We Can Change… the name of the game

A brief reflection on recent layoffs

Gee, it seems like our obsession with nonstop, exponential growth might actually be:

🤢 toxic

💔 cruel

🤡 selfish

🤑 greedy

☠️ harmful

🤖 inhumane

💣 destructive

👶 irresponsible

🌍 unsustainable

📉 counterproductive

🧭 misguided

🤔 illogical

🦖 outdated

🦄 impossible

Sure, business is cyclical and it’s true that we are in a particularly volatile time. Neither makes mass layoffs inevitable. But this is what happens when executives fail to respect the cycle, focus only on immediate gains and refuse to acknowledge the limits to growth.

“The idea that there might be limits to growth is for many people impossible to imagine. Limits are politically unmentionable and economically unthinkable. The culture tends to deny the possibility of limits by placing a profound faith in the powers of technology, the workings of a free market, and the growth of the economy as the solution to all problems, even the problems created by growth.”

― Donella H. Meadows, Limits to Growth

I’m thinking of the tens of thousands of people who have been impacted by layoffs this week alone. I’m envisioning a future of work in which our growth goals are in sustainable harmony with our humanity. And I’m going to keep working toward that vision.

(If you’re with me on this, you may be interested in a course I’m launching this spring: Agents of Radiant Change. It’s for anyone who wants to be a more effective steward of change anywhere—in your organization or industry, in your community or in your own life.)