The Work Revolution: Freedom and Excellence for All

The Three Channels of Change

Fred Kofman, author of the must-read book Conscious Business, defines the idea of unconditional responsibility.9 If you say, “I can’t be happy in my work because my organization is too bureaucratic,” you are choosing to be a victim. To be a victim is to be a spectator and completely give up power. While it might be soothing to blame all of your ills, injustices, and bad results on external factors outside of your control, this renders you unable to make any changes and, thus, become part of the solution.

If, however, you choose to be a player (the opposite of victim) and claim “response-ability,” then you focus 100 percent on the factors that are within your control. You are saying, “I can make a choice on what to do, given that the world has presented me with this situation.”

If we all showed up at work taking 100 percent responsibility (not to be confused with blame), then we would all be empowered to be part of the solution. As a player, Kofman states, “There’s always something I can do. I am free to choose how I respond to this. . . . When you are a player, there is no ‘they’; if anything bothers you, then it’s your problem.”

So the first step—or, rather, the prerequisite—in the Work Revolution is that everyone, individuals and leaders alike, step up to respond to the problems of their organizations. Change can happen when individuals, leaders, and their teams line up to each take 100 percent responsibility. Some books are written about organizations—how ...