It's pretty clear to me that no one, much less economists, understand our present economy. Those who might really understand are so distrusted by those who don't, they can't explain a thing to anyone else's satisfaction. Many who don't understand, believe they do understand. As Laing said, "What you don't know you don't know, you think you know." Ever was thus. Dismal again.
Fact might be that none of us have any personal experience with 'an economy,' which doesn't exist anywhere but as a network of figments. But then figments have always taken most of our first row seating. We thrive on 'em. Until they do us in.
Our certainty is the most curious part of our relationship with figments. We, for instance, hedge our risks, believing that we have mediated risk as a result. Ceteris Paribus, all other things remaining equal, is small defense against a credit crunch or a full-tilt meltdown. All other things do not, as a general rule, remain equal, just especially uncountable and unpredictable. Small insurance this, against the first person experience of loss.
Now comes the bailout. And I've been thinking about the leverage one has - or doesn't have - when bailing out. Ever been in a boat that's sprung a leak? The size of the boat relative to the size of the body of water that formerly floated it puts the bailer in a weak position. Even should the leak get fixed, the effort required to remove the accumulated water is great. And the bucket remarkably small in comparison.
I read this week that the value of hedged instruments was estimated at perhaps ten times the annual gross world product. That's a big pond. How big is the leak? No one knows how to value what's left. Well, few understood how to value what was there before, either, but it's easier to float on a positive figment than a negative one. We love positive figments and fear the negative ones.
Maybe we only ever come close to experience the real power of collective figment certainty when the bottom falls out from under our confidently maintained fantasy because we experience real hunger then. Perhaps even genuine privation.
"The M&M or Motherhood and Mismatch Strategy was conceived by the American strategist, Col. John R. Boyd. The basic goal of an M&M strategy is to build support for and attract the uncommitted to your cause by framing a "motherhood" position -- i.e., a position no one can object to, like the mythical "motherhood, apple pie, and the American way" -- and then inviting your opponent in to repeatedly attack it and, in so doing, smash himself to pieces at the mental and the even more decisive moral level of conflict. Self-destruction will happen inevitably, if you can successfully induce your adversary into attacking your motherhood position in a way that exposes mismatches among the three poles of his moral triangle, defined by (1) What your opponent says he is; (2) What he really is as defined by his actions; and (3) the World he has to deal with. Whether consciously or not, I believe Obama has an intuitive feel for the moral leverage inherent in the M&M strategy and this enabled him to outmaneuver McCain and his campaign and bring them to the verge of mental and moral collapse. That Obama also did this to Hillary Clinton suggests it is no accident."
I have inadvertently employed something like this strategy when introducing companies to the practice of ProjectCommunity. I claim that while teamwork is nice and even useful, it cannot meaningfully influence outcome without using it with a broader, ProjectCommunity mindset that considers everyone who can effect and everyone effected by the effort on equal us-ness with the core team. Those who deny this obvious (to me, anyway) fact, inevitably find their cordoned effort under the influence of some unconsidered, discounted constituency. And while this outcome might, from within the team trance, seem like evidence of bad luck, this bad luck and trouble becomes pretty much their only friend. Even those who concede, but continue to consider the community to be comprised of 'stakeholders', over time grow to appreciate what it feels like to be considered a vampire with stakeholders stalking them.
I'm also seeing this strategy used in what feels to me to be a destructive way, though I guess any strategy that succeeds in producing an outcome I don't support might be fairly characterized as destructive. The burgeoning 'sustainability movement,' which is rapidly creating a cadre of ideologues worthy of any mass movement, has taken the same motherhood and apple pie position that the Zero Growth movement occupied thirty years ago. Locally, the City has agreed to convene a sustainability committee. Who could oppose such a thing? Their first objective: To define what sustainability means here.
As near as I can tell, anyone successfully defining sustainability would say that it means continuing surprising change, since that's how the world seems to actually work. Instead, it seems to be widely interpreted as meaning 'retain what we like' and 'eliminate what we don't.' Since when has anyone successfully sustained an agenda like this? Further, I personally have survived long periods of conditions that should have done away with me, my teen-aged years not excepted. Yet here I am. Mysteriously. Even surprisingly.
Not to be cynical, but I keep running into anti-progressive attitudes traveling under the sustainability label. But that does sound cynical, doesn't it? I'm arguing against motherhood and apple pie, even though sustainability remains, as Spinney says, an empty vessel. I'm just beating myself to bits railing about it.
I was re-reading Jay Haley's remarkable essay The Power Tactics
of Jesus Christ, and concluded that maybe he knew something about
this strategy centuries before the candy ever appeared. He didn't
challenge the orthodoxy, but claimed instead to represent a truer
instantiation of it. He commanded no one to follow, but invited
followers instead. How could anyone successfully challenge such
high ground?
Once? You tried it once? Then concluded that it never would work?
Well, it wasn't just them saying this, I've said it myself.
What happened to "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?"
Not in the modern corporation, thank yew. Not in my backyard, either. There, the phrase is , "if at first you don't succeed, you've failed." Utterly. Supported by, "We tried that once and it didn't work."
We live in a society poised to throw some bum out on his ... bum. Not terribly generous when money, time, or public reputation gets involved. Fail for me once and you're outta here!
What sort of practices get reinforced under this regime? Nothing bold or innovative (aka, likely to fail.) Whatever can keep its head furthest down, shadow most secret, and profile thinnest.
How wise are our 'throw out da bum' choices? How much difference does it make what we choose? (I know, I know, it's supposed to matter a lot who we vote off the island, and who gets to stay. Does it, really?)
The first eXtreme programming project utterly failed. The sponsor threw out da bums! Not even I want to read my first few hundred essays. I cringe when someone requests one of my earlier songs. Looking back (and then projecting forward), I can't see a single situation, other than that time when I decided to jump out of that tree onto a steep slope and cracked a metatarsal bone where, "We tried that once and it didn't work" actually worked. What worked, or seems to have worked so far, involved a lot of "We kept trying, even though it didn't work at first." Some stubborn someone wasting time, money, and reputation on what they (and perhaps no other at first) were convinced held some potential merit, until it did. Best born from one hell of a lot worse.
But none of this might really matter. Maybe change itself catalyzes improvements, like the long ago-discovered Hawthorne Effect. Maybe (cringe) we have no influence on outcome at all.
Interesting piece about the rationality of voters in the current Wilson Quarterly. Maybe these findings are appropriate metaphors for how we choose our methods, maybe not. What if they are?
"It’s not only in the United States that the Depression-era tendency to “throw the bums out” looks like something less than a rational policy judgment. In the United States, voters replaced Republicans with Democrats in 1932 and the economy improved. In Britain and Australia, voters replaced Labor governments with conservatives and the economy improved. In Sweden, voters replaced Conservatives with Liberals, then with Social Democrats, and the economy improved. In the Canadian agricultural province of Saskatchewan, voters replaced Conservatives with Socialists and the economy improved. In the adjacent agricultural province of Alberta, voters replaced a socialist party with a right-leaning party created from scratch by a charismatic radio preacher peddling a flighty share-the-wealth scheme, and the economy improved. In Weimar Germany, where economic distress was deeper and longer lasting, voters rejected all of the mainstream parties, the Nazis seized power, and the economy improved. In every case, the party that happened to be in power when the Depression eased went on to dominate politics for a decade or more thereafter. It seems far-fetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented well-considered ideological conversions. A more parsimonious interpretation is that voters simply—and simple-mindedly—rewarded whoever happened to be in power when things got better."
We were doing an extended engagement in NYC a few years ago and, as we often do when working there, we played what we call Broadway Roulette. Show up at Duffy Square a half hour before curtain time and see what tickets are left, buy a couple and head off to a show. We happened one evening on the revival of Kiss Me, Kate, and were delighted. This one piece (in the above YouTube video), where two hoodlums, backstage to shakedown the male lead for gambling debts "accidently" wander on stage during a performance, was the highlight of the show for me, because it reminded me that whatever truth we might nudge out at the client's shop, we needed to respect their traditions, or, more to the point, Brush Up Our Shakespeare.
Of course, it's silly that merely reciting the Bard would make the difference our clients sought, but not knowing the Bard might well prevent the change we all aspired to.
We've all been subjected to the next best thing, delivered by someone clueless about the present history supporting everything. We can't really ditch what we've always been. Change, whatever its intent, needs to be melded with the familiar status quo if it is to be meaningful and successful.
So, the next time I (even you) intend to make something different, remember to brush up on whatever amounts to Shakespeare there first. As Virginia Satir said a very long time ago, "Change rests upon the full, albeit temporary acknowledgment of the way things are." And always have been.
Years ago, I wrote the story of an interview with a Chief Financial Officer of a major American corporation. He had underwritten a project that had grown by insignificant increment to threaten his company’s financial standing. He spent most of the session pointing fingers. That damned VP of IT was really to blame. She was an upstart lesbian trying to play with the big boys in the big leagues. That damned Big N consulting firm was to blame. They were booking hundreds of thousands per month and not making any progress. He even blamed his own staff for not performing as he expected.
He finally proclaimed, exasperated, that “this isn’t rocket science!”
I disagreed. It was more like rocket science than not. The larger problem, as I later told him, was that he was not a rocket scientist.
I suggested in my recent post, You Suck@Projects, that the lousy level of understanding in the executive suite about projects contributes a great deal --- quite probably more than any other single factor --- to the continuing poor performance of projects. One common executive-sponsored strategy has been to operationalize projects, enforce method, techinque, standards, and metrics. This can make projects more predictable while transforming adaptable efforts into lethargic bureaucracies. Kinda like making a mustang manageable by turning it into a cow.
Another common executive strategy is to command results. Hardball negotiate outcomes, insisting upon what everyone not hydrocephalic or suffering from altitude sickness can see could never work. Tighten down the screws until no degree of freedom remains, then complain about how unresponsive the effort is.
Ignorance fueled by authority equals true stupidity.
This week, we’ve been watching while a Congress, clearly ignorant about even the first principles of economics, wrestles with a shit-simple decision. Distracting each other with finger pointing from atop lofty principles, insisting upon a label that misrepresents the outcome, insisting infant-like that irrelevant issues also be addressed as a part of the “solution,” then complaining that the resulting response doesn’t actually solve anything.
Where has the metaphor machine gone that managed to label a bill destined to disenfranchise a third of students No Child Left Behind? Wall Street Bail-out? Reframe first! That’s what any responsible rocket scientist would do. No, it’s not just a matter of simply hitting the chosen target, rocket science is all about maintaining scrupulous attention to just how far off course you are at any point in time.
Where did we get these boobs, anyway? We elected them! We, who know little about the responsible operation of government, chose people for their opinion on fleeting issues. Where do they stand on some social issue that government has no business fiddling with? How Christian are they?
The rest of the world stands gape-mouthed as we chop the legs out from under ourselves --- and them, too.
We are no more rocket scientists than we are project managers. We are ignorant executives complaining about our cruel fate, steadfastly refusing the necessary because it conflicts with our notions of how it should be.
Remember when a new company couldn’t float stock until they’d been profitable for three of the prior five years? Oh dear, how arcane that all seems today!
Forcing people into defined contribution pension plans was as easy as promising the moon. Why settle for a modest defined benefit amount when you could become Daddy Warbucks on steroids managing your own retirement account?
Why, indeed.
That set the stage for every mom and pop to speculate to live. It’s better to bleat than bleed. To avoid those non-deductible credit charges, why not open a fully-deductible credit line secured by your home? Monthly payments optional. In the long run, we’ll all be ahead.
In the long run, actually, everyone’s just dead.
When the hedge funds went bust, we snickered, “Suckers!” When Wall Street hit the wall, we secretly smiled, “Schmucks!” When our local banks bottomed out we thanked God for the FDIC.
(It couldn’t possibly happen to me.)
Then margin calls came to Main Street. No, you didn’t speculate on stocks or buy sub-prime, you just supplemented your shrinking income, tapping the only asset you could ever call “mine.” When Wall Street stumbled, your good old reliable home value slipped.
Your collateral became your collateral damage.
The Feds were pre-emptively bailing out the Big Boys, the ones who’d pitched the sale, who’d grown through acquisitions ‘till they were just too big to fail. While you and I were working hard to weather wind and hail, the Feds were just too busy to help the little guys bail.
Swamped and sinking, homeless now, we’ve finally found the cure for unaffordable housing here: Can I make you a deal?
Unless you were a hedge fund jockey or a golden parachute-wearing CFO, the bankruptcy judge will order you to submit to credit counseling. Submit as serenely as you speculated. Remember fondly, friends, the good old days, when all we fussed about was the price of gas?
Rain had slipped in overnight, soaking the half-scraped wall
But I still tacked the tarpaulins over the coldframe and
climbed that clammy scaffolding to stand and scrape and sand.
It was Easter when we'd moved
the poles and bracing down the wall
and all through May I watched each day usher in the fall.
For I was working some other walls while this one stood
half-scraped
Though I hoped I could get back to here before this summer
escaped
Into June each afternoon found me
blocks away
engaged in chores meant to adore my Father's final days.
I'd decided to try to say goodbye by hovering close to him
Reviving that weed-choked lawn of his and catering to his
whims:
Watermelon was the only meal that
sorta seemed like food
So I delivered more than he would ever eat, uncued.
For I was chipping away at paint, laid down long before
When he was still all-powerful and I could still ignore
The walls that came between us and the paint we'd slathered
on
When time was still so young and fresh it never would be
gone.
But this summer our old hourglass
began to spit,
hinting that remaining sand would surely, shortly stick.
Inexorably inflexible, our time together came
with me the much more powerful player in the game.
And all this time I worked behind the scaffolding standing
there
More than aware I'd not prepared for primer or despair.
July saundered in with almost
nothing changed
and slipped right through the lines we drew, leaving none the
same.
And then we tried to satisfy his ever expanding needs
while layers of sticky surface scab resisted every plead
The well went dry on August first and and the yard went back to
weed
while we began to count the days, unwilling to concede.
Through August I never spent a
thought on my untouched wall,
I spent my time climbing his and mine, hoping to ease his
fall.
And in the end that dear old friend was pretty thoroughly
scraped
and ready for whatever paint might tempt the taste of
fate.
And I, exhausted from the time,
emotionally drained
decided it was well-past time for me to finally paint.
And so, a few days following his final, labored gasp
It being Indian Summer, and my obligations past,
I placed the soggy planking on the rusting steel shell
And set about to scraping down to bare wood on MY wall.
Ten days later, with September
slowing down
the first marine intrusion turned the temperature around.
Though Thursday felt like ninety, Friday felt much less,
Saturday rained all morning, but the afternoon digressed.
And here I stand on the morning of the last day before fall
Still in preparation to prepare my weathered wall.
1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
3. Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task" (Montgomery 1997: 250).
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
(Thanks,Wikipeadia!)
..............................................................
Schmaltz’ Principles of Practical
Performance
1.
Leverage rule-of-thumb wisdom by appreciating differences in
perspective.
2. Work together in community to more fully acknowledge the context
governing purpose, and design situated approaches for creating
sustainable value.
3. Match work with the preferences of individuals.
4. Acknowledge and appreciate the necessity of self-management to
the discovery, definition, and realization of purpose and the
creation of lasting value.
..............................................................
1.
Acknowledging the Way It Is
A couple of years ago, Rob Austin, Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School, invited me to his annual innovation symposium, the centerpiece of which was a presentation prepared by Austin describing his research into the sources of business innovation. His research involved filming innovators at work, then, through a process of rigorous observation, cataloging the behaviors common to innovators.
Rob had developed a shorthand notation to describe observations and trained a few graduate students in its use. He claimed objectivity because different observers similarly classified actions when viewing the same film.
I sat teetering between boredom and fascination throughout this presentation. Rob’s method was doubtless scientific, but to what end? He might prove that he can condition graduate students, the lab rats of higher education, to observe and interpret in the same way, but then what? Would knowing, for instance, that the observed innovators opened up conversation rather than dominating it translate into anything useful to the aspiring innovator? I couldn’t stretch my meager imagination to believe it could.
No innovator was observed carefully cataloging the actions of other innovators. This omission was not scientifically observable, yet it seemed a material contribution to—and the very soul of—the practice of innovating. Vaguely acknowledged rules of thumb seemed adequate to guide the innovators, while Rob’s study of innovation demanded statistical rigor, proven objectivity, and repeatable methods. Curiously, innovation involves none of these. It thrives on gut feel over statistical rigor, sensitivity to subjective qualities over objective observation, and blazing trails rather than replicating them.
But what method could describe—let alone prescribe and induce—gut feel, subjective sensitivity, and unique response? Kind of a paradox, isn’t it?
I can’t argue that scientific analysis is impossible for some kinds of work. Mechanical work has long been well-represented by flow charts and innumerable similar process diagramming methods, because machines are programmatic. They are designed to do what they are told to do, and they can be engineered to behave. The recipe for insanity starts when this innocent technique starts charting unchartable territory. Like Rob’s scientific investigation of innovation, charts can be produced describing even the most subjective experiences, but how could anyone know whether the resulting charts represent the successful training of graduate students or an accurate—let alone useful—portrait of subjectivity? Distilled into predictive process descriptions, even love couldn’t help but seem understandable.
Poor Rob. He had managed to attract National Science Foundation funding, but had chosen a paradoxical field of study. The best his techniques might produce is a homogenization of something only useful raw, an absurd average, a silly statistic. But why would anyone chase such chimera? For science? For fortune? For fame?
What If Mechanical Engineers Ruled The World?
Sounds very much like Austin’s tactic, doesn’t it? The mechanical engineer’s world is mechanical, prescriptive, predictive. Unlike the pattern-producing chaos other world views describe, the mechanical engineer inhabits a tidy, knowable universe, or one capable of being tidied up. So they tidy. They hammer and nail and paint, oblivious to deeper philosophical questions, focused upon completing the assignment.
Hooray for them! If only the rest of us could perform so carefreely. But we are tangled in one or another conundrum. We fuss. We fear. We experience a more organic, subjective, surprising world; a messy universe glimpsed in shifting patterns of meaning and feeling and not so easily mastered. We, too, might hammer and nail and paint, but while struggling with deeper philosophical conundrums, leaving, if not a physical mess, at least some deeper meaning unresolved. Because we are not mechanical engineers. We are not any more or less human than mechanical engineers, but our humanity seems to play a more dominant role in our lives.
I’m merely describing temperaments. The decisive and the phlegmatic. The journalist and the poet. The realist and the dreamer. If mechanical engineers ruled the world, the dreamer might well be classified as unproductive rather than inventive. Placed on an assembly line, dreamers are dangerous, but wouldn’t immersing a realist in ambiguity produce similarly disjointed results?
One client described as an outright assault on intuitive thinkers by sensing doers the Bush administration’s attempt to reform via process improvements Los Alamos scientists’ proven generations-old practices. Physicists do not approach their work as a mechanical engineer might, and their methods seem inefficient and meandering in comparison to the straight-forward mechanics any engineer would employ. But the problems physicists pursue are different in class than those engineers resolve. They demand meandering, intuitive thoughtfulness, rather than active, predictive solution. They are not merely employing hammers, but inventing them.
The result? At Los Alamos, the assault yielded dramatic improvement in the productivity of the scientific investigation, not because the speed of scientific discovery was increased, but because a significant number of scientists choose to leave the Labs, reducing the overhead cost. What will this savings cost long term? No engineer could calculate this cost.
In Mark Frost’s novel The Second Objective, Nazi spies hold counterfeit passes to gain entry to Allied headquarters, but discover that “headquarters” is misspelled as “haedquarters” on their counterfeits. The Nazi spies produce replacement counterfeits to correct this error, only to learn later, after their intrusion is thwarted, that the genuine passes contained the misspelling. A French detective who helped crack the case comments about the Nazis, “They didn’t really make the trains run on time, either.” Their attention to the way it was supposed to be blinded them to the way it was.
And this kind of blindness is the very foundation of the mechanical engineer’s world view. Their certainty about how things should be, supported by rigorous scientific investigation, blinds them to the way things actually are. We can observe only the observable, and much of what dictates success in human endeavors remains tenaciously unobservable. We might decide that behavior can serve as a stand-in for all we cannot see, and conclude much based upon easily observable actions, and miss seeing the presumption this construction teeters atop. A house of cards.
If Mechanical Engineers ruled the world, we might find a world obsessed with measurement, one focused upon mechanical efficiency, and one improving meaningless as well as meaningful processes. This mysterious world would be characterized as ultimately predictable, and our economies would become roulette wheels rigged by a cruel fate. Our governments would be endlessly bailing out institutions grown so huge and essential that we cannot afford for them to fail, but ones which ultimately fail from focusing upon engineering clockworks to master organics. When they crumble, we find few guilty of any crime save those crimes classified as collusion, conspiracies created to contain natural messiness into predictable portfolios. We wonder how different these outcomes might have been had their energies been focused upon more fully acknowledging the way it is rather than enforcing the way it otta be.
Our survival might well depend upon us fighting this global movement toward Taylorism. In education as well as business, in government as well as industry, the mechanical mindset has gained significant credibility. And no wonder. It can, does, and has produced dramatic short-term improvements in the standard of living, as measured by income, capital, and wealth. But as the roller-coaster performance of our industries as well as our governments show, these improvements are short-lived. They boom then bust. They provide before producing privation. They are ultimately unsustainable.
Let this be a gentle engagement, inexorable. Fought not with the machines of war, but with the hearts and minds of thoughtful and caring people. One fueled by insight rather than hard rules of engagement. One informed by ethical responsibilities rather than by marching orders. Our goal cannot be to vanquish an enemy, but to encourage and nurture our own humanity. To appreciate differing gifts and build robust communities of otherwise individually inadequate individuals. To sustain rather than contain. To imagine rather than enforce. To build rather then destroy. To see science as something more than a metaphor for predictability, but as a method of genuine inquiry, one intended to generate more questions than answers, more insights than injunctions, and more sustainable humanity than mechanical precision.
I delivered this eulogy for my father today:
My father was a gentleman,
A gentle man.
A Republican.
He didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
He was a soft touch;
He loaned much but borrowed little.
My father was a noble man,
A nobleman,
An able man.
He wasn’t handy, but he
was
persistent!
He persevered much
And gave so freely, he seemed rich.
He leaves behind a family,
Familiarity,
Hilarity.
He came from what today is called a ‘blended
family,’
But during the Great Depression was just a busted home.
He swore that his kids wouldn’t grow up like that
And we did not.
He insisted upon eating the chicken backs
At Sunday chicken dinner
I was grown before I understood that
No one prefers to eat back meat,
Not even him!
He preferred for others to be satisfied
And could absorb more personal misery in pursuit of other’s
happiness
Than anyone I’ve known.
My father hated infirmity
and growing older
was hard for him
A bungled surgery left his foot drooping,
and he walked with a cane after that.
He’d walk almost down to Sturm and back
at a turtle’s pace. But he walked.
My father was a working man,
A hard-working man,
Never a hard man.
He held his own convictions,
forgiving others their’s.
He seemed to know someone everywhere he went.
He was a gentle spirit
Who just couldn’t get
Why we couldn’t get along.
He loved songs. Country songs and crooner’s songs
Charlie Pride and Nat King Cole,
And old familiar melodies we’d never heard before
back-lit him like sheet lightening.
He stood up for his kin.
He believed in them,
Even when others’ faith was thin.
He’d shake his head and remember when
They were younger, I guess, and clueless,
And he seemed to understand.
He leaves behind a closet filled with free umbrellas
Blind Native Americans sent
Pleading for his pennies for their programs.
They got their annual check. An obligation he fulfilled
Even though he had no use for those umbrellas.
He read voraciously
Deliciously
Endlessly.
When he’d read every book in the house,
and started in reading them twice,
it pained him to give those friends away
He filled those shelves again before he left.
He loved baseball
tolerated football
hated basketball.
He coached but hated competition.
Sportsmanship was more important—
That everyone could play.
Winning or losing meant less to him than how he played the
game.
And he played well.
He also played when he wasn’t well.
He had some down days in his life:
Sick sometimes, but never unshaven.
No time off without grooming.
His mornings smelled of Aqua Velva,
after he’d shaved until his face shone with
satisfaction.
He had a lead palate
preferring veal cutlet
to any fancier cut.
He despised mayonnaise,
revered anything with gravy,
He let his beans melt his cheese,
and he counted his cholesterol.
This is the part I cannot say
It’s above my pay grade
He and my mother were bound by something
Few have found
I’m not qualified to expound on it other than to say
His dedication drove me crazy
Inspiring me. A rock. A bickering mountain.
He protected her.
More than a care-giver,
It was as if her fate was on his soul,
and he couldn’t let go.
We couldn’t know the depth of this devotion
“This is just a part of the deal,” he disclosed
Heaven might know what he meant by that.
I know I don’t.
I’ve been trying on
different songs,
unseen ways of seeing
But have not yet found the sort of tune
that might replace this being.
“I can’t complain,” he would explain
It’s all part of the deal.
He’d take his cane and his good name
and make it almost down to Sturm and back
at the speed of a screaming turtle.
note:
Sturm is the name of a street about two blocksfrommy father’s
home.
The evening before my dad died, a praying Mantis landed on the front screen door. Mother recalled that a mantis takes up temporary residence on that porch this time every year.
All that evening and into that long, long night, while family came and went, and we stepped out for soothing night air, that screen door opened and closed again and again and again. Through it all, that solitary Mantis held vigil, much as we inside held loving vigil over his final night.
Morning light found our mantis devotional still. As Nancy the hospice nurse came and went, and his loving CNA Kathy came to bathe and massage him, that mantis remained. Silent. Still.
He drew his last labored breath mid-morning, and as we stepped outside to find consoling air, we noticed our mantis still in prayer. As family flocked together to share numb prayers, opening and closing his door another few dozen times, our monkish mantis never moved.
And later, as the mortician arrived, minister mantis stood steadfast. Only after his sons helped guide him one last time through that door—into eternity—did our freakish friar fly away.
The Ancients believed the mantis had divine and magical powers. May a divine and magical mantis sing kaddish for each of us in our time. Amen
Bob was born January 15, 1923 in Mt. Angel, Oregon, to Nicholas D. Schmaltz and Caroline P. Bounds. He was raised in Mt. Angel, Scotts Mills, Yachats and Waldport, Oregon, attending Waldport High School. He married Bonnie M. Wallace on October 28, 1945 in Condon, Oregon, where he served with the volunteer fire department, played on the town baseball team, worked with the county road crew, and began his long career with the US Postal Service. Bob moved his family to Walla Walla in 1952, continuing his Postal Service career, retiring in 1978 after 30 years service. Bob and Bonnie raised five children in their Pleasant Street home. After retirement, Bob and Bonnie traveled the country in their motor home, visiting family and friends until ill health intervened.
Bob was an avid reader, enthusiastic baseball fan, resonant singer, and quiet-spoken storyteller. Bob was a member of the Central Christian Church and the local Parkinson's Support Group. He was the primary caregiver for Bonnie for the last fifteen years.
He is survived by his wife, Bonnie, his half-brother Darwin Stewart of Downey, Idaho, half sisters Leta Dibble of Corvalis, OR, and Victoria Nelson of Walla Walla, step-sister Vanessa Clemons of LaGrande, OR, children R. Carol Smith of Walla Walla, Robert A. Schmaltz and wife Lana of College Place, David A. Schmaltz and wife Amy Schwab of Walla Walla, and Kathy (Schmaltz) Carey and husband Greg of Tulsa, OK, 12 grandchildren, and 25 great grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents, his brother, his step-brothers and sister, one daughter, Susan McCormack, one son-in-law, and one great grand-daughter.
The family requests memorial donations be made in Bob's name to Walla Walla Community Hospice.
This will be a brief, peg-legged posting. I have been peg-legging for some time, working around a curious feature. A few weeks ago, my space bar and delete key started working intermittently. Just here and there would I noticethatwhatIhadjusttypedcameoutasonevery,verylongword. Wait a minute or two, and the problem would fix itself.
I finally replaced the keyboard, something I procrastinated on because it is a 140 mile round trip to the nearest Mac shop, and because, actually, I was enjoying the increased consciousness this little frustration brought.
Along about Friday, though, the novelty wore off. I was trying to write something and thespacebar(thenewone!)refusedtoclickbacktoworkingmode.
The technician suggested I repair permissions, which I did to no effect. Next, she suggestedreloading the operating system, which, with help from Amy, got done. Again, to no effect. I finally figured out that I could copy a space and type-paste my way through a document. Sort of. This procedure so jangles flow as to render me functionally primitive. (I know, how would anyone ever know?)
I am including a link to an entertaining piece about unlearning: Unlearning-Obsolete-Technologies. My peg-legging brings unearning into sharp relief, where I cannot freely exercise my same-old usta be. Painful.
After the holiday, I will go get another keyboard installed. Until then, I am taking an extended break. Cheers!
This is the next installment of the series considering the secular religion of Management-ism.
Here's the hard part: You gotta start where ever they start. You can't start where you know this is going, because you aren't there yet. And you can't insist that the relationship, which could only develop from digging out from naive beginnings, already be THERE at the very beginning. Can't do that without falling down a rabbit hole. That you know where this is going --- that's irrelevant now. Hush up. Start where ever they are. Travel with them to where you might go together. The journey's the thing. Gotta start at the beginning, not the end.
Do not mention that the end envisioned will not be the end achieved. Never has been before. Unlikely to be this time. Each engagement starts as half truth and half promise, like we know the future from the start. We must move through our lives with confident strides, just as if we knew stuff, just as if we controlled our hearts. Otherwise, our hearts could never become enchanted along the way with what we never anticipated.
Let the management-ist be. I have spent the last few weeks describing the secular religion of management-ism only to learn that I must accept these people as they are, because that's how they are. It's not MY job to reform them --- or to show them the supposed error of their ways. Or to guide them to the path of whatever passes for righteousness in MY book. That would be suspiciously similar to the driving I complain about THEM doing. It matters not even a little bit whether you or they are an SOB or an angel. And who you are today matters even less than who we might become together tomorrow.
More ... next time.
Prior installments:
How We 'Managed' To Screw It Up,
Getting Off The Grid
Off The Grid
Abstractions
Going Organic
Interview With A Management-ist
eXtreme tAylorism
Changed By It
Enablers
Who manages
the managers? A piece in the current New Yorker talks about the Tragedy of
the Anti-commons. We are all familiar with the tragedy of the
commons, where a free good gets destroyed because it's in every
individual user's short term interest to consume more than a
sustainable fair share. But I'd not considered the converse, where
the ownership of a property necessary for collective work is split
up into so many independent shares that cooperation becomes
impossible. The common lies unproductively fallow because every
owner wants too much in return for cooperation.
Sound familiar?
It sure does to me!
Each individual holds out for more than his fair share as a precondition for participating. Paying off everyone at the level they desire costs more than the perceived value, so the value lies untapped.
Each tragedy is tragic only because we cope so poorly with it. Viewed as a problem to be solved, which is the standard management-ist frame of reference, we engage in no more or less than a game without end, without resolution, which is in practice, in fact, tragic.
But these are not tragedies unless engaged in as if they were problems to be solved. The management-ist cannot seem to escape from his tenacious problem solving mindset, an act which all by itself could open up possibilities and create choices. Who manages the managers?
Tenacious belief or choice manages them. In fact, they (we) often fail to calculate anything more than the cost of doing business, neglecting the much more useful value of doing or having done business. And the value lost by not doing it.
What do we want? This or that? This is never the whole choice, and neither is that.
The trick is to find choices beyond this and that. This or that constitute an illusion of choice, since choosing either yields the same unwanted result. If you're damned if you do AND damned if you don't, it doesn't matter which option you choose. Either one will result in tragedy.
Here's the cue for any dedicated management-ist to roll his eyes. If you are a skilled problem-solver, you are at a disadvantage. Go ahead, solve the tragedy of the commons --- or the tragedy of the anti-commons. Just try! Neither are nails looking for a hammer. I'll bet you'll direct someone to hammer away anyway.
I recently interviewed a CFO about a soured project. He'd reassigned the Project Manager, who had been unable to get the leaden effort airborne. He was looking for a replacement PM to get the effort back on track. Someone, he hoped, with experience with the technology. Someone who would (at last!) hold the participants accountable. I commented that a) the project was not a train and there were never any tracks, b) I'd never seen a project like this fail because of the technology, and c) holding people accountable for what they cannot do doesn't improve anything.
What would I do? I'd want to talk with everyone involved to hear the story from their perspective. I'd want to understand why a group of people who have the innate ability to work well together managed to not work well together in this instance. Then, working together, I'd want to understand what could be responsibly promised and actually delivered. No hammer. No nails. Glue. Patience.
Well, you know, if I was to do that, the project might not make its target date and the CFO would have to go back to the board and ask for more money. Yup. If the project doesn't do that, it for certain won't make it's date and you might choose to go back to the board and tell them that you've decided to cancel the effort. Hummm. Damned whatever you do. Anti-commons!
I think he decided to hire a hammer.
Prior installments:
How We 'Managed' To Screw It Up,
Getting Off The Grid
Off The Grid
Abstractions
Going Organic
Interview With A Management-ist
eXtreme tAylorism
Changed By It
"I'm working to reinvent our company's operational practices. As I understand things, technology is a key enabler for making processes more efficient. At the same time to really improve things new processes should be developed which take advantage of increased communication and automation now available. I'm looking for a good forum which talks about "use this to do that", "this tool allows you to do this better", and possibly discuss streamlined processes."
Parse the language in this posting. Notice what isn't there!
What isn't there? People are missing, replaced, as F. W. Taylor long-ago predicted, by "the system." Who performs these 'operational practices?' Who does this disembodied 'communicating?'
What IS there? 'New processes,' 'technology,' 'efficiency,' and 'automation,' enablers for an unmentioned community of ... ... (wait for it) ... PEOPLE?
Isn't this where we've learned to go? What we've learned to do? To chase ephemeral efficiency with as-of-yet unimagined technology? And what do we imagine that technology to be? Something featuring software, no doubt. Something that comfortably integrates within the existing network. Platform independent. Licensed or open source. Upgradeable. A good, solid, tangible cause capable of making our aspirations real.
Notice one other word imbedded within this posting. Notice the 'should' innocuously standing there, just as if it weren't controlling the traffic flow for the whole danged inquiry. Also notice the tenaciously passive voice, which never specifies any who except for the author's innocent 'I'. He will be reinventing 'our' company's operational practices. 'I'm' looking for a good forum. I find no evidence of either 'us' or 'we' in the entire posting. Where did we go? Why no us?
Am I being too harsh? Reading too much into this posting? Perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. We construct our world with language, and the world this language creates doesn't seem to include space for the object of the whole inquiry, speaking in what Bateson called 'the dormative,' language that induces sleep rather than action. It focuses upon derivatives rather than the underlying source. What IS that source?
In his remarkable book How Doctor's Think, Jerome Groopman, MD recounts how injecting technology into the practice of medicine brings unintended social consequences, typically because some manager somewhere focused upon derivatives rather than the actual practice. Easing the effort to invoice insurance carriers inhibits the doctor's ability to reliably diagnose. Simplifying diagnosis by documenting decisions using pre-formatted decision trees disables diagnosing. The cognitive confusion inherent in any social interaction becomes more complicated by streamlining apparently trivial tasks.
I could be arguing in favor of more whole system thinking, except what passes for the whole system in the management-ist's language excludes most of the system's holistic nature. Certainly, we can create notional models of any system, but can include in those models only those elements we characterize as causative; germane. The result is a curiously satisfying reduction, wholly comprised of derivatives sensitive to underlying, unseen, unaccounted for, uncountable components. Groopman labels the most commonly overlooked element 'context,' and claims that little any doctor actually does holds meaning out of context. Like the old thought experiment that proposed dissecting a cat to find the purr, decomposition discards the context, typically the social context.
Before the author of this post will be able to really reinvent 'our company's operational practices,' he will need to reinvent his way of describing reinvention. Were he to actually reinvent, his initiating notions of what characterizes reinvention must certainly crumble. Otherwise, he will merely reinvent more (perhaps even more) of the same.
That was a characteristically long-winded preface to what I intended to address in this posting: enablers. The manager is commonly represented as enabler, the cause of performance and efficiency, the 'driver' of results, the 're-inventor of operational practices'. In a social context, enablers are those individuals who assume the burden of someone else's addiction-induced dysfunction. In an organizational context, managers are expected to both make and take this heat, sometimes innocently (and sometimes not so innocently) encouraging the very dysfunction they intend to eradicate. Most commonly, this dysfunction centers around individual agency or the lack of it. We want to hold people accountable for their performance, but insist upon them agreeing to be irresponsible to achieve that.
Imagine a manager commanding a subordinate to do something that the subordinate knows he cannot do. Will he say yes? He knows his no will encourage a raft of 'get with the program' innuendo, insistences that he explain exactly why he can't, and 'help' getting over his cluelessness. Very probably all of these will occur if he says 'No!" while being managed by a management-ist, because his personal perspective is gumming up the system, and the organization is all about the system. Isn't it?
The under-apprecated technology we seek might well be what the eggheads at MIT are calling Social Technology. Social Technology is not before-the-fact causative, it involves no software, except the software imbedded in every individual at birth, though our sensitivity to it can be disabled by some of the socialization received thereafter. It includes two of Aristotle's Causations explicitly omitted from reductionist science and its progeny, scientific management; management-ism. Omitted as metaphysical: not countable, not reducible, not manageable. Omitting these two causations leaves only the most primitive two, those commonly labeled Material causation and Efficient causation.
Material Causation ascribes cause to the nature of material. The fireplace is rigid because it is constructed of brick. Efficient causation ascribes cause to some previous act. We're late because the last meeting ran long. Science, scientific management, even management-ism limit their domain of inquiry to these two dimensions, when their domain of existence includes and is subtly influenced by Aristotle's un-reducible and uncountable metaphysical causations: Formal Causation and Final Causation.
Formal Causation ascribes cause to form. An example of formal causation are the differences we experience when communicating face-to-face and via email. The form of communication subtly influences, affects, 'causes' difference. Asking exactly how or why these changes occur assumes a material or efficient causation at work, and while these questions might well elicit any number of interesting responses, none will be satisfying in the way that a material or efficient causation might provide.
Final Causation ascribes cause to some imagined future state, as if our aspiration caused the result. A common example of final causation at work is found in scheduling assumptions: the flight departs at four because we want to arrive at five. What caused the flight to depart at four? Our aspiration to arrive at five. Certainly a raft of material, efficient, and formal causations were also involved in arriving at five, but without the aspiration, none of them would mean anything. The root cause is our anticipation of future events.
When a management-ist searches for the root cause, he limits his search to material and efficient effects, though these will inevitably provide only the most primitive parts of the explanation. This is fine if identifying the material or efficient causes provides some leverage for useful action. Omitting formal and final causations limits possibility for change, and holds the source of what are commonly referred to as unintended consequences. These might be better described as unimagined consequences resulting from unseen and unconsidered contexts. Because science education focuses upon understanding the material world and cataloguing efficient causations (aka Best Practices and Procedures), it focuses the practitioner's attention away from powerful, causative points of leverage. Without acknowledging the influence of the metaphysical, any practitioner can degrade into focusing upon the purely physical, firmly believing that an efficient cause must be provided to enable performance. Hence, the enabling management-ist.
Who gets disabled in this context? Those who become addicted to the material and efficient world-view. The management-ist, all-powerful though he might seem, is just as addicted as those who firmly believe that he causes their performance. This aspiration might well be the final cause of this disabling enabling. Mention the metaphysical to a dedicated management-ist and watch his eyes roll.
Who manages the management-ist? Next time.
For the last fifteen years, I've been facilitating curious workshops. These never told anyone what they should do, and I've developed a strong aversion to anyone who presumes to know what I should do and when I should do it. Nothing I do involves procedures. Nothing seems suited to steps or checklists. This is an improvement over the years following my graduation from university, when I performed a lot of quantitative analysis on what was in retrospect subjective experiences. I attempted to routinize a lot of work which never as a result exhibited routine. For I was infected with the notion that I should measure and, more dangerously, that only if I measured could I properly manage. The people I was charged with managing were wiser than I was, however, and while some of them chased the measurable manageable metric god, none of us ever caught him. And we succeeded at an acceptable rate, anyway.
Jerry Weinberg's Problem Solving Leadership Workshop, which I helped facilitate for seven years, attracted many upwardly mobile middle management types. Some were team leaders tapped to move into management. Others were managers being groomed for executive futures. Some were executives trying to improve their effectiveness. Most came with little understanding of what this experience would bring. Many were frustrated that no one would tell them exactly what they would learn, being used to workshops that provided succinct lists of learning objectives and descriptions of what would be learned.
Jerry invited participants to create their own learning objectives, instead. A pre-work assignment that just baffled many.
The workshop served as a kind of introduction to self more than providing a set of general instructions. Each participant was encouraged to write in a personal journal, and us facilitators called frequent journal breaks for people to jot down their reflections. No one was ever required to share their personal reflections, and aside from an opening ritual where small groups distilled and reported their learning objectives and a closing ritual where each team reported on whether they'd achieved their objectives, personal learning stayed quite personal. No one knew what anyone else was really learning.
I attended my first PSL in the late 80s, when I was a driven middle manager. I was what I've since labeled 'zoned in' on my career, my work life, my company, my projects. I was monoral, single-minded, a driver. My wife at the time complained a lot about my schedule, my obsession with work, claiming that I'd changed since I went to university and took a management job. I couldn't see it. I claimed that while I was no longer the songwriter I once had been, I was "just playing a different-shaped guitar now."
PSL involved a series of simulations, experiential games intended to help people "catch themselves being themselves." I stumbled into myself on the first night, in the middle of a black box simulation. The me I encountered in that game differed so greatly from the persona I'd been inhabiting that I took sick, what I now recognize as soul sick, and missed much of the balance of the workshop. I was deeply changed by that experience.
I had no way to know this at the time, but many who attended PSL over the following years experienced similar results. Many encountered an unfinished or neglected side of themselves and found their resulting selves less willing and able to engage as they had previously unselfconsciously engaged. They woke up and were changed by the experience. Some left the companies that had sent them. Others struggled upon return to find a place for something that had not seemed germane before attending the workshop. Many stayed connected and started a now life-long conversation considering who they are and what they are doing in this world. I'm still connected to many people I first met attending and later facilitating PSL. My present wife, Amy, was a student at PSL when we first met.
What does this have to do with management-ism? Management-ism requires the subjugation of self, the often pre-conscious denial of who I am and what I am doing. To encounter self in a revelatory way, after not being aware of self's absence, unsets more than our carefully constructed house of cards. It changes the game.
As I said, I met Amy at a PSL, where she was 'just another student' when I first noticed her, the shortest member of her learning team, standing on a chair, painstakingly positioning the top tier of cards on a planned eight-foot house of cards. Her team had won the first round of competition, where the challenge was to build a four-foot house of cards, and had taken their proprietary technology and moved from the lobby where other teams could copy to an adjacent dining room for round two. As I approached their construction, yardstick in hand, her team members asked for a measurement. Taking my yardstick, they found that they were building their eight-foot house of cards in a seven-foot, ten-inch room. No way to succeed.
What Amy and her team did then was instructive. They became political. "Would it be good enough to show that we could have succeeded? Can we use Amy's foot in lieu of a standard one?" And they began to build faster. They continued building for a few minutes after time was called on that round in a kind of Wiley Coyote attempt to keep running after losing their ground.
On reflection, Amy realized that she'd stumbled upon a dandy metaphor for her life. Her work assignment was like trying to build an eight foot house of cards in a seven foot ten inch room. So was her marriage. So was her career. She was changed by her unanticipated experience of self.
Management-ists tell stories about how self-less they are, about how they sacrifice for their company, their team, their goals, their customer, just as if their selflessness contributed to creating more value, more results, more satisfaction, as if what matters to them doesn't really matter at all. They can encourage selfless cultures, where their curious affliction gets rewarded as the norm and any semblance of self experienced as evidence of less than full commitment.
F W Taylor deliberately omitted self from his efficient procedures, measuring only what he measured, not the inevitably self-infused organization. The workers complained a lot at the time, reasoning that since Midvale Steel was not competing in the small margin railroad rail market but the huge margin government armaments market, there was plenty of space for a variety of self in the fabrication. Nor did the calculated efficiencies prevent the company, or the bulk of it, from being acquired by the Pittsburgh steel combine and turned away from its DNA. We wonder now what that self-lessness really achieved.
But our training and the context within which we manage seems now to insist upon us acquiring the bug. Those who suffer from it might never suspect their infection. Those who recover from it usually stumble upon or over themselves, then work to incorporate their discovery into something quite distinct from the game they were originally certified in and the one they were convinced they just had to play. Those who've not yet made this discovery remain confident, certain that they are playing the right game right. This unchangeable certainty is clear evidence that something essential's missing from the mix.
([Note: I am the Management-ist depicted here. I am also the one interviewing (or, in proper management-ist lingo, 'being interviewed by') the management-ist. I have been on both sides of this conference table.]
The chill will crawl up the back of your neck.
The surroundings are comfortable enough: a well-appointed office, a conference room decorated with fine art. The welcome will be genuinely warm. The conversation always starts with small talk—studied small talk, as if I'd been instructed to 'start from the heart' and engage with the 'person' first. Whether this takes the form of sports, the weather, the travel from there to here, or the nearly universal quick apology for being a few minutes late for the meeting, the first five minutes of the interview will be beside the point.
Study the scenery. What books are displayed? (These are clues to the form and texture of belief.) What clutter prevails? Am I wearing one of those absolutely unfunctional Polo dress shirts with a logo in lieu of a pocket? Tassled loafers or tasseled Top Siders? The tassel: the management-ist's curious decoration of choice!
Listen to the language. I will pass more than your maximum annual dose of unconditional superlatives. I will say 'best' when the context screams 'better', I will use 'accountability' as a synonym for 'responsibility', I will revere 'predictability' as if it were 'reliability.' Listen closely, you will not understand very much of what I say. I speak in deep code. Buzz words punctuated with references. I will not speak for myself, but quote noted authorities, just as if knowing who said what makes what I say meaningful. Mostly, my story will be garbled. Ask for clarification and expect to receive a puzzled frown.
Sometime within the conversation, I will disclose another's shortcoming. 'They' will have done something 'stupid.' 'They' won't have 'gotten it.' 'They' will be characterized as some form of clueless, a condition linguistically elevated to character flaw. You will sense that 'they' managed to fake it until this recent unmasking of the deeper truth. 'They' are the cause. Defend 'them' at your own peril.
If your mind wanders, reflect on how it is that such a smart and experienced individual could be surrounded by such blunder. If I confide that 'my people' are well-intended, but not very experienced, return a year later, and I will repeat the same story. Then wonder: How could that year have not resulted in someone acquiring experience?
Whatever the topic, notice the interview wandering back toward me, the management-ist. I am the final arbiter of experience. More interestingly, I have assumed the role of final arbiter of everyone else's experience, too, second-guessing whatever fails to make a priori sense or contradicts my personal convictions. I feel powerful, but I am stuck in a story I seem to star in, yet hold little culpability for creating.
Jung claimed that this sort of absent presence occurs when a secondary temperament component (Thinking/Feeling) overrides the two primary temperament modes (Intervert/Extravert-iNtuition/Sensing). Typically, where acquired knowledge is more valued than how one naturally relates to others and how one naturally prefers to acquire information. In other words, where one more highly prizes what they have acquired over what they are naturally endowed with. Perhaps this is the delusion of our age, our very culture writ large. We move to cities to escape where we're from. We take degrees to distinguish ourselves from others so we can get a high-paying job. We assume professional (literally, what we profess) roles, then fuss about not being able to talk about what theory doesn't really work. We believe ourselves to be what we know, not who we are.
Fine, I'd rather have a knowledgeable manager than an ignorant one. But the fine distinguishing line is not between knowing and not knowing, but between knowing and being. The management-ist is defined by what they know, rather than more properly informed by it. A management-ist without a litany of oft-quoted external references (whether from Heroclitus or Tom Peters) is to their mind, no manager at all.
Some worship before the alter of continuous improvement. Others, six sigma. Whatever their belief, you will notice explanations that do not and could not ground themselves. Each requires faith for closure. Each requires belief to work. Ask an innocent question about, for instance, who decided what would be called Best Practice, and notice the quivering eye movements that signal the search for qualifying references. Some noted authority, who invariably became noteworthy due to their own audacious commercial bluster, will be named. This dance can continue for as long as you care to play.
I call the dance between the management-ist and the human Idiot Making. Where another presumes to know better than you what your experience is. Where their 'superior' judgement co-opts your inferior perspective, robbing you of your experience and leaving little more than a promise that, with diligence, you could know better, too. This is where the fear will crawl up your spine and tickle the short hairs on the back of your neck. You will be in the presence of a person capable of justifying almost anything, of dis-qualifying anyone except, of course, himself. Be afraid. be very afraid.
If you glimpse yourself in the management-ist role, as I have glimpsed myself in the past, be even more afraid. This peek took my breath away. Whether or not you suffocate on this unwanted insight, hope to be changed by it.
Next time: Changed By It
In the last installment, I introduced the character behind management-ism. The 'can't manage what can't be measured' mindset that seeks metrics for measuring everything. Peter Block once asked the question, "If performance appraisals are so good, why don't we perform them on our spouses?" We don't perform them on our spouses because we have better ways to assess the goodness of that relationship. In absence of relationship, though, where we merely inhabit roles and perform process scripts, managing by such metrics might seem to make all the sense in the world. The management-ist sees no contradiction in employing 360 degree feedback strategies. The rest of us certainly do!
Within industrial-scale organizations, some new (read:old) paradigms are emerging. When Nike realized that the gas used in their air-cusioned sole was a volatile greenhouse gas, a movement started within the company. As Peter Senge explained it, three people—not executives, not powerful middle managers, but three rank and file employees—started a movement. They hosted lunch-time chats. They networked to gain influence. Their goal? A carbon-neutral Nike. Impossible? Certainly not on the corporate radar at that time. It is now. Nike's long-term strategy includes carbon neutrality. This started as a conversation among the powerless to become the stated goal of the whole organization!
How did THAT happen? You already know!
This is no isolated incident, though it might serve as the model or pattern for an under-recognized reality operating within even industrial-scale organizations. Innovation isn't top-down. Inspiration isn't either. The motive power that actually moves even the behemoths is organic, not mechanistic. Though the literature focusing upon processes and the improvement thereof leans heavily upon mechanical metaphor, the mechanism they fail to describe isn't mechanical, but organic. Quite remarkably human-scale. (Don't let the management-ist know, okay? They think they're in charge.)
If the management-ists aren't in charge, who is? As unlikely as this might seem, you are. I can't count the conversations I've had with individuals imbedded within industrial-scale organizations, where they cheerfully recount how they get away with things. These are not native sneak thieves, but deeply benevolent and loyal employees who routinely work the system so that system can work. The management-ists are blithely ignorant of the catastrophes avoided, believing, I guess, that their grand strategy is working more or less as they intended. It isn't. It never does.
The machine has remarkably little influence over this organic spirit. I have seen it thrive under the harshest conditions. In fact, harsh conditions seem to encourage it. Telling it "No!" won't deflect it much. This will just get its conniving imagination working harder.
The choice is not to work for someone else or work for yourself, you're always working for yourself, no matter who signs the paycheck. Working for yourself carries some ethical responsibilities, which can become lost in the overly-responsible dance management-ism embodies. In fact, everyone is managing all the time, it's not just the responsibility of the designated managers to manage. Where management becomes the sole purview of designated managers to do unto others and descends to the level of religious conviction, the net available management power within the organization plummets. These organizations are not certified organic. Where everyone understands that, regardless of what the mythodology claims, they are responsible for managing themselves first, interesting things happen. They happen as a resonance of a set of ancient ethical responsibilities that every human was born with but that the industrial, management-ist mindset scrupulously ignores. Kinda like what happens when organic methods reconnect a plant with its source of macro-nourishment. (Some just call this bullshit.)
One of these ethical responsibilities is:
Enough for today. More next time
Continuing the investigation of the secular religion of Management-ism started HERE, continued HERE and HERE ...
The last installment introduced Dr. Bob Ironside, an Internist who fled the managed care system to start a subscription-based health advocacy clinic, where his clients actively collaborate WITH him to maintain health rather than simply treat illness.
Dan Starr, in his comment on the third installment, noted that the HMO (Health MAINTENANCE Organization) concept originated in just this idea, a physician/client partnership focused positively, to maintain health and so reduce health care costs. It morphed into its opposite, where the object became negative, to reduce health care costs by aggressively "managing" allocation: dictating delivery terms, questioning diagnoses and treatment recommendations, and tightly limiting reimbursements to minimize costs. How maintaining health shifted into minimizing costs might serve as the general pattern defining the difference between the manager and the management-ist.
Management-ism thrives on homily and abstraction. Read any number of popular management books and you might reasonably conclude that management is more art than science, or so many commentators have concluded. The science seems rooted in something other than carefully considered propositions, relying heavily upon rumor, personal preference, and "consensus". It can't quite qualify as an art, either, as anyone who's formally studied art or lived as an artist quickly acknowledges. Some descriptions devolve into the even murkier realm of "leadership", which has all of the sparkle and promise common to personality cults.
In a Harvard-sponsored teleconference on leadership training, one of their B-school researchers admitted that not even Harvard knew how to train for leadership, and that their efforts would probably be best focused not on the B-school, but upon the Divinity School. She characterized B-school candidates as being more aggressive and self-centered than D-school students. Neither of these preferences are closely associated with good leadership. They are, however, common to forceful governance.
But how to transform responsible guidance or leadership into forceful governance? One must have a code, an ethic if you will, that justifies aggressive, self-centered acts. A force, ahem ... to be reckoned with. And that force was found in rules of thumb elevated to imperative, in promoting specific experiences into Best Practices, and otherwise mindless homilies into mind-numbing necessities. By creating an enforceable myth, a compelling story, and, above all, a plausibly believable fiction: Organization Man. (I imagine a kind of superhero who wears a spandex Brooks Brothers suit, high-luster wing-tips, and a sixties-style, narrow snap-brimmed hat. What Frank Loesser called "a Scarsdale Galahad, the breakfast-eating, Brooks Brothers type." Think Bob McNamara in his prime.)
Where to begin? Lets begin with what managers, according to their mythodology, can't do. They "can't manage what they can't measure." Moral: Anchor the organization to clear, objective, measurable metrics: SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) goals. "Balanced" Scorecards. Focus upon predicting the future as the present reality. Tether everything to numbers. [Or, as everyone with much experience "managing" to these knows them, "NUMB-ers."] There, the perfect ambiguity cocktail, a steady diet of which utterly fogs reality.
One thing I noticed missing from Dr. Bob's description of his practice was the absence of any mention of specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals. I'm certain his operation carries a few of these, as all businesses do, but they were nowhere apparent in the space between Dr. Bob and I. They were not foreground dominant. There, he seemed to be managing by instinct, by gut feel, by sparkly-eyed purpose. Exactly how he will satisfy his mission was not even germane to his realization of it. His clarity of purpose was obvious in his very presence. He was not managing his clinic, he was being it.
The professional management-ist is careful to maintain clear boundaries between self, others, and organization; he remains above all else "professional." He is not emotional—the constant focus upon the numb-ers helps there. Not introspective, but extrospective, taking cues from what he characterizes as external objectivity. He keeps score. He is fiercely loyal to his allies and fiercely allied against his enemies. You'll never see him sweat. He plays high-stakes poker. He knows the odds, the margin, the vigorish, and the game. He makes the rules when he can, bends them when he can't, and is tenaciously competitive; but a cardboard competitor, two dimensional, shallow. He's ruthless if he needs to be, generous when he must, heartless in the face of doubt, and stingy extending trust. He's convinced of the rightness of his cause, skeptical about your reliability, and cynical about his fellow man. He's negotiated a generous package for himself that will guarantee that he leaves "whole", whatever the contingency. He is, above all else, politically astute.
Quite a stereotype, huh?
In practice, the management-ist might well exhibit all of these patterns, but would never characterize himself in this way. Or, he might well exhibit none of these characteristics. He is, as the soothing voice-over in a Walt Disney short describes Goofy, "just your average guy looking to get by in the world." He's been infected with a perspective, though, one which comfortably justifies cold-hearted compartmentalizing, removing the person from the personality, leaving a caricature, an actor playing a role. An abstraction. Not present. Human absent soul.
He is curiously not curious. He can be quite dismissive toward anything he doesn't a priori understand and especially toward anything he cannot measure. If you cannot speak in his curious, limited dialect, it's YOU that will be judged clueless. As a class, they suffer from the one truly incurable disease: certainty. Consequently, they are addicted to risk-taking.
The seductions of this life are huge and, not surprisingly, measurable! Money. Position. Power. Authority. Security. Tenure. The costs, too, are enormous but fuzzy. Obligation. Responsibility. Accountability. Indictability. And, curiously, tremendous insecurity. (What do you do when you reach the top of your profession? Move to a gated community!)
Their world is abstracted by objective measurement. Like the mythical character who falls in love with the swan, the management-ist falls in love with his gauges, managing what he can measure and trying to measure whatever he aspires to manage. This might explain what transformed health maintenance into managed care. The gauges associated with managing care might just be as close as any management-ist could come to getting their arms around health maintenance. Health is subjective. Care can be metered by definite abstraction. It's all in the numbers, somewhere.
More next time. I've gotta go check the bumps on my head. ...
This posting continues the story started HERE and continued HERE. This third installment of my investigation of Managementism, the profoundly popular theology influencing everything from food production to health care, looks at one example of one practitioner who choose to step "Off The Grid."
In the last installment, I introduced a doctor, Bob Ironside, who, dissatisfied with the management of the health care system he was a part of, took personal agency to make his part work much better. I was sitting in an extremely comfortable room—I would not call it a waiting room, because it was clearly not designed for any activity as wasteful as waiting—for a chat with Bob about his life off the grid.
...I spent the few minutes after the receptionist left checking out the room. My chair was extremely comfortable. Three other matched chairs were, like mine, set around a large, low table, which held a bouquet of fresh flowers. Just behind me, on a sideboard, a Bose Wave Radio softly bled classical music. The windows to my right overlooked the mansions and forest just above NW Portland. I sipped my water, wondering where this conversation would start. And where it might lead.
Bob quietly opened the sliding panel and slipped into the room. I stood, and we shook hands like old friends before settling back into those comfortable chairs. I asked, "Bob, why don't I feel like a cow in a cattle car waiting for the conductor to call my stop?"
He explained that people don't open up when you treat them like cattle. He'd designed this clinic to not feel very much like a clinic because the traditional design shuts people down, and he needs people to speak freely there.
He went on to explain how his clinic works. "If Tim Russert had been our client, I'm convinced that he wouldn't be dead," he asserted. Bob's clients do not suffer catastrophic illness. Sure, they get sick, but in every case, he's seen the trouble coming and caught it in the earliest, most treatable stages. He helped one client, an ex-Olympic athlete, avoid a heart attack by carefully listening to his family's health history. Though he was in excellent health and showed no symptoms of heart disease, he ordered a battery of tests which showed that he did, indeed have heart disease, which he's treating before it became a catastrophe.
He shared several examples of clients who came to him dissatisfied with the diagnoses (and mis-diagnoses) they'd received (or not received) from their harried managed care physicians. Bob's great skill, I knew from my earlier relationship with him, was his exceptional ability to create rapport and really get to know his clients. He gets to know their story and can weave the intricate threads together. Perhaps just as importantly, his clients get to know Bob's story, too. He discloses a lot of his personal stuff as a part of his work.
This, it seems to me, is one hallmark of the self-manager. They do not aspire to an emotionally or intellectually or politically-neutral professional presence, but a disarmingly personal one. He is a very skilled and deeply respected practitioner, but he doesn't present himself as a Mr. Know-It-All. Instead, he creates a sense of joint inquiry, fueled by deep personal interest and, as I already knew but was about to learn even more profoundly, an uncommon advocacy.
His practice is now all about advocacy. When he refers a client to a specialist, he visits the specialist WITH them. He doesn't second-guess or upstage the specialist, and rarely says a word during these visits. If the client has questions, he lets the specialist answer unless explicitly invited into the conversation. Too many times, Bob noted, clients have questions after a specialist visit or don't understand that they don't fully understand what the specialist tells them. Bob forwards extensive patient history to each specialist beforehand, but admitted that specialists do not always make time to review them before the client arrives. Having been there, Bob can help position the puzzle pieces so the whole portrait makes sense to his clients, their specialists, and himself, too, making for much better-informed choices.
I was astounded! I wondered how he could possibly schedule those visits. (He also visits any client who's hospitalized.) Bob explained that client load has a lot to do with disabling a doctor's ability to fully advocate. Under managed care, he needed to carry a client load of about 3000 to make the numbers work, and even then, the numbers didn't work very well. Fully three-quarters of his staff then worked on billing and collections, and his performance was hampered by the normal intrigues that come with any large staff. Now he has a client load of about a hundred.
Incredulous again, I wondered, "So, you can do more with less, but what about the bottom line."
"It's much healthier than it ever was before," he smiled."
How does this work? People subscribe to Bob's service, paying an annual flat fee in advance. In exchange, Bob provides exceptional internist attention and health care advocacy. One of his clients, the Board Chair of a local hospital, was dissatisfied with the specialist Bob had referred him to at that hospital. "He was brusk, and 'all-knowing,' and we didn't feel like he'd delved deeply enough before diagnosing. So, I looked nation-wide, and ended up referring him to a colleague at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, who found a potentially life-threatening condition before it could threaten. Did Bob accompany his client there, too? You betcha!
This is an admittedly small-scale operation, but it's getting noticed by the HMOs. Bob's clients are healthy because they proactively attend to their health, rather than retroactively respond to often avoidable illness. The reimbursement for treating a single modest health crisis could pay for a lot of pro-active advocacy. Bob's practice doesn't replace the need for personal insuran