The Optics of Now
Today, I’m going to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming with something a little more personal. There have been some questions bubbling inside me for a bit. I think it comes from being at home, moving through the same familiar routine each day, being trapped in my body. Because I’m not just trapped in my body. I’m trapped behind screens. Computer screens, phone screens, TV screens. And this year, those screens are one’s portal to friends, to work, to the country, and to the world.
This has been the case for so many of us, for six+ months (gosh). Yet, you may have sensed that August, in many ways, has been a month of new beginnings for Ellevated Outcomes. I’ve been trying to embrace and emit that positive energy. Our business has some fun, delightful, and helpful things on the horizon for our clients and network. And I do want us to shout about them from the rooftops. After all, who doesn’t need a little positivity, control, and hope right now?
Yet I have to admit: sometimes I have flashes of doubt that make me self-conscious. By being upbeat and optimistic, does it look like I – or more importantly – Ellevated Outcomes doesn’t see or isn’t active in the things that are wrong in the world?
That couldn’t be further from the truth; and frankly, I’m really proud of our company values and how we make them come to life in real, tangible ways. We hire and fire clients based on them. Hire our people based on them. Decide where to invest our money based on them. We do the things. But should we be talking about them more openly? Have we reached a point in time where optics matter more than action?
Let me rewind a bit and share something from the archives with you. I grew up in an extremely religious household, in an extreeeeeemely religious diocese (we were Catholic). And don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t something forced on me. For whatever reason I was all-in on religion, religious schooling, my youth group. I soaked it all in. Fun fact: I was nervous that I was being called to be a nun! I didn’t want to be one, but I feared that may be my destiny. Anyway, over time, I was able to get a little distance by going to a Jesuit university, where you’re taught that you can be Catholic and ask why.
My experience of my adolescence was that I was raised in a way and a community that says: treat people how you want, then apologize to God if you do something wrong. That’s the path to forgiveness and heaven.
So I share that as background to say: when I started seeing things that way, I 180-ed. In my adult life I’ve given zero shits about the optics and all the shits about trying to do the right thing, in the real world, even if no one sees it. And it’s funny how even that is perceived. As my dad and my husband would say (no Freudian link, I’m sure, haha): “yep, she suuuure marches to the beat of her own drum. I just have to let her do her thing.” It’s perceived as discord!
But today, with our looking glass to the world being through that gosh-darn screen, does what you’re doing on the inside need to be projected to the outside? Is it enough to do the work if you don’t tell the outside world? Is it tone-deaf? Complicit?
And let me say this: we would never, ever, everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr go about it without authenticity. Each of our employee role agreements say,
We perform like role models for what business looks like at its peak performance.
This means: hands-down, we don’t tell our clients to do things that we don’t practice ourselves. We walk the walk. It’s required. But should we talk more? Is that required in today’s screen-based environment?
Just this morning, I had an energizing, intriguing conversation with a good friend and fellow business owner who disagrees with my approach. She says that it takes the optics and external communication to push most people to have difficult conversations. I have at least three to five difficult conversations a day, so this is an interesting point I wouldn’t arrive to on my own. It’s a huge blind spot for me; and therefore, I take her point on board.
But the slippery slope, I argue back, is: depending on how you frame these things out loud, you risk losing people who see the world differently from you. (And I’m not talking about, like, number of Instagram followers. I’m talking about people whose minds and hearts you want to reach). People who already agree with you are going to continue agreeing with you. Big whoop, that’s not helpful. What about the others?
The more important question (I think) is:
How do you be an effective change agent, finding the opening and slowly making your way in, in a human, connection-based way?
As I’ve said before, examples need to be set and policies and the like do need to happen from the top-down; but I believe, perhaps incorrectly, that real change happens from the bottom-up.
So now that I’ve poured my wonderings, agitations, and heart out to you (should’ve started this post with “dear diary”) there’s not a tidy conclusion, for I don’t have the answer. Gosh, who does? Someone, are you out there!?!
But here is what I’m going to do… and maybe it’s for optics. Maybe it’s for role modeling. Or maybe it’s for my own personal processing.
Over the two weeks, I’ll share:
- What we do as a company. These are things that we’ve operationalized into our days and work habits so that they’re not one-offs. They are how we do things. They’re woven into our culture and our processes.
- Our company’s next stage of work, including the three legs of inclusive action that my friend Ivy Kusinga outlined to me last week.
I don’t know why I feel so self-conscious about this. Just please, please, please don’t think of this vocalization as trying to humble-brag or for optics. It’s me, it’s us – Ellevated Outcomes – dipping our toe into the vast but not-always-deep waters of media, in a way. I don’t know if it’s the “right” way.
But I do make this commitment to you: we will never step beyond what is true for us. We will never talk without doing the walk.
