Be Brave.

"You can be amazing, you can turn a phrase in to a weapon or drug, you can be the outcast or be the backlash of some body's lack of love, or you can start speaking up." - Sara Bareilles - Brave 

Today I had a conversation with a friend about feeling lost. We said sometimes you just have to follow the path, and that it's OK to not know the path. We talked about what it would be like if we clipped the threads that sometimes feel like they tie us down.

It's hard to take a chance. It's hard to take a leap of faith. It's hard to not know where you are going.  It's hard not to have an acceptable title in a society that places more value on the title than the person.

This brings me back to my quest for goal-less-ness.  I believe in my heart of hearts that we have learned to behave to the point where we have lost our ability to be brave and I believe that our goal addiction is one of the contributors.

In my life as a corporate planner, I became very good at setting goals. That was my job. So I can say with a high degree of accuracy that the word "goal" is deceiving because it implies "stretch" but it seeks to create confinement.  This confinement method is called the "Balanced Scorecard", which was introduced to management some 20 years ago. I have implemented several.  Here's how it works.

The purpose of the goal in the business world is to confine activity to a given outcome so that leaders can achieve targets that are set. The targets are usually numbers related to how much money should be made, and how much money can be spent in making money so that at the end of the day, there is more money made than money spent, or profit.

The Balanced Scorecard contains goals.  The purpose of a goal is to limit behaviour, not expand it.  Not invite it to explore and create. The goal is a defined set of instructions.  It is a tool that we use in business to keep the people within the confines of the plan.  There are good reasons for goals corporately. Without corporate goals, organizations would not be able to control their resources, which is defined as money, people, technology and various other inputs to the creation of the product or fulfilment of purpose.

Often times there are "goals" related to human resources (that's the people who come to work) and the clients (the people who spend their money on the products that lead to $$).  But these two goal areas are really seen as necessary to achieve the bottom line goals.

That's just business, in a nutshell.

Because work is such a big part of our lives,  we learn to behave this way because we are rewarded when we achieve goals.  And so goals become part of us.  I suppose the only way to avoid this is not to work, but that has its own downfalls. It is difficult to abandon the idea of a goal in life, and when we have no goals, we feel rudderless. Without purpose.  And it hurts, because we feel like we are of no value.

On the day that I left my last corporate job, after 20 years of setting goals and helping people meet those goals, I see now that while this is important for business, it is in effect, caging its employees and taking away their ability to fly.

So what to do.

"And since your history of silence won't do you any good, did you think it would, let your words be anything but empty. Why don't you tell them the truth. Say what you want to say. Let the words fall out. Honestly." - Sara Bareilles - Brave 

The Flamingo Project was borne out of my desire to incite a revolution of the human spirit.  It is not about a specific topic, like bullying for example, as that seems to be the one that is in style, although that's a possible discussion here.  This is about empowerment and self expression, and finding the balance between the world of work and the world of being a human being. It is about telling the truth and knowing the difference between what we do for money and who we are as people.

 I hope to create a conversation about the things that keep us inside and scare us through the means that are available to me, which are my words and my actions.

I can't promise anything, but I can promise to do my part and be brave.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to write back.

Sincerely,

Lynn Armstrong