My ever-pensive coworker sent me an article or blog about "sheepwalking." He thought I would easily enjoy such an article. Turns out that it is a blog I am familiar with but hadnt gotten back to for some time. It is great to see that the excellence of this blog has only gotten better with the polish of time. Anyway, the topic was "sheepwalking," not to be confused with any other sheep related hobbies; I will drop in his definition and link. It's great reading.
I define "sheepwalking" as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line. The TSA 'screener' who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A 'customer service' rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars of TV time even though she knows it's not working--she does it because her boss told her to.
It's ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That's because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain-dead stuff.
We've mechanized what we could mechanize. What's left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it's not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheepish. ... more Seth...
You've probably encountered someone who is "sheepwalking." In fact; apparantly I have been an apple cart upsetter. I ask too many questions. I want to know why and why not. Some people are annoyed by questions and even worse by disagreement. I prefer to experience and acquire knowledge on my own terms or at least with full disclosure of the information for a more educated guess. I suppose I have worked in a diverse set of workplaces...but all were teeming with "sheepwalkers" and "sleepwalkers." I am even sure that I have been guilty on occassion of both. It's extremely difficult not to have a bad day that really gets you down every once and a while. Typically, a bad day brings friends. That's the kind of coward a bad day is; never alone, rarely just man to man. I try to shorten the recovery time by taking captive the thoughts and energies that come from bad moments that tend to stretch into a day. If you can get used to asking what was funny about this or what can I learn from this or just accepting that tomorrow will be better — it really helps or at least has helped me. If you're breathing; you're probably going to experience a bad day or week at least once a year. Great article, Seth....but they always are!
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