It’s a story about a black sheep, a member of a group who is regarded as a disgrace to it, an outcast. Someone who doesn’t look the same, think the same and act the same as the rest of the flock. A head that is standing out of the crowd. A deviation of the norm. An unwanted surprise. An unexpected child born. One little dot that ruins the whole pattern. A chaos in the form of being. It breaks harmony, it breaks silence, its energy is moving, flowing, melting down the iceberg of status quo. This is the black sheep story and this story is its voice.
My friends, we all are sheeps, we live in a flocks. This flocks can be our family, school, community, works or office, organizations where we’re in and even the country we live in. We all are sheeps and we live at least in one of these flocks.
Many of these flocks, especially nowadays in the 21st century, preach us all, and told us all to make a difference and to create change. For example, organizations and mainstream management teachings always told us that in an era of hyper competition innovation matters, creativity made all the difference, and that we have to think out of the box! But when look in a closer detail in our offices, workplaces and organizations, what happen to those who are really innovative, creative, and think out the box? They will be kicked out of the box. We preach about creativity but we strangle creativity, we talk about change but we don’t really want to change. We don’t know what we’re preaching, we just love the jargons, because it sounds nice, cool, and every up to date person in the world talk about it. We like it but we don’t really want it. We don’t mean what we say.
The truth is: As a flocks we want everybody to be like the rest of the flocks. It’s our tendency. In schools, family and life somebody will always force us to live up to their expectation. A father who wants his son to be a doctor or engineer while the son loves art. In schools we are forced to be brilliant, to be top of the class and to play by their rule. We grew up in a society that cloons us, engineered us to be part of the flocks, to be a white sheep, while ironically they keep telling us the story of the black sheep.
No.. no… no… as a being we obviously don’t like when someone is different from us, we don’t like when something challenges our status quo, we like to be in control, we hate changes, we don’t like surprises. And yet, we keep telling the story of the beauty of being different. We worship the statue of the blacksheep but we kill them everyday.
My dear friends, please keep this story in you heart, for maybe tomorrow or one day, when you come back to your country or your own organizations, you will see and be part of these flocks. And remember that you can always choose: to be just like the rest of the flocks or be one the black sheep: who drives real change with the risk of being slayed and silenced.
*) The short story of the black sheep by Augusto Monterroso