When I first came to the United States, what was notable to me was the amazing conformity exhibited by employees. This manifested in terms of the way many spoke, what clothes they wore, and what hobbies they had (sometimes none.) In the land where individuality supposedly ruled, it was often absent on the surface in a lot of my colleagues. At least that’s how it seemed at the time.
What I now realize is that it was the managers that wanted conformity (and the employees complied in a shallow way). For managers that meant it was easier to manage people. If two people were viewed as basically the same then they could be moved into each other’s roles. In some sense, the managers were treating people in the way that Henry Ford treated car parts — they needed to be interchangeable. The problem is that people aren’t made in moulds.
That reality is the focus of a recently published book, The End of Average: How We Succeed In A World That Values Sameness by Todd Rose.
Read more here.
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