Action theatre vs real action

Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

The guys at PSFK are running an article by me about what I call action theatre. Meetings often get trapped into empty rituals that appear to be about generating action, but actually get in its way. Often in the middle of lively conversations someone will say something like “Well all this talk is great, but it won’t mean anything if we don’t have some actions!”.

It sounds sensible enough, but abstract talk about the importance of action can be really unhelpful. As the article says

It seems as though someone cares about action, but really, it’s just theater. Just urging action is like entering a room, rolling your eyes, telling everyone how untidy it is (by which you really mean, how untidy they are), and then leaving without picking up any litter.

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