EXCERPT -- The Worker, Alone!

 A Conversation with Stanley

(PART TWO OF THREE PARTS)

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

© May 15, 2015

What I see lacking in education is a philosophy of education. What appears instead is the expediency of design — a “new curriculum” for every contingency that surfaces. For me, the aim of education is to prepare the student first, to think, to become an able problem-solver within the context of life experience; second, the dual function to increase an awareness of the nobility of man’s achievements, and an appreciation of the fragile beauty of nature; and finally, to make prudent choices in the student’s best interest, which ultimately would prove beneficial to society.

This combination enhances the student’s grasp of reality and maintains his hold on his spiritual legacy. The combination also heightens his capacity to love and to give of himself, which makes him more human.

Education is not preparation for a job. That should come later when the student chooses a profession, craft or vocation. All the technical skill in the world, without this spiritual-intellectual foundation, leaves little satisfaction. Life is meant to be lived, experienced, and enjoyed to fulfillment. Pain, risk, discomfort, embarrassment, confusion, doubt and failure are but country roads taken to arrive at that destiny.

Stanley asks: You speak of the control that polling has over our government as well as ourselves. What can be done?

In other books, I write that the “please other” mentality is damaging to the soul. Such a mentality is too easily swayed to follow the Pied Piper of Polls.

When the focus is on other people’s expectations for us (on their agenda), there is little appreciation of what gives us satisfaction. Life is a constant battle to please, in which case the spirit always loses: “You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t!”

Only by first “pleasing self” may the spirit soar and behavior be guided by what we personally think, believe, expect and value, not because we are instructed to be so inclined, but because we have discovered it to be so.

It is further suggested that selflessness is one of our convenient masks that wins societal approval, but which hides a hidden agenda. It is the disguise of the victim, of the person who swims in the ocean of self-pity and never touches the shore.

On the other hand, the truly selfish person, who first understands and satisfies his basic needs, is more in a position to be generous and genuine. He is whole. Such a person values people who have an opinion, a stable of beliefs and a value system which supports his choices.

What a person thinks is of more value to him than what voices of wisdom would have him think. He bases his behavior on firsthand experience, not second or third hand information. He takes success and failure in stride. He judges others on the basis of what he experiences in his relationship to them. Celebrity, which the “please other” mentality spawns, is of no consequence to him.

Therefore, polls are irrelevant.

He has a point of view, a philosophy of life, an approach to the problem-solving. The choices he makes are his choices. He is in our present societal corporate culture a rare breed.

So much identity and recognition is tied to collective belonging. Pollsters exploit this tendency. Many find comfort in thinking like the pollster’s sample. One day it will dawn on those so inclined that the only person they can please is themselves. Advancing that agenda is bound to displease others. No one can have it both ways. Meanwhile, society is gridlocked in a nervous dance to be all things to all people. Polling is symptomatic of this mania.

Stanley asks: Where are students going to learn the difference between rights and privileges, since all too many parents have abdicated this responsibility? Many parents don’t want schools to become involved in teaching values. So where does that leave us?

Forgive a personal aside. When my daughter was a teenager, we once gave her the largest bedroom in our home, complete with her own television, personal telephone, stereo, bathroom, as well as generous access to a family automobile. I say “once,” because she treated these privileges as rights.

Over time, as her behavior deteriorated, she was not grounded, but these privileges were reduced. First, she lost her large bedroom with adjoining bath. She had to find a place for most of her things in the attic as the new bedroom was quite small. In time her bedroom looked like a convent cell, with no phone, sparsely furnished, plus, she no longer had the use of an automobile.

After a few months, as her behavior improved, these privileges were gradually restored, eventually she was even given the title to her own automobile. Thereafter, her behavior became more and more exemplary.

She now understands clearly the difference between “rights” and “privileges.” School, which was once a drag, became suddenly important to her. She is now a college graduate and a successful professional in her chosen field. And she has done it all on her own. No one else can take credit for her turnaround.

You cannot teach values. You have to demonstrate values. Rhetoric is no substitute for the pain of reality. Neither the family home nor the school can have it both ways. They cannot threaten to take away privileges, then restore them without reason as if rights. Parents and teachers have to demonstrate values in the conduct of their function, not pontificate them.

Teachers often are afraid to be teachers. They complain they lack the support of the administration. Parents are afraid to be parents. They are afraid their children won’t love them, will no longer see them as “friends.”  The function of the parent and teacher is not that of a friend but rather of a caring, concerned and knowing nurturer.  Without this nurturing, chaos is the result, first in the home, then in the school.  Parent and teacher are partners in adolescent growth and development; neither is effective without the other. 

Stanley writes: You ask who is to blame, then say, ‘The workers have no one to blame but themselves.’ Where does leadership come from? Is it any more apt to come from union leadership than the company CEO?

We are in the midst of a leaderless society. The role of leadership has not changed. Leadership remains a function of vision and service to others. That said transactional and transformational leadership, what scholars have focused on, is also proving inadequate in addressing the role of leaderships in the 21st century.  Those in leadership roles and those in followership roles seem not to be on the same page so how can you expect them to get off on the same dime?  Put another way, leaders fail to understand their co-function of followership and followers their co-function of leadership. 

For some time now, those in positions of leadership, seemingly mystified by the new demands of leadership.  They have come to treat perks as the divine rights of their status, and therefore to exercise power however they desire.

Paradoxically, they have little sense of the nobility of their role. This is equally true in trade unions, academia, government, the religious and the corporate world alike. They see their role as directing activity when it is totally that of facilitating shared values based on trust. 

Leadership has been on holiday, and gridlock has come to occupy the vacuum. The prerequisite for leadership according to James MacGregor Burns is complete followership—that is, complete attention to the maturations, motivations and nuances of the human group. Today, leaders and followers, however, exist as if on different planets.

Patriarchal conceit springs from the belief that leadership is omniscient; that it knows what is best for workers without knowing them at all. This conceit has finally run its course. The fact that industry and commerce are stumbling along without leadership indicates how valueless leadership has become, but how valuable workers in its absence.

Society is surviving with no one at the helm but the worker, alone. Having said that, workers are still waiting for a venerated leader to rescue them from their Limbo of Despair. It will never happen. They expect from leadership what they refuse to expect from themselves. The result is stagnation.

Leaders do not choose their destiny. It is chosen for them, and by their followers. Leadership entails the heart, soul and mind of the followers, their complete essence, with the ability of leaders to articulate their passions and to identify with their needs, which are often beyond expression in language, but can be conveyed powerfully in symbolic terms.  It is not the leader’s agenda which is central to leadership, but that of the people.

George Washington was not the great wit of his day, but he understood the people of the young American nation.  He dressed like a leader, indeed, some said like a king without acting like one.  He designed his own uniforms and they were gaudy and ostentatious.  It was what the people wanted.  His appearance connoted strength, power and purpose.  Standing well over six feet, straight back, firm jaw, and bold demeanor, he epitomized what they took to characterize their own persona.   

  

For a good part of the 20th century, we have had it “ass backwards.” Leadership develops its agenda and then recruits followers to its support. This continues to fail for it is a counterfeit process.

Leadership rises out of the ashes of the Sphinx, out of the rank and file workforce. All of the trauma workers have experienced in the past several years could have been anticipated.

Indicators of ensuing problems in personnel displacement and company retrenchment were glaringly predictable. Nobody paid attention, especially the workers.

Four people were assigned to do a one person job. Reports were generated which nobody read. Meetings were conducted on a daily basis in which 90 percent of those in attendance were subbing for those called to the meeting. Trips were taken as social jaunts with a wink at business. Hourly workers huddled in factory tunnels waiting for the whistle to blow for the shift to change so they could clock in for overtime.

When workers complained, they were careful to complain amongst themselves, not to management. Meanwhile, workers didn’t see themselves as part of the problem and therefore not part of the solution. Workers share in the blame and cannot expect relief from the problem until they accept this fact.

Without workers, there is no organization. Without dedicated workers, there is no good will or successful outcomes. An organization can survive with leaderless leadership at the top, as it has, but not without conscientious workers. Modern society is proof of this.

Stanley writes: You list three crucial flaws that contribute to the social psychological chaos of our times: workers failure to grow up and seize the moment; workers predominantly as knowers, not learners; and workers obsessed with control. You say happy workers are the foundation of a rational ordering society, then go on to say that this responsibility belongs to workers, alone. I quote, “Happiness is about being, not becoming, which is a choice.”

My point is that the purpose of life is what we do, as individuals, not what we “are going to do,” or “should do,” or “are expected to do,” or “say we’ll do,” but what we are actually doing, now.

Moreover, intelligence or brilliance is not a “genius” score on an I.Q. test, or a perfect S.A.T. score, intelligence is what it does. Potential is of little value if it is not translated into something meaningful and useful.

Once we are born we are old enough to die. Every moment of life is precious. Pain and pleasure, happiness and sorrow, success and failure are the fabric of meaningful existence. You cannot have one without the other. Every honest pursuit in life is noble.

None is nobler than another. If what we do is enjoyed for itself, gives us a sense of pleasure, is of value to others, and makes our spirit soar, we are on the right track to happiness.

Yes, it is a choice. Life is to be taken seriously, but not ourselves. There is a certain irony to everyone’s life. The fool is as much a part of the sage as darkness is a part of light. Knowing this generates perspective, a sense of humor, balance, and secures our well-being.

Stanley had trouble with the chapter on “Not Happy Campers.”

He writes: “Aren’t you painting society in general and special groups in particular with a wide brush? There are those in every trade and profession who take money under false pretenses. True, I have known teachers and professors who fit your characterization, but there are many others who are very dedicated.

As to doctors, Dr. Bernie Siegel says that a large number of doctors need to remember to treat the patient as well as the disease. As to society two hundred years ago, sheer numbers make this a different world. A strong work ethic then was necessary for survival. Those who had a trade developed great pride in their work. As to how CEOs are selected, I suspect that in all too many cases what you assert is true. In government we seem to be so dumb that we vote for candidates who promise us the most without giving pause to consequences.”

Only the reader can decide how wide my brush is. I share only my own experience, observations, reflections and limited knowledge. It is up to the reader to compare this with what he knows and understands to be so. If it fails to make sense, or fails to provide insight, then it will be rejected, as it should be. But if it touches a cord of experience and stimulates thought, it might increase the level of awareness and discernment. Then, reader and writer have connected.

EXCERPT -- The Worker, Alone!

A Conversation with Stanley

(PART ONE OF THREE PARTS)

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

© May 14, 2015

“In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.”

—Will Durant, prolific writer, philosopher and historian

“There is a history of leaders and groups who are ahead of their time, who resist prevailing trends, but who appear in the official documents as misinformed or malintentioned obstacles to the main direction of historical development. There is a history of common folk struggling to become, and becoming, their own leadership.”

—Frank Adams, British mathematician

Many people have read The Worker, Alone! Going Against The Grain in manuscript form, none more closely than my dear friend, the late octogenarian educator, Stanley Reeves of Clinton, Iowa. For Stanley, work was a labor of love, dedicated to the service of others. He brought his heart and insight to everything he touched to the end of his days.

As school principal, he kept abreast of the changing maturations in education and, as you will see, not always without some skepticism. That is why I share with you his concerns expressed in a long letter to me after reading this book.

Stanley asks: One might assume that most workers want identity as well as financial reward for their work, but do most workers really want responsibility?

Workers as children shun the demands of responsibility. Such workers are non-responsible as opposed to irresponsible. They do what they are told and little more. Their greatest fear is to be exploited, so they exploit their employer, which is a punishing way of exploiting themselves. But mature adult workers, a breed apart and unhappily in short supply, are motivated by the challenges and demands of responsibility. It is the way they compute value and measure themselves.

Stanley sees contradiction in my suggestion that the HYPE (Harvard, Yale and Princeton Elitism) formula is not working. He agrees that Ivy League power brokers mainly represent the pomp and circumstance of the Establishment, the divine rights of insiders, and that HYPE has little motivation to modify the status quo, or to deal with society’s sick soul. Therefore, he takes me to task for my failure to place our eroding society on HYPE, choosing instead to place it on the backs of workers, themselves. Why?

HYPE is far less important, far less crucial to society’s redemption than HYPE, itself, would prefer to believe. HYPE is actually an aberration created by a passive society immersed in denial.

Obviously, HYPE has no real motivation to change conditions to a more optimum system, especially when it might prove threatening to its power. Why should it? As matters now stand, HYPE reaps the benefits of passivity. A disenfranchised workforce and indifferent citizenry denies itself the power it actually possesses.

Were workers to take charge of their destiny, the identity and recognition they so passionately desire would follow. Modernity, or the processes of modern industrialism, has left workers running on empty. Materialistic society finds the glass half empty, not half full. Materialism’s emphasis on consumption at the expense of spiritual nourishment has depersonalized relationships and crushed workers under the burden of a corpulent bureaucracy.

The predicted “death of God,” or the “disenchantment of the world,” however, has not taken shape. The hunger remains for balance between secular and spiritual needs. Only workers, themselves, can restore this balance.

Over his long career in education, Stanley has seen the repeated quest for the perfect formula in education. Each panacea has run its course only to be replaced by a new contender. It intrigues him that I should see “information technology” as essentially a new panacea, an excuse to avoid our problems.

Stanley writes, “I found your concept especially interesting as all too often a professor writes a book and we all jump on his bandwagon. A few years later, we jump ship and adopt a new program. This ‘new program’ is not new at all, probably one that was dumped not that long ago.”

I confessed to Stanley that I am not anti-science. Nor am I pro-technology for technology’s sake. I am simply not awed by power brokers leveraging the newly discovered to fill their coffers.

My point here is that technology is not bad in itself, but that its promoters often use it as a ruse to gain control and influence, as well as economic advantage. Little thought is given to its long term impact on society. Science is the pursuit of knowledge, technology the pursuit of power. Technology, as wondrous as it is, cannot replace the spiritual needs of humanity. Man does not live by bread alone.

Stanley writes: “The segment on “Silent Invasions” is so true, but sadly we seldom think about the fact that our lives are invaded from every direction...government, TV, surveillance, noise of every kind.

I love your expression, ‘Love is the sinew missing from the muscle of today’s organization… love of work, life, friendship, and being. Lust, greed and pleasure are the void fillers for those afraid of love.’ This is sad but true.”

We are culturally conditioned from birth, programmed to value, believe and behave in a prescribed manner, a manner dictated by society. Conditioning is a powerful force with which few of us stop to wonder. It has enormous impact on our lives.

Generations subjected to a particular style of cultural inculcation establish behavioral patterns, patterns which stubbornly refuse to desist when they are no longer appropriate.

Why are there no Catholic priests who are women? Why no American popes? Why has the United States never had a woman as president? Alas, we have an African American president, who was not only elected in 2008, but also re-elected in 2012. Still, why so few great female philosophers? Why has work gotten a bad name?

Stanley’s conditioning was revealed when he took exception to my claim that “no matter where public confession is exhibited, it is suspect.” He sees the gross display of private lives on day-time television considerably more offensive than public confession in esteemed disclosure groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. I see them as both the same. They both rape the soul. He asks, “Why do you feel that way?”

When I was young, I thought electric shock therapy was barbaric; that frontal lobotomy surgery was uncivilized for the treatment of the mentally ill. Yet, it was accepted as good, and I was told I was too young to understand otherwise. Earlier in our history, bloodletting was a prescribed medical procedure. It often hastened the departure of many souls from this life. To have suggested it barbaric, then, would have met with a similar rebuke.

The sanctity of the human spirit is the last bastion of civilized existence. Too frequently, workers go along with violation of this sanctity for a “good,” which they are told is greater than the evil it causes. So, they are silent. Their good sense is buried in a shallow grave, giving the benefit of the doubt to those deemed “wiser,” but who are actually less attuned to the human spirit.

When we abuse our sanctity, it demeans the very nature of being human. There is nobility in private suffering, little grace in public confession.

In the chapter on “The Price of Innocence,” Stanley asks: Are you saying that as empowerment comes from within rather than from things, we tend not only to accept giving up much control but to demand it?

What is intriguing about this question is that Stanley found the buzz word “empowerment” disturbing. It has thrown him off course. That is the intention of buzz words, to cloud the issue, cover-up the complexities, and let whatever inference is made be unchallenged. It keeps the dialogue going, nothing changes, and Madison Avenue has another marketing coup.  You are correct, empowerment does not come from “things.”

It comes from within. Power can only be given. Once given, it is nigh impossible to get it back. The current buzz word, “empowerment,” is therefore totally misleading. Literature is replete with the issue of empowerment, as if this were a secret weapon from the Oracle of Delphi. Not so.

Management cannot “empower” workers. Only workers can empower themselves by grasping and using their own power. The only way one human being can have power over another human being is by one giving up power to the other.

“Empowerment” is one of those non-word words which periodically floats to the surface, like an oil slick, to pollute the cerebral cortex. No one can have power over another unless that person forfeits his power.

Democracy supports the myth that workers control their lives, when in fact they don’t. People of influence flatter workers into giving up their power on a voluntary basis. This creates dependency and suspends workers in adolescence. Power, or control of workers’ destiny is thus sacrificed for the promise of comfort, safety, security and harmony. Another word for “power” is freedom, and it is clear in these times of ubiquitous terrorists in the shadows of our lives that many are willing to sacrifice such freedom for the assurance of security and stability.

In totalitarian states, the same is done but on a more coercive scale. Far less consideration is given the mechanism of persuasion, which would have workers believe they control their destiny. Granted, there is a conspicuous difference in the ambience of these two political persuasions, while worker behavior is remarkably similar.

The similarity is demonstrated worldwide. In theory, if power is given up voluntarily, cooperation follows. If it is obtained through coercion, compliance follows. What behavior dominates the workplace worldwide? The evidence suggests that compliance prevails, which is cleverly masked to give the appearance of genuine cooperation.

Workers and managers everywhere proclaim they promote cooperation when, in fact, it is compliance. “Empowerment” remains a fictive machination which nobody buys, but everyone sells.

Technocrats feel they can bend and twist workers into the configurations desired that support the interests of technology. Empowerment is but one stratagem. Across the globe, sophisticated empowerment programs support technocratic objectives.

They are not working. They cannot work. The stratagem is designed to fail because it plays recklessly with the worker’s spirit, as if that spirit were a microchip. It isn’t.

Workers gave up much of their power early in the 20th century for the currency of comfort and security on the job. It created the working middle class. Up to The Great Depression of 1929, the “Robber Barons” of Rockefeller, Carnegie and Mellon, among others, took more and more away from workers until they were little more than working slaves.

The Union Movement came to the fore, and fought hard for workers all through the 1930s, and gained compensation and entitlement concessions, but alas, at the expense of control of work. It had been a difficult transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society, and it is proving equally difficult going from and industrial society to an information society.

Farm workers were first chased into factories by the shift to an industrial society, and then regimented to time cards and imprisoned in windowless barricades. Not only did these farm workers surrender tractors and plows, but the freedom and control of what they did. As farmers, there was commitment to self-interests.

Now, their lives were committed to a new breed, management. Workers lost more than power. They misplaced their souls. Their identity, dignity and purpose, once taken for granted, was now stranger to them.

Seventy-five years of cumulative cultural shock has made workers passive participants to their own destiny. They are wards of “the system,” no longer independent contractors. They can smell the fields as they drive to work, only to have the aroma killed by the stench of machine oil or the static hum of computers.

With a casual flair, management talks about “giving power back to workers” by “empowering them.” This flippancy is like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube. Meanwhile, management itself has outlived its function and is disappearing from the workplace in droves. The Human Resources movement and its “scientific management” is obsolete. The worker is truly alone.

Stanley asks: How can we convince workers that in a number of areas we are no longer the best, when the government and media insist that we are?

This is not a problem of the government or media. Both are responsive, not creative organs of society. Workers give both of them far more credit than they deserve. The problem is the refusal of workers to embrace reality while they still have a choice. It appears they would rather deny despair, and surrender to a corrosive fatalism. Not until despair takes hold, and forces workers to attention will workers appreciate the fact that they are truly alone. Not until they hit bottom are they likely to challenge popular myths.

Maturity is a function of reality. Cognizance of reality ensures survival. When survival has multiple buffers, which make denial an alluring retreat, a sense of jeopardy is not experienced. Workers today live in a climate of denial, in the lap of luxury. They are only miserable, not yet despairing. They have little sense of danger, only inconvenience. The “other shoe” has not yet hit the pavement.

Stanley asks: Is it the amount of production or quality which deserves more of our attention?

It is heresy to suggest that these are not relevant considerations.  Increased production means more jobs. Better quality means a more stable market share. Still, production and quality camouflage the issue.

These are outcomes or effects, not causes. What is ignored, and what I feel needs more consideration, is the necessity for workers to develop more orderly minds, like the minds they once had when they worked on the land from sun up to sun down, and loved it. Their minds were in balance with a sense of equilibrium. Workers today are underemployed because they are underwhelmed and underdeveloped. Tap this collective mind and the question of productivity and quality will be moot.

Workers are capable of incredible achievement if moved by their interests, or what they want to do. Focusing on production and/or quality exclusively are outcomes or things they have to do. Givens. Good quality and increased production are effects, not causes. The fusion of work is in the nuclear structure of the spirit of the workforce. Quality and production are the results of a spirited workforce built on trust with full utilization of its collective energies.

Stanley asks: Why isn’t technology doing what we hoped it would do for education? Are our goals wrong, our methods, or is it something else?

Technology cannot create spirit. It can kill spirit, and often does by the sheer magnitude of its conceit in minimizing the human factor. Spirit is the central core of work. Without it, work resembles a collection of mules turning a wheel and going nowhere.

Technology has limitation the same as everything else. In the end, the more technology seeks an answer to the mystery of the human spirit, the more it appears entangled in its own confusion.

Education is a spiritual adventure which is anchored in an intellectual experience. It is not a “thing,” but a process. The process is one of discovery.

The human mind is seemingly limitless in its capacity for insight and foolishness. Tools, such as the computer, may assist in discovery as long as they remain tools and not as ends in themselves. Then they become toys, which is alright, too, as long as the distinction is clear. Where technology seems to be headed, at this moment, is as another ornament on the tree of knowledge. Nothing less. Nothing more.

EXCERPT -- The Worker, Alone!

A LEADERSHIP MANIFESTO FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

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

© May 12, 2015

“The wise man has his follies no less than the fool; but herein lies the difference – the follies of the fool are known to the world, but are hidden from himself; the follies of the wise man are known to himself, but hidden from the world.”

—Caleb C. Colton (1780-1832), English clergyman

Leadership is in a state of retreat bordering on confusion. Not only is leadership out-of-date but out-of-touch with the reality of work and workers. Leadership models are now in jeopardy because they were designed for another time and another workforce. Institutions today go from crisis to crisis, scandal to

scandal, outrage to outrage. We wait for the other shoe to drop and have become the United States of Anxiety.

—James R. Fisher, Jr., Misdirected Leadership Ideals

The Chronic Problem: Typology of Leaderless Leadership

Jack Welch, venerated former CEO of General Electric (GE) never realized how short he was until he saw a picture of his high school sports team. Welch became the ultimate workaholic to compensate for this shortcoming, and one day found himself “like a man standing 6 feet 4 with a full head of hair,” the quintessential executive and corporate leader of America.1 Welch had his GE management team and rank and file basking in his reflected glory with soaring accomplishments.

John Francis “Jack” Welch, Jr. was born November 9, 1935 of Irish American parents, his father a Boston & Maine Railroad conductor, his mother, a homemaker.  He has been focused, industrious and successful  throughout his life.

During high school, he worked summers as a golf caddy, newspaper delivery boy, shoe salesman, and drill press operator. 

At Salem High School, although small, he participated in baseball, football, and captained the hockey team.

Late in his senior year, he was accepted to University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied chemical engineering, and worked summers in chemical engineering at Sunoco and PPG Industries, graduating in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering.  He turned down several corporate offers in order to attend graduate school at the University of Illinois where he earned a Master’s degree in 1960 and a PhD in chemical engineering the following year.

A score of years later, he became chairman and CEO of General Electric and held that position from 1981 to 2001.

During his tenure at GE, the company's value rose 4,000 percent.    In 2006, his net worth was estimated at $720 million.  When he retired from GE he took a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in history. 

Despite this impressive portfolio and record of success, he has had his critics.

Academics, such as Rahesh Khurana of Harvard, are not so easily impressed. Dr. Khurana suggests that leadership at GE has been superb for the past 100 years and that Welch’s contribution to that leadership is consistent with that reputation. The system, Khurana points out, created the climate for such leadership to evolve. The system created Jack Welch, he did not create the

system.2

Being newsworthy these days is not a function of culture or unobtrusive performance, but personality and charismatic appeal, where the mystique of the brash 14-year-old mindset in the 60-year-old bodysuit becomes the prototype of what constitutes leadership.

Welch fits the mold and worked to create the impression he was a regular guy and working stiff – even if he made 700 times more than the typical worker. What role did the 300,000 GE employees play in this success? Apparently little.

Why should a single CEO at the top of an organization be treated like royalty? This makes no sense when we consider that thriving organizations assign decisions to workers who are close to the level of consequences and depend on timely feedback from these workers to generate strategies with positive outcomes.

Yet MBA students are taught to focus on the management of things with only passing attention to the leadership of people as persons. They learn that people are expendable and are necessary only to accomplish given goals; the less people the better the financial advantage. One executive took this philosophy to heart and instituted a 20-40-60 plan: re-evaluate all employees who have had 20 years of service, who are more than 40 years of age, and/or

earn $60,000 or more.

Senior managers at K-Mart sued the company in the US Court of Appeals (February 14, 1995) for this alleged practice.  This case against K-Mart proved not to contain probative evidence as it was an oral rather than a written policy. K-Mart filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002. Ex-CEO Charles Conaway was ordered to pay $10 million, reduced to $5.5 million for misleading shareholders about the retailer’s prospects before its 2002 bankruptcy. Conaway eventually became Chief Operating Office of CVS Pharmacy.

What is most disturbing about this case is that once trust is broken struggle for survival is doubly difficult, as is the case with K-Mart today. The careers of corporate sinners, however, go on as they remain essentially unscathed.

Charles Conaway was fired from K-Mart for hiding the company’s credit status from stockholders, only to become COO of CVS Pharmacy.3  These outrages are labeled as the arrogance of power, and they represent a corporate society adrift without a rudder. They show the love of total war. Competition must be obliterated not simply beaten. The enemy must be destroyed, no mercy granted. If these actions cause collateral damage, such as people losing their jobs, so be it. This is leaderless leadership, leadership without a rudder, the dilemma of leadership today.

Leadership discussions assume everyone is talking about the same thing. Leadership often is personified in a charismatic leader (President Kennedy), a central figure (Pope John Paul II), or a person in the organization (Jack Welch).

Leadership invariably is reduced to an individual at the helm.  I find this too narrow a perspective. I don’t think charisma is relevant, and I don’t believe leadership is personified in a central figure. I believe leadership is organic, an all-encompassing phenomenon in which everyone is a leader or no one is!

Typology of Leadership Behavior

Our institutions are failing and such failures are always human.  The fact that scandals grow nastier is evidence only that we have a problem – not a morality issue but a contextual problem. Because the leadership culture programs the way workers behave, and corporations get the leadership and behavior they deserve. Crisis, scandal and outrage do not occur in a vacuum. They are unwitting products of corporate design, and when the design is wrong, the social termites or “six silent killers” produce their silent havoc.4

Circumstances are forcing a re-evaluation of leadership. I suggested

more than a decade ago that work could be conducted more efficiently without managers, that performance appraisals were a costly and counterproductive sham, and that the total quality movement was an expediency driven by crisis management.5 Time has not changed my mind.

People are failing, and we need a typology to describe the humanness of this failure. After observing people for over four decades, I have gleaned the typology of leadership behaviors described in the following sections. If you notice that these types focus on failure, it is because I have encountered far more failures than successes.

Manipulators

Manipulators believe everyone has his or her price, and the leadership system was made for exploitation. The more able the exploiter, the faster this leaderless leader rises to a position of consequence. Manipulators conceal hidden agendas and naked ambition, deceptively promoting an image of being straight arrows. Their weapons are fear and intimidation; first they try

and cajole others to accept their perspectives; if that doesn’t work, they threaten.

Frustrated Participants

These leaderless leaders believe in the corporate system and see themselves as dedicated managers. They often are frustrated but are reluctant to complain. When they find inconsistencies in company policy, flagrant violations of fairness issues, etc., they feel their role is to protect the company’s image without protest. After a particularly exasperating experience, one frustrated

participants was asked what he would do. He replied, “What I

always do. Suck it up and move on.”

Inside Outsider

Some leaderless leaders possess critical specialist skills, often having professional credentials that rank with officers of the company. Although they arrive to enhance their status by impressing others with their unique skills, they don’t attain the authority exercised by generalists and are never considered key players. They experience the paradox of being needed but not wanted. To the old guard they are cowboys, to the new guard, necessary evils.

Winning Side Saddlers

This type of leaderless leader appears more frequently at higher levels of the organization. They are consummate pleasers, which endears them to their bosses. They focus on what is wanted, not what is needed. They are chameleons with the capacity to change camouflage at a moment’s notice. Should a power shift be eminent, they are the first to leave the old saddle and climb into the stirrups of the new boss.

Nostalgic Elitists

Remnants of a less egalitarian past, these leaderless leaders long for the way it once was, when a clear demarcation existed between workers and managers. Today’s less structured, open-systems approach causes them great pain. They cannot fathom why their authority is challenged, why the less gifted are treated as equals, or why their superiority is no longer self-evident. Nostalgic elitists see a more permissive culture emerging, where everybody does his or her own thing. They fail to recognize that creativity and chaos are related and that open systems spawn creativity.  Their attitude alienates peers, frustrates subordinates, and agonizes superiors.

Waiters in the Wings

These pragmatic leaderless leaders marshal resources, plan strategies, and develop tactics. They periodically compare their careers to company progress, having no desire to tie their future to a sinking ship. Their ambition is not obvious because they feel no need to campaign openly. Although they seem relaxed, they usually are impatient and are not willing to wait very long for recognition and promotion. Operationally, they make themselves indispensable and are self-confident, but they are not cheerleaders. They are

balanced and maintain perspective without being easily ruffled. This makes them calming influences in crises, and inadvertently threatening to those who are less secure.

Happily in Harness

These contented leaderless leaders love what they do and are appreciative

and generous, good co-workers and supervisors, competent without being arrogant. They create a climate for peers and subordinates to grow – even if they are not always effective coaches. They are trusted and fair, consistent and honest. They never think of countermanding an executive order or bad mouthing a superior. They take pride in their ability to do the job, but are surprisingly tolerant of those who don’t. Although laziness is foreign to them, they remain philosophical about lazy people. They are unlikely to rock the boat.

Quiet Soldiers

Although these leaderless leaders may appear similar to those that are happily in harness, they differ in some striking ways. They are comfortable as followers and identify with subordinates but are not necessarily content in their jobs. They do only what they are told and don’t take risks. They have talent but little resolve.  They are apt to accept untenable situations rather than complain. “Not my job,” echoes in their silence. Simply put, they are passive passengers on their own ship of destiny. In the past, quiet soldiers were the impetus to paternalistic authority, but now they are more often part of the logjam. They are an atavistic holdover from an anachronistic system.

Victims

This martyr-like leaderless leadership pattern is displayed by managers

who expect to be trusted without being trustworthy, given cherished assignments without being dependable, and taken at their word without being reliable. They delight in the failures of others, but find no humor when others delight in theirs. When others fail, it is because they’re incompetent, when victims fail, it’s because others let them down. “If only” is their litany and mantra.

Unbending Idealists

Idealizing life and living in a dream world, these leaderless leaders see themselves as saviors of lost causes and lost souls, explaining away failures. “He didn’t mean to steal the laptop. He just forgot to bring it back.” As apologists, they envision a world where there is no conflict or contradiction, only utopian harmony. The problem is that managed conflict is the adhesive that holds workers to their tasks, and contradiction is the natural volutionary spark of ideas.6

Adventurers

As the category name implies, these leaderless leaders are consumed with adventure; they are out to push the envelope. Being productive is not exciting enough for adventurers. They are geared for the sensational. When cornered, they come out swinging with an incomprehensible explanation. Nothing is impeded by its possible consequences, as it never occurs to adventurers that

they might get caught. They are often brilliant and could succeed without all the artful dodging, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. Often the adventurer is the darling of the organization, the daredevil and nonconformist that is envied for monstrous accomplishments that often seem unbelievable (and may be based on cutting corners, slipshod work, or outright fabrication).

Spin Doctors

Spin doctors see themselves as the eyes, ears, and voice of authority and their role to put the best possible face on the worst situation. These leaderless leaders tend to reduce everything to digestible sound bites, which often leads to credibility issues. Assessing explosive issues and putting a positive spin on them is no small achievement. It requires the skill of the illusionist to change

complexity into simplicity, give the chaotic situation an orderly context, and cloak crisis situations under the umbrella of calm. The danger is that spin doctors’ short-term solutions often create long-term problems. Spin doctors are apt to be quick witted, congenial, decisive, and backstage performers.

Reluctant Soldiers

Everyone knows and tolerates reluctant soldiers without expecting anything from them. They are in the same job and at the same level where they started. They are leaderless leaders who wandered into a job and found a home. Long ago they retired on the job. They have received increased compensation and improve entitlements for doing less and less over the years. To call them lazy is an oversimplification. They are often crafty with an instinct for survival. When first employed, they were considered safe hires and then were forgotten. Statistically, they are part of the 15 percent foot draggers that plague most organizations.7

Overachievers

Overachievers equate working hard without necessarily working smart. They pride themselves on their multitasking and fail to see its down side, and demonstrate surface acumen that garners the attention of superiors. It doesn’t hurt that they are usually likeable, agreeable, and never seem to sleep. Their attractiveness blinds others from how little they achieve. No one seems to notice their obsessive attempt to cover all bases rather than to focus on the

critical 10 percent causing the problem. These leaderless leaders are actually not achievers; they are well meaning but get lost in the detail. They equate accomplishment with time spent doing, and intensity of effort with competence. Overachievers personify a whirlwind process that far too often generates a marginal product.

Messiahs

Whereas unbending idealists dream of a utopian world where answers are not needed, Messiahs believe they have the answers. They provide corrective recipes to what ails the workforce, assuming motivation can be defined, packaged, and disseminated as a product – along with more appropriate styles of management – to rejuvenate a lethargic organization. The solutions presented by these leaderless leaders don’t succeed because the culture dictates behavior, and the culture is driven by the structure and function of work and not by divine intervention. This requires architectural insight, which is missing in their answers.

Professionals

Professionals are a breed apart. They think in a language unique to their technology. No entry level salary or job for them. They feel they have paid their dues in academia and now they are entitled. Somewhere lost in this scenario is the importance of experience, the benefit of failure in the learning process, and the realization that a career is a journey. These leaderless leaders want positions, not jobs; they desire authority without accountability. In an age when much work requires self-management, when maturity is essential

to deal with ever changing and conflicting circumstances, these leaderless leaders epitomize the spoiled child that feeds on itself and the system. Campaigning for the next position is a fulltime job.

Ten Guidelines for Successful Leadership

To move from leaderless leadership to leadership, workers and managers

need to remember the following points:

• All contributions large and small are essential to an objective. All work is ennobling.

• No worker, manager, group, or function is complete within itself. Pulling together towards a common objective creates organizational synergy.

• Competitors are not the enemy. An obsession with killing the competitions saps the collective strength and derails effort from the objective. Much can be learned from competition because competitors are serving the same customer.

• Technology should be user-friendly, available, and applicable as a tool to fit requirements, not as a toy to exaggerate differences.

• The best organization is not harmonious. The best employee is not the safe hire. Nor is comfort the best design for success. A Culture of Contribution is the key where struggle, failure, pain, disappointment, chaos, conflict, and confrontation are managed, as opposed to being avoided. What is a Culture of Contribution? It is organized chaos, a challenge to the existing status quo and modus operandi, to misguided authority, and to the objectives that are inconsistent with the mission. It is also a challenge to do more than what is expected.8

• All organizations are in a state of dying. To survive they must constantly be reborn, retooled, and redirected. This requires a change in mindset and culture, which often results in a step backward before taking a step forward, a

retrenchment to reassess the situation. In sports, we call it a time out, in life, we call it getting a second wind, in organization, we call it survival.

• Any organization is a human group. People are not things to manage but persons to be led. Leadership must encounter and deal with suspicion and questioning of authority in order to realize cooperation.

• People tend to compare and compete, to look at the “in” group and the “out” group, at the pecking order, on who is getting the perks and keeping score, and who is working and who is not. Given this tendency, there will be lapses

– times when people  won’t be on the same page and times when the organization isn’t working anymore. When this happens, don’t bring in consultants or implement cosmetic changes; let the dust settle, re-evaluate where the organization is and how it got there. Don’t point fingers, but apply strategic interventions that focus on the 20 percent causing 80 percent of the problem.

• The vertical structure of organizations isn’t working. Nor is vertical thinking based on linear logic and critical thinking enough. Horizontal organizational structure is needed to complement the vertical structure. Likewise,

lateral thinking, based on intuition and creative thinking, is needed to complement vertical thinking.

• Remember, organizational culture follows this formula:

• Structure of work determines the function of work;

• Function of work creates the workplace culture;

• Workplace culture dictates organizational behavior;

• Organizational behavior establishes whether an organization is to vegetate, flounder, expire or flourish.

Summary

Leaders don’t know how to lead and workers don’t know how to follow.

The workforce has changed in the past 50 years from 90 percent blue collar to 90 percent white collar, but the mindset of management has changed little. Some feel the problem is management style, but it is not. Management, as it was paternalistically designed isn’t working. Leadership is needed where workers are treated as partnering adults, not as dependent and obedient children.

Leadership is the vision to see and the ability to serve. To serve, leaders must become followers. They must understand the needs, desires, motivations, interests, fears, and dreams of workers – not by giving workers everything they request but by challenging them.

Every organization has the workers it needs to be successful. The problem is workers are reluctant to add their voices to the dialogue. Workers have the answers because they experience the problems! These inclusive factors determine in large measure whether an organization has true leadership or leaderless leadership. They revolve around three spheres of influence of the Fisher Paradigm™; workers and managers (personality), the organization (geographic), and the prevailing culture (demographic). Where does your organization fall in this continuum?

Resources

1. Ellen Goodman, “A Downsized Jack Welch,” The Tampa Tribune, September 20, 2002, p. 17.

2. The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, “Executive Perks,” Ray Suarez talks about pay and perks given to corporate CEOs with Rakesh Khurana, professor at the Harvard School of Business and Robin Ferracone, partner with Mercer Human Resources, PBS television, September 16, 2002.

3. James R. Fisher, Jr., Six Silent Killers: Management’s Greatest Challenge (CRC Press 1998), pp. 7-21.

4. Fisher, op. cit. pp. 83-142.

5. James R. Fisher, Jr., Work Without Managers: A View from the Trenches (The Delta Group Florida 1991).

6. Edward de Bono, Parallel Thinking (Penguin Books 1995), pages 147-149.

7. Most organizations form a performance curve: 15 percent foot draggers, 70 percent followers, and 15 percent hard chargers.

8. Fisher, op. cit. pp. 197-220.

Note: This appeared in The Journal for Quality & Participation, Winter 2002, pp. 20-24.