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Changing More Than the Workplace

Apr 14, 2010 » by Cali & Jody

We were pleased to see this mention in the Huffington Post from Morra Aarons-Mele as part of their coverage of the Workplace Flexibility Conference . She does a nice job linking how people are waking up to a new way of working to how people are waking up to what needs to change in how Americans eat. Especially when it comes to kids.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the work of British chef Jamie Oliver, we encourage you to check out his new show Food Revolution on ABC. Fresh from taking on Britain’s “meat-pie moms”, he is now turning his attention to raising awareness about school nutrition. As Aarons-Mele points out, it’s not just about the food itself, but the culture of eating that surrounds it:

One of the most moving moments was Jamie’s sheer shock that kids at elementary school aren’t allowed to eat with knives and forks. Everything served was finger or spoon food- almost as if the kids are in jail. There is something sub-human about not teaching 6 year olds how to eat like civilized people. Do we really expect so little from them?

The message from the elementary school on Oliver’s show was “we don’t trust kids enough,” and so they remove the tools kids need to manage eating. This must hold them back and it doesn’t let them think critically.

This idea of trusting people and letting them manage their own lives is, of course, central to what makes a Results-Only Work Environment tick. But this post reminded us that the problems of the traditional work environment aren’t confined to the workplace. They are emblematic of larger cultural issues.

The spoons-only policy is just another example not only of what happens when you don’t trust people, but also what happens when you don’t give people the power to learn and grow and succeed (and yes sometimes fail.) When did the bar get so low? And when did we have this conversation where we collectively decided to settle for such radically diminished expectations?

Our kids (and our working adults) deserve better. The answer is to give people increased power and control, but also to give them increased accountability. Human beings are amazingly resourceful and resilient creatures, but only if you give them the right tools.

Perhaps we should start with a knife and fork.

  • http://conmergence.com/blog Ed Dodds

    OK, yea, yea, I know I post here too often but on the theme of “right tools” check out http://www.facebook.com/pages/Communities-United-for-Broadband/ One of the things necessary is an an infrastructure which allows one to work from (nearly) anywhere.

  • Persephone K

    Very nice parallel. I have been following Jamie’s show and I was also struck by that segment you highlight. I’m sure that your work with the federal government will emphasize this mentality even more. The people of the Fed are mostly great and talented, but have been squashed by bureaucracy and one-size fits all, check the box, compliance mentalities. It is easier to manage by one broad standard than to manage individual situations and nuance. Like the Fed, schools are also tremendous bureaucracies operating under very similar constraints. It will be a large part of your challenge to transform the Fed, IMO.

    Also, back to Jamie’s Food Revolution, I was also reminded about how the other challenge to a ROWE are the attitudes of people, especially those with a lot of experience doing things “the old way.” Alice, the “lunch lady” wanted to keep things like an assembly line largely because it was comfortable for her and her staff. She had lost sight of the real goal of feeding children health food. For her, it was merely a process. The process mattered more than the outcome, and the infrastructure of the school system supported that mentality. In a ROWE, that is exposed.