The beach resort is miss­ing its soul

At any moment, the lit­tle boy will cry out.

He is still focussed on the ball and skil­ful­ly returns every shot of his father. He is full of ener­gy and joy as he plays foot­ball.

All I can see is the flow­er­ing clover every­where. The lit­tle boy steps on sev­er­al flow­ers with every step he takes. It seems only a mat­ter of time before a bee catch­es him.

The beach com­plex in my home­town on Lake Con­stance reopened this sum­mer. Peo­ple are flock­ing in droves on these won­der­ful sum­mer days.  

A few days lat­er, you read in the var­i­ous media what they think of the new resort on Lake Con­stance. Some com­plain that the pool is too small, oth­ers crit­i­cise the grav­el in the play­ground and the slip­pery tiles. Some are dis­ap­point­ed and will not be return­ing.

The new resort was cer­tain­ly well planned, a lot was invest­ed and even the timetable was right. But the soul is miss­ing.

This can be seen on the lawn, for exam­ple. Where the chil­dren, teenagers and adults play foot­ball or fris­bee, it has not been mown and the clover is in full bloom. Where it has been new­ly sown, you walk over a humpy land­scape and have to be care­ful not to trip. Here, too, the grass is far too long.

The soul­less­ness is also evi­dent in the cater­ing. In the past, the tables and bench­es were sim­ply placed on the grass under large trees, but today you sit cramped and uncom­fort­able on tiles. There is no cosy lounge area or meet­ing bar to invite you to linger. It seems that the new com­plex was designed and planned on the draw­ing board, cer­tain­ly with good inten­tions, but now there is no one who con­sid­ers it impor­tant. Nobody real­ly cares about it. Every­one is doing their job. That’s it.      

Isn’t it the same in every team and every organ­i­sa­tion? If no one cares, the beau­ti­ful­ly designed work­places become joy­less work­spaces. It is always the peo­ple who shape organ­i­sa­tions and give them a soul. It is only through com­mit­ted employ­ees that work­places become places of encounter and inspi­ra­tion, where one thought trig­gers the next. They are the ones who are approach­able and some­times share a per­son­al thought and enquire about the well-being of oth­ers. But they also take care of ‘lit­tle things’ such as green plants, colour­ful posters or sim­ply clean­li­ness and tidi­ness. If organ­i­sa­tions scare these peo­ple away and lose them, what remains are cold, life­less shells. 

And the lit­tle boy? When I come back from a long swim in the lake, he is no longer there.