It is not always that shows one enjoys onscreen remind one of situations at the workplace. After all, it isn’t easy to draw parallels with real-life work scenarios and onscreen stories. However, here is one show that can be food for thought, not just for HR leaders, but all leaders in the organisational hierarchy.
The haunting and eerily relatable Apple TV series, Silo, has garnered acclaim for its taut storyline and outstanding performances. Beneath the gripping plot is a distinctive composition that is both literal and metaphorical in its expression. In a literal sense, the Silo refers to a massive underground structure designed to shelter a community of survivors following a global catastrophe. This structure is divided into multiple levels: the top level is the most privileged and prosperous, home to the Silo’s leaders and their families. The middle level refers to the middle class, housing skilled professionals such as teachers, doctors and engineers. Those in the middle are less privileged than those at the top, yet, relatively comfortable. The bottom levels are impoverished and oppressed, home to the Silo’s working class and criminals. Figuratively, the levels are a testament to the themes of class inequality and social hierarchy.
The show’s protagonist is Juliette Nichols, a feisty mechanic and engineer, played by Rebecca Ferguson. Frustrated with the bizarre and oppressive rules of the Silo, Nichols uses her skills to assist fellow inhabitants and challenges the status quo. She often makes references to the “up top”, where the wealthy and powerful live, and to “the middle”, which she sees as a place of hope and possibility.
But is the middle really all that promising? Another well-acclaimed television series delves into parallel themes, although from an entirely distinct perspective. Michael Schur’s The Good Place is a comedy about the afterlife divided into two realms: “The Good Place” and “The Bad Place”. The former is where virtuous and morally upright individuals are supposed to spend eternity, while the latter is reserved for those who lived morally corrupt lives. The show revolves around a woman named Eleanor Shellstrop (portrayeddeftlyby Kristen Bell) who dies and wakes up in the Good Place, despite her self-absorbed life back on Earth. Eleanor must figure out how to stay in the Good Place without being discovered, until she realises that there must be a ‘Medium Place’ for people like her. She rambles to her soulmate from the afterlife: “I mean, I wasn’t freaking Gandhi, but I was okay. I was a medium person. I should get to spend eternity in a Medium Place!”
Eleanor and others in the show go on to discover that a Medium Place does indeed exist, with a sole inhabitant named Mindy St. Claire, a corporate lawyer who did some good deeds but also engaged in morally questionable behaviour in her life. Due to the ambiguity of her moral balance, she ended up in her own personalised, grim and lonely Medium Place. Plot twists notwithstanding, Mindy does very little to improve her plight and is confined to her isolated backyard for eternity.
The Medium Place, then, is a metaphor for the tyranny of the middle — the discontentment of the middle child, the longing of the middle class, the crisis of middle age, the compromise of the middle ground and the disempowerment of the middle managers. An ode (elegy?) to those who are stuck in a rut, unable to take risks or make big changes around them—those afraid of failure, and of stepping outside their comfort zones. The ‘satisficers’ are content with an option that is ‘good enough’ or ‘satisfactory’. How can they break free from the restrictions that bind the middle?
Fixable is a podcast show hosted by Harvard Business professor, Frances Frei and her wife Anne Morriss, a CEO and bestselling author. The promise of the show is that the hosts will “move fast and fix stuff by talking to guest callers about their workplace issues and solving their problems – in 30 minutes or less”. In the first episode of Fixable, the hosts invite Kelli, a nurse in a cardiovascular acute care unit at a teaching hospital. Kelli talks about a communication breakdown in her unit. There are multiple teams such as the heart failure team, the surgical team, the infectious disease team and others, who are expected to work as a cohesive group in service of the patient. In reality however, everyone is in their own silo and nurses such as Kelli end up becoming the ‘middleman’ for everybody.
Much like in the show Silo, the hospital has a clear structural hierarchy. Professor Frei reflects on the problem: How do you foster communication in a very complicated system where you’re not at the top of the hierarchy, and do it from the middle? The hosts nudge Kelli to experiment with things that are outside of her control and think about how she can begin to influence the larger system around her. This may involve talking to others and learning from them, enlisting the support of colleagues to drive change, or seeking the help of her manager. Interestingly, Kelli’s ideas for seeking support mirror the actions of Nichols in the show Silo. Nichols enlists the help of her fellow engineers and influential figures, such as the Sheriff, come to her aid.
However, this kind of incremental progress is hardly an optimal solution. Instead of transferring the burden of systemic change to individuals such as Kelli, the leaders ‘up top’ ought to create an environment conducive to identifying and addressing problems. As the hosts riff in Fixable, “when problems aren’t surfaced, when we push them down, we have no chance of improving. And so, we want to elevate problems… because those problems when surfaced are precisely our improvement opportunities.”
The author Subramanian (Subbu) Kalpathi is a learning, leadership and OD professional. Currently he is global lead – learner experience and advisor, talent development, DXC technology. He is also the author of The Millenials. Views expressed are personal.
