Something in the air. At last!

Group think. Yes it does. And it can be the powerful source you need of relationships that feature exceptionality and durability.

What happens when a bunch of people find themselves grouped together? Two or three people, or perhaps half a dozen, or maybe more but not so many that they cease to be a smallish group? And the circumstances mean that they know they’re going to be together for a period of time?

Weird question, huh?

The point is, they will do something.

That something will, of course, depend upon the circumstances. It’s perhaps easiest to think about it when a group has come about as a result of sort of mishap. Are the people likely to remain together and isolated for a period of time that will necessitate their sourcing food? What about shelter? Are any of their number hurt and requiring attention? And on and on.

But it doesn’t have to be the result of a mishap. Whatever the circumstances that bring a group together, they will do something.

Now, admittedly, from around twenty years ago that something may start later than at any previous time in human history. Why? Because the group members’ initial reaction may be to avoid doing something by scrolling time away on their digital devices.

Nonetheless, at some point, someone will turn to someone else and say, “Hi, my name’s ….” And the conversation will start, and before long the question will be raised: “What do you think we should do?”

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All of which is to say, something is what humans do. We can’t help it. It’s in our genes.

In fact, when we are deprived of something to do, or if we are forced to do something that lacks any personal relevance or meaning, we either scream with rage or drift towards the moribund, or both. It’s the stuff of every dystopian story or film you’ve ever read or seen.

But the narratives that thrill us are those where problems are overcome, where something makes our world - our micro-minuscule sliver of the Big Wide World, that is - better. And where we’ve actually contributed to it.

Notice something? It’s all about individuals and individual actions. It is a supremely bottom-up process. It’s even a process that can be linked to religion and, specifically, to the emergence of Christianity. I’m an irreligious so-and-so but, in my later years, I have come to think that we Westerners should pay more attention to our Judaeo-Christian roots:

[T]hrough the story of Jesus, individual moral agency was raised up as providing a unique window into the nature of things, into the experience of grace rather than necessity, a glimpse of something transcending death. The individual replaced the family as the focus of immortality. ¹

Individualism, in secular terms, is surely how our operating system works; it’s a basic driver of our evolution.

It therefore follows that getting the best out of people cannot work from the top down - or, at least, not exclusively from the top down. Such an approach is, quite literally, anti-human, which is what makes so much current practice so questionable.

Think about digital technology. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Still in its infancy (or, perhaps, now at the five-year-old child stage?), it has already enabled global transformations in manufacturing, communications, entertainment and on and on and on.

And, now, with AI, we are anticipating quantum leaps in all manner of areas, from medicines to motor transportation, from widgets to weaponry, from X-rays to extra-terrestrial exploration.

However, in my opinion, digital tech - or, at least, the way we currently use it - is problematic when it is used to impose inflexible top-down operating regimes to the exclusion of all else.

Years ago, in the run-up to the millennium I came across a fascinating book about the Toyota Production System². In it, the author, Taiichi Ohno, categorized the evolution of human thinking in terms of a sequence from ‘the agricultural mind’ to ‘the industrial mind’ to ‘the computer mind’.

Already, back when the book was published, Mr Ohno was concerned about who was controlling what:

While we intend humans to control them, computers have become so speedy that now it looks as if humans are controlled by the machine.

… and the actual value of some of the newly available information:

Is it really economical to provide more information than we need - more quickly than we need it?

… and restated the traditional view of the information hierarchy:

The industrial mind extracts knowledge from manufacturing people, gives the knowledge to the machines working as extensions of the workers’ hands and feet …

Well, we’ve come a long way since those words were written. Now, no question, we are in ‘the computer mind’ era and, more and more, it is categorically a top-down world.

Throughout the industrial era there were complaints that people were being dehumanized, relegated to the status of ‘cogs in the machine’. Now, ironically, when humans really are more and more at risk of becoming ‘cogs in the machine’, the topic seems to me to be less discussed. Perhaps it’s because there are now so many distractions? I recently wrote more about this phenomenon here.

One thing’s for sure - something needs to happen.

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At which point, permit me a brief diversion back to the 1980s to an early summer evening at the Dorchester Hotel on London’s Park Lane.

Earlier that afternoon, in a nearby office, a client and I had made a presentation in pursuit of investment for his new product. The presentation had gone well and we felt it appropriate to take a break to discuss it, and decide possible next steps, over a couple of drinks. So there we were in the Dorchester lounge.

Comfy chairs were set out in twos, threes and fours around small tables: in total, sufficient seating for maybe forty people. And a pianist at a grand piano played softly in the background. I recall that his looks and style reminded me of a young Nat King Cole.

My client and I reviewed the presentation we had made, and the possible outcomes, and the follow-up actions that we needed to initiate, and also just enjoyed our drinks.

At some point, we became aware of a couple on the other side of the room. A young man and young woman who were behaving - how shall we say? - in what was perhaps an increasingly inappropriate manner for a public place.

Having started off in her own seat, the young woman had gravitated onto the young man’s lap. The good thing was that they clearly liked each other. The less good thing was that they were beginning to forget where they were.

More and more people started to notice what was going on but, in true British style, nobody said a word. As the couple’s hands wandered ever more the looks on people’s faces spanned an extraordinary range of emotions from amusement to distaste.

Then, the pianist launched into a new number. But this time he took the volume up a little so that the music moved from the background more to the foreground. And the song he chose? Feelings³.

It had a dramatic effect. Within seconds the couple came back into the real world, looked embarrassed, straightened their clothing and scuttled off.

When they had gone, the pianist simply reduced the volume again.

Spontaneously, everyone in the lounge applauded. The pianist had achieved an exceptional outcome, a small miracle, simply by doing something.

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At the outset I said that when people come into close and ongoing proximity they do tend to do something, in which process they inevitably reveal something of their true selves. Which is to say, they make a personal contribution.

It’s perhaps relevant to note that an exception to this rule may occur when there are too many people. An over-supply of humans may cause those present to shed their individuality either by adopting conformance to some perceived group belief (groupthink), or by becoming fearful and mentally withdrawing completely from what is going on around them.

In the vast majority of situations, however, given the chance, we will all self-identify and contribute our real selves. Generally, too, our intentions within these groups will be positive: after all, it is self-evidently in all of our longer-term interests that as many of us as possible achieve positive, ongoing outcomes.

In turn, this means that many, perhaps most, interventions and suggestions and actions will be well-intended, positive and constructive. What they may not be is expected. I refer you back to the anecdote about the pianist at the Dorchester Hotel.

My good friend Dr Olaf Hermans takes this idea further, encapsulating it as “The Drunk Uncle” mechanism …

Imagine the scene. A wedding party is under way: the bride and groom and their immediate families seated at the top table; the remainder of the wedding guests at other tables. At one of the ‘second order’ tables is an uncle of the bride. He likes a good time and, as far as he is concerned, the proceedings have become boring. Too many speeches, perhaps. Too many earnest speeches, the psychic pain of which he has tried to ease with a few glasses of something.

Eventually, the now-tipsy uncle spontaneously starts trying to rectify the situation as he sees it, at least so far as his own table is concerned. Perhaps he asks who at his table would like a cigar. “You can’t do that!” says the woman seated next to him, “You can’t smoke in here.” “Why not? Is this a celebration or a wake?”

There’s a pause and the uncle says, “It’s a shame my niece didn’t pay more attention to what I taught her over the years about the work of P.G. Woodhouse.”

The others at the table look bemused, thinking Oh god, he’s drunk. What is he going on about? But the uncle persists and declaims:

‘Oh Brancepeth,’ said the girl, her voice trembling, ‘why haven’t you any money? If only you had the merest pittance - enough for a flat in Mayfair and a little weekend place in the country somewhere and a couple of good cars and a villa in the South of France and a bit of trout fishing on some decent river, I would risk all for love.’⁴

And the people around the table laugh. And the mood lightens. And the lightness transmits itself to nearby tables because Spike Milligan was absolutely right when he wrote:

Smiling is infectious,
You catch it like the flu,
When someone smiled at me today,
I started smiling too.

I passed around the corner,
And someone saw me grin,
When he smiled I realised,
I’d passed it on to him.⁵

Okay, I’m getting a little carried away there but you get the idea?

“The Drunk Uncle” mechanism is a means to comprehend that optimum efficiency implies the requirement for two organizations running concurrently in all cases:

• a system-led, top-down directed mechanism.

• a human-led, bottom-up directed mechanism.

To be clear, digitalization is amazing. I’m not suggesting for a moment that it gets curtailed. BUT … the more that the digital world has carried all before it in the past few decades, the more system-led organization has dominated, often leading to the parallel human-led organization being ignored and/or squeezed almost to death.

Which is maybe why we hear so much these days about mental health pressures, and burnout, and ‘lack of authenticity’, all while enterprises are more likely to express and communicate whatever it is that they do in hyper-positive terms. You know the sort of thing: “At XYZ we are passionate about… ” and “I’m super-excited to be taking on the role of … .”

Where people have really thought about it - which, I suspect, is quite rare - the implication seems to have been that there is no room for the bottom-up system because it may mess up the smooth-running of digitalized so-called best practice.

Well, yes, humans can be messy, argumentative, awkward so-and-sos, can’t they? That said, I personally believe that Steinbeck was stating a more or less universal truth when he wrote, at the start of Cannery Row:

Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.⁶

And the key point is that genuine human interjections, from saints and sinners alike, are not just nice-to-have. They are essential. Why? Because they are the basis of that oh-so-longed-for outcome … relationships. Meaningful relationships, that is. Meaningful in the sense that they result in exceptionality and durability.

So, yes, something is in the air. We label it ‘R’ which stands for Relational Metacognition. It’s the brainchild of Dr Olaf Hermans. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to follow the development of R over the past few years and will expand on the topic in upcoming posts, including a direct introduction for you to Olaf’s work.

If, even from this brief sniff of the topic, you have any thoughts or questions, do please feel free to say something in the comments.

In the meantime, I’ll conclude with the remainder of Spike Milligan’s lovely poem. Enjoy.

I thought about that smile,
Then realised it’s worth,
A single smile just like mine,
Could travel round the earth.

So if you feel a smile begin,
Don’t leave it undetected,
Let’s start an epidemic quick,
And get the world infected.⁷

Thanks for reading.

The image at the top is from Shutterstock.

1. Larry Siedentop. Inventing the Individual (2014)

2. Taiichi Ohno. Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production (2014)

3. Maurice Albert (lyrics) and Louis Gaste (music). Feelings (1974)

4. P.G. Wodehouse. Lord Emsworth and Others (1937)

5. Spike Milligan. Smile

6. John Steinbeck. Cannery Row (1945)

7. Spike Milligan. Ibid.