“Images of free market society that made sense prior to the Industrial Revolution continue to circulate today as ideals, blind to the gross mismatch between the background social assumptions reigning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and today’s institutional realities. We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control, when most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government[emphasis added].“
What else could you call the modern workplace, where superiors can issue changing orders, control attire, surveil correspondence, demand medical testing, define schedules, and monitor communication, such as social-media posts?
—Nathan Heller on Elizabeth Anderson, The Philosopher Redefining Equality
Society’s structure and governance impact almost every aspect of our lives. How civic discourse frames our actual structure and governance conditions what we think is ethical. Ever since Richard Cantillon and Adam Smith developed the concept of the free market, political economists have framed the choice for society as one between free markets and state control.
Anderson points out that this framing ignores the reality that the modern workplace increasingly controls adults’ lives. Such loss of individual autonomy threatens to reduce spontaneous connection and authentic community, both inside and outside work.
1984
We are still a long way from George Orwell’s 1984, where the Party only allowed conformist relationships. (Though the current rise of dictatorships around the world is an ominous sign for the future.) But we need to be aware of new kinds of oppression in private organizations. In addition to those mentioned above, organizations continue to further blur the line between work and personal. Corporations require more and more employees to respond to routine “emergencies” day or night.
The number of people with substantial autonomy in their work and life is decreasing with the rise of private government. This concerns me more than the historic tension between free markets and the state. With the ongoing collapse of unions and continuing consolidation of businesses, private government has fewer checks on its power. As a result, workers find it more and more difficult to resist new demands.
What to do?
The first step in tackling a problem is to notice it exists. We overlook the rise of private government by focusing on creating the “right” balance between free markets and state control. Free markets move inexorably towards the minimum “acceptable” competition, typically duopolies (think Uber versus Lyft). State power provides some limits on how much concentration of power occurs.
But inside organizations, there is little, if any, limit on what private government can impose on employees’ lives.
Public government is the only means workers have to communicate their desire to limit the suffocating effects of private government. Private government uses its vast resources to fight such efforts via well-funded media campaigns. Such campaigns use effective tools, such as polarizing and misleading memes, which work at an emotional level to demoralize opponents or sway audiences to an advantageous point of view.
The unchecked power of private government may only be curbed when its excesses become too much for workers to bear and a tipping point is reached. Until then, it’s important to work to increase awareness of the growing control that companies have over employees’ lives and the ensuing deleterious effects.
Why do some learning experiences stay burning in our brains and others fade into oblivion? Transformational learning is the key!
I still vividly remember the first Event Camp held on February 6, 2010, in New York City. I learned so much at this one-day event, meeting many progressive meeting industry professionals for the first time and making what have turned out to be lasting connections and friendships.
And I believe that most participants experienced something similar.
Why did we have this shared learning and connecting experience? Was there a critical factor that made this meeting such a transformational experience?
Emotional connection
While reading J. Scott Wagner‘s wonderful book The Liberal’s Guide to Conservatives — a must-read for liberals and conservatives who want to communicate better with each other — I came across a passage that answers these questions:
“It’s easy to forget that inspiration is the only voluntary catalyst for transformation.
There’s only one way I’ve found that our adult unconscious mind can consistently be inspired to shed…heuristics and biases and learn something challenging from someone else. It’s actually miraculously easy, often: we experience a positive emotional connection together.”
—J. Scott Wagner, The Liberal’s Guide to Conservatives
Scott is not talking here about our routine day-to-day right-brain learning. Rather, he is describing transformational learning, the kind where real change can occur in how we view the world and our experience of it. He says, and I agree, that a positive emotional experience of connection inspires transformational learning.
That’s what happened at Event Camp 2010. We came together for the first time and discovered kindred souls who were thirsting to learn and share about how to make meetings better. And in one day, our positive emotional connection changed our preconceptions of what meetings could be.
The original participants at the first edACCESS conference, which I and others convened in 1992, felt the same way. The experience of this early peer conference led to an annual conference that’s still thriving 33 years later. Over time, it has become clear that the driving force behind the event’s success has been how its design fosters participants’ positive emotional experiences, creating and supporting opportunities for transformational change in how the professional attendees view and do their work.
Fostering learning experiences
Traditional meetings don’t treat sessions as times to foster positive emotional learning experiences but as times to learn from lectures. So, at such meetings, positive emotional experiences are restricted to non-session socials and non-session-entertainment. The official learning opportunities are segregated from exactly the kind of environments that can make them inspirational and transformative.
Paradoxically, we design special events to create positive emotional experiences—but special events don’t focus on learning! Rather, to inspire transformational learning, you need to create conferences and conference sessions designed around appropriate positive emotional experiences that relate to the participants’ real learning wants and needs. Do this, and you’ll discover how powerful, transformational, and unforgettable meetings can be!
Last Saturday, the ashes of my wife’s beloved Tai Chi teacher were interred in our tiny town cemetery. People came from all over the world to celebrate her life, but some could not make the journey. Could I help distant friends and students in the United States, New Zealand, and Germany to connect with the ceremony in some way? To facilitate connection between those present and those far away?
Well, my mission is to facilitate connection between people, so I said “yes”.
A quick trip to the cemetery established that a weak cellular data signal was available on site. After obtaining permission from the family I set up a Zoom streaming meeting for the group and arrived on the day with a simple iPhone setup.
For some reason (perhaps the weak cellular data strength?) Zoom was not able to stream much of my audio. But the iPhone video was quite good, and I could easily hear the viewers’ comments. During the ceremony, I loved the group’s delight at various points; they were so happy they could experience something of what was going on.
The service moved me. It included raucous opening and closing parades with noisemakers around the cemetery, poetry, and a beautiful Double Fan Form performed by the Tai Chi group. Although I am a fan of low-tech and no-tech solutions at events, sometimes hi-tech is the only way to facilitate important connections under circumstances like these. I am grateful to be able to bring people who are far away into the heart of what is happening.
In early 2010, at the first EventCamp, I discovered the wonder and power of meeting people face-to-face whom I had previously only met online. Perhaps the wonder is stronger for me than most, living in rural Vermont, 100+ miles from any city. Nevertheless, when I travel to a major metropolitan area these days and have a few hours free I try to bring people together.
I love bringing people together in ways that work for them—in fact, that’s my mission. So it was a pleasure to host these three casual meetups for event and association management professionals. What was amusing, however, was how often people thanked me for bringing them together. I had to laugh—here was a guy from Vermont facilitating connection between people who all lived near each other, people who could easily arrange to meet frequently. And yet…they didn’t.
Sometimes people need permission to connect. In this case, a small outside impetus was all that was required. An hour of my time to send emails out to my local connections, find somewhere to meet, and track/answer questions from those who were coming. No big deal. And I doubt it hurt my professional life to be a connector, an initiator for the enjoyable and interesting connections that subsequently occurred.
Yes, we’re all busy. But let’s not forget that our work in the event and association spheres is fundamentally about facilitating connection between others. And that should, once in a while, include ourselves—our peers—both known and new. So, pass it forward, my friends. Once or twice a year, send out some invites for a casual get-together with your peers. It needn’t be elaborate or have a specific marketing focus; just meet somewhere for drinks or a meal. Publicize the event to your local network and welcome anyone who hears about it and wants to come.
You’ll be bringing people together. Who knows what the pleasant consequences will be?