Reliable. Steady. Easy to work with. Low maintenance.
Every one of those is a real virtue, and every one of them, applied often enough, becomes a description of a man who is convenient. Convenient men get kept exactly where they are, because moving them would cost the people around them something.
The box is built of four things and they brace each other. Titles, which tell you what you may speak about. Expectations, most never stated, many inherited from people no longer in the room. Fear, which is the load bearing wall. And other people's comfort, which is the wall a good man builds himself, out of genuine love, without noticing he is inside it.
Here is the part that reorganises how a man sees his work. The dysfunction in your company or your church is usually not a malfunction. It is functioning exactly as designed, and everybody has quietly agreed not to say so. That is why complaining changes nothing, and why leaving usually changes nothing either.
You cannot transform what you are afraid to challenge.
