The little deli around the corner just started opening an hour earlier on weekday mornings. Of course, it makes sense for a business located in a walkable neighbourhood to serve commuters who will grab a coffee on the way to work and maybe even buy a sandwich for lunch later in the day.

The last time I was there I got chatting to one of the assistants.

“Why did you decide to open earlier in the morning?” I asked.
“Oh, ‘they’ (meaning the management) wanted to give it a go to see how it went,” she replied.

Sadly we disown our role as part of the collective in this way all the time. We talk about how the country, community or business needs a new direction, all the while forgetting that we are the country, the community and the business. There is no ‘they’—there is only ‘we’.

The secret of successful organisations of any kind is that they think like a team, which in turn means they act like a team. When we abandon the ‘them and us’ mindset and own our part in the story, magic happens.

Image by Alpha