PROOFREADING TODAY I KEPT THINKING OF THE UKRAINE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© March 7, 2014

REFERENCE:

Call me a bit odd, and you would not be the first, but in proofreading my copy of “Work Without Managers” in a chapter called “Echoing Footsteps,” I found myself thinking of the Ukraine.  I’ve never been to that country, but I have been to Russia, as well as to Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia along the Baltic Sea coastline, all part of the former Soviet Union. 

I was moved by the people in these Baltic nations, and how much they relished their independence.  Never before had I been so aware of the importance of freedom. 

But that, alone, did not trigger this response.  I watched Tom Donilon, former National Security Advisor to President Obama, speak on the situation in the Crimea peninsula and the nation of Ukraine on the Charlie Rose show on PBS television. 

I am a student of corporate speak, as my background and, indeed, my books indicate.  Tom Donilon has corporate speak down to such eloquence that you forget that these are just words, and our president is very good with words, as is Charlie Rose, who also displays a facility with corporate speak.

In this snippet from WWMs, it concerns the pusillanimity of training, or training for training’s sake, when we need to be educated and enlightened in dealing with the challenges of the day, from the simple making of things to the complexity of dealing with people, all people in all situations, from all backgrounds, nationalities, ethnicities, traditions, histories, cultures, and, yes, the biases that they entail.  I found the idea of “training” transmogrifying into détente.

There was a single word in the Donilon interview that I took from the Charlie Rose session, and it was “reconciliation.”  He sees the people of the Ukraine nation being pushed and pulled between President Putin in the East and Europe and the United States in the West. 

Neither is relevant insofar as the people are concerned.  What is relevant and what is only relevant is what is in the best interest of the Ukrainian nation.   Geopolitical ideas, no matter how sound, from the outside have little impact on the minds and hearts of the people in the middle of the maelstrom. 

My mind was wandering to this fact as I was proofreading this section on “echoing footsteps.”

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More importantly, training has little impact on cultural biases.  Therefore, for all intent and purposes, these billions of dollars are being poured into a bottomless pit. This is because training is not designed to deal with cultural change. Only education can deal with the organization’s cultural resistance to change because it uses previous learning as a basis for building a bridge to new learning experiences.

Education does this by assisting the individual worker in exploring their cultural basis of operation and how it meets, or fails to meet their performance needs.

Such engagement, over time, generally finds them discarding the old and making way for the new. It is a slow and patient process that is generated by the momentum established by the will of the worker.

Once this momentum takes hold, however, there is breakthrough to incredible achievement. Meanwhile, training is too frequently a panic response to an ill-defined problem.

Regrettably, when this occurs, training comes to be known as an activity for its own sake and little more.  As for technical leadership and economic clout, these are evanescent when it comes to individual will and creative spirit. Will and spirit are intangibles that personify the thrust of a national psyche.

Here reside the sense and will to survive, founded in common values and beliefs.

These abstractions are energized by the pain of history and the challenge of reality. But when the twin cultural narcotics — comfort and complacency — invade the American psyche (as they surely have), then there is little sense of the danger ahead, for few can hear ‘the echoing footsteps.’

Ironically, it is the gift of technology that has deadened the senses. There is only one reason man has survived on this planet: the human brain. The brain is a necessary apparatus for human survival, with the human mind the software recording of that struggle.

What is imprinted upon the mind dictates the way human beings behave. Paradoxically, as technology has pushed back the veil of ignorance, it has lost the coordinates of wisdom and humor.

Whether science or religion, whenever either becomes dogma or ritualistic consensus, civilization takes a step back into the Dark Ages. Awareness and acceptance have become buried in these times, yet the situation mandates that the American people disavow their resistance to reality and embrace what reality demands.

Our inclination, however, is denial. Today, defensiveness, excuses, justifications, and denials combine with comfort and complacency to depict the landscape of catastrophe.

Unfortunately, these are words. Only words. If they are not felt, not valued, not believed, not understood, the echoing footsteps of catastrophe will not be heard. What is so disconcerting is that this seems to be the case.

Organizations, because they refuse to deal with workers differently than in the past, appear helpless in the face of mounting challenges. Despite expending enormous amounts of energy, time, and money, it seems impossible for them to see the situation clearly.

American organizations are currently throwing prodigious amounts of resources at their cant nemesis — poor quality. Quality has become the New Messiah, with ‘salvation through quality’ the new litany. “It will save us from ourselves, and win our redemption.”

This is a panic response to the strategic issue of “how do we get back on track?”

Global issues require global strategies. But we are not comfortable thinking in such terms. Global strategies require a conceptual framework and theoretical speculation. But thinking conceptually gives us a headache, and we have little time for theories (or, for that matter, for theoreticians). Such a framework entails qualitative analysis, or subjective thinking. But we are extremely skeptical of this type of analysis, finding it too abstract and fuzzy-headed.

We prefer quantitative analysis, with concrete references. This we see as objective and ‘value free.’ No matter how often this disappoints or fails us, we invariably return to the ‘quick and dirty’ solution, the newest fad, or the ‘miraculous.’ We live in the Prison of Panic Called ‘Now,’ and have little desire to escape its punishing comfort.

This, then, explains the popularity of Harris Polls, questionnaires, statistical analysis, and astrology. It is reduced to quantitative mathematics, neat and tidy summaries — not messy, inconclusive speculation.

We want something that deludes us into thinking, “If we do this (reduce cost) and this (improve quality), the problem will automatically solve itself.”

This implies that our problems are more quantitative than qualitative; more operational than psychological. Therefore, cost cutting and continuous quality improvement necessarily will improve the health and stability of the organization.

None of this is true, of course. On the contrary, it is a cultural issue. If you design a bad system, and the people believe in it, it will work. If you design a ‘perfect’ system, and the people do not believe in it, it will invariably fail. It is true that Western Europe and China are setting the economic pace in the world market. But to focus on their quality and productivity as an exclusive algorithm would be unwise!

Western Europe, in particular — because the culture is so richly nurtured and maintained — has been responsive to almost any economic system. Max Weber’s authoritarian bureaucracy is firmly in place. The Germans, especially, are a resourceful people and respectful of their authoritarian tradition. This resourcefulness is not to be confused with being industrious, which they are not. Certainly, they are not nearly as industrious as Americans.  Germans can, however, be accused of working smarter than Americans, as they are more apt to work on the "right things" than attempt to do everything right.  That said industrious effort, alone, is not a good gauge of productivity.

But when Germans work, they work. They find little solace in ‘working for work’s sake.’ Moreover, with an average annual vacation of five weeks, and an additional nine to 14 paid holidays, they make the average American’s two-week vacation look anemic.

Ironically, Europeans seldom carry vacation over to the next year, whereas this is common with American workers. There is a saying, “When Europeans are working, they are thinking about their holiday. When Americans are on holiday, they are thinking about their work.”