Writing for the wrong audience

There is a great deal of good writing about what is wrong with workplaces. Some of it from professionals, some from people writing on their lunch break.

I read a lot of it and notice who else is reading it.... the same people who wrote it.

I guess, like any community theme, Brexit, football, the far right, the writing circulates among those who already know. It is read, shared and agreed with by people living inside the conditions it describes. The people who could change those conditions, the ones who set the agenda, hold the budget and shape the incentives, are not present. They are reading something else, probably about growth, AI, how innovation will always get them out of trouble, how to manufacture authenticity, or some other genre that tells them that they are the answer. Ouch.

So the writing does two jobs, and probably neither one is the one that the writer intends.

For the writer, it is relief; I know that as I feel it as I type into the black hole, there is the potential for being heard and supported. For the reader, it is recognition, and again, the feeling that they are not alone. Both are worth something, but very little changes.

Also, when this writing does try to help, it reaches for optimism. You can do it, things can be different, but the people reading do not need to be told that things can be different. They need strength for the world as it is: the standing to say no, the language to speak out (sometimes against power), the confidence that what they see is real, and the confidence that the community has their back.

Optimism asks people to believe in a better future, but strength lets them act in the present one.

If you write about work, who are you actually writing for, and what would it take to be read by someone who can act?

If you lead, when did you last read something written by someone below you and believe it?