This is the August 2024 Create an Adaptable Life Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.
I’ve heard about a “level playing field” for many years. First, it was in school, where supposedly “everyone” had the same opportunities. If everyone has the same start, supposedly it’s up to us to make of our lives what we will. But we’ve never had level playing fields in our personal lives or at work.
The lack of a level playing field starts when we’re quite young.
Personal Playing Fields
Even as a kid, I could see we did not all have the same opportunities.
For example, my folks had the time to take me to the library every week. However, the library was only open restricted hours, so not all parents could take their kids to the library. As a result, those kids read much less than I did.
In addition to reading, my folks took us to museums and plays. After, we discussed what we saw. Some kids did not have that opportunity.
There was more, but all of those opportunities enriched my life and gave me several steps up from the supposedly level playing field.
While we might start from a level playing field at birth (and I’m not so sure of that), these playing fields become uneven very quickly. School, by “tracking” kids through various classes, creates an even less level playing field. (I can only imagine totally rethinking what school looks like to change this.)
Then, we go to work.
Work Playing Fields Start Off Uneven
HR people work hard to create career ladders that offer career ladders supposedly based solely on merit. Those merit-based ladders work to create a “level playing field,” where everyone has supposedly the “same” opportunities.
But that requires these assumptions:
- All opportunities in the organization are equal. Not a chance! Some work or projects are much more valuable than others.
- Everyone in tech needs a college degree. That means the candidate needed to have the time and money to go to and graduate from college.
- And, everyone can have pay parity based on “their” expertise. That assumes anyone understands what a single person’s contribution is and that every person knew to negotiate every job’s pay.
Not only does work start off uneven, the unfairness tends to get even more lopsided, the longer we work, especially if we stay with one organization for years.
While I love the idea of a “level playing field,” I have never seen one, except in sports. And often, the leveling occurs because the teams switch sides on the field.
Life is unfair. Yet, we can choose to do things personally and in society that can create a more level playing field—if that’s what we want.
When Should We Create a Level Playing Field?
We need level playing fields when we want more people to contribute to an overarching goal that allows us to play an infinite game. (The infinite game allows the players to continue to play, even if they don’t always win. Everyone wins enough that the game continues.)
For example, imagine we want this outcome: More people to work in high-paying jobs so they can pay more taxes. (I’m not suggesting that’s the best goal, just that it is an overarching goal.) If more people pay more taxes, we have many more choices about how to spend that money. We could offer more children free lunch, and more enrichment programs. (And books! Kids need books!)
That might level the playing field for children.
You might not agree with me about kids, so let’s examine organizations. For organizations, the overarching goal is to continue the company, even if the company has some challenging times.
Organizations have trouble with level playing fields because of the built-in assumptions about work. But what if we chose to change the job descriptions and where we find candidates? What if we rewarded people based on their contribution to collaborative work instead of “their” individual work? (I’ve written about this topic in the Modern Management Made Easy books and in this blog post: One Pragmatic Thought: Reward Collaboration, Not Individual Work.)
That would level the playing field inside the organization and allow the organization to continue longer.
Life is never “fair.” We’ll always have uneven playing fields. But the more we consider what makes sense for how we want to live and work, the more level we can make these various playing fields.
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Till next time,
Johanna
© 2024 Johanna Rothman