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Now, however much they might present to the outside world as embodiments of all that is ''laissez-faire'', within their walls, most commercial organisations are dictatorships.<ref>We are not being provocative here. The analogy is eerily precise: there is a tight command-and-control structure, no meaningful democracy; the centralised dissemination of information that is filtered, framed and sometimes rewritten to make the administration look good, and all is ably supported by a [[human resources|clandestine internal agency]] with unlimited power whose job is to keep the ranks in a state of fear and mistrust of each other and the authorities. </ref> Only those at the very top of have any kind of wherewithal, other than ''to keep quiet, get on with your work and do what you are told''. | Now, however much they might present to the outside world as embodiments of all that is ''laissez-faire'', within their walls, most commercial organisations are dictatorships.<ref>We are not being provocative here. The analogy is eerily precise: there is a tight command-and-control structure, no meaningful democracy; the centralised dissemination of information that is filtered, framed and sometimes rewritten to make the administration look good, and all is ably supported by a [[human resources|clandestine internal agency]] with unlimited power whose job is to keep the ranks in a state of fear and mistrust of each other and the authorities. </ref> Only those at the very top of have any kind of wherewithal, other than ''to keep quiet, get on with your work and do what you 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 subsystems spawn and fiefdoms mushroom, while others wither and dessicate. | ===The making of leaders=== | ||
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. The firm is an organism: it makes itself. It [[emerges]] out if its own reflexive [[systemantics]]. | |||
By the fact of its operation, an organisation ''self-generates''. | By the fact of its operation, an organisation ''self-generates''. | ||
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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> | 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> | ||
===Leaders as a mirror of nature=== | |||
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?” | 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?” | ||
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Hence the conceptual problem with [[change from the top]]. | Hence the conceptual problem with [[change from the top]]. | ||
===On the difficulty of changing from the top=== | |||
So the idea of current management changing the very machine that has contrived to put them in the place where they can do that presents a variation of the [[time traveller’s paradox]]: If I change this, do I kick away the very ladder I climbed to reach the cockpit? If I fiddle in this way with the geometry of corporate space time, might I not disprove my very being? | |||
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 | 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 management add 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. | ||
But this is the thing: change comes from fracture, disruption and when shafts of light are thrown unexpectedly by unintentionally broken windows to iilluminate old problems or new opportunities in wholly unexpected ways. | But this is the thing: change comes from fracture, disruption and when shafts of light are thrown unexpectedly by unintentionally broken windows to iilluminate old problems or new opportunities in wholly unexpected ways. | ||