No Escaping That For Me
“Destiny! Destiny! No escaping that for me!”
– Gene Wilder in “Young Frankenstein”
As fans of Mel Brook’s classic comedy Young Frankenstein know, Gene Wilder’s destiny as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein is to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and create the monster. This being a comedy, things do work out somewhat better than they did in the original story. Destiny, it appears, can be changed with sufficient effort. Indeed, precisely because Frederick Frankenstein realizes that he’s following in Victor Frankenstein’s footsteps, he is able to turn things around at the last minute and bring about a happy ending.
In my consulting projects and in conducting leadership training with various groups, from college students through executives, I’ve frequently observed destiny in action. People play out the roles that they believe they are supposed to play out. Organizationally, we act as we’ve been taught to act in our various roles: CEOs are expected to behave in one way, managers another, engineers yet another. For example, in some companies it’s perfectly normal for engineers to show up to work in jeans and T-shirts, but totally inappropriate for a manager to do the same.
Read the rest at Corp! Magazine
