The romance of movements
The following has been submitted by Tim Leberecht, the author of The Business Romantic: Give Everything, Quantify Nothing, and Create Something Greater Than Yourself and the founder and CEO of Leberecht & Partners.
I REMEMBER ONCE MEETING THE FORMER GENERAL manager of MTV World, Nusrat Durrani, in Paris. We were talking about organisational change and innovation and what it is that makes organisations consistently perform at the highest level. Nusrat shared a very simple metaphor that stuck with me. He said, ‘It’s all about being on fire. If your organization is on fire, you can do anything.’ No doubt, MTV was on fire for more than a decade. It was a movement, although it would never have called itself such (to borrow from the movie Fight Club: first rule of a movement? Don’t call yourself a movement!).
MTV’s fire lit everything up, it warmed everybody, and it brought out people’s passion. It offered a strong sense of purpose rather than a strong purpose: never fully articulated, because it was always understood, always felt. You can’t codify a fire. Then, at some point, the fire went out. And if that happens, you just have to accept it. It’s almost impossible to rekindle it. Romance sustains its power because it doesn’t last.
The romantics knew that. Romanticism — the seminal art, literature, and philosophy school in the 18th and early 19th century — was a movement. Moreover, any movement is essentially romantic: the promise almost always exceeds the concrete value it eventually delivers. Arriving is never really the point: it is the journey itself. Achieving a specific goal is what starts movements, but it is not what powers them. They remain incomplete. They never reach their full potential and are never fulfilled. Movements are not stories but narratives (to use John Hagel’s fine distinction) but collective stories that are written as they emerge, without clear morale. Permanent yearning is their modus operandi, and a reluctance to being explained and tamed is their aura. Unlike organisations, movements defy formalisation, they defy explicit hierarchy and structure, even meaning. They can be leaderless but never without intrinsic impetus. Movements provide their members a third place; a vessel for their alter egos, their alternative, expanded selves — the possibility of another world.
Movements form because we believe in something, but they also give us something to believe in. They give us the mystique of the unknown, the chance to devote ourselves, in fact, to surrender to an idea greater than ourselves. At the same time this collective cause stretches us into new terrain as individual human beings, allowing us to act as somebody else before eventually becoming somebody else. In my native German language, there is a great word for this particular quality: ‘Hingabe.’ It means both devotion and surrender and pinpoints the very power of movements: asking us to give everything without promising us anything. Movements are a powerful way of overcoming the confines of our ego and aspiring to become someone greater: the boldest and best version of ourselves.
I believe the world would be a better place if we had more romance in our lives. And movements — inside or outside our organisations, made of a dozen, of hundreds or hundred thousands — are its perfect catalyst. Rich are the lives of those close to the fire; those who are part of a movement or can start one of their own.