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August 25th, 2010 by Leadership Catalyst

As the midday heat started to give way to a gentle afternoon breeze and the lunchtime conversation with my accountant began to slow down it was time to ask for the bill.

Scanning the restaurant verandah I saw a young, somewhat shy looking, female restaurant attendant. I waved at her and, upon her arrival at our table, informed her that we wanted to pay, would she please bring the bill.

A few minutes later the young lady re-appeared by my side, shyly proffering the bill in a leather folder sponsored by some credit card company. Instead of taking the folder I leveled a steady, slightly stern, gaze at her and asked in a flat tone “Do you think this is the right thing to do?”…

The young lady stared at me blankly. As I steadily looked at her without saying a word her sense of loss and discomfort grew, the hand holding the leather folder started shaking slightly and a little droplet of sweat stated forming on her forehead: she was stuck, her mental process and expectations of what should ‘naturally happen’ at this point (me taking the bill and paying) had been completely derailed.

After allowing her to remain in silence for a minute waiting for me to say something I said “Well, tell you what, go away for 5 minutes, then come back and tell me what you think!”

As the young lady trotted off my accountant shot me a withering look and hissed “How could you! Poor thing, what has she done to you!!”

My accountant was just about to continue her reprimands (after all she is a very proper lady a few years my senior and felt entitled to set me straight) the young lady re-appeared. With jaws set, a menacing look on her face to hide her insecurity, she sternly said: “Here is your bill sir!”, to which I asked “So, is this the right thing to do?” “Yes it is!” she shot back looking as imposingly strong as she could… “Of course it is!” I replied with a big grin and a cheery voice while I whipped out my wallet.

The transformation on the young lady’s face was pure magic, she beamed the biggest smile ever! A smile of newfound confidence: she had smashed through a mental block, she would never be scared of another ‘big bully’ like me, she had learned that just because a guy is bigger and older than her this does not mean she has to go into instant ‘it’s just little old me’ subservient mode. Her initial knee-jerk reaction to my seemingly stern face and the patently absurd question if it was right for her to bring me the bill after I myself had asked for it was the classical product of what we term ‘culture’.

All cultures are nothing else but an agglomeration of stories and rules that are implanted into our subconscious as soon as we trainable in childhood. Break these rules and woe to you, you will be punished. Once you have absorbed all these rules and follow them unquestioningly you have become a ‘good child’.

On the way to becoming that good child you have lost something vital: the will to vigorously enquire why things are supposed to a certain way and not another, thus generating truly fresh and independent insights. On the other hand you have gained something dangerous: a truckload of stories and do/don’t rules that will run your life at knee-jerk speed if you don’t clean up your attic and decide which of these rules makes sense and which keep you hostage to some idiotic and downright harmful mindset.

3 of my all time favorite mind-high-jacking stories that paralyze human behavior are:

The ‘Women Can’t Talk About Their Age’ Story

In many societies it is still absolutely impolite to ask a woman for her age. This is why I make it a point to ask many women that very question. Of course many women blanch and go into their instant ‘how-dare-you’ mode. Once I ask them why it actually is not ok to reveal their age these very same women, who were flirting with coronary failure at the very thought of revealing their tenure on planet earth, stare at me blankly… why it’s not polite? Well… cos’ it just IS, OK?!

Once you point out that the actual reason why a woman should not reveal her age after she turns 25 (or some such arbitrary timeline) is linked to the fact that woman’s value up to a few decades ago was commensurate with hear ability to bear children, meaning: the moment a woman moved past her prime childbearing age it was better to keep quiet about her age because this would ‘devalue’ her it becomes amply apparent that this is actually a really horrible reason: it means you were looked upon as a child bearing object of no real other value!

Being Obedient = Being “Good”

Mind you, I am aware that some societies have made an art form of civil disobedience, making a creative discourse almost impossible. I am not referring to these societies. My invitation goes out to members of societies who have over-codified obedience into creating individuals who are obedient at all costs, especially at the cost of de-activating their own questioning abilities. There was a time when unquestioning followership might get you safely through life, those times are gone. Your value will not be measured in how many nonsensical orders you have faithfully executed but in how many constructive questions you have asked to achieve a better results faster: if that makes you feel queasy at the start, so be it! The faster you re-learn the art of free thinking and enquiry we all had as a child, the faster your value and contribution will rise.

The “I Am Not Qualified” Fallacy

A major mental block that keeps popping up like a Jack-in-the-box and derails many company brainstorms with metronome-like predictability is the “I am not qualified to talk, think, speak about X” mindset. Sure, if I need a triple bypass surgery performed I’d prefer it to be done by a highly specialized individual, short of that let serendipity rule! Disengage from the delusion that just because someone has an official certification to do XYZ it means that he/she is actually good at what they are supposed to now.

90% of all professional economists goof up their forecasts and spend most of the time scrambling to put together workable theories as to why all these ‘unforeseen’ events happened that derailed their last theory.

Success as often belongs to the highly focused specialist as it does to the consummate outsider who has a fresh viewpoint and is not stuck in old paradigms. If you happen not to be a specialist at something rejoice in the fact that you have the gift of ‘fresh eyes’ and the childlike ability to ask two simple questions:

‘Why does it have to be so?”

“How could it be done better?”

Free Your Mind And The Rest Will Follow

Your new anthem shall be the great song by En Vogue: Free Your Mind And The Rest Will Follow!

The first steps to freeing your mind are:

1. Observe every knee-jerk reaction you have towards what people say or do, take a closer look at this knee jerk reaction and analyze how/when this unthinking knee jerk reaction was implanted into your system
2. Be playful: mess with other people’s belief system a bit and see how they react with metronome-like predictability to the buttons you are pushing in them, this will show you how important it is to rid yourself of your own pre-programming and it will lead to great conversations with the people you have just interacted with
3. Enjoy the state of outsider serendipity, the total freedom to observe with clarity and ask simple questions: you are as smart as the rest of them out there, certificate or no certificate.