Rhubarb, Myers-Briggs & People.
Other than having read a few books relating loosely to the subject. I know nothing of gardening, and by loosely, I mean 1 about permaculture and 1 about composting human poo (The Humanure Handbook) a surprisingly terrific read.
So, I found it nothing less than remarkable, when I planted the same seeds, from the same pack, in varying locations around the garden the stark difference in the outcome.
The Rhubarb for instance in the full sun produced the seedling long before the one in full shade that was protected from the elements, but soon after it would stop growing and never flourished. Whereas the one in the back yard in full shade took some time to produce the seedling but is now over 10 times the size of the other.
Some were also potted and put in other various locations within a 15-metre square area, all producing hugely different results.
The above experiment got me thinking about people, specifically how their environments, even differing ever so slightly might breed hugely different outcomes.
From my experience I know this is true with our work or employment. One employee thought of as a lost cause by one manager with a slight tweak of their environment or manager could be a huge asset to the business.
Who knows, maybe we would all thrive given the right amount of sunshine or shade? But the problem today is we are often unwilling to do this, treating everyone the same and then grading them, judging them whether they’re good or bad in the environment we have created. I just described the western school system and most internal company operations.
Its bullshit. Utter shit. People are different, more different than we know and will ever know if we keep the current system of 1.
The Myers-Briggs test says there are 16 personality types, it doesn’t really matter whether you believe this research or not, but I think it has more to offer than the current metrics we use = None. We treat everyone the same. Out of those 16 types there are many crossover attributes.
So, it’s probably not too unreasonable to suggest for the purpose of progress you could whittle those down to 3-4 different groups, so that you have people working together or learning, whose values and attributes are far more aligned and come up with programs for each, I bet we’d see better results.
We do it with plants, they give you a little tag that tells you whether they like sun or shade, whether they like hot or cold, wet or dry conditions.
Not unlike what we do with our people, I ignored their needs and because of this I may as well have thrown them in the bin. Surely, we wouldn’t do this to our people? But worse, we don’t even encourage them or try to learn, what makes them tick to ensure we get the best out of everyone. They just get the shitty old training program everyone gets because some todger liked the font. Surely, we can do better and must.