The Problem with Change by Ashley Goodall

Author:Ashley Goodall [GOODALL, ASHLEY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2024-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

When we do this, we cut through the fog. The clarion beauty of a thing done well is where we find solidity in what we do. It is also where we find our deepest wells of motivation. David Remnick, now the editor of the New Yorker, worked at the Washington Post early in his career, and he remembers the environment that Ben Bradlee created there: “Even if you were quite sure he didn’t know your name, you were prepared to go to fantastic lengths to live up to his standards.”10 This animating force can’t be found in scores, or ratings, or raises, or promotions, because while these might in some convoluted way reflect shadows of excellence in the past, they are at the same time mechanical and abstract and instrumental and inhuman. Rather, it reveals itself in moments where the universe collapses for a moment to a singularity, in which one human does something that, to another human, is clear, and pure, and fine, and life-affirming, and undeniable.

And surprising. Which of us would include the requirement to help people forget about a really bad day in the job description of a tow truck driver? Certainly not anyone designing the metrics for that role, or anyone deciding on the appropriate goals. More often than we might admit, we don’t know what we want or need other people to do. In many walks of life, we don’t know exactly what the next great thing looks like, because it doesn’t exist yet, and as a result, as much as we might want to, we can’t define the required skills or set out the right scale. But if we can figure out how to give more of our fellow humans the joyous combination that Alexander the Great has—tangible competence and freedom—then they will take us to places far beyond what we might, today, imagine.

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