I would guess that you, like me, were horrified by what happened in Washington DC last week. Actually, I've felt pretty horrified on a daily basis by everything coming out of Washington for the last four years, not to mention our own fun and shenanigans with Brexit here.
A dark and divisive mood still pervades on both sides of The Pond, driven by extreme views, propaganda, disinformation, rumour, and outright lies. Joe Biden's victory and coming inauguration as President may do something to alleviate these stormclouds of thought, but it's going to take time - time and cooperation.
It's that latter word I miss in the world right now - cooperation, along with empathy, perception and openness. The American and British Worlds, right now, still seem to be firmly set in a retributive, punitive, aggrieved mood.
But who to punish? Who to exact retribution on? And more importantly, why? What's the point?
It has struck me that in the current political climate, there is very much a sanction-oriented style of management in charge, rather than a solution-oriented one. Now, you might be asking, what do I mean by this?
A 'Sanction-oriented' culture is one that wishes to punish others for their transgressions, be they real or imagined. The world view of such a culture is that it is the model on which everything should be based, and any deviation from its norms needs to be sanctioned, fined, punished, imprisoned - or extirpated. It doesn't tolerate anything other than its own view and behaviour. It is, essentially, a prescriptive view of the world. It's the culture of 'lock 'em up and throw away the key'
A 'Solution-oriented' culture is one that seeks to find an answer to a given problem or issue. It sees its own culture as a complement to other views and is open to having its own paradigms questioned. It takes the time, effort and expense to seek a way to coexist, to compromise, or to find an effective solution.
From a traditional political perspective, you might say that the Right is Sanction-oriented (after all, the Conservatives pride themselves on being the party of Law and Order), while the left (or, to use the language of the tabloids, 'the loony lefty dogooders) is Solution-oriented.
It is, of course, not quite so clear cut. Successive Home Secretaries in the UK have been very much Sanction-oriented (while their civil service and diplomatic staff have, quite frequently, been looking for solutions). Priti Patel is most definitely of a punitive frame of mind: The language she uses and the ideology she espouses leave little doubt that she thinks everyone needs to be sanctioned until they do exactly what she says. Conversely, going back to the 80s, Tory Kenneth Baker introduced the reforms to education that I regard as very much solution-oriented. The Good Friday Agreement is another good example.
I could, of course, go on into much more detail, and I'm sure you can think of examples: There's the case of the homes run by nuns in Ireland, for example, or attitudes towards abortion, or opinions about rights for minority or marginalised groups. As for Donald Trump, or Jair Bolsonaro, or Vladimir Putin, or Recep Tayyip Erdogan - well. It applies to our workplaces - do you work in a sanction-oriented or solution-oriented management culture?
It even pervades home. As anyone who's been a parent to obstreperous teenagers can attest, it sometimes seems easier to punish our little darlings by sending them to their room (the old-school answer - not sure it'd work now) or cutting off their internet access.
And yet here's the thing: Sanctions rarely work. Punishing people isn't particularly effective. Banging up lawbreakers for infractions doesn't stop the crime itself happening. Beating up someone for being a different colour or gender or sexuality doesn't stop them being that colour, that gender, that sexuality. Just because you don't want something or someone to exist doesn't mean that it's going to disappear.
Sanctions, in my opinion, are a poor solution - they may be instant, but they don't actually tackle the nub of the problem - in a way, all sanctioning does is to push the issue under the carpet, or further away.
Solution-oriented culture takes time. It takes patience. It takes energy, and resources, and expense, and quiet often considerable courage - but in the end, it's actually far more worth it.
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