Last week I watched a video on Youtube. The voiceover kept on saying that mankind managed to survive until now only thanks to cooperation. Nature wants us to overcome more and more challenges. Climate, geopolitical, social change and a new awareness of the consumerism.
In this scenario, companies have to face an unprecedented transitional period, in which human resources attitude is the main asset, even if a lot of people think that technology will save us.
Can a machine motivate an individual? Can it generate hope when there’s discouragement all around?
In this clip from “Tomorrowland”, Casey’s attitude is the one that any captain of industry would like to see in their companies, as well as we would like to see that in them. There is no doubt that there are lots of problems and mankind has done little to minimize the impact of its wicked lifestyle, but “What are we doing to fix it?” And how can we do that with a true heart?
That’s the question we should ask before asking anything else.
With a lot of professors talking too much about the past and too little about the future, politicians and managers anchored to the present, we must focus on winner personalities. Men and women focused on hope, as to a few of other certainties. Casey lifts her father’s spirit with the story of the two wolves, and then she’s the only one to raise her hand to counter her teacher’s discouragement: “I get things are bad, but what are we doing to fix it?“.
Who benefits from this question?
Teachers above all (not all the teachers of course), because if they have any hint of conscience, they should realize their mission isn’t following the scholarship program, but educating grown up individuals capable to ask smart questions to themselves and to other people.
Schoolmates, because they have to understand that there’s a different way to see the world, with more individual responsibility and more initiative.
For the world, because who asks this questions with good intentions is a true leader and the world really needs that.
And for Casey too, because maybe there’s no way to fix it, but still we have the chance to discover that there’s a way, to prove ourselves and to activate problem solving ability.
But the ending of the clip looks like reality. A man rolling his eyes and gets saved by the bell. When I think about that, I think about all the individuals in a position of power, that only wait for the weekend to go on with the achievement of the next personal goal.
Luckily I knew a lot of “Caseys” and they will be the one who save us, not technology or politics. As Einstein said:
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking“.