As I Was Saying...

on Friday,:

And I realize that at almost 59 years of age, I'm still angry. I still want things to change. And I'm still trying to both be the change I want to see and to create ways for that change to come about.

We could be so much better...

And then, Doc says this, today:

I also think that, in the long run, most businesses will be understood to work fundamentally at the grace of their customers and employees, and that conventions for getting those two parties to communicate directly will replace the cosmetic callings of advertising and PR. (One good reason: it's cheaper.) Blogging may be one of those conventions. Maybe others will emerge. Whatever they are, many years will pass before the old flywheels stop spinning.

Let's remember that similar points about employees and customers were being made by Peter Drucker fifty years ago.

And that Alvin Toffler wrote The Third Wave, which notified the world about the end of the Industrial Age, and the dawn of the Information Age, more than 25 years ago.

I'm just glad I work in a field where the future started arriving early enough to treat me with a taste of it.

It also saddens me to know that I'll be long dead before the rest of us taste the same thing.

That's also one reason I'm motivated to help urge progress along in the meantime.

Exactly what I meant in the more wistful last line of my post. And the source of Friday's anger. (Remember Freud's connection between anger and death.)

We continue to be encumbered by fear, the greatest hindrance to human progress. This is why Point #8 of Deming's  14 Points has always struck me as foundational to all else:

8. Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

How simple to say. How difficult to do.

Blogs tap into managers' fears of losing control, not of "the message" but of their workers. "Managing" is still synonymous with "keeping them in line." How could we manage without controlling the workers? Without making sure they're not saying what we want them to say, or else, making sure they say nothing at all?

And how else could we manage if not through fear?

Tags: Doc Searls Management Deming Leadership

Comments

[Niti Bhan]

Well said. Let's not forget 'micromanaging', only to be used by the absolutely afraid.

[Tom Guarriello]

Yes, "supervision"; the tool of the most fearful and furtive.

[Doc Searls]

As I recall we're about tied. I hit 59 on 29 July.

Annoys me. That kinda shit outa be illegal.

[Niti Bhan]

Tom, you may enjoy a peek at this article - interviews of foreign executives in the US and their impressions of the workplace culture here - the essence of which is fear, just as you point out.

Quote:

Welcome to corporate America, where you're invited to check your straight-shooter outside the company door. After surveying a broad spectrum of foreign executives from twenty-six countries who live and work in the United States, I discovered that they are shocked--and ultimately frustrated--that the bold face we Americans put on in the marketplace is quite different than the one we have in the workplace. Why our split personality? Because, foreigners say, we work in fear--of confrontation, of retaliation, of litigation.

http://www.conference-board.org/articles/atb_article.cfm?id=347

[Niti Bhan]

Ick, sorry, bad URL posting, here's the link

http://tinyurl.com/qcn7d

[Diego Rodriguez]

Tom -- thanks for the Deming quote. Great post.

[Tom Guarriello]

Doc, you got me by a week...I'll turn 59 on August 7. Where do we go to get the law written about this shit?

Niti, I'll check out the article, and given the quote you've provided, probably blog it.

Deming has remained an inspiration, Diego. Reading his book, Out Of The Crisis, is still like taking a breath of fresh air.

[Jon Husband]

That fear thing ... it's at the core. Fear of loss, fear of uncertainty, fear of disapproval, fear of being outside.

Tom, have you ever read these two related books ?

"Top Down - Why Hierarchies Are Here To Stay And ... ", by Harold Leavitt

"hierarchy remains the foundational shape of every large human organization. Why? Because it works. Top Down neither defends nor attacks the much-maligned hierarchy. Rather, this counterintuitive book convincingly shows that even the "flattest" of today's organizations are really just hierarchies in disguise-and, to improve the ways hierarchies function, we must first acknowledge their inevitability.

and "Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege and Success", by Art Kleiner.

"If you resent your organization functioning for the sole purpose of pleasing core group members, you are in danger of succumbing to a malignant condition known as 'core group envy'." Your choices are:

- Chart a route into the core;
- Leave for another organization (and, by definition, form your own core group); or
- Accept your role as a "transactional employee" - one who views employment as a detached labor-for-cash exchange.

[panasianbiz.com]

I'm sure there are many managers who will cringe when they read your observation about managing "being synonymous with 'keeping them in line.'" Unfortunately, the prevalence of micromanagers today supports the validity of this statement!