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 Now, however much they might present to the outside world as embodiments of the free market, within their walls, most commercial organisations are dictatorships.<ref>The analogy is eerily precise. There is a tight command-and-control structure, centralised dissemination and revision of information, and all is ably supported by a [[human resources|clandestine internal agency]] whose job is to keep the rank and file in a state of fear, and stamp out those malcontents who don’t get the message. </ref> Only those at the very top of have any kind of wherewithal, other than ''to do what they are told''.
-So, how do leaders get to lead? Well, an organisation is a ''[[system]]'': a pulmonary lattice of stocks, flows and feedback loops, sending information, consuming resources, generating artefacts and, over time ''making things'' — not just widgets for sale, but ''itself'': speed up the frame rate and you will see whole new systems and subsystems spawn and mushroom, while others wither and dessicate. By its the fact of its operation, the firm ''self-generates''.
+So, how do leaders get to lead? Well, an organisation is a ''[[system]]'': a pulmonary lattice of stocks, flows and feedback loops, sending information, consuming resources, generating artefacts and, over time ''making things'' — not just widgets for sale, but ''itself'': speed up the frame-rate and you will see whole new subsystems spawn and fiefdoms mushroom, while others wither and dessicate.
-One of the things it self generates is ''its  own leaders''. In an odd way, the organisation ''makes'' its own personnel: it selects them, fashions them, moulds them, weeds out the misaligned, nurtures and promotes the most on-message, and — where no home-growns are ready for a role — buying in best-fitting external candidates who are. The most successful of these — only the most paradigmatically ''of'' the organisation; the most perfectly resemblent of its essence — make it to the executive suite.
+By the fact of its operation, an organisation ''self-generates''.
-The selection process by which one ascends the greasy pole is relentless, unending, and brutal. It ''fashions'' people the way a river fashions stone. The bigger, and greasier, the pole, the more spectacular the canyon.
+One thing it self-generates is ''its  own leaders''. In an odd way, the organisation ''makes'' its own personnel: it selects them, fashions them, moulds them, weeds out the misaligned, nurtures and promotes the fittest, and — where no home-growns are yet match-ready — it buys in best-fitting external candidates who are.
-You will already notice ''another'' [[paradox]] here: however singly directed from on high it seems, the very illusion of command-and-control ''[[emergence|emerges]] from the subconscious machinations of the beast''.
+Only the most successful of these personnel — the most paradigmatically ''of'' the organisation; who most perfectly resemble its essence — make it to the executive suite.<ref>Cry bitter tears, my friends: almost certainly, you are not so destined. The sooner you realise this, the easier becomes your burden.</ref>
-These men and women owe their very position to their utter synchronicity with how the firm is now. All its imperfections, cock-eyed, peg-legged, pie-bald, skewiff glory.
+The selection process by which one ascends the greasy pole is relentless, unending, and brutal. It ''fashions'' people the way a river fashions stone.<ref>Now you may notice ''another'' [[paradox]] here: however singly directed from on high it seems, the very illusion of command-and-control ''[[emergence|emerges]] from the subconscious machinations of the beast''.</ref>
+All this is a baroque way of saying: these men and women who run the firm, and who have the means to change it, owe their very position to their utter synchronicity with ''how the firm is now''. All its imperfections, cock-eyed, peg-legged, pie-bald, skewiff glory. They are the answer to the question: “if this organisation, as it is now, made its own leaders, what would they look like?”
+The answer to the question, “if this organisation were changed, and ''then'' made its own leaders, what would ''they'' look like?” is: ''NOT LIKE THIS.''
+Hence the conceptual problem with [[change from the top]].
 No employee survey, no well-being outreach, no human resources questionnaire in history has been designed to prove out the point that the executive suite is populated by a bunch of glad-handing dilettantes, that the upper layers of senior mmanagementadd no value and stunt the organisation’s forward progress, much less that human resources is in itself a pernicious waste of space. I dare say it would be rather fun if someone were to try.