Status - Then and Now
Cast your gaze back in time to 1910 America, or there about. If you were the average citizen, your best options for getting around locally were to walk or ride a horse. Most likely, you had a laborer's job and had the hands to show for it. You worked outside in farm and ranch fields and were pretty lean as a result. More than likely, you had skin weathered from working outdoors. Lean, weather-beaten, and on a horse (or pulled in a wagon by a horse) signaled you were working class.
If you had money, you might have one of those newfangled horseless carriage contraptions as a show of your wealth. You probably worked indoors - an office of some sort - had smooth clean hands and a complexion missing the adverse affects of too much sun. Probably not as lean as the working class of the early 1900's, you might even have been considerably overweight and flaunted the fact. An automobile, unweathered skinned, and overweight signaled you had the means to work in a safer, cleaner environment and eat as much food as you wanted - even to excess.
Bringing your focus back to the present, these status symbols have flipped. The working class (labor and knowledge workers) are indoors working factories, pushing paper, or banging on computers for 8-12 hours a day. They get very little sunlight and have the complexion to show for it. Their hands are smooth and clean. A significant majority of them have a car and the odds are better than 50% they are overweight. An automobile, unweathered complexion, and excess body fat signal you are a member of the working class. If you can afford a horse (or several), spend much of your time lounging on beaches or by the pool, and have a personal trainer to help keep you lean, you are signaling your status as being among the wealthy.
On a shorter time scale, I can think of other status flips. Thirty years ago, those with higher status had a cell phone. Today, everyone and their infant has a cell phone and those with means move about unencumbered by the e-lice known as "smart" phones.
I've been thinking and reading a lot about status recently. It factors prominently in my model for managing teams, in general, and Agile teams in particular. The phenomena of status flips are particularly interesting and important. I believe they are one of several key elements to consider when people at any level of an organization's hierarchy prove to be resistant to changing their behaviors and practices. The subject of status has grown from a few paragraphs to a full section in one of the chapters to my book.
