I have attempted to write this blog several times and struggled at giving voice to a deep frustration. The frustration of knowing that certain things do not work (for me and many others) while not knowing what new ways I can create… just yet.
Maybe, I start with some definitions.
Colonialism is a practice of control by people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, the administrators rule the territory in pursuit of their interests, seeking to benefit from the colonised region's people and resources. (Source Wikipedia).
What goal settings has to do with colonialism? Let’s look at the etymology of the word. Goal from Middle English goal “boundary, limit”, from Old English *gāl “obstacle, barrier, marker”.
When I hear talking about goal settings I sense a perpetuation of colonialism in pursuit of conquering a boundary. Some of the terminology around goal setting gives a clear sense of this attitude:
conquer or dominate a market, a niche, a field, etc.,
establish a supremacy over competitors,
gain control over a process, system, market…
Can you have a look at the goals you have set for yourself (for your team and organisation) and just check how much conquering and dominance you find?
Modern colonialism has a close relationship with capitalism. The poet Adrienne Rich, who became the only person to decline the National Medal of Arts in one of creative culture’s most courageous acts of political dissent, considers the perilous interplay of the market and the mind in capitalist culture:
We have become a pyramidic society of the omnivorously acquisitive few, an insecure, dwindling middle class, and a multiplying number of ill-served, throwaway citizens and workers [resulting in] a kind of public breakdown, with symptoms along a spectrum from acute self-involvement to extreme anxiety to individual and group violence. […]
Capitalism presents itself as obedience to a law of nature, man’s “natural” and overwhelming predisposition toward activity that is competitive, aggressive, and acquisitive. Where capitalism invokes freedom, it means the freedom of capital. Where, in any mainstream public discourse, is this self-referential monologue put to the question?
The settler-colonial logic is inherently eliminatory. The inherent elimination is at the core of many (too many) business strategies that aim at eliminating anything or anyone that stands in the way of their "market access goals". Terms like consumers, target audience, client/talent acquisition, and so on, reduce people to commodities to acquire, areas to conquer… Sometimes I feel like these inherent colonisers live within us, invisibly and undisturbed, without us even realising what is their impact.
Where your achieved goals have colonised someone else’s identity or space? Can you decolonize your goal settings? How that looks like?
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