My partner is in Snowdonia, training for advanced orienteering leadership with the Scouts. This triggers my son’s memory of our journey to the top on ‘Great-grandad’s railway’ and that in-turn reminds me of the moment I discovered a personal history of what it can really mean to ‘Speak your Truth’. Not a literal definition, but the consequences of standing for and living by professional principles.
My father’s father was the consultant Engineer for Snowdon Mountain Railway during the 1960s and 70s. When we had visited recently I’d looked him up in the history book at the gift shop at the top. He would walk the narrow-gauge track and check each of the joints, supports, and foundations for the unique Abt rack-and-pinion solution that annually takes 130,000 souls one kilometre up into the clouds of Britain. However one year the board of the company were forced to “accept the recommendation of their senior engineering consultant (yeah, that was my light-bulb moment) to close the railway for up to 6months in order to undertake ‘essential engineering’.” They would have missed peak season with massive losses – not just to the company, but also the local tourist industry. When I asked my father what had happened, he recalled it being a tricky time but that Grandad had “just got on with it.”
50-years later and I find myself acting as consultant in the gig economy. I’ve been asked to come in and ‘do something’ to alleviate a client’s perceived misery but after rapid investigation of the problem, the business objectives and potential solutions, the truth was that ‘Do Nothing’ was going to be the best option for the business. Five-days in and I’ve put myself out of a job, speaking my truth, just getting on with it.
Getting on with ‘it’ would ideally mean finding something to build, a visible solution for a problem, purposeful forward-moving activities. Doing something. The thing is that when the best solution is ‘Do Nothing’ that doesn’t mean you did nothing to make that decision. It just might look that way.
Stark choices presented by professional practice generally won’t have personal consequences but speaking your truth can feel just as risky. Checking that the business justification for a product or project is still valid may not be a corporate norm in your organisation and staying in Discovery when your team just want to build something can be really tough but if you know your truth, speak it.