A question for you. Don’t panic, its not one of those ‘which of these options’ quiz-check-button-traps. This is more rhetorical. I don’t expect you to decide how to answer right now.
So, how much of your time is spent going around in circles?
Even if you’re just starting out in your job / career/ calling, more likely if you’ve done a few turns, I bet there’s a fair bit.
I’m thinking about the project reviews and meetings where those present (well, in the room. Maybe not actually there) are overwhelmed with a sense - is there a collective noun for deja-vu sufferers? Duja-vu-ests? - of here, we aren’t going anywhere again. Another trip on the merrily-we-go-around.
I know the actual circular economy is a good thing. The whole “sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible”, really good.
Problem is when a circular economy veers into the workspace, in the guise of talking shops. Literal chatrooms where everyone airs a view but nothing is ever resolved. An economy - we’re all here, in the meeting, spending time - that never moves forward.
All the hope-full discussions about stuff a business could be doing Right Now, kicked into the next meeting. Or someone else’s meeting. The circular economy spins out the hopes of everyone, at the risk of disappointing some people. Bet most business’ would say that was not their strategy. But hey, you’re not doing anything else. So it ends up being it.
Sometimes a crisis is needed to perpetrate a decision - for making progress - where that process has become bogged down in the circularity of meetings about meetings and deference to policy-makers and shapers who can - should. Must - make calls on what’s being asked.
Fortunately most business’ never get to that crisis fever-pitch. Recognising that closing out unrealistic aims or (however passionately misplaced) ideas about ‘why are we doing this-ery’ isn’t demoralising. It’s leading.
If you’re in charge, taking charge and making decisions is what you do. Business isn’t a democracy (ok, excepting co-operatives) but a place where people spend time and expend energy on the collective progress. A decision would be a kindness, so as we can get on with helping it (or deciding it’s not for us, and checking-out.)
Going round in circles literally not only gets you nowhere. It gets staff off somewhere else.
By the by, have you decided how you’re going to spend your time now?
