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Angus Grundy's avatar

Another deeply thoughtful piece, John, and a great springboard for a culture conversation. I love your "chain reaction of yawns" observation—part of the mimesis we social animals exhibit. It's a great analogy and (intentionally or not) also points to the feeling many have when talk turns to improving the culture. The fact that it is an "intersubjective", experienced both at the individual and collective level makes it complex and impossible to untangle through easy interventions.

That said, we know from our own experience that some people have an outsized influence on those around them, either positively or negatively. And perhaps it's worth looking to those people first to see how we might encourage more (or less) of what they do. I've found Peter Scott-Morgan's ideas on "unwritten rules" insightful here. The triad of "motivators" (what I want), "enablers" (who can help me) and "triggers" (what actions would signal my intentions to those enablers to help me get what I want) can explain why people act in the ways they do. (Hat tip: Geoff Marlow)

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The People Geek's avatar

Great to see Lewin’s equation here. People often mistake the & between person and environment as two independent parts. But they are interdependent and Lewin was saying how we cannot look at them in isolation. The lowest level of measurement should be person-task-environment (Newell’s Triangle).

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