Do you know what ‘normal’ is?

I went to school on a bus reserved for ‘whites only‘.

This was normal.

And that was just the tiny tip of the racist Apartheid Iceberg designed to secure white privilege and deny fundamental freedoms and opportunities for most of the population.

When I turned 18 and ventured down to the pub in Cape Town, I had a choice of the ‘Men’s Bar‘ or the ‘Ladies Bar‘. The Men’s Bar was not a euphemism. It was a bar reserved solely for those of the male gender.

The ‘Ladies Bar‘ was not for women only but was so-called because it allowed women to join men for a drink.

This was normal.

Of course, I refer to white men and women in both cases.

Because other races were not admitted.

Totally normal.

I came to Australia at age 21 and didn’t suffer from culture shock on these matters. After all, we were only seven years on from allowing people of aboriginal descent to be counted in the census as human beings resident in this country.

This was normal.

And if I slid into the local pub in Adelaide for a quiet one (and I assure you, I did), I might choose the ‘Public Bar‘ for my imbibing. However, this title was an ironic misnomer as, until the mid-1970s, only men were permitted to drink in Public Bars. Most pubs included a ‘Ladies Lounge‘ furnished with chairs and tables where women and men could drink together. Still, women were usually not admitted to the Lounge Bar unless accompanied by a man – and were usually not permitted to buy their own drinks.

This was normal

Of course, no bars were available for aboriginal citizens, but they were generously allowed to buy ‘grog‘ in paper bags through a door at the back of the pub.

This was normal too.

Five years into my recruiting career, and after two years in London, I came to Sydney in 1985. This was pre-Internet, so there were no job boards, and the classified advertising in the newspapers ruled the day when it came to job-search. The Sydney Morning Herald had a massive lift-out of jobs called ‘The Classifieds‘, and it was 100 pages thick, full of job ads, all paid for by recruiting agencies and direct hiring companies.

These were the ‘rivers of gold‘ that drove the fortunes of the mighty Fairfax Group, although nowadays, those rivers of gold have been diverted and flow to Seek.

But if you opened the classified lift-out, it was broken into two sections. So, prepare yourselves for what is to come.

The first section was called “Men and Boys“, and the second section was called “Women and Girls“.

Please reflect on what I’m telling you. I was six years into my recruiting career, and you placed ads in the paper according to the gender you thought those jobs fit.

Indeed, if somebody were looking for a nurse’s job, they would go to ‘Women and Girls‘ while an accountant would peruse ‘Men and Boys’. Because you know, men can’t be wasted on a girl’s job like nursing, can they? And a woman couldn’t be trusted with important ‘smart’ jobs, like handling numbers, could they? Obviously!

This was normal.

In Sydney and London in the 80s, every job we took started with the specification of the gender sought. I’m sure it was probably against the law, but I can assure you it was commonplace to specify your preferred (or required) racial profile too.

This was normal.

In South Africa, the UK and Australia, at that time, it was commonplace to refer to those who were not heterosexual with what today we would describe as horrific homophobic slurs. There were dozens of words used, but in Australia, the most popular started with a ‘P’, in South Africa, the most used descriptor began with an ‘M’ (You won’t get it unless you have lived there), and in the UK, it probably started with an ‘F’ or a ‘B’.

I am not talking about late-night bar room bigotry. These words were used in Board Rooms, schools, workplaces, on sports fields, and the bus. By men and women alike. Children too, consequently.

This was normal.

No one blinked. Except perhaps the people in the conversation who were, in fact, being referred to! But few knew because the closet was jam-packed at that time.

If this shocks you, I am pleased because it will serve my point. But, if it outrages you, tough, this is the way it was not very long ago, not the way I wish it were now.

So, what do we learn from this very recent history?

Firstly, be slow to smirk at my examples and write them off as failings of the three countries I have referred to. Every country has its dirty past. (Some of them have a messy present.)

The problem is that mainly at the time, we did not think it was ‘dirty’ at all.

It was normal.

Secondly, there is little we regard now as ‘normal‘ that we can take for granted and consider permanent. The emergence of ‘personal pronouns‘ to clarify who you are for everyone is not something many of us would have predicted only a few years ago.

The fanatical Twitterati and social media ranters, who bang on about the ‘new normal‘ and how WFH, for example, is here to stay, are good examples of those who have no grasp of historical precedent.

It is quite likely that with one deep, prolonged recession, people will work where they are told to work.

Pretty much nothing is forever.

That is both scary and exhilarating. We can drive change, and we can improve our lot, and that of others.

But we also need to be nimble!

The pace of change has accelerated exponentially. We need to be dexterous and prepared to make informed predictions and change course accordingly.

There is no such thing as the ‘new normal.’

Stop saying it.

There is only the ‘now normal‘.

The ‘now normal‘ which is about to change to the next ‘now normal‘.

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Greg Savage in London

31st August 2022

Courtesy of the REC

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Designed for business leaders, you will come away with a roadmap to help you navigate the next few years, and practical improvements which you can implement straight away to increase value and productivity.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay