Vanuatu

More space to make mistakes…

It’s dangerous to be making generalized statements about work culture, not only because generalized statements always have exceptions but also because so many of the social demands, taboos and responsibilities don’t apply to volunteers; in fact, as an outsider, we often are completely oblivious to these demands or protocols. But in spite of the above, one thing I have increasingly noticed is the lack of “strictness” at work. That’s not to say that the people aren’t professional. But just seems like there’s more space, both at work and in leisure time, to make mistakes and let go. I am attending provincial meetings on the official level; I still observe people cracking jokes or talking silently within themselves. And this isn’t taken as a sign of disrespect or in-attention by the speaker; simply something part of human interaction where it is sort of hard, if not impossible to maintain absolute silence and attention for a good hour or two straight.

Some would argue that this automatically means that there is decreased work output and efficiency. In response to that I would say that in spite of having several conflicting personalities at work, there continues to be this surprisingly high level of (superficial) calmness, maybe due to the social protocol that discourages open conflict. And I doubt that this superficial-calmness would be possible were people over-stressed with meeting a certain quota of work every day or week.

While on this topic, another observation: people talk here, well “stoyean” to be more exact. But to say that they sometimes talk things to death might not be too much of an exaggeration, but yet, taking this time to talk makes the entire consensus bilding process easier, less painful and less mechanical (as was my observation while serving on board for WPIRG). That’s not to say that there aren’t people who continue to be dissatisfied, but still allowing everybody an opportunity to talk at least takes the responsibility of any future problems away from you, as the meeting facilitator; besides, than you can’t be labeled with such fun and arbitrary tags as “racist”, “oppressive”, “facist”, “bossy” or whatever other stuff we love to throw at each other.

posted by faa-T @ 10:44 PM