Scotland – Logic or Emotion
Over four million Scottish residents will today vote on whether to form an independent country and break away from the United Kingdom.
Who would ever have imagined such an event?
It is on days like this that I reflect on my world, on what I do with my life and what I stand for (unfortunately as an English resident the impact of the Scottish vote is apparently of no concern to me as I have been disenfranchised – a matter for another day).
I feel that I need to share some thoughts on this momentous occasion because that is what I do in Stop Press. My dilemma is whether or not these thoughts should have any promotional bearing on what I sell.
A moment of hesitation this morning led to a very clear decision – of course I should. What I do with working life matters greatly to me so why shouldn’t I promote what I do if life’s circumstances support my initiatives.
I have been arguing for a long while that as individuals working in the financial services sector we are obsessed with operating in a logical manner. I have gone on to try and make the point that we need to find ways of engaging with the emotional side of our persona – whether in relation to ourselves, the teams we operate in or the companies that employ us.
The Scottish referendum illustrates this point clearly. If the vote was about logic there would not be a referendum let alone a possible “Yes” outcome. Why would any logical, sane human being want to jump off a cliff not knowing what the future holds, not knowing what currency one will use, not knowing what one will own in eighteen months and not knowing whether one will be allowed to remain in the EU and Nato?
But the referendum is not only dictated by logic. It is very much dictated by the emotional convictions of four million Scottish residents. It is dictated by feelings of status, feelings of identity, feelings of pride.
By tomorrow morning we will know whether logic or emotion has won the battle.
In the interim, I would like to leave my readers with two messages.
As I say to my life coaching clients, control what you can control and manage the consequences of what you can’t control.
Are your organisation’s contingency plans for a “Yes” vote ready?
Finally I would like to assure readers that I have not lost the plot. Risk Audit’s training offering on technical subjects (the logical world) continues to thrive.
However I make no apology for engaging with the emotional world in our Auditing Culture workshop and hope that some of you will join me on October 22nd.
I would also refer readers to my article which previews the Cultural Risk Management Framework which underpins our work in this arena.