no sense of personal identity. To choose to show up again and again for the abuse while reciting company values. Crazy, who would do such a thing, right??

We do. We all do. Or have done in the past.?

All of us.?

Tell me in the comments if I’m wrong, but is anyone reading this completely unfamiliar with he the feeling of being chewed and spit out by a corporation that doesn’t see them as a person? Is there anyone reading this who hasn’t felt extreme dread when having to report to terrifying control and command structures where speaking up or having any dissent is seen as insubordination? Anybody who has never felt that their personal lives were an imposition to the organisation that would much rather prefer they were “professional” enough to never even mention them??

Tell me “Not me, I can’t relate to any of this and have had a joyous work life where I encountered no command and control, no toxicity or politics, no dread and no fear. In fact, my individuality and personal lives were welcomed and supported, I have felt empowered, I have felt lifted, helped, trusted and trusting and I have loved every minute of it while I brought my A-game and delivered amazing value in ever tighter Psychologically Safe teams” - go on, I’d LOVE to hear at least one token counter-example because if we don’t even have exceptions what we are left with instead is a monstrous and all-encompassing problem.

I’ll hazard a guess that no one will stand up and be counted as the exception.?

We are all the “Data Refinement Department” - we have all been mistreated, unseen, micromanaged, and disrespected. And this isn’t even firmly only about the evil corporation doing this, but about the humans accepting it too, so the responsibility firmly sits with them as well as it does with all of us. The only difference one could argue is how we’re safe from surgical intervention and active brainwashing. At least “for now”.?

Pondering this “woe is us the employees” theme may make me sound like I’m moaning about the evil enterprise which, if you recall my stance on the fact that the organisation is as real and useful as Santa, seems like a departure but I am not, this is not a finger-pointing exercise for the sake of the common complaint. In fact, this same topic had a lot less in the way of “we have to do something” pleas in the Chasing Psychological Safety newsletter because as ever, I believe the tech community to be the more capable one when it comes to diminishing HumanDebt and stopping the cycle of near-abuse of our “resources” that happen to be human, but I put it to us that we are on a firm track to arrive at Severance if we don’t do something ourselves and quick.?

Like I keep preaching - someone has to own auditing the HumanDebt and the need for the human work to become embedded in the every day work. It doesn’t matter who accomplishes that.?

Should it be the top leadership of the company as this is their biggest to-do and their biggest risk? Of course. Will it be them? Unlikely. Remember, they don’t have the courage that personal brand gives the “red shirts” aka the Superheroes and they surely don’t have the teams to be Psychologically Safe and not only call a spade a spade but lean on each other to steer us all in the opposite direction to Lumen so it will not be them.

It will have to be all of us. Putting our foot down. Saying enough is enough. Shunning command and control. Becoming more and more empowered and emboldened. Wanting to be our best selves and asking for what we are owed - an environment where we can be authentic and collaborative and have flow, be in the zone, be passionate, be curious, be always improving and yes, enjoy ourselves. An existence where the delimitation between work and life is as non-existent as we need it to be. A life of no fear.

Ultimately, it will have to be all of us insisting that we are more human not less so.?

Why??So we create valuable work outcomes that are more valuable the more human we are.

Isn’t that what they hired us for?

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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are:?Understand,?Measure?and?Improve

At?PeopleNotTech?we make?software?that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- talk to us?about a demo?at?[email protected]??

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age" book go to this Amazon?link