Winnie-the-Pooh or The Relevance of Questioning the Status Quo

Nearly 6 years ago I held a lecture in Leadership Excellence at the University of Furtwangen. One of my most relevant issues was the non-existence of 'Questioning the Status Quo in Management and Leadership'.

I illustrated that with the following excerpt from a famous children's book we all know - but never understood as a kind of philosophical paragraph:

"Here comes Winnie-the-Pooh, rumpel-di-pumpel, down the stairs on his backhead.

This is, as far as he knows, the only way to go down stairs.

Sometimes he feels that there is, there must be another way.

If only, just for a moment the noise in his head, rumpel-dipumpel, would stop, so he could think about another way.

Then again he feels there is no other way to go down stairs."

Source: A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh Collected Works

In this short analogy we all are Winnie-the-Pooh. We all are hurt by the way we live, act, work, talk to our co-workers.

We feel the pain, but due to that pain we cannot think about a way to stop the pain. This is crazy. - At least when a little bear intuitively feels it.
We ourselves do not bother, we got acquainted. For us it is normal. There is no other way.

But of course there is! We just have to get rid of the pain - by getting rid of the status quo. We have to stop making sense!

Acting rational is our prison, our cage, our status quo. Rationality is the opposite of freedom, independence, individuality, and change!

Question your pains! Understand the root causes! Act!
Questioning the status is the 1st step to outgrow yourself!