It’s so easy to default to a common level of thinking about how life works and what our role in it is. This common level of thinking can be termed “one-way streets” for their simplicity. And for much of the time, one-way street thinking is adequate. It provides enough of a framework congruent with reality for us to navigate the world.
Yet it’s the moments that don’t fit within the common level of thinking that we can differentiate ourselves and reach heightened levels of clarity. These opportunities lie within what we’ll call two-way streets, frameworks where power dynamics, information flow, and more operate in different directions.
Education, business, and community are all major themes that have significant influence over the trajectory and quality of our lives. Let’s look at each one and the two-way streets that exist within all of them.
Two-Way Streets in Education
A common one-way street belief is that when applying to higher education institutions, you have to be selected. This means that you have to polish your image, submit transcripts, resumes, cover letters, writing prompts, design portfolios, and jump through all of these other hoops to show you are worthy of admission to that university. It’s a one-way street where the university dictates what is required to prove merit. And while all of this is true, there is more to it. There is another lane going in the opposite direction.
You, the applicant have demands of the university too. It has to be worthy of you to attend. In visiting institutions, you are vetting the campus, quality of living conditions, and university resources. Does the university align with your brand? Does it help you get to where you want to go in life? Are you receiving good value (cost of tuition versus education) from that school?
Universities work hard to stand out to prospective students. They spend millions on facilities. Oftentimes they spend even more on sports. They submit to national and regional media companies for rankings. And they employ tons of marketing professionals to get their good word out to the masses. It’s not cheap or easy, but when done correctly these efforts are effective in driving admissions. Similarly, the more you work to increase your abilities and brand, the more optionality you will drive in selecting where you can go.
Two-Way Streets in Business
Around the world, business and power go hand-in-hand. All too often, the perception of the power dynamic in many businesses flows from top to bottom like this: the client has power over the business, the business has power over its managers, and the managers have power over junior employees. For many types of business, this is the direction of power. In fact, most businesses most of the time have this dynamic. Many factors contribute to this, such as the economic environment, the talent pool from which to recruit, and government regulation, and many more are all factors. But nothing is permanent; just because your business operates within a certain paradigm now doesn’t mean it will forever.
Businesses are feeling the lurch of change especially hard right now thanks to a confluence of events. The COVID-19 pandemic, calls for improved sustainability efforts, gains in artificial intelligence, and a younger generation entering the workforce are all coinciding to put unique pressures on companies. Old-guard corporations and high-flying startups alike are navigating tricky waters when it comes to both strategy and operations.
One area in which businesses are presently struggling is recruiting and retention. For many years, the common belief among company executives was that people needed jobs and, because the pool from which they could pluck up talent was plentiful, they held the power. They could hire on when necessary. Retention plans included semi-competitive pay, a retirement plan, and some other minor benefits.
While that wasn’t always necessarily the case, the present is anything but that scenario. We reside in a world where salaries are disclosed on websites like Glassdoor and Indeed. Job postings on those websites and others like LinkedIn have salaries listed or estimated. Benefits too. Current and former employees can disclose to the world what it’s actually like to work somewhere. Workers are seeking flexibility in the amount of and location where work is done. People want work that feels purposeful.
This paradigm shift should make one thing evident. Businesses hire employees, but employees also “hire” businesses. Similarly, businesses fire employees, but employees also “fire” businesses. There is a two-way street that exists in the world of business when it comes to recruitment and retention. Both the business and its employees must exhibit their worth to each other for the relationship to make sense.
Two-Way Streets in Community
When it comes to selecting a community to live in, many factors may influence your decision. What amenities are there? Are there quality schools nearby? Is there adequate and reliable infrastructure? What are the taxes like? Do you enjoy the weather? And so on. The community needs to meet a certain threshold for you to want to live there.
You receive a lot from being part of the community, but you also have much to give. Yes, you pay to be there in the form of your mortgage/rent, taxes, association fees, and so on. But that’s the minimum. What else do you give to be there? Do you volunteer in schools? Did you join a city council advisory board? Did you create a business that adds value to the community? In other words, being part of a community is a two-way street where you give and you take. What are you giving?
Conclusion
Seeing life as a one-way street may be good enough to get by, but it is incredibly limiting. Life is a two-way street where you have some power and others have some power too. You give and you take. Understanding this allows you to better grasp the world around you and navigate it more skillfully.
If that’s not enough reason to seek out the other lane, here’s another important outcome: seeing the world as two-lane streets is simultaneously a booster for self-confidence and a governor of hubris.
Here’s how. Consider a student who lacks self-confidence applying for college. She isn’t getting athletic scholarships and she isn’t planning on rushing a sorority. She doesn’t even know what she’s going to study. But she wants to go to college, so she starts applying, hoping that in doing so somewhere will accept her.
If this student starts to consider all the schools she doesn’t want to go to, she begins to grasp the notion that those other schools weren’t accepted by her. She has some degree of power in giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to a prospective school, just as they do for her.
On the other end of the spectrum, consider a vice president of a medical sales company. He has worked around the clock for years to attain his job title and he projects that desire onto everyone else at the company. As such, he expects others to work as hard as he did every day. After all, this is a great company and these are important, high-paying jobs. Who wouldn’t want that?
Many of the salespeople, however, have other motivations. Namely, more time at home with family. Other jobs offer this benefit and pay well. After months or years of dealing with the vice president’s expectations, some of the salespeople start to leave. The VP backfills the roles, but attrition remains high. He realizes the true cost of projecting his personal career goals onto everyone else at the company; he doesn’t have all the power. The salespeople were effectively “firing” him as their leader for his behavior, just as he could do to them.
We showed one-way versus two-way streets in education, business, and community, in this post, but they exist elsewhere too. Examine other big components in your life, such as family, health, and sports. Where do you seem to have all the power? Where do you seem to lack power? You’ve likely internalized those areas as one-way streets.
Now think further: Are these actually two-way streets?
