This week while chatting with a good friend, I confessed that I can never see myself working ever again in a corporate business with companies or leader who put profit over people.

The mere idea of working for such a business doing exactly the same thing that I’ve been doing for the last 25 years of my working life, fills me with dread. Over the last couple of years, this has been the biggest wake up call in my life.

It could be an age thing too when you see through all the BS and the lip service. It could also be the realisation that what I espoused was too idealistic, naive and unattainable in systems designed to extract profit from everything. After all, underneath all the messaging of the changing workplace, it’s really about that.

It could be seeing the world through a different lens now and asking myself, what has been my part in it to get it to here? Was I also complicit in this behaviour in some way? Could I have done something different – played the game, followed along, do what everyone else is doing?

What has happened in the last few years to see this shift in my thinking to something so unrecognisable where now I cringe at the thought of my own area of expertise?

Cringing at the thought that I was part of getting people online, connected, understanding social tools for their own professional and personal development and now, I don’t even recognise the social online world full of lies anymore?

How, when I was espousing community, social and peer learning collaboration and learning work is still a notification overloaded, unrecognisable, hidden, isolated, competitive, and ego driven?

I can’t play the game anymore. I’m tired. They won.

They’re saying that “this is the new normal”. That I should “get with the program”, that “I’m not ‘with it'”. I should be and think more like a “futurist” to learn to keep on top of all this constant uncertainty and change. To try and do more and be smart about it. (*Eye roll*)

If THAT’s normal, then keep me well out of it thanks.

The idea of doing the same thing, dealing with the same problems, issues and obstacles as well as the same rebuttals from management and leadership is something I just don’t want in my life anymore.

If someone asks me to help them with their social media or to help them build their community around extracting profit in some way for their business, I don’t know what I will say. I cringe at the thought that I’m known for this. That I built my reputation and expertise around the use of social tools that weren’t like how I knew them in the past but now, are simply so unrecognisable and toxic that no one knows the difference anymore.

Even worse, the models of how people are using and promoting themselves on social media are the templates by which companies and people use for their enterprise social networks believing that’s how they should be used – for self-promotion, broadcasting or pushing their products and services. They don’t know the difference because there is no other model presented out there – nor are people willing to take a risk to do something completely different and to break that mould.

No, I’m better off without them.

Similarly the idea of building a social learning consulting business all over again to work within the same system that doesn’t change or evolve with new behaviours and thinking is something I can’t do. Not now. Not ever.

I cannot become the bit player again having to feed the social platforms my content to find business rather than spend that time honing my knowledge, expertise, craft and working with people and communities that make an impact to the world in a positive and more meaningful way.

I.simply.can’t.face.the.bullshit.anymore.

I’ve come to the realisation that work – the knowledge work – in the form that it is today, in the systems and companies driven by the bottom line goes against my own values in every way.

I cannot work for such companies or pretend to anymore.

I have no idea why I’ve reached this point in my life. It was never an issue before but post Covid lockdowns, I don’t really like how the world is going at the moment – nor liking how the technology platforms are driving new behaviours around egotism, isolation, narcissism and lack of empathy as being normal.

They are not normal.

They’re infiltrating our work and our relationships with people around us.

It’s as if I have reached the point of extreme bullshit that we have been served at work that I can’t take it anymore. I’d much rather do anything else – find anything else – that would have me do anything else than I used to do before.

So it’s time to move on and do or try something new because I’ve decided I simply don’t want to participate in a system that misaligns against my values.

Future of work, future of work influencers, thought leaders, LinkedIn influencer scores, selling your soul for a Like or a Follow, feeding the algorithm, companies cottoning on that they can use their employee networks to flog their own products and services, it’s all a crock.

Unless companies are actively changing the systems they themselves use to exploit others, get their hands dirty, make sacrifices, decrease their own huge wages, help those in need rather than following the examples of how ultra rich tech billionaires act for the way they should also act or behave, then nothing will change.

I refuse to be part of that system anymore.

Right. I’m off to study my French now. There’s a need to learn the subjunctive tense. I’d much rather talk about that.