What Have You Not Created Yet?

I watched The Matrix trilogy again this summer. For probably the umpteenth time. Somewhere between the red pill and the blue pill, I had a realization about our current work environment.

(For a refresher: Red Pill = The choice to face the truth, no matter how difficult or painful it is. Blue Pill = The choice to remain in ignorance and accept a comfortable, safe place…putting you in a coded alter-reality called The Matrix)

What if we’ve unintentionally taken the blue pill?

There are so many brilliant minds that I meet. Why does so much of these months seem like the same solutions we have explored before and it just isn’t working? I started pulling the words and trends people were repeating. Why are we fighting change so hard. Why are we not changing. Why are we still applying old workforce strategy frameworks that you and I know just don’t fit in this modern day world.

Change fatigue.

We've been changing so much for so long that somewhere along the way, many of us stopped wanting to create. We just want to get through it. Give me the framework. Give me the five steps. Tell me what worked somewhere else. Give me something I can implement Monday morning.

When we’re exhausted that makes sense. But there’s a problem. The solution to your biggest problem might not exist yet. Think about that for a minute.

What if the thing that would transform your organization isn't another framework someone else created? What if the answer isn't sitting in a conference session, a book, a consultant's model or another "best practice"?

What if you need to create it? That's where The Matrix clicked for me.

The blue pill represents choosing the comfortable reality. Staying with what is familiar. Accepting the world as it appears. The red pill represents choosing to see the truth, even when that truth is uncomfortable.

I see it from a third party view, the exhaustion, the grind. What we've been doing isn't working anymore. Not because the people are failing. Not because the organization isn't trying. Because the trail map was created for a different landscape.

So what happens if, instead of trying harder to make the old map work, you decide to redraw it? That's the work I've begun doing with a few organizations through this workforce strategy shift.

We're not starting with "Here's the framework you should implement." We're starting with questions. Something interesting is happening. The energy is coming back. Work didn’t get ‘easier’ or ‘quicker’ or ‘used A.I.’ It was because people started creating again. They started having the conversations they'd been avoiding. They started challenging assumptions. They started designing solutions for today and the future instead of continuing to solve problems from five years ago.

It's not always pretty. But it's colorful. Different. Unique. In that messy middle…very much alive. Maybe that's the real opportunity in a world of constant change. Stop reacting to change and start creating it.

So here's the question I want you to sit with this week:

Which pill have you been taking?

The blue pill: comfort, familiarity, repeating what you've always done because you're too exhausted to rethink it?

The red pill: seeing what's actually happening, having the difficult conversations and creating something new?

Maybe the next breakthrough for your team isn't another framework. Maybe you need a new map. Maybe you don't need to find it. Maybe you need to create it.

That's a big part of what I'm exploring through Workforce Energy Management™. It isn't about doing more. It's about showing up differently in our days in ways that feed our natural energy instead of forcing it.

Sometimes that means changing the path. Sometimes it means throwing out the map. And sometimes...it means finally taking the red pill.

Explore More: Take the Red Pill

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