Empowerment
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Less in the sense of touchy-feely yogababble about how we should all be actualised to be the best versions of ourselves, but in the sense of having the autonomy and authority to make pragmatic decisions to move an organisation on.
In any commercial collective, there is an enduring tussle between the (sadly) resistible force of subject matter expertise — wielded limply by those who know what they are doing, understand the proximate ramifications of their actions and derive professional pride and no small amount of job satisfaction from the very act of exercising small nuggets of authority — and the hardly moveable object of policy, process, precedent and sclerotic infrastructure that trusts no such executive agent further than she can be thrown, and is stout in the resistance of any kind of risk, however theoretical or academic.
Those two forces — of substance and of form — wrestle in any organisation; the bigger and older the firm is the more likely the thrusting young executive is to lose. She may want little more than the opportunity to stand on the deck, in the sun, blowing wistfully into the sail, an action that, by itself, will vouchsafe ineffable meaning in her grim working life even if it doesn’t noticeably propel the vessel, but even that will be denied her.
She will be institutionalised, worn down and broken. Her fresh blue eyes will cloud, her shoulders will sag, she will mutter distractedly, using the world “leverage” when she means “use” — all these deteriorations in the service of descent towards the same fate we all share: a lifetime nosing boulders back up that very same slope.
We all know the feeling. The credit department policy that requires cross default in a spot contract. The clearing house which demands an unlimited indemnity for losses it might suffer carrying out a trade-matching service that it cannot articulate even in theory. A disclaimer of all liability for conduct up to and including gross negligence.
In each case, the home-team negotiators know these terms to be preposterous, but they know just as thoroughly that the prescribed process for winning a derogation from them is so monstrous as to be unthinkable, so they externalise the suffering to their clients’ negotiation team. Of course, these poor souls have their own policy crosses to bear. Presented with such enstilted nonsense, they will have no choice but to object to it: it is their sacred covenant to make sure their firm does not recklessly endanger itself by contract. Their domain being one of law, not facts, it is theoretical, juristic endangerment they must identify: that no merchant would be so misguided to take such protections to their logical legal conclusion can form no part if his calculus.
And so it is we have two bald men fighting over a comb neither of them wants, because other bald men, with barely any more interest in it, have put in place a policy that a man must have a comb.