A dream workplace needs the positive input of everyone

If I were to make an “I have a dream” speech for the workplace, I would dream of a day when everyone’s sense of responsibility and duty would be guided by the wish to be facilitative to colleagues, where everyone would wish to  be measured by how they helped create an enabling environment.

An environment within which each person could attain both professional and personal growth and objectives.

I would dream of a place where everyone takes personal responsibility for the environment within which they would wish to operate. Where there would be a true sense of duty and responsibility that would be supreme to all excuses.

Where each person would be driven by a sense of purpose, people would no longer hold jobs but would become missionaries in what they do, not that they would not be paid, but their purpose and achievements would make them more proud than the sizes of their pay cheques.

I would dream of a place where humility would be a virtue, where people would be humble in their actual and perceived achievements and abilities. A place where the question that would lead all discussions and reflections would be: how have we facilitated towards attaining the objectives?

Where personal achievement would come second to the shared achievements. Where each person’s achievements would be measured on how they helped other people towards their own journeys. It would be a place of appreciation of each other. It would be a place, in my dreams, with huge amounts of humour, where people would be able to laugh at themselves, their shortcomings and their mistakes and misadventures.

The people’s faces and voices would look and sound relaxed even in the face of adversity — both real and imagined.

There would be laughter and joy, for people would be able to see the comedy that life is sometimes. For, in the seriousness of the targets, deadlines and projects, there would be lots of things to be happy about and even laugh about.

It would be a place full of grace and dignity. Graceful dignified treatment of each other in the full knowledge that we are all in this universe for a purpose and none can fulfill the other’s purpose, nor can anyone stop the attainment of the other’s purpose. In competition, therefore, there would be some grace and dignity.

The place would be filled with compassion, even when a not-so-favourable decision would need to be communicated.

It would be done with some degree of understanding and empathy, for in each decision — regardless of how harsh it may look — there lies the beginning of a new journey with new opportunities.

In my dream, I would see a place with a huge amount of trust. People would not need to second guess each other.

What is said would be what is meant and what would happen. There would be no doublespeak. The tempo would be the same, truthful and purposeful.

But, much as I dream, I would want to ask myself what I could contribute towards that environment. I would ask, “What can I be remembered for? How do I currently contribute towards that kind of an environment?  Do I start by examining my contribution before looking at others, or do I always say what others are not doing?”

What is that one single thing that you can be remembered for? What is that one single thing that people look up to you for?

What is it that you and I offer?

Mr Muturi is the executive director, Kenya Institute of Management