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by Dirk Depré - August 1, 2021
Silenzio, Bruno
by Dirk Depré - August 1, 2021
Imagine being dared to ride a homemade Vespa off a cliff. Your negative inner voice is most likely going to question whether this is the brightest idea you’d ever had. Alberto tells Luka to repeat to himself to silence that negative inner voice – shutting down his doubts by giving them a name; ”Silenzio Bruno!”. And so this becomes Luca’s way to be brave. Disney Pixar’s movie, “Luca”, tells a beautiful story about friendship and how it helped to become more brave through the likes and support of each other. And maybe it’s that kind of bravery we need to call up on more when we strive for what actually matters.
One of the perks of having young kids is that you HAVE to watch Disney movies. With Disney+ it has become much easier than it has ever been, because it’s just a click away. By the way, Disney didn’t pay me to tell you this, it’s personal experience. And so, you get to watch great movies with a strong underlying message based on good morals and values. …. Spoiler alert, the good guys always win in the end. But maybe it’s because those good guys tend to adopt good values and the bad guys often adopt shitty ones.
A word about values
Mark Manson has written about adopting good and shitty values in personal life. And you should definitely catch up on his ideas. He has put it as raw and uncut as it should be in his books. Good healthy values tend to be ‘reality-based’, ‘socially constructive’ and ‘immediate and controllable’. So you end up with values like : telling the truth, standing up for others, going one step further than you think you can, self-respect, curiosity, … . The shitty values sound like : feeling good all the time, being liked by everybody, dominating others, …. You’ve guessed it right, they are ‘less controllable’ and ‘not immediate’ because you’re expecting something from someone else. They are even more ‘socially destructive’ or possibly ‘superstitious’. So it is only logical that the good ones always win … eventually. The Disney recipe for a great story is a good guy with good values and not a good guy with shitty ones…
Opinion: Watch out for the moral decay
June and July 2021, 24 teams battled to become the best football team of Europe. Belgium should have won it, yet Italy did win it and they fully deserved it. During the tournament, the Italian squad became a team in the true spirit of that word : interconnectedness, friendship, loyalty, fun and a strong belief in achieving that ultimate goal. They moved forward as one, each person adding something extra to the team: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. They showed real courage and teamwork, overcoming troublesome injuries. In the end, this all resulted in playing football the right way: attractive, physically strong and with passion. But for the first time in my life, I can criticise the tournament because it made it very clear that football players are just puppets on a string and they need to live by the laws of the UEFA. Football has become more intense, more physical, more demanding. Clubs have responded by following up on players and supporting players to being able to peak every week. But, at a certain point, there is nothing more you can do and players will become victim of the system they're part of. Kevin De Bruyne already expressed in the past that there are too many games. For example, UEFA invented a new format and added with the Nations league a new competition to the calendar, making it quite impossible for national teams to experiment and schedule proper training games, making it mentally impossible for a player to get some rest. All star players always need to be on top of their game when playing top games every week. Supporters are always expecting a win though. And on top of this all, UEFA is trying to make the game more attractive, changing the rules to create a more fluent gameplay. But there is a downside to this all ... multiple players are getting injured, also the huge stars. Impact on collision isn't taken too much into account anymore because it all has to be more spectacular. Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis already knew this about 2000 years ago: "Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt." But I honestly thought we evolved in the meantime, apparently we didn't. I can’t stand our cheers for more aggressiveness on the pitch. De Bruyne got body checked in the Champions league final with devastating consequences for himself and his team. The opposing player, Antonio Rüdiger, received a yellow card. De Bruyne also got tackled from behind in the game against Portugal at the Euro 2020 tournament. The opposing player only received a yellow card. The ankle of De Bruyne might have proposed another color of the card for that action. In the final, Chiellini hauls down Saka in a true wrestling style but also receives just a yellow card. It's becoming more on the edge of what I believe is still okay. And I think UEFA should ‘lead’ on this and protect the players against themselves: taking care of the players should be their number one priority. Ex professional players once told me that they were fully aware whether their tackles were going to have an impact or not. Those players accepted receiving the red card and knew exactly what they had done. No theater on the pitch to say they were innocent. Today I see players acting astonished when they receive a red card for fouls worse than their old predecessors. But with the game turning more athletic and aggressive today, I can only say that players are for once actually not the ones to blame, but the culture in which they have to play football, is. So let’s define culture: the most common definition describes culture as a system of values and beliefs which we share with others, all which gives us a sense of belonging or identity. So we can only conclude that more aggressiveness on the field will develop into more aggressiveness off the field. The verbal insults after the final towards Rashford, Sancho and Saka after they had missed a penalty are an example of it. It has become easy to address those players from behind a screen. If UEFA is really serious about inclusion, diversity and belonging, they'd better start setting the example. Instruct the referees to be less tolerant towards aggressiveness on the pitch and start respecting the players again as people, not as puppets on a string. And good values will help, not a shitty one like being richer than… or more powerful than ... nothing good ever came from that. There, I've said it...
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”
– Friedrich Nietzsche –
What does football have to do with this all? I believe that from a sociological point of view, we can draw a couple of conclusions. The football society is part of our bigger society and so offers insights on what is happening. At least, that’s how I tend to look at those things. Besides that, it also offered me the opportunity to ventilate my thoughts ..
Values in a business context
As a leader in business you take care of your people and hopefully try to provide a healthy culture in which they can operate to their full potential. If that is a yes, then maybe we should be more thoughtful about the values you pick as a leader to create a healthy culture: get rid of the shitty ones and live by the good ones. Like it often goes, living by good values is going to take time, demanding patience and expecting courage. Despite that you will do that, there still is going to be something like a company culture. Nevertheless, I truly believe that leaders should be made aware of their responsibility and the fact they should show more bravery and courage to lead and adopt good values. I’m stating this because too often a new leader gets carried away by his title and so called responsibility that all of a sudden they are never to be seen in the workplace ever again. My good friend William Wallace said it already to his fellow Scotsman Robert the Bruce: “Your title gives you a claim to the throne of our country, but men don’t follow titles, they follow courage“. Instead of looking at courage as something extraordinary, maybe look at it as: “taking one step more than you think you can”, said Holly Lisle. One more step isn’t too scary but could mean a huge difference in the end.
Living by good values or not?
A good technique to investigate your own actions is to ask yourself one of the following ethical questions:
The Front Page Test: How would you feel if your actions were on the front page ? Would you squirm or would you stand proud?
The morning after Test: How will you feel about what you did the day after?
The Mirror Test: How will you feel about your behaviour when you look at yourself in the mirror?
Role reversal test: How would you feel about being on the receiving end of your action?
Golden Rule test: Would you be willing to be treated in the same manner?
Whatever other introspection question is actually fine.
As a leader, there is much value in doing some thinking about your actions up front because
those actions will impact the lives of others.
Let’s talk Disney again
Before you want to put your ideas into action, maybe apply the Disney brainstorming method. The famous film producer and innovator Walt Disney had a special way of refining his ideas. Once he came up with an idea, he started fine-tuning it:
shoot for the moon and DREAM big: imagine this … , how great would it be if … , why not do …So he fantasised about the most absurd ideas. There was no limit to the imagination. What are we going to do?
make it practical and be more REALISTic about the idea: the outspoken ideas were re-examined and re-worked into something that could actually work. Making the idea possible. How are we going to do it?
CRITICIZE the ideas: be your own critic and find all sorts of reasons why something isn’t good enough. That way, he was actually trying to fix the loopholes in his own ideas. Why are we doing this?
Those ideas that passed this process were the ones Walt would further work on. The power of this method is that you don’t shoot down your own ideas before you have had the opportunity to explore them because you explicitly leave out the reality and criticism in the beginning.
Stay unfiltered and loud
Silence that negative inner voice and do what is the right thing to do. In Agile, there is this great way of looking at things through assuming positive intent. This means that you assume that people show up and have positive intentions to move forward. Maybe riding off a cliff is not that crazy after all… maybe you just get a whole lot for it in return? And you know what? If we live by good values and be more courageous … we’ll end up creating cultures of amazement. Isn’t that worth fighting for? So next time your negative inner voice tells you to not do it, I would say: “Silenzio, Bruno!” and go for it.
Just go for it.
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