Very good question. I find that those who often want 'community' oriented institutions often work in large top down hierarchical and unaccountable , bureaucratic entities or support such entities, such as Universities or the EU. Those that are in most need of protection and help are often furthest from them. I have seen the emergence of a managerial class that protects its own jobs through bureaucracy (all week in online meetings). We've rebranded this class as 'Leaders' but that is not, in fact, what they do. All of the constant consultation and discussion of abstractions, it leads to a sort of paralysis and failure of the imagination. Doing and action are too often missing from the debate yet that is ultimately what work is. Too much focus on the managers themselves, not on external goals. It's all too inward looking for me.
We construct systems of complexity and come to believe that they are both real, and permanent. We nest within them to codify power, and create a mythology to protect it. I think this is one way you see leadership - as a myth - and i am inclined to agree.
Perfectly expressed. I honestly witness a sort of cult of Leadership that is all about protecting a middle management tier, one that is most often protecting itself by inventing a mythology and bureaucracy of Leadership. So we get endless training courses on values and abstract moral compliance. Too many people in meetings, too little decision making, too few actions, little accountability, but lots of messaging!
I think that can kick off into lots of different directions. Initial thoughts about [1] how we create complexity to insulate systems - which can be a good thing to slow and stabilise them, but also tends to lead to them persisting past their sell by date, and be unable to change and [2] the importance of values and morality, but the need for it to be found by ‘self’, and not indoctrinated. In this latter point, i think that divergence is fine, may even be an aspect of resilience (use that term with you carefully - but nonetheless i would consider it true) - so not ‘broadcast’ and stultified published values, but truly lived ones. Hence i would favour approaches whereby people can find their own truth, not just buy or borrow mine.
Wholly agree with this. Yet 'indoctrination' is what passes for management and leadership these days. These are my values and you must CONFORM to these values. Yes, resilience... world I never use. Never hear it uttered by anyone in real life, only in management talk and Leadership courses. I honestly think it's yet another strange and hollow construct by a middle management class that needs to constantly invent concepts to keep their inward-looking show on the road. We now have full 'courses' on 'resilience'. OEB has it as their main 'theme'.
I am more inclined to think there is value in considering resilience - not specifically as a value laden concept or ‘thing’, but in terms of how we engineer stregngth into a system - which i think we can do. This piece, from the Socially Dynamic Org, considers the idea of the Porcelain Organisation, and i think i still stand by this view. https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2019/12/05/the-porcelain-organisation-domain-to-dynamic-pt-4/
Very good question. I find that those who often want 'community' oriented institutions often work in large top down hierarchical and unaccountable , bureaucratic entities or support such entities, such as Universities or the EU. Those that are in most need of protection and help are often furthest from them. I have seen the emergence of a managerial class that protects its own jobs through bureaucracy (all week in online meetings). We've rebranded this class as 'Leaders' but that is not, in fact, what they do. All of the constant consultation and discussion of abstractions, it leads to a sort of paralysis and failure of the imagination. Doing and action are too often missing from the debate yet that is ultimately what work is. Too much focus on the managers themselves, not on external goals. It's all too inward looking for me.
We construct systems of complexity and come to believe that they are both real, and permanent. We nest within them to codify power, and create a mythology to protect it. I think this is one way you see leadership - as a myth - and i am inclined to agree.
Perfectly expressed. I honestly witness a sort of cult of Leadership that is all about protecting a middle management tier, one that is most often protecting itself by inventing a mythology and bureaucracy of Leadership. So we get endless training courses on values and abstract moral compliance. Too many people in meetings, too little decision making, too few actions, little accountability, but lots of messaging!
I think that can kick off into lots of different directions. Initial thoughts about [1] how we create complexity to insulate systems - which can be a good thing to slow and stabilise them, but also tends to lead to them persisting past their sell by date, and be unable to change and [2] the importance of values and morality, but the need for it to be found by ‘self’, and not indoctrinated. In this latter point, i think that divergence is fine, may even be an aspect of resilience (use that term with you carefully - but nonetheless i would consider it true) - so not ‘broadcast’ and stultified published values, but truly lived ones. Hence i would favour approaches whereby people can find their own truth, not just buy or borrow mine.
Wholly agree with this. Yet 'indoctrination' is what passes for management and leadership these days. These are my values and you must CONFORM to these values. Yes, resilience... world I never use. Never hear it uttered by anyone in real life, only in management talk and Leadership courses. I honestly think it's yet another strange and hollow construct by a middle management class that needs to constantly invent concepts to keep their inward-looking show on the road. We now have full 'courses' on 'resilience'. OEB has it as their main 'theme'.
I am more inclined to think there is value in considering resilience - not specifically as a value laden concept or ‘thing’, but in terms of how we engineer stregngth into a system - which i think we can do. This piece, from the Socially Dynamic Org, considers the idea of the Porcelain Organisation, and i think i still stand by this view. https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2019/12/05/the-porcelain-organisation-domain-to-dynamic-pt-4/