A Policy of Activism in the Workplace is Anti-fellowship

Of course, this is a reflection on the happenings in Basecamp. If you are all Basecamp'd out, please ignore.

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A policy of activism in the workplace is anti-fellowship. 

A fellowship is "a group of people that join together for a common purpose or interest". This dictionary definition fails to capture the benefits of fellowship - namely, through an aligned sense of purpose, the group can fully apply the group's collective resources, willpower and intelligence towards one direction and mission.

The classic book - "The Fellowship of the Ring" - vividly showcases the benefits, struggles, and nuances of fellowship. What drives the story is the characters putting away their personal preferences and goals to accomplish something greater than themselves. Everyone has to put away something; hatred of other races, pride, fear, ambition, and mistrust of one another, and it is the great sacrifices from all parties that allows the mission to succeed.

The book preaches that to accomplish something great, everything else must be put away, and through fellowship, you can have camaraderie and unity of disparate political, ethnic, and social groups.

For most organizations, the practice of fellowship is not as vividly descriptive or righteously motivated as the story of Middle Earth, but still just as important. Probably most important is the ability to align and push towards a shared goal, even with fundamental disagreements. 

What instead happens in a lot of organizations is politics, factions, feet dragging, and heel biting. The individuals in the org, instead of pooling up their collective resources to push solutions to problems, undermine each other because they are unable to align. In Middle Earth terms, everyone refuses to send out their armies because it isn't in their own best interest. 

People have every right to disagree, and there are many valid reasons for disagreement. You can disagree with your leader's personality or political choices. You can think the proposed solution is wasteful and inefficient. You can have your own goals or pride. And "fellows" can have as many disagreements and political beliefs or be as politically outspoken as they want. But when mission needs to be accomplished, they need to put those things aside, buy in and fully commit along with the other fellows.

If you put other things above your fellows and mission, you're a mercenary, not a fellow. And mercenaries can't build fellowships, because you'll eventually sell out the fellowship for personal reasons. You'll steal the ring for yourself, you'll withhold troops, and you'll backstab the very people that you're supposed to cover. 

A policy of allowing activism in the workplace is anti-fellowship. It suggests, at its core, that people don't need to put aside their personal agendas to come together. It promotes people to stick to their beliefs rather than put them aside. It attracts those who have their own interest and want a platform for their own interests, rather than those who want to be fellows in a fellowship.

If you're not a fellow, that's not a bad thing; there are plenty of mercenary camps. Many are successful organizations, and people working as mercenaries get paid well, have good friends, close relations, and live great lives. 

But if you value working in an environment of fellowship and see it as a strategic or lifestyle advantage (or both), promoting activism in the workplace is fundamentally incompatible with it.

tl;dr - There's no way the ring is getting to Mordor if Gimli is pushing for elf reparations.