FD: Footnote Deficit

In a recent talk, I once again mentioned the Peter Block gap, the fact that so many students in academic Organization Psychology and related programs have never heard of this man who just days ago was acknowledged by the Organization Development Network for his lifetime achievements. You would think that such recognition would get his name up on the academic screen. A graduate student approached me after the talk, assuring me that he did know Peter's work, but there was no way Peter's work - nor mine for that matter- could be cited in his research. It seems that Peter and I  suffer from FD - footnote deficit.
Maybe our work could be included in academic studies if it were accompanied by a footnote reading something like: "reflections from the field, as yet incompletely substantiated through rigorous research, yet having potential value."

If knowledge that can make a difference is our goal, then all of this seems pretty silly and unproductive.

The Socialists are coming! The Socialists are coming!

Beware  the Red Tide! The socialists are coming and they threaten to destroy the great American entrepreneurial spirit, taking us down the road to communism: Spreading the wealth! It's hard to know whether the latest Red Scare grows out of political cynicism, ideological rigidity, or just plain "real American" ignorance. Basic systems literacy - of which there is too little - informs us that individuation run amok (otherwise known as unrestrained free market) leads to the economic conditions we are currently facing, and that systems save themselves by balancing individuation with integration. It happened following the 1929 stock market crash and it is happening today. Ideologues don't know how to handle this. Facing disaster, it's hard to make the case for more freedom. I am no economist, but here is what I wrote in Leading Systems back in 1999.

"...the United states prides itself on being an individuated system - extolling the virtues of individualism, freedom, liberty, free markets, and so forth - and it demonizes integrated systems (communism, socialism) for their suppression of freedom. Yet the United States, in order to avoid potential collapse through rioting, class and racial warfare, and revolution, has a history of incorporating many elements of the integrating culture: labor laws, Social Security, health and safety regulations, minimum wage, civil rights legislation, graduated income tax. Although one can make the case that the stability of the individuated system depends on its being balanced by these elements...this does not stop the champions of individuation from continuing to demean [integration] as socialists, communists, threats to the vitality of the system - and to blame [integration] for whatever weaknesses the individuated system has."

                    Leading Systems, page 150

Ideologues can't just stand there; they have to say something no matter how ill-informed. So the current problem is not individuation run amok, it is greed. Individuation is greed, and when greed is working there's no problem. When we invest in the stock market, it's not out of beneficence, it's out of greed. We want our money to grow.

Ideologues just can't stand there, they must be in favor of something. So swallow your ideology and allow the government to bail you out. Just a little. It's that extra bailout that's dangerous, heading straight down the road to communism. It's solid "Joe the Plumber economics," and if we're relying on Joe the Plumber economics, you know those ideologues or cynical politicians or dumbbells or whoever they are are hanging by a thread.

As usual, what bothers me more than the convoluted explanations they are spinning, is that so many of my fellow Americans are swallowing the bait. Joe the Plumber, if only you had listened to these free marketeers and abandoned Social Security in favor of some privatized stock market investments.

How come they all know these problems?

How come they all know these problems? That's what was puzzling - and disturbing - the graduate student. Here's the setting. He's assisting me at a talk I'm giving at the Organization Development Network annual meeting. There are seventy plus people in the room. Mostly consultant from a variety of organizations world wide. As part of the introduction, I mention how, as an anthropologist in Power Lab after Power, I began to notice regular patterns occurring at the Top, in the Middle, and among the Bottoms, even though the people were randomly assigned to their positions. So the interaction with the audience went something like this.
I said "We found Tops regularly falling into territoriality." And then I asked the audience, "Have you ever seen that?" And a moan of painful recognition spreads across the the room.
Then I said "We found Middles regularly becoming alienated from one another, non-groups. Have you ever seen that?" Another room-wide moan of painful recognition.
Then I said, "And we found  Bottoms regularly falling into We/Them relationship and, internally, into the conforming pressures of groupthink." Another moan.
I am so immersed in these predictable phenomena  that I forget how stunning it can be when one first sees these regularities and grasps the fundamental notion that these relationship issues may feel very personal - it's about you and me and our personal characteristics - or specific to our organization or situation, when in fact they are neither personal nor specific. This is what shakes up the graduate student. Something else is going on here.  There is an opening, an opportunity to move from system blindness to system sight. And, maybe, some day down the road there will be fewer moans of painful recognition.

Charisma can be deadly

Today's news story reveals how smitten Washington insiders are with Sarah Palin, the U.S. Vice Presidential candidate who has positioned herself as the quintessential outsider. Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio voice, calls her a "babe." According to the news commentator, Bill Kristol and other conservative writers act as if they have a crush on her. Watching crowd reactions, it is clear that Sarah Palin has charisma, and that's what bothers me. Charismatic leaders can be deadly. They have the ability to inflate us with  just how special we are, and our specialness comes at the expense of those less special. Palin has fired up crowds with her reference to "real" Americans. And who in that crowd doesn't appreciate being recognized as a "real" American. Of course, if some are the "real" American, then who are the others who call themselves American but, obviously, must be something else? Not just something else, but something lesser: liberals, wine sippers, socialists. Not the real deal. The charismatic generates pride, but also anger. Anger at those others. And so you hear ugliness in the crowd - "Hang 'em." I don't know what to make of  Sarah Palin, how conscious she is of her demagoguery or how deep it runs. She may just be a tiny blip on an ugly history of demagogues who roused people with their specialness. There were the real Germans and the "others." Whites who were special and the "others." Straights who are special and the "others." Serbs who were special and the "others." Terrible things we "real" people can do to the less real ones. What troubles me most about this is not the demagogues; it is the rest of us. The fact that we can so easily fall for the bait. Are our lives so empty that we need to be puffed up by our membership in the "real." I dream of the day when some demagogue will try to fill us with visions of our greatness as opposed to those "others," and our response will be to turn our backs and walk away.

Eliteness, Greed, and Ethics

Don't you  hate it when situations are so complex that it's hard to  just go out and find the bad guys and  hang them.Let's be clear, I'm not having that trouble with Lehman Brothers, not as I learn how executives were awarded 20 million dollar bonuses (special payments) while the company was pleading for a government rescue. So the picture is clear: they grab their bags of big money, head off to one of several mansions while leaving the rest of us - including generations to come - to be taxed (dollars and dollars and dollars) for their failures. Talk about Wall Street and Main Street. Could the excesses of the Czars or Louis XVIth have been more outrageous!  No, I'm stuck this time. I'm missing the complexity that soothes as it invigorates. No sad stories about the high cost of high living, or soaring prep school tuitions, or the difficulties of finding a reliable nanny, or the outrageous berthing fees for one's yacht, not to mention  huge mortgages to be paid on mega-mansions. None of this would soften my heart. This is just the Elite, in their bubble, doing what the Elite do as the ship is sinking: taking care of themselves.  And my guess is, at the time these special payment decisions were being made, this just seemed like the right and natural thing to do. Don't we all agree? Yes we all agree.  Please, no more talk about the responsibility culture. After every scandal there is conversation about ethics and what are our business and law schools doing about teaching ethics. It might be more effective to teach about Eliteness and Ethics, and the special vulnerabilities and responsibilities associated with living in an Elite bubble.

 

Ubuntu: From Basketball to the Boardroom

Ubuntu is a fascinating concept of African origin.  Doc Rivers describes it this way: "A person is a person through another person. I can't be all I can be unless you are all you can be." Doc Rivers is coach of the NBA champion Boston Celtics. Ubuntu became the basis of the Celtics' winning strategy. Three superstars, each accustomed to being the single high-scoring superstar, instead chose to become part of a team in which  players were committed to one another's success, and in that process, they brought out the best in themselves. On first blush, ubuntu appears to be about unselfishness; it is that, but it is also selfish. I am enhanced through my commitment to you.In our individualistic society, ubuntu would be a huge transformation.  How would this work with Top Executives who are locked in turf warfare, or with Middle Manager peers who are alienated from one another? Those questions are explored in Act III, scene 2 of Seeing Systems. We don't call it organizational ubuntu, but we just might.