In Christopher Nolan’s Inception1, each new dream layer takes the characters further down the rabbit hole to plant the idea deep down in the subconscious where Robert Fischer could no longer identify what’s false anymore. Each new layer is precisely constructed to solve a task the previous layer couldn’t handle. Within each layer there is a dreamer who creates the actual layer and a subject who provides the projections from their subconscious.
The concept rotates around the connection between the dreamer and the subject; they both need each other’s presence so they can create the dream together. Once the subject’s subconscious notices the trickery, the dream itself turns against the dreamer to restore balance.
If you’ve ever sat in meetings with your mic and video turned off, the dream layers might feel similar; you might just know them as assumptions that can turn into lies with each passing day, turning green statuses to red.
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Everyone Is Guessing
Spending a decade in tech both as a team member and a master of ceremonies taught me that nobody knows for certain what’s going to happen and when that might be. Everybody guesses based on available information, previous trends and the heat they feel under their feet. The more time you spend around a set of problems a.k.a. product, the more accurate your guesses will become. But they will never reach certainty. The entire flow rests on confident shoulders who themselves don’t know jack.
This, my fellow padawan in self-development, is our first layer within the realm of lies.
When was the last time you heard anyone saying this bluntly: “I don’t know.” Nobody can work with that, and the system needs to find somebody who dares to assume closely enough. Team members either learn quickly to stay on the safe side when asked about their progress, or face consequences that are rarely supportive after recurrence. This is how we reach the second layer: portraying confidence that’s hollow inside.
Beneath the twisted roots of handshakes that happen under pressure, the system slips to the third layer where everyone tells themselves: “This is fine, everything’s under our control.” That slight nausea before your daily status meeting is an excellent indicator of how everything is actually not fine. But you get to keep on rowing.
Everything above is important to understand why you feel desperate to throw away your keyboard after seeing another unplanned meeting reach your inbox for 4PM on Friday. Fellow’s 2024 State of Meetings Report2 study concluded that the average employee spends 28% of their 40-hour work week in meetings. Combine this finding with a 91-day diary study3 that was based on participants’ self-reporting to admit how many times they lied during the day. The study was not specifically about workplace meetings, so it cannot tell us how often people lie at work, but its categories are strikingly familiar to anyone who has spent years in project and status meetings. Take it with a grain of salt in this case, but the overall mean was 2 lies per person per day, and I’d bet good money that one of those lies was told on that Friday.
If you think about the findings for a second and imagine how much time we might spend around the first and second layers by design, you might just start to blame people. Please don’t. Yes, it’s their decision after all, but the problem lies in the framework itself.
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The Cost of Pretending
The Achilles heel of the system is how performance is incentivized. Come new year and you’re tasked to hang up the carrot in front of yourself, with the entire business chain’s approval, of course. Now we’re back at the first layer, trying to guess what’s about to happen in a year in an environment where the carrot itself can become obsolete overnight. Would you dare raise your concerns?
You’re not motivated to tell the truth.
You’re motivated to achieve what you thought was possible when bears were in a state of torpor, but since then three employees left and now you must deal with their leftovers too. When asked, still assume with precision and don’t mention that you struggle with the fact that you signed up for an 8-hour workday, not 10.
As we go deeper into each other’s lies, we also descend into our own darkness. We compromise our own boundaries, letting our work creep into our nights and our managers into our decisions. Essentially accepting a new state that will make it impossible to backpedal out of. This is when the dream starts to turn, leading to complete disengagement.
Within Inception all the dreams were meant to be woken up from. We are not designed to live within the realm of lies either. Now as a coach I started to look at lies without being judgmental and see the layers through a different lens: What are people afraid would happen if they spoke honestly?
Behind each title there’s a human being who tries to get ahead in life and they probably have to provide for their family. This tension alone can create an environment where a status report is not as easy as: I don’t know. They will assume.
A Way to Wake Up
When I started to facilitate meetings, I found myself in the uncomfortable situation of asking the holy grail of all questions:
“When are you going to be ready?”
Now it has created a new world of psychological pain. I knew exactly when someone had no clue if delivery would be ready tomorrow or next week. I saw the fear in their eyes as they switched to an alert state when the question reached them. My only problem was that I didn’t ask the question for my own amusement. I brought those answers with me in front of heavier sights. I was incentivized to know what others tried to hide. I needed their honest answer; otherwise, I couldn’t be honest either.
It’s a weird feeling to stand on a rug that’s being pulled from underneath you while you try to stay in balance yourself. To trust them in becoming able to stand up for what they’ve promised but after a while, trust crumbles and isolation creeps in without a clear path forward.
Who are we to say that the world of truths is more real than the realm of lies, if we all shook hands on it?
I always believed that leadership is not to throw people under the bus if the whole motorway is rigged against their ability to deliver. So, I offered them a way out, by discovering what might have been holding them back to come through with their assumption and what has gone wrong along the way. Holding a mirror for them in a way.
The mirror had one purpose only: to question the fabric of reality, so it wouldn’t reach a point of no return. The tools were simple enough: pay close attention and dare to ask uncomfortable questions.
It would be nice to wake up one day to a world where we could all say, “I don’t know when that’s going to be ready” without having to lose sleep over the possible retaliation. The dreamy carrot you hung in front of yourself will lead to the dream turning on everyone if lying becomes second nature.
The recurring tension created fertile land for disengagement for both sides. Team members were afraid of consequences and tried to avoid social interaction, thinking they might live to fight another day. On the other hand, I was sitting with a big fat collective “I don’t know” that was not an accepted way of doing business. I depended on those people’s assumptions, hence they became the subject of my dream that we could build something together, while being honest. But the dream turned on me instead.
Here’s the plan: I keep writing about what’s pulling at me. Things I think might matter for your growth, not just mine. The goal: make the time worth it. Subscribing’s the surest way it reaches you. No chasing it down.
And if it stops working for you? Tell me. I’d rather know and get sharper than guess. Unsubscribing’s fine too. No grudges.
This story was originally published on capillarygrooves.com
This is such an interesting topic. As I'm figuring out how to work for myself, I realize a liberating truth: I can honestly tell myself, "I don't know." I don't need to worry if my boss would be infuriated. Although sometimes I do get frustrated and impatient when I encounter decisions I don't know how to handle, it is up to me to figure that out honestly. But looking back, in most workplace meetings, it seems to be the norm that we need to pretend we know everything to appease the boss, or we have to move things forward when there is no space to honestly admit how shaky the ground is. The assumption seems to be that employees are paid to solve problems, so saying "I don't know" is not allowed.
The inception thread is quite interestingly tying together the theme. Nice work!
Very well articulated Csaba! I recall one such instance with my professor while working on a project. Where I had some questions...since I thought he might not be welcoming like most in the department. I tried figuring out on my own or ask someone. During one such discussion he said you can email me even if the doubt is small or so or reach out for any other questions. This improved my efficiency and finished on time as well. So yes, honestly admitting to what one can or cannot works every time.