As I write, the Canadian truckers Freedom Convoy story has inspired truckers in countries around the world to do the same. They share a common story of freedom with their Canadian counterparts. Their story has inspired a community of Canadians from British Columbia to Nova Scotia to join them in their protest. A social cohesion resulted, that has been able to resist the pressure from the Canadian government to disband.
http://www.yrdsb.ca/schools/museum/exhibits/Footsteps/Pages/Vimy-Ridge-100th-Anniversary.aspx
In a similar way that Canadian soldiers during the First World War defined the character of a nation at Vimy Ridge, so too these truckers and supporters will remain in our memories as the best that Canada offers the world.
You can see a similar phenomenon watching the Canadian Parliament sessions. You can see that many of the MPs share a common story with the truckers. They stand defiant as they speak against how their government has acted towards its citizens’ concerns. The Ministers of Parliament also share a common story of loyalty to the government that they were elected to serve. They are caught in the middle. Which is exactly where they should be. They represent the people to the government and the government to the people.
There are those who do not share the truckers’ story. They tell a different story to themselves and the world. As I write, Premier Trudeau has invoked Emergency orders for the first time in Canada’s history. Just as the Freedom Convoy defines the Canadian citizen, Trudeau’s action is the defining act of his leadership as Premier.
Stories Matter
Communities are born and they die. Stories chronicle the history of these transitions. When people don’t share a common story, they may move on to a community that does. There has been a significant relocation of people during the coronavirus pandemic here in the US. I am one of those who moved.
When there is no commonly shared story that defines a community, conflict can arise that may turn violent. Over the past decade, we have witnessed how race and a public health crisis become the ground for conflict between people. Where conflict grows, there is a loss of respect, trust, and mutual accountability. And with it the shared story that once unified a community fades away.
This loss of a shared community brings about social isolation and loss of historical perspective. The neighborliness that I wrote about earlier can be lost. Fear and suspicion grow. It also opens the door to corruption. What do we do about this?
Restoring Community for the Future
Two years ago I spoke to a business leadership group in Nairobi, Kenya. At the end of my presentation, I was asked, “What do we do about government corruption?” At that point in time, I had not thought deeply about it.
I applied my Circle of Impact model to learn how corruption grows. It is as easy as taking candy from a baby. The more difficult question is determining what to do about it.
There are two realities that we must address. One is the brokenness of organizations. The other is the severing of accountability from authority. I wrote about issues in two parallel books published in 2020.
The first, Seeing Below The Surface of Things: The Brokenness of the Modern Organization, identifies the brokenness of organizations in the lack of alignment of the three dimensions of the Circle of Impact. Alignment is another way to talk about a healthy system of organization. Based on my model, each dimension supports the other two. No alignment? Corruption and conflict result.
A simple way to see that you have a problem. You ask, “Is this an Ideas, a Relationship, or a Structure problem?” The dimension you choose cannot be the resource that solves the problem. The solution comes from the other two dimensions.
For example, if you have a relationship problem with a colleague or a client, you don’t go and say, “We have a relationship problem.” Instead, you seek to establish common ground through shared values about the impact that you want to create together. With a shared focus, the relationship has an opportunity to be repaired.
The other book, Where Did Trust Go?: Restoring Authority and Accountability in Organizations, addresses the corruption issue as one of a loss of trust. It begins with the severing of the relationship between authority and accountability. The ultimate result is the tyranny of the organization’s leadership over its people.
In other words, corruption and tyranny are products of a broken system of organization. It is one of the signs that an organization or a society is approaching a point of failure or collapse. This is a contributing factor to the collapse described in The Future is More than Complex.
We could then say that the Freedom Convoy is an attempt to restore government accountability. To do so requires a story of national governance that aligns the values of the country with restored relationships of respect and trust between citizens and their elected leaders.
To Restore Trust, We Need A Story
This is not just a Canadian story. It is a story that touches every nation and person globally.
If the Freedom Convoys around the world were all successful in returning accountability to the governing authorities of their nations during the next month, who is going to step in to lead?
Our stories presently are more reactionary and resistant. We need stories that are more than a longing of going back to normal. That normal put us in the situation that we have today.
This is the harsh reality that we face.
We don’t have a story that unifies the world.
All we have are stories of resistance and remembrance of past experiences that remind us of who we are.
It isn’t that those stories are not valuable. It is that they are not sufficient to provide a path to the future. They are inadequate because the crises that we are experiencing now are breaking down the foundations that were the basis of the normal life that we now miss.
What is lost is lost. But not all is lost. Do not forget that!
Our ancestors faced harsh realities during their day. For Canadians, they remember their soldiers who fought at Vimy Ridge during the First World War as the moment their country became a nation among nations.
We are here today because of the men and women who came before us.
Our future descendants will be here because they will tell stories about what we are now doing. As William Faulkner wrote, “The past is not dead. It isn’t even past.”
Can you see that while we want to hold government leaders accountable, we need to be held accountable too? Our passivity and go-along-to-get-along attitudes have contributed to the situation we are in today. Now, we must change in order to be persons whose impact creates the stories and the systems that we need when this hard time is over. Remember …
We are all responsible.
We are all accountable.
We are all sovereign over our lives.
We all must have our own story to share.
What does that story look like? Stay tuned for Part Two coming soon.