The things you do in that first week or month can easily become your routine. The coffee shop you regularly visit, for example. (someone said moving is the best time to quit smoking, and it makes sense to me. You're changing all your routines and habits anyway, so it's easier to just not add that one.)
And although I think we have an inner self that doesn't easily change with our environs (and helping us become more fully that self is kind of the goal in life), it's true that we are deeply shaped by our routines and the people around us.
That's part of why I had an idle thought, back in my lieutenant days. An idea that could never really be tried.
See, there are good organizations and bad. Good organizations that make good decisions, that people love working for, that come up with great ideas or products and make them reality. And that bring out the best in their people. Promote talent, develop skills, etc. To use what's now a cliché, they have good synergy. The whole is greater than the sum of their parts.
And then there are toxic organizations, where people dread going to work. Where every decision just seems to make things worse, where the talented get alienated and pushed out and the ones who remain tend to be cynics or locked in because they're afraid of losing benefits. Where the worst people get promoted, and everyone fights to get credit for the good things and avoid blame for the bad. (Clear lines of responsibility are pretty important for holding people accountable, which is probably why organizations like this prefer to fudge who is responsible for what. Makes it easier to avoid blame if everyone - and therefore no one - was involved.)
My question was... If you slowly transferred all the people on the toxic organization over to the good one... Slowly enough that each individual grows accustomed to the new organization's way of doing things...
Could you eventually have the exact same people in the good org as had been in the bad? And would the good organization still be high performing?
I mean, yes. We each bring something unique to the table, and every gain and loss changes an organization. But the history and traditions of a place imbue it with its own character. And if you did the transition slowly enough, how much of that organizational character affect the collection of individuals?
Command climate is a thing, and not just some buzz words used by the people in charge. Shaping that, deliberately creating it.. That's part of what good leaders do. (That's what they're doing when they say "there are no stupid questions.")
For all that we can consciously choose to do so, though... Most people aren't really aware of that ability and don't really use it.
Like, I do believe we have free will. I just think the vast majority of people don't really use it.
Which is part of why I consider so many things systemically.
For example... Some time ago I read an article discussing how Wall Street recruits top notch graduates. It was interesting, because the article said most of these kids didn't really want a career on Wall Street. Like a lot of us at that age, many wanted to go out and do great things. Change the world.
But they got recruited into these (high paying) positions, and then found it hard to leave. Kind of like the 'golden shackles' I've heard ex-military talk about with regards to working in combat zones as a contractor. It pays well, you get a lifestyle that fits your income, but it's hard to make that kind of money anywhere else.
So you keep doing it. Not so much because it's your passion, but how else can you live in the style you're accustomed to?
The people who make more money don't generally think of themselves as that wealthy (or so I hear).
I'm guessing that some of that is because when you're in those circles you also know many people who have far more, and there's a vast difference between a 1%er making around $400,000/yr and a Jeff Bezos making millions.
The rest of it is the golden shackles. It feels like every couple of years some 1%er writes a (horribly hilarious) article about how they're really not making that much money. Honest! Except they always include details that show how out of touch they are. They'll say - but I spend X amount sending my kids to <horribly expensive private school>. Except for most of us there's absolutely no chance we'd be able to send our kids there. So you choose to spend that money, and you do so expecting it to pay off down the road... As your kid also gets into the colleges we won't, and builds connections with other wealthy individuals that we can't.
Or they'll talk about how they have to pay for maid service. As if the vast majority of us have maid service! If I've pulled a, long week at work and don't have the energy to clean, I'm sorry... But the house stays dirty. Don't come over unannounced.
Or they'll talk about how expensive the cost of living is (which is often true. Especially in Silicon Valley or NYC). Except you know what the median salary in New York is? Around $70K.
That means half of New Yorkers are living off less than that. Cost of living is definitely a factor, but not so much that you can't find somewhere decent for less. (though how much of that is again about networking, connections, and the like? Gotta keep up with the Joneses).
So the thing of it is that to people like me even the 1%ers have fantastic opportunities I could only wish to have. (There are a lot of things I'd love to do or buy, but yeah.. Let's pay off a few things first. And hope no new disaster happens like my dog getting sick again. The nice new laptop can wait, and maybe some day I'll visit all the BRICS nations, but who knows when that'd happen. And if I didn't have to worry about finances for a while there's other things I would love to try, but whatever. I can't honestly complain, especially when I'm able to work from home during a pandemic.)
Anyways, the article about Wall Street, and those comments about the 1%ers, are all because they highlight the problem.
Its not that there's some greedy and villainous elite that is trying to turn us all into slaves with no hope of ever making enough money to feel financially secure. (though there do seem to be some who are greedy. And there are bad people across all classes, though the ones with wealth have the ability to do a lot more damage.)
Really, an evil cabal (whether it's a Jewish company with a space laser, or lizard people, or whatever horrible anti-semitic conspiracy theory these people think of next) would be a lot easier to deal with than the real problem.
Which is that there's a lot of people shaped by their environment, who just like most of us don't realize how much that is true, and who are also cogs in the machine.
Just cogs that get paid more, and actually have a better chance of changing that machine if they decided it's worth doing. (Hence a great deal of frustration. They could change the world for the better. They've got the resources and access. And yet... the rich still get richer, the poor get poorer, global climate change is a thing, and over 400,000 Americans have died in a pandemic.)
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