THE GREATEST GENERATION IS NOW!
An Exchange of Views on the American Connection to the German Culture (First published as an email)
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 6, 2008
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Rabbi Hillel
REFERENCED EMAIL: "Alan Bloom was right! We have a German Connection!"
The late Alan Bloom, professor of social thought at the University of Chicago, shocked American society in general, and the education establishment in particular with his book, "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987).
Bloom's indictment of this institution's failure sent tremors through society. But that was not what was most surprising to me. I had taught graduate school as an adjunct professor at several universities for more than ten years, so was well aware of the American college student he described.
What surprised me was the indebtedness we Americans have to German culture.
I had always thought that the Irish and Italians made up the largest immigrant segment of the American population, when neither is even close to matching Americans with German ancestors. More than 60 million Americans out of a population of 300 million can trace their ancestry back to Germany.
The oldest German community was established in 1683 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. Coincidentally, my son is the head tennis professional there and director of one of the largest and oldest tennis clubs in the United States, the Germantown Tennis & Racket Club.
Our American culture was greatly influenced by Germany in the transplanting of German’s symphony and opera to the United States. Much of our art and literature shows a strong German influence as, indeed, does our science, philosophy, medicine, and engineering.
We are aware that King George III of Great Britain had acquired an army of Hessian or German mercenaries to fight against the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. What is not common knowledge is that George Washington's bodyguard was a German, as well as many of his soldiers had German ancestry.
The hamburger and hot dog are German confections and staples of our fast-food culture, as are several other dishes.
It is also true that the German “know how” is evident in our railroads and the steel industry as they have the stamp of the German influence.
Bloom ends his chapter on "The German Connection" with his acerbic prose, which as I say, alerted me to how many German thinkers introduced me to myself. Bloom writes:
"We (Americans) are a bit like savages who, having been discovered and evangelized by missionaries, have converted to Christianity without having experienced all that came before and after the revelation. The fact that most of us never would have heard of Oedipus if it were not for Freud should make us aware that we are almost utterly dependent on our German missionaries or intermediaries for our knowledge of Greece, Rome, Judaism and Christianity; that, however, profound that knowledge may be, theirs is only one interpretation; and that we have only been told as much as they thought we needed to know. It is an urgent business for one who seeks self-awareness to think through the meaning of the intellectual dependency that has led us to such an impasse." (p. 156)
I have nearly 3,000 books in my study, and it would not surprise me at all if 600 of them are of German authors or ancestors of German heritage.
Be always well,
Jim
______________________
SOME GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT MY EMAIL EXCHANGES
One of the most satisfying experiences I have had in recent years is that of exchanging thoughts and ideas with stimulating people; people who think beyond the headlines of the daily print and television news, and don’t limit themselves to legends on the Internet; people who have real experience in real time doing real things while making meaningful contributions. Sometimes these people do things well beyond what will ever be known of them or their work. They do it because they must.
This has been my audience on these emails for the past more than ten years. I am greatly impressed with the quality of their minds and their quest to make a difference.
And, yes, there have been those, too, who copy me with emails that fit the narrow limits of their biases; people who refuse to think or believe that their enemies may be more like than different to and from them.
I am suspending this direct linkage for all intent and purposes because it takes more time than I have available at this late stage in my life and I would like to complete my novel on South Africa before my powers totally recede.
I am confident that many of my ideas will survive me, and that many of my projections will become realities. It is the luxury of a thinker being able to look at all sides and ruminate about them into some kind of a vision.
I will still write on my blog, where you can find me if you like. I am changing directions a bit, just as I have recently pruned my email list. A horticulturist has informed me that pruning is good for the soul. I think she is right and I thank her for the support.
Having said that, I wish all my readers remain forever well as they discover their own center. I am a provocateur, not a sage, and my advice from the beginning has been not to let anyone, including me, point out their own centers to them. We can never know another person much as we have been programmed to believe the contrary. We can with some effort get a glimpse into our own souls.
Every thinker, social, psychological or political interprets events in the context of his or her limited perspective, knowledge and experience. Wise as some of these constructs may appear, even as reliable as they may seem, they have true resonance only to and with their creators. This is as true of Freud as it is of Nietzsche as it is James as it is of Skinner. We should give pause as to why someone’s idea resonates with us before we swallow it whole. It can cause mental constipation or diarrhea of the soul.
This is because pointers of the human condition are limited by the limits of their own minds in only being able, if at all, to understand who, what, where and why they are.
By an irony of nature, if we are ever to know, understand, and accept ourselves as we are, we cannot farm it out to a discipline, guru, an ideology, a cause, or another knighted person. It is a singular responsibility and therefore must be a quest by a majority of one. For that reason, I feel it is seldom mounted.
JRF
______________________
THE GREATEST GENERATION IS NOW!
NOTE:
These two responders have differing views to my email -- ALAN BLOOM WAS RIGHT! WE HAVE A GERMAN CONNECTION! -- but are alike in their service to others.
I share them because they demonstrate a healthy sense of who and what and why they are. Both are professors with a different take on the same subject.
What they have in common is that they are doers as well as thinkers.
Responder No. One has dedicated his life in the service of others in a drive to attain social justice; so has Responder No. Two, but from a different perspective.
Responder No. One has been a wealth creator, and has put his mind and heart into attacking poverty and discrimination, not by writing essays as I do, but on the ground from his highly affluent neighborhood. He deals with wrenching poverty with all its concomitant ills only a few miles away.
Responder No. Two, as you will see in reading his comments, has traveled the world for decades giving his heart and mind to making the world a better place.
Responder No. One is only 40, and a member of the current generation coming into or already occupying positions of power in society.
Responder No. Two, although much older, is still working as hard as ever as he moves into his senior years. I find them both members of the GREATEST GENERATION NOW!
______________________
RESPONDER NO ONE
Jim,
What you say about Germans is right, but I'd like to point out that it's not the whole story. Have you read "Hitler's Willing Executioners?" It might temper your admiration for this nationality somewhat.
The Holocaust was not perpetrated by a few Nazis, but by an entire culture and nation that actively facilitated and/or participated in it.
If other cultures, including our own, have done wrongs as well, that does not mollify what the Germans did at all. "Two wrongs..." as the saying goes.
I don't have it in me to hate anyone, especially not an entire nation-full of people. However, I do not hold German culture - especially its authoritarianism - in high regard at all.
Having taught a large number of Germans, there is at least a bit to be said for Churchill's remark that "The Germans are like dogs - they're either at your throat or at your feet."
That played out so many times in my classroom that it became almost trite. A new German (or Swiss-German) student would challenge me on an advanced point of English grammar or even vocabulary; I would set him straight, sometimes embarrassing him if it was necessary, and from then on I'd have a delightfully compliant companion.
Some of my dearest and best students ever are German, including Steffi Keller and her boyfriend Mike, who are simply wonderful friends. My brother-in-law, Ingo, was born in Germany and raised by German immigrants - he is one of my best friends. However, I also have met a number of Germans (including Ingo's parents, aunts, and uncles) who at once deny and defend the Holocaust - an interesting contradiction, to say the least.
I've decided to wait seven generations from 1945 before I forgive Germany for its sins of the Nazi era. It has only been three.
Take care,
T
______________________
MY RESPONSE TO NO. ONE:
T,
I have read Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners," and still admire the culture that produced Einstein, Goethe, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Beethoven and Schopenhauer, among others.
I have also read Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" and "Breaking Faith."
Indeed, I have read and have rather an extensive library of twentieth century Germany, including several biographies on Hitler (Bulloch's, Fest's, Speer's, etc.), Aarons & Loftus's "Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis, and Soviet Intelligence," Freidrich's "Blood & Iron," Wistrich's "Hitler and The Holocaust," Lukacs's "The Hitler of History," and Machtan's "The Hidden Hitler," to give you a sample.
My interest in Hitler is as a student of leadership, which shows how vulnerable people are to a demigod when pride and survival expose bare bones and baren souls. A best friend of mine, a German of my generation, experienced and survived that nightmare as a boy, and for it I would include him as a member of the GREATEST GENERATION NOW!
It is another lesson in my continuing pursuit to make people conscious of the fact that everyone must be a leader or no one is. We must not surrender our minds to anyone for if we do we surrender our souls.
That said I separate that terrible period of twentieth century from a people that rose from barbarians to establish a climate for cerebral and cultural genius.
I should add that the Irish people have always been admirers of Germany. The Irish Republic refused to declare war on Germany in World War II, although many Irishmen and Irish women joined the cause serving with the British military.
My best students as an adjunct graduate professor, which I was for more than ten years, were often of German ancestry. The same was true with my own career in science in college, work in the lab, in the field, in the corporation, and among the corporate executive ranks.
The atrocities of the Nazis show how low man can go. Stalin and the Soviet Union committed similar atrocities, most of which we know little. What we do know is that millions of Russian Jews perished.
All of that said, we Americans cannot change the fact that much of what we claim to be original is not; and one of our greatest cultural benefactors were of German origin despite any personal bias or experience. That was what I was sharing.
Be always well,
Jim
______________________
RESPONDER NO. TWO
Jim
Thanks for the info on the German influences. You may find it of interest to know that our university has a MBA program that I have led off teaching both in Germany, across the Rhine from Mannheim, and in Pensacola. We are in our fifth year and fifth set of students and I often remind each of our German cohorts that this country owes much to
the German intellectuals over the centuries.
We are also fortunate to attract to this unique MBA program students from across Europe as part of this program but the majority by far are Germans of which several are second or third generation children from the guest worker program that was so important in rebuilding Germany after the war.
These are overall excellent students and tend to take on the additional challenges of my class design. No one in my MBA class for example can receive an A level grade unless they develop a learning project that is self directed. I consider an A grade a mark of a potential leader and the first person a leader should lead is him or her self.
Most of my U.S. students bypass this extra effort so I seldom have an A level grade in my local MBA classes, far more than half of the German students take this challenge on and succeed at showing initiative and self direction and gain an A.
The other notable difference is that my German students often self organize as a class much faster and often better. I believe this is partially due to the fact that in their experience the professor was a more unapproachable figure and students realized to survive they had to work together effectively.
I have taught now in Asia, the Middle East as I lived in Cairo for two years, Europe on both sides of the old iron curtain and have had many South American students.
Our U.S. students are good but there is just beginning to be a recognized awareness that the flat world we have created will make them work much harder and so many are starting to take education much more seriously.
American students can see that the only reason they can expect to make more than about $10 a day -- my rough approximation of the global wage level -- would be because they add value to their organizations by collaborating and creating new forms of organizing to serve great unmet human needs.
Well, as you can likely tell, teaching is still a cause for me and though my first MBA teaching was in 1972, I am not giving up and I will continue to teach around the world and then come home and help our next generation to take on the challenges out there and to make a positive difference.
Many in that next generation give me hope but in every class I also apologize for the mess that they are being left by our generation and tell them to read about the trials and tribulations of earlier generations, and to accept the challenge and enjoy the opportunity to truly make a positive difference.
Making a difference can be a challenging life, and I know how clear that is to you, and what I want most to pass along. Our legacy is important. Neither of us, I am confident, wants this next generation to be given fewer opportunities than we were given.
I take seriously the Chinese expression that crises is both a problem and an opportunity. That is what can make a life more meaningful. Since we are leaving so many crises to challenge them, the next generation of leaders will have to discover this for themselves.
They will learn, step up to some of the same demands and make a bit of difference just as we did. Then, too, they will leave a world behind where there is still much work to be done. But without this work what would humanity become?
We all need a good challenge or two and we are sure making that possible for all of those younger leaders.
K
______________________
MY RESPONSE TO NO. TWO:
K,
Your career and your contributions over the years have sometimes made me breathless. Where you get the energy, the humility, and the drive is a matter I respect and admire, but failed to comprehend. As I mentioned in a piece that I’ve placed on my blog of yours and the responses of others to my email “America’s Connection to Germany, I find you members of the “Greatest Generation.”
I have known you now for nearly two decades, ever since you first read WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS, and invited me to lecture at your university to one of your graduate seminars. I have kept turning out books that most people never read, while you have touched thousands of lives, and by that touching have multiplied your influence, the most positive influence possible, that of the teacher.
One of your colleagues that also responded to my missive is doing great work with the poor, not by writing books and articles as I continue to write, but by being directly involved in the lives of the impoverished and disadvantage. He does this through his philanthropic work, and by direct personal involvement. He, too, I tap as part of the “Greatest Generation.”
You will note in reading your remarks that my hand is in them a bit. I hope you don’t mind. I mean no offense. As a matter of fact, your delight in lower case in your emails reminds me of my late da who stubbornly insisted in writing notes to my mother in lower case, although his son would constantly correct him.
Thank you for sharing, thank you for all your wonderful work, and always be well,
Jim
______________________
Sunday, April 06, 2008
AMERICAN CONNECTION TO THE GERMAN CULTUREI
AMERICAN CONNECTION TO THE GERMAN CULTURE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 5, 2008
The late Alan Bloom, professor of social thought at the University of Chicago, shocked American society in general, and the education establishment in particular with his book, "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987).
Bloom's indictment of this institution's failure sent tremors through society. But that was not what was most surprising to me. I had taught graduate school as an adjunct professor at several universities for more than ten years, so was well aware of the American college student he described.
What surprised me was the indebtedness we Americans have to German culture.
I had always thought that the Irish and Italians made up the largest immigrant segment of the American population, when neither is even close to matching Americans with German ancestors. More than 60 million Americans out of a population of 300 million can trace their ancestry back to Germany.
The oldest German community was established in 1683 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. Coincidentally, my son is the head tennis professional there and director of one of the largest and oldest tennis clubs in the United States, the Germantown Tennis & Racket Club.
Our American culture was greatly influenced by Germany in the transplanting of German’s symphony and opera to the United States. Much of our art and literature shows a strong German influence as, indeed, does our science, philosophy, medicine, and engineering.
We are aware that King George III of Great Britain had acquired an army of Hessian or German mercenaries to fight against the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. What is not common knowledge is that George Washington's bodyguard was a German, as well as many of his soldiers had German ancestry.
The hamburger and hot dog are German confections and staples of our fast-food culture, as are several other dishes.
It is also true that the German “know how” is evident in our railroads and the steel industry as they have the stamp of the German influence.
Bloom ends his chapter on "The German Connection" with his acerbic prose, which as I say, alerted me to how many German thinkers introduced me to myself. Bloom writes:
"We (Americans) are a bit like savages who, having been discovered and evangelized by missionaries, have converted to Christianity without having experienced all that came before and after the revelation. The fact that most of us never would have heard of Oedipus if it were not for Freud should make us aware that we are almost utterly dependent on our German missionaries or intermediaries for our knowledge of Greece, Rome, Judaism and Christianity; that, however, profound that knowledge may be, theirs is only one interpretation; and that we have only been told as much as they thought we needed to know. It is an urgent business for one who seeks self-awareness to think through the meaning of the intellectual dependency that has led us to such an impasse." (p. 156)
I have nearly 3,000 books in my study, and it would not surprise me at all if 600 of them are of German authors or ancestors of German heritage.
Be always well,
Jim
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 5, 2008
The late Alan Bloom, professor of social thought at the University of Chicago, shocked American society in general, and the education establishment in particular with his book, "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987).
Bloom's indictment of this institution's failure sent tremors through society. But that was not what was most surprising to me. I had taught graduate school as an adjunct professor at several universities for more than ten years, so was well aware of the American college student he described.
What surprised me was the indebtedness we Americans have to German culture.
I had always thought that the Irish and Italians made up the largest immigrant segment of the American population, when neither is even close to matching Americans with German ancestors. More than 60 million Americans out of a population of 300 million can trace their ancestry back to Germany.
The oldest German community was established in 1683 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. Coincidentally, my son is the head tennis professional there and director of one of the largest and oldest tennis clubs in the United States, the Germantown Tennis & Racket Club.
Our American culture was greatly influenced by Germany in the transplanting of German’s symphony and opera to the United States. Much of our art and literature shows a strong German influence as, indeed, does our science, philosophy, medicine, and engineering.
We are aware that King George III of Great Britain had acquired an army of Hessian or German mercenaries to fight against the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. What is not common knowledge is that George Washington's bodyguard was a German, as well as many of his soldiers had German ancestry.
The hamburger and hot dog are German confections and staples of our fast-food culture, as are several other dishes.
It is also true that the German “know how” is evident in our railroads and the steel industry as they have the stamp of the German influence.
Bloom ends his chapter on "The German Connection" with his acerbic prose, which as I say, alerted me to how many German thinkers introduced me to myself. Bloom writes:
"We (Americans) are a bit like savages who, having been discovered and evangelized by missionaries, have converted to Christianity without having experienced all that came before and after the revelation. The fact that most of us never would have heard of Oedipus if it were not for Freud should make us aware that we are almost utterly dependent on our German missionaries or intermediaries for our knowledge of Greece, Rome, Judaism and Christianity; that, however, profound that knowledge may be, theirs is only one interpretation; and that we have only been told as much as they thought we needed to know. It is an urgent business for one who seeks self-awareness to think through the meaning of the intellectual dependency that has led us to such an impasse." (p. 156)
I have nearly 3,000 books in my study, and it would not surprise me at all if 600 of them are of German authors or ancestors of German heritage.
Be always well,
Jim
Friday, April 04, 2008
COLD SHOWER NO. 4 (Part One) -- WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED "GENIUS"?
Cold Shower™
WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED “GENIUS”?
No. 4 (Part One of Two Parts)
PART ONE
COMPARATIVE OR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IS NOT GENIUS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 4, 2008
This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial /organization psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern professional workers everywhere. His latest book captures the fixation of the times, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).
Question: What is your take on genius? I get the impression you are cynical of the whole idea. Let me quote from one of your books: “B. F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud considered themselves geniuses and so they could moralize about whatever came into their heads with the assurance it would be taken seriously.”
Do you not consider them geniuses? I would also like to know where you see yourself. You write about yourself in your books, but never about genius and you.
Dr. Fisher replies:
Before I attempt to answer your question, your comment refers to chapter VII in “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007) where I write about the interesting role of the outsider who goes against the grain of established cultural practices.
Outsiders are often moralists. The irony in trying to explain the world as they see it, or themselves as they feel themselves to be, they touch a cord or perhaps many cords of insiders. Sometimes this is quite by accident, but more often it is an obsessive quest to be insiders, and “voila!” They become the darlings of insiders.
They seek to create a reputation and some claim to fame. When they succeed, they are inclined to manage their image with the care of a Hollywood celebrity.
Then, of course, there are outsiders that never bother themselves with image making. As a consequence, they remain on the periphery of general consciousness. I am thinking of such existential thinkers as Rollo May, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who, incidentally, refused the Nobel Prize for Literature. They had their devotees, to be sure, but they are not as familiar as names such as B. F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung. What you refer to appears as follows in my book:
“Skinner, Freud, and Jung make philosophical statements on the human condition, but claim to be scientists with philosophy outside their discipline. Yet, it is the nature of their work that has created the gulf between observer and subject that has drawn attention to this inconsistency. Meanwhile, outsiders they scorn take advantage of this intimacy with the subject, seeing their role as being part of the story.
“Freud advised Jung to ignore his critics, while Skinner chose to brand them neurotic or psychotic. Skinner sees himself beyond criticism, especially by people outside the discipline. Another conviction Skinner holds in common with Freud and Jung is that he is a genius. The mere fact that he would be of such a mind suggests he considers genius a rarity when actually genius is quite common.” (A Look Back To See Ahead, p. 59)
We are in the age of media dominance and media like to toss around such words as “genius” with whimsical insouciance. They are in the business of creating icons. Media have worked in concert with such self-absorbed individuals and their coterie to establish the mystic of genius.
Albert Einstein knew and understood this game long before it was an established industry. He confessed, “Why denigrate oneself? Others take care of that when necessary.” He also said, “People flatter me as long as I don’t get in their way.” Once his reputation was established, and he could coast through life, he also said, “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer. I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious.” This is a man who changed physics and the modern world.
Einstein was ahead of the celebrity curve as well becoming the equivalent of a “rock star” of science by his admirers, who found it of slight importance that they had only the vaguest notion of what he had accomplished. I find it interesting that he seemed to delight in feeding this public idolatry and that fantasy. Yet, it would be remiss not to consider Einstein an extremely gifted man.
My point, and one you quote accurately, is that I think genius is common, not rare, and that there are all kinds of geniuses:
(1) There is a genius in animal intelligence found in athletics where the athlete intuitively and instinctively does the right thing in the blinking of an eye.
(2) There is emotional genius where a person maintains self-control under the most extraordinarily demanding of circumstances.
(3) There is intellectual genius in the ability of a writer to capture the essence of his ideas and distill them in a manner that they having meaning and moment to others.
(4) There is the genius of physical beauty as Nature’s hand has touched a person’s sculptured and textured self with incredible kindness.
(5) There is the genius of personal service to others well above and beyond whatever could be expected.
(6) There is the genius of having an eye for organization putting people and purpose together to comparative advantage. Organization genius finds a person creating from little a viable, functioning, progressive and effective association. Once organized, it carries forward on its own power.
(7) There is the genius of doing nothing and appreciating everything, using this brief moment of life to grow in wisdom and knowledge and awareness of those things that cost nothing, and are free to enjoy, while being unconcerned about accumulating anything.
(8) There is the genius of taking people alienated by hostility, dissolving their differences, and forming them into a collaborative coalition by showing them how much more they have in common than what divides them.
(9) There is mechanical genius with the ability to see machines in three-dimensions and to visualize their working parts as if they were functioning separately.
(10) There is the genius of love that shines its light in the darkness of hate, which carries people out of the cave of their despair.
(11) There is the genius of acceptance, which means you don’t own other people’s problems, but will help them solve them if they but have the will.
In simple terms, genius is a many faceted, multi-colored, multi-perspective, and multi-dimensional entity. Genius is before our eyes every day, but not always recognized or celebrated as such. One of the ironies of human nature is that we don’t know how wonderful or gifted we are until someone tells us. The human tendency is to take what we have been given for granted, as if everyone else is equipped with the same gifts, the same talents, and the same capacities, when we know this is not true.
Sometimes, as a result, we flaunt our gifts, or prostitute them with a devil may care attitude, squandering our special talent until it no longer exists, as Lord Byron did, as Malcolm Lowry did, as many others in the arts, athletics, sciences, and in the public arena have. In my own ethnicity, two Irishmen, Timothy Leary in psychology and F. Scott Fitzgerald in literature come to mind.
It concerns me the way people are cavalierly labeled brilliant, gifted, or, indeed, genius. It indicates the patronizing malaise of comparing and competing.
Comparing focuses on the talent of others or what others have at the expense of focusing on our own talent, what we have, and what we might do with it.
Moreover, there is no greater cultural disease than competition.
When we compete in an effort to match the talent or genius that others possess, it enslaves and degrades our minds to be synthetic copies of what others are and have achieved. That said “being competitive” is one of the most prevalent and certainly most destructive forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if it becomes obsessive, we turn into dull, imitative, and an insensitive person to our own unique gifts. Mediocrity is the price we pay for this mania to measure up to someone else’s talent, which results, ultimately, in burning ourselves out.
Often people stereotype us by saying, “You are just like Dick/Jane.” By doing this, they assist us in this debilitating competitive and comparative programming.
Parents, friends and peers can induce us into the competitive process until it becomes habitual behavior. We go out for sports or for the band or glee club or this or that activity with little insight into our uniqueness. Likewise, we launch ourselves into a career in medicine, science, engineering, accounting, or law with little enthusiasm until one day we find ourselves locked in to it for life.
Then, being competitive grows into a habit. We leave initiative, imagination, originality and spontaneity behind in order to fit in, while convincing ourselves this is what I always wanted to be, when we know it is a lie. We have only this one life to live. Yet, without a second thought, far too frequently, we will our careers to the highest flatterers. Meanwhile, our secret love atrophies in the closet of our mind.
Those that we construe as genius have another agenda:
(1) They don’t focus on what is “in” or “out” or what is the prescribed orbit to get ahead.
(2) They do not contaminate their aspirations to be everything to everybody and nothing to themselves.
(3) On the contrary, they follow their bliss.
Unfortunately, the habit of competing is so widespread that many people firmly believe it is the “Law of Nature.” Competition is frequently praised as a great virtue to be developed by everyone. This lies at cross-purposes to breathing life into one’s own unique talent and frustrates relationships with others because of the envy of what they are and have at the expense of developing one’s own gifts.
The moment our focus is on imitating and emulating the model of others is the moment we move away from our own genius. I am a writer. I have been a writer since I was a little boy of five-years-old, a dreamer, a wonderer, an idealist; a person who often wrote little notes on envelopes, margins of books, magazines or newspapers of my thoughts and feelings, perceptions of how everyday things influenced or provoked me. I have even gone to the very dangerous and questionable business of putting these ideas into print, flawed as they are, as imperfect as they are, sometimes as supercilious as they are, inaccurate as they might prove to be, and, indeed, as repetitive as they often are. Yet, I do it. Why? That will be the subject of the second part of “genius.”
See Dr. Fisher’s books and articles on his website: www.fisherofideas.com.
WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED “GENIUS”?
No. 4 (Part One of Two Parts)
PART ONE
COMPARATIVE OR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IS NOT GENIUS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 4, 2008
This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial /organization psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern professional workers everywhere. His latest book captures the fixation of the times, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).
Question: What is your take on genius? I get the impression you are cynical of the whole idea. Let me quote from one of your books: “B. F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud considered themselves geniuses and so they could moralize about whatever came into their heads with the assurance it would be taken seriously.”
Do you not consider them geniuses? I would also like to know where you see yourself. You write about yourself in your books, but never about genius and you.
Dr. Fisher replies:
Before I attempt to answer your question, your comment refers to chapter VII in “A Look Back To See Ahead” (2007) where I write about the interesting role of the outsider who goes against the grain of established cultural practices.
Outsiders are often moralists. The irony in trying to explain the world as they see it, or themselves as they feel themselves to be, they touch a cord or perhaps many cords of insiders. Sometimes this is quite by accident, but more often it is an obsessive quest to be insiders, and “voila!” They become the darlings of insiders.
They seek to create a reputation and some claim to fame. When they succeed, they are inclined to manage their image with the care of a Hollywood celebrity.
Then, of course, there are outsiders that never bother themselves with image making. As a consequence, they remain on the periphery of general consciousness. I am thinking of such existential thinkers as Rollo May, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who, incidentally, refused the Nobel Prize for Literature. They had their devotees, to be sure, but they are not as familiar as names such as B. F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung. What you refer to appears as follows in my book:
“Skinner, Freud, and Jung make philosophical statements on the human condition, but claim to be scientists with philosophy outside their discipline. Yet, it is the nature of their work that has created the gulf between observer and subject that has drawn attention to this inconsistency. Meanwhile, outsiders they scorn take advantage of this intimacy with the subject, seeing their role as being part of the story.
“Freud advised Jung to ignore his critics, while Skinner chose to brand them neurotic or psychotic. Skinner sees himself beyond criticism, especially by people outside the discipline. Another conviction Skinner holds in common with Freud and Jung is that he is a genius. The mere fact that he would be of such a mind suggests he considers genius a rarity when actually genius is quite common.” (A Look Back To See Ahead, p. 59)
We are in the age of media dominance and media like to toss around such words as “genius” with whimsical insouciance. They are in the business of creating icons. Media have worked in concert with such self-absorbed individuals and their coterie to establish the mystic of genius.
Albert Einstein knew and understood this game long before it was an established industry. He confessed, “Why denigrate oneself? Others take care of that when necessary.” He also said, “People flatter me as long as I don’t get in their way.” Once his reputation was established, and he could coast through life, he also said, “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer. I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious.” This is a man who changed physics and the modern world.
Einstein was ahead of the celebrity curve as well becoming the equivalent of a “rock star” of science by his admirers, who found it of slight importance that they had only the vaguest notion of what he had accomplished. I find it interesting that he seemed to delight in feeding this public idolatry and that fantasy. Yet, it would be remiss not to consider Einstein an extremely gifted man.
My point, and one you quote accurately, is that I think genius is common, not rare, and that there are all kinds of geniuses:
(1) There is a genius in animal intelligence found in athletics where the athlete intuitively and instinctively does the right thing in the blinking of an eye.
(2) There is emotional genius where a person maintains self-control under the most extraordinarily demanding of circumstances.
(3) There is intellectual genius in the ability of a writer to capture the essence of his ideas and distill them in a manner that they having meaning and moment to others.
(4) There is the genius of physical beauty as Nature’s hand has touched a person’s sculptured and textured self with incredible kindness.
(5) There is the genius of personal service to others well above and beyond whatever could be expected.
(6) There is the genius of having an eye for organization putting people and purpose together to comparative advantage. Organization genius finds a person creating from little a viable, functioning, progressive and effective association. Once organized, it carries forward on its own power.
(7) There is the genius of doing nothing and appreciating everything, using this brief moment of life to grow in wisdom and knowledge and awareness of those things that cost nothing, and are free to enjoy, while being unconcerned about accumulating anything.
(8) There is the genius of taking people alienated by hostility, dissolving their differences, and forming them into a collaborative coalition by showing them how much more they have in common than what divides them.
(9) There is mechanical genius with the ability to see machines in three-dimensions and to visualize their working parts as if they were functioning separately.
(10) There is the genius of love that shines its light in the darkness of hate, which carries people out of the cave of their despair.
(11) There is the genius of acceptance, which means you don’t own other people’s problems, but will help them solve them if they but have the will.
In simple terms, genius is a many faceted, multi-colored, multi-perspective, and multi-dimensional entity. Genius is before our eyes every day, but not always recognized or celebrated as such. One of the ironies of human nature is that we don’t know how wonderful or gifted we are until someone tells us. The human tendency is to take what we have been given for granted, as if everyone else is equipped with the same gifts, the same talents, and the same capacities, when we know this is not true.
Sometimes, as a result, we flaunt our gifts, or prostitute them with a devil may care attitude, squandering our special talent until it no longer exists, as Lord Byron did, as Malcolm Lowry did, as many others in the arts, athletics, sciences, and in the public arena have. In my own ethnicity, two Irishmen, Timothy Leary in psychology and F. Scott Fitzgerald in literature come to mind.
It concerns me the way people are cavalierly labeled brilliant, gifted, or, indeed, genius. It indicates the patronizing malaise of comparing and competing.
Comparing focuses on the talent of others or what others have at the expense of focusing on our own talent, what we have, and what we might do with it.
Moreover, there is no greater cultural disease than competition.
When we compete in an effort to match the talent or genius that others possess, it enslaves and degrades our minds to be synthetic copies of what others are and have achieved. That said “being competitive” is one of the most prevalent and certainly most destructive forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if it becomes obsessive, we turn into dull, imitative, and an insensitive person to our own unique gifts. Mediocrity is the price we pay for this mania to measure up to someone else’s talent, which results, ultimately, in burning ourselves out.
Often people stereotype us by saying, “You are just like Dick/Jane.” By doing this, they assist us in this debilitating competitive and comparative programming.
Parents, friends and peers can induce us into the competitive process until it becomes habitual behavior. We go out for sports or for the band or glee club or this or that activity with little insight into our uniqueness. Likewise, we launch ourselves into a career in medicine, science, engineering, accounting, or law with little enthusiasm until one day we find ourselves locked in to it for life.
Then, being competitive grows into a habit. We leave initiative, imagination, originality and spontaneity behind in order to fit in, while convincing ourselves this is what I always wanted to be, when we know it is a lie. We have only this one life to live. Yet, without a second thought, far too frequently, we will our careers to the highest flatterers. Meanwhile, our secret love atrophies in the closet of our mind.
Those that we construe as genius have another agenda:
(1) They don’t focus on what is “in” or “out” or what is the prescribed orbit to get ahead.
(2) They do not contaminate their aspirations to be everything to everybody and nothing to themselves.
(3) On the contrary, they follow their bliss.
Unfortunately, the habit of competing is so widespread that many people firmly believe it is the “Law of Nature.” Competition is frequently praised as a great virtue to be developed by everyone. This lies at cross-purposes to breathing life into one’s own unique talent and frustrates relationships with others because of the envy of what they are and have at the expense of developing one’s own gifts.
The moment our focus is on imitating and emulating the model of others is the moment we move away from our own genius. I am a writer. I have been a writer since I was a little boy of five-years-old, a dreamer, a wonderer, an idealist; a person who often wrote little notes on envelopes, margins of books, magazines or newspapers of my thoughts and feelings, perceptions of how everyday things influenced or provoked me. I have even gone to the very dangerous and questionable business of putting these ideas into print, flawed as they are, as imperfect as they are, sometimes as supercilious as they are, inaccurate as they might prove to be, and, indeed, as repetitive as they often are. Yet, I do it. Why? That will be the subject of the second part of “genius.”
See Dr. Fisher’s books and articles on his website: www.fisherofideas.com.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
COLD SHOWER NO. 3 -- WHAT IS CORPOCRACY?
COLD SHOWER™
WHAT IS CORPOCRACY?
No. 3
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 1, 2008
_____________
This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial /organization psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern professional workers everywhere. His latest book captures the fixation of the times, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).
_____________
QUESTION:
I’ve read several of your books, and am still confused about the meaning of a word you use repeatedly, and that word is “corpocracy.” What exactly is corpocracy?
DR. FISHER REPLIES:
I am sorry for your confusion. It is true that I often refer to “corpocracy” in my essays, and it appears as well in “Work Without Managers” (1990), “The Worker, Alone!” (1995), “Six Silent Killers” (1998) and “Corporate Sin (2000),” or four of my nine published books. These books are building blocks designed to create a narrative of what I see wrong with our corporate structure and why.
I THE AMERICAN DISEASE – CORPOCRACY!
Stated simply, I see “corpocracy” as manifesting the dysfunctional aspect of today’s corporate centralized authority. The corporate structure is the fatal flaw to organization that persists past its prime. Permit me to explain.
While I was an executive in Brussels, Belgium for Honeywell Europe Ltd., I came across an article in a German magazine, Wirtschaft Woche (Business Week, January 16, 1987), titled “Amerikas Krankheit” (The American Disease). I read it with interest and found it remarkable in identifying ten factors which it labeled “corpocracy”:
(1) Management is insensitive to its employees.
(2) Management is consumed with company politics at the expense of productivity.
(3) Secretiveness is the measure of company communication.
(4) The principle product of work is paperwork.
(5) Endless meetings are the “way,” when in doubt, call a meeting.
(6) An obsessive internal focus is maintained as potential markets are ignored.
(7) Short term planning and thinking are preferred to embracing challenges – plan, plan and plan some more!
(8) Individual initiative is not supported – you never know where it might lead!
(9) Management has isolated itself from employees by building mahogany towers between them.
(10) A “covert” hostility to innovation is maintained while overtly praised.
The article went on to say that the American corporation was running rampantly out of control. It observed that conduct formerly confined to government bureaucracies had become pervasive across American business, commerce, industry, education, and religious institutions.
II STUMBLING ON THE ESSENCE OF THE PROBLEM
It so happened that since 1984 I had been collecting my thoughts on the corporate organization in some forty engineering notebooks. This was a forced discipline on me that became surprisingly natural and spirited. How I came to engage in this activity centers around a keynote speech I gave for Honeywell’s Department of Defense customers in Clearwater, Florida in March 1984. I was an organization/industrial psychologist with Honeywell’s Avionics division at the time. The theme of the conference was “employee empowerment” celebrated through “participative management.”
The title of my speech was “Participative Management: An Adversarial Point of View.” In my daily observations, I found participative management a charade and empowerment a sham, and provided book, chapter and verse why it was so. I nearly got fired, but instead was instructed to keep these notebooks as part of my penance.
Reexamining these notebooks in 1987 after reading this German article I discovered my findings dovetailed with its conclusions. I knew I was on to something. It turned out that these notebooks would give birth to the breakthrough classic, WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A View from the Trenches (1990), and launch my career as a writer in this genre.
III THE GENESIS OF ORGANIZATION
“Corpocracy,” or society as bureaucratic organization had replaced the simple life and pastoral domesticity of the nuclear family and rural society by the end of World War II. A new day and a new military/industrial complex were taking hold that would be reflected in everything.
With that change, institutional society, as it was known, hit a historical snag. Corporate farms replaced ancestral farms, machines replaced farm hands, mom and pop small businesses were swallowed into corporations, and these in turn swallowed into larger corporations, the same in industry, education and the church. Worth was now measured in quantity, not quality. Communities and states bragged about how their populations were exploding. Automobiles got bigger; houses got bigger; indeed, people got bigger, as bigger was always better. The corporate pyramid grew taller with more and more levels of management.
Meanwhile, jobs of workers got smaller. Everyone had a smaller piece of the action. Worker control of work disappeared. A workplace of 4,000 employees would have 400 or more managers-supervisors who made the big bucks and got the majority of the perks.
Routine became dogma. Workers did everything a certain way because it had always been done that way. In Brussels, the European headquarters for Honeywell Europe dutifully generated detailed sales reports and issued them every month to the affiliates. These reports were never read, despite the man-hours dedicated to them. Several other bureaucratic reports had a similar fate.
The pervasive routine noted in the German article I saw routinely established in Europe as well as the United States. I came to describe this routine as “non-thinking thinking to do non-doing doing of non-thing things”. Workers went along with the pointless drill because their heart, after all, wasn’t in their work. They were working for a paycheck not for the love of what they did.
An assignment dramatized this to me. I did an intervention where a small facility of some 320 workers and 80 managers were struggling to stay in business. The 80 managers worked 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week to find the solution to remaining viable, while the 320 workers worked their 40 hours, went home without a smidgeon of concern whether the operation made it or not.
Stated otherwise, 80 self-appointed saviors of the company operated without the support, input, or involvement of the other 320. Yes, 80 people were observed pushing the great stone of Sisyphus up the slope, while four times that number stood by and watched laughing through their teeth. “It’s not our problem” was the symphonic buzz, “management got its tit in the ringer. Let management get it out!” So glib. So righteous. So comfortable in their ignorance. These workers suffered from the “American Disease” of corpocracy, but were located in Switzerland.
You cannot charge these workers with being irresponsible when they were clearly nonresponsible. How many companies have folded across this land and other lands with such thinking?
IV ORGANIZED FOR ANOTHER TIME
We are not designed for survival.
When power and authority are centrally located, as they are today, should that center be flawed, the entire organization collapses in on itself no matter how much effort to the contrary. We have seen this in the subprime debacle, FEMA and Katrina, bribery in government, vice in the church, fraud in education, and corruption in virtually every institution of society without exception.
A strong central authority has come to represent the weakness of the corporate structure. If it is flawed, the weakness extends out in concentric rings to the peripheral aspects of that organization. That said the Secretary of the Treasurer of the Bush Administration wants to make the Federal Reserve stronger and more centralized in the panic of “Now!” The dollar is dropping, oil prices rising, jobs are disappearing, and once again, the thinking is predictable: more power and authority to be designated to manage the problem.
The last time such a policy was mounted was during the Great Depression, a very different time. It is difficult to get beyond the hard wiring in our brains when the best minds of our society are stuck, as this would suggest.
We are in a new age. The progression has reached the end of its tether and must rediscover its essence by a peculiar circular route:
(1) The Industrial Revolution saw America move away from a pastoral and agricultural society in which authority was decentralized and small communities were dotted across the landscape to a society of large centralized work centers in metropolitan areas.
(2) For the past fifty years, we have been in a post-industrial society in which the corporation completed the movement from decentralized to centralized power and authority.
(3) This functioned well before, during, and immediately after World War II.
(4) Centralized authority grew in concert with the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam War.
(5) The United States military/industrial complex was not seriously challenged until the late 1970s.
(6) Throughout the 1980s in a panic mode corporate America grabbed hold of any idea that would right itself and reestablish its dominance.
(7) Corpocracy evolved as corporate society continued to do, believe, and behave essentially as it had always behaved.
(8) Then a revitalized Europe and an emerging Japan, Inc. and South East Asia cut into the competitive advantage of the United States.
(9) We are now in the post-post Industrial Revolution and Electronic Age.
(10) Cottage industries have been shooting up in the tens of thousands every month.
(11) On-line universities have more students than traditional universities.
(12) “Printing-On-Demand” (POD) publishers are publishing more books today than traditional publishers.
(13) More than 100,000 pay phones are being removed every month across Western society as few people use pay phones now that cell phones are so common.
(14) Workers don’t need supervisors to tell them how they are doing. They have electronic readouts that score their work.
(15) Workers can text message their standing; the same with students in school their grades.
(16) With the electronic connections that exist in every walk of life, there is little need for a strong central authority.
(17) Power and authority not only can be distributed throughout the system, but must be redistributed for appropriate action to be taken on a timely basis.
(18) We have reached the point in which everyone must become a leader of what they do or no one is.
(19) The Electronic Age is decentralizing activities while calling for interdependent responses to routine as well as crisis situations.
(20) Managers are atavistic and the hierarchical organization is anachronistic.
(21) The time for change, dramatic and radical, is now.
(22) There are no secrets anymore.
When the German article came out, it highlighted the obvious. Corporate America was off its track, running harder and harder but making little progress because it had left its steel rails. That is when “corpocracy” set in. Unfortunately, it is not only an American Disease, but also a Western Society Disease.
V A CASE IN POINT
Corpocracy has conditioned us to be passive and nonresponsive, silent and safe hires, going along to get along, doing what we are told even when we know it is wrong, keeping our nose clean and out of trouble, not being a whistle blower when we discover corruption, not reporting somebody seen misusing or stealing company property, or somebody withholding important information to a project.
Corpocracy has led to worker cynicism with workers bringing their bodies to work but leaving their minds at home.
It is counterintuitive to suggest that the corporate design is anachronistic; that corporate society has overstayed its functional life; that this has led to corpocracy.
To illustrate, I once told the director of a department of sixty people that he didn’t need his ten manager-supervisors. He looked at me aghast, “How would we operate?”
I answered, “Better than you’re operating now.”
A nice man, he was literally dumbfounded by such a suggestion. He could not see getting anything done without all these overseers of work.
Well, he was wrong. These were professionals. In one section of his operation, there were seven Ph.D.’s. They were all treated as if children suspended in terminal adolescence waiting for instructions from above, which incidentally, were by people who had little knowledge of their discipline. It resulted in chaos.
These ten manager-supervisors, whom I describe here, took in $750,000 in salaries and benefits. It was the 1980s and they were essentially paper pushers and meeting holders, both now essentially replaced by electronic records and conferences.
VI WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM OUR ENEMIES
Another writer registered concern that Islam and its jihad could one day take over our way of life. I don’t think so, not if we learn important lessons from how this movement operates.
The Western belief is that if we could only take out Osama bin Laden the international jihad would collapse, and peace would be restored throughout the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What the terrorist movement should teach us is the wisdom of decentralization. There couldn’t be a looser confederation than this jihad. Yet, it has confounded the single super power of the world.
Consider this:
(1) There is no strong central authority with this jihad, although we like to identify certain members of the jihad as occupying this authority.
(2) We have erroneously looked at Islam as a group and failed to recognize these renegades are only a small splinter of the total Islam population.
(3) The best equipped, most technological advanced and electronically sophisticated military the world has ever known has failed to subdue this poorly trained, poorly led, poorly equipped, and relatively small insurgency movement.
(4) The reason is obvious.
(5) The jihad has mastered the wisdom of decentralization where the passion of individuals is the highest possible, along with the willingness to sacrifice their lives for the cause.
(6) The jihad’s only advantage is the knowledge that it can move swiftly and stealthily without the encumbrances of a lethargic, complex and complicated multilevel sophisticated organization of apparatchiks carrying out decisions made half a world away.
(7) The Roman Army made similar mistakes when the Visigoths and Germanic tribes sacked Rome.
(8) Rome refused to demand sacrifices of its Roman citizens, and instead entertained them in the coliseum.
(9) The Roman Army failed to adjust its military to deal effectively with these barbarians from the north and paid dearly for it.
(10) Rome fell.
(11) The Dark Middle Ages followed.
This elaboration on “corpocracy” is meant to show that a reluctance to learn from our enemies is not new, but has tracked man throughout history. Time will only tell if we will become unstuck and learn from our enemies.
Check out other essays by Dr. Fisher on his website: www.fisherofideas.com, where all his books are also available for purchase.
WHAT IS CORPOCRACY?
No. 3
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 1, 2008
_____________
This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial /organization psychologist and former corporate executive with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. For the past thirty years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. He is the author of nine books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk-taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits, and relationships to power – for a changing workforce in a changing workplace. He started as a laborer, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinationals. These columns will answer questions troubling modern professional workers everywhere. His latest book captures the fixation of the times, A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007).
_____________
QUESTION:
I’ve read several of your books, and am still confused about the meaning of a word you use repeatedly, and that word is “corpocracy.” What exactly is corpocracy?
DR. FISHER REPLIES:
I am sorry for your confusion. It is true that I often refer to “corpocracy” in my essays, and it appears as well in “Work Without Managers” (1990), “The Worker, Alone!” (1995), “Six Silent Killers” (1998) and “Corporate Sin (2000),” or four of my nine published books. These books are building blocks designed to create a narrative of what I see wrong with our corporate structure and why.
I THE AMERICAN DISEASE – CORPOCRACY!
Stated simply, I see “corpocracy” as manifesting the dysfunctional aspect of today’s corporate centralized authority. The corporate structure is the fatal flaw to organization that persists past its prime. Permit me to explain.
While I was an executive in Brussels, Belgium for Honeywell Europe Ltd., I came across an article in a German magazine, Wirtschaft Woche (Business Week, January 16, 1987), titled “Amerikas Krankheit” (The American Disease). I read it with interest and found it remarkable in identifying ten factors which it labeled “corpocracy”:
(1) Management is insensitive to its employees.
(2) Management is consumed with company politics at the expense of productivity.
(3) Secretiveness is the measure of company communication.
(4) The principle product of work is paperwork.
(5) Endless meetings are the “way,” when in doubt, call a meeting.
(6) An obsessive internal focus is maintained as potential markets are ignored.
(7) Short term planning and thinking are preferred to embracing challenges – plan, plan and plan some more!
(8) Individual initiative is not supported – you never know where it might lead!
(9) Management has isolated itself from employees by building mahogany towers between them.
(10) A “covert” hostility to innovation is maintained while overtly praised.
The article went on to say that the American corporation was running rampantly out of control. It observed that conduct formerly confined to government bureaucracies had become pervasive across American business, commerce, industry, education, and religious institutions.
II STUMBLING ON THE ESSENCE OF THE PROBLEM
It so happened that since 1984 I had been collecting my thoughts on the corporate organization in some forty engineering notebooks. This was a forced discipline on me that became surprisingly natural and spirited. How I came to engage in this activity centers around a keynote speech I gave for Honeywell’s Department of Defense customers in Clearwater, Florida in March 1984. I was an organization/industrial psychologist with Honeywell’s Avionics division at the time. The theme of the conference was “employee empowerment” celebrated through “participative management.”
The title of my speech was “Participative Management: An Adversarial Point of View.” In my daily observations, I found participative management a charade and empowerment a sham, and provided book, chapter and verse why it was so. I nearly got fired, but instead was instructed to keep these notebooks as part of my penance.
Reexamining these notebooks in 1987 after reading this German article I discovered my findings dovetailed with its conclusions. I knew I was on to something. It turned out that these notebooks would give birth to the breakthrough classic, WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A View from the Trenches (1990), and launch my career as a writer in this genre.
III THE GENESIS OF ORGANIZATION
“Corpocracy,” or society as bureaucratic organization had replaced the simple life and pastoral domesticity of the nuclear family and rural society by the end of World War II. A new day and a new military/industrial complex were taking hold that would be reflected in everything.
With that change, institutional society, as it was known, hit a historical snag. Corporate farms replaced ancestral farms, machines replaced farm hands, mom and pop small businesses were swallowed into corporations, and these in turn swallowed into larger corporations, the same in industry, education and the church. Worth was now measured in quantity, not quality. Communities and states bragged about how their populations were exploding. Automobiles got bigger; houses got bigger; indeed, people got bigger, as bigger was always better. The corporate pyramid grew taller with more and more levels of management.
Meanwhile, jobs of workers got smaller. Everyone had a smaller piece of the action. Worker control of work disappeared. A workplace of 4,000 employees would have 400 or more managers-supervisors who made the big bucks and got the majority of the perks.
Routine became dogma. Workers did everything a certain way because it had always been done that way. In Brussels, the European headquarters for Honeywell Europe dutifully generated detailed sales reports and issued them every month to the affiliates. These reports were never read, despite the man-hours dedicated to them. Several other bureaucratic reports had a similar fate.
The pervasive routine noted in the German article I saw routinely established in Europe as well as the United States. I came to describe this routine as “non-thinking thinking to do non-doing doing of non-thing things”. Workers went along with the pointless drill because their heart, after all, wasn’t in their work. They were working for a paycheck not for the love of what they did.
An assignment dramatized this to me. I did an intervention where a small facility of some 320 workers and 80 managers were struggling to stay in business. The 80 managers worked 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week to find the solution to remaining viable, while the 320 workers worked their 40 hours, went home without a smidgeon of concern whether the operation made it or not.
Stated otherwise, 80 self-appointed saviors of the company operated without the support, input, or involvement of the other 320. Yes, 80 people were observed pushing the great stone of Sisyphus up the slope, while four times that number stood by and watched laughing through their teeth. “It’s not our problem” was the symphonic buzz, “management got its tit in the ringer. Let management get it out!” So glib. So righteous. So comfortable in their ignorance. These workers suffered from the “American Disease” of corpocracy, but were located in Switzerland.
You cannot charge these workers with being irresponsible when they were clearly nonresponsible. How many companies have folded across this land and other lands with such thinking?
IV ORGANIZED FOR ANOTHER TIME
We are not designed for survival.
When power and authority are centrally located, as they are today, should that center be flawed, the entire organization collapses in on itself no matter how much effort to the contrary. We have seen this in the subprime debacle, FEMA and Katrina, bribery in government, vice in the church, fraud in education, and corruption in virtually every institution of society without exception.
A strong central authority has come to represent the weakness of the corporate structure. If it is flawed, the weakness extends out in concentric rings to the peripheral aspects of that organization. That said the Secretary of the Treasurer of the Bush Administration wants to make the Federal Reserve stronger and more centralized in the panic of “Now!” The dollar is dropping, oil prices rising, jobs are disappearing, and once again, the thinking is predictable: more power and authority to be designated to manage the problem.
The last time such a policy was mounted was during the Great Depression, a very different time. It is difficult to get beyond the hard wiring in our brains when the best minds of our society are stuck, as this would suggest.
We are in a new age. The progression has reached the end of its tether and must rediscover its essence by a peculiar circular route:
(1) The Industrial Revolution saw America move away from a pastoral and agricultural society in which authority was decentralized and small communities were dotted across the landscape to a society of large centralized work centers in metropolitan areas.
(2) For the past fifty years, we have been in a post-industrial society in which the corporation completed the movement from decentralized to centralized power and authority.
(3) This functioned well before, during, and immediately after World War II.
(4) Centralized authority grew in concert with the Cold War, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam War.
(5) The United States military/industrial complex was not seriously challenged until the late 1970s.
(6) Throughout the 1980s in a panic mode corporate America grabbed hold of any idea that would right itself and reestablish its dominance.
(7) Corpocracy evolved as corporate society continued to do, believe, and behave essentially as it had always behaved.
(8) Then a revitalized Europe and an emerging Japan, Inc. and South East Asia cut into the competitive advantage of the United States.
(9) We are now in the post-post Industrial Revolution and Electronic Age.
(10) Cottage industries have been shooting up in the tens of thousands every month.
(11) On-line universities have more students than traditional universities.
(12) “Printing-On-Demand” (POD) publishers are publishing more books today than traditional publishers.
(13) More than 100,000 pay phones are being removed every month across Western society as few people use pay phones now that cell phones are so common.
(14) Workers don’t need supervisors to tell them how they are doing. They have electronic readouts that score their work.
(15) Workers can text message their standing; the same with students in school their grades.
(16) With the electronic connections that exist in every walk of life, there is little need for a strong central authority.
(17) Power and authority not only can be distributed throughout the system, but must be redistributed for appropriate action to be taken on a timely basis.
(18) We have reached the point in which everyone must become a leader of what they do or no one is.
(19) The Electronic Age is decentralizing activities while calling for interdependent responses to routine as well as crisis situations.
(20) Managers are atavistic and the hierarchical organization is anachronistic.
(21) The time for change, dramatic and radical, is now.
(22) There are no secrets anymore.
When the German article came out, it highlighted the obvious. Corporate America was off its track, running harder and harder but making little progress because it had left its steel rails. That is when “corpocracy” set in. Unfortunately, it is not only an American Disease, but also a Western Society Disease.
V A CASE IN POINT
Corpocracy has conditioned us to be passive and nonresponsive, silent and safe hires, going along to get along, doing what we are told even when we know it is wrong, keeping our nose clean and out of trouble, not being a whistle blower when we discover corruption, not reporting somebody seen misusing or stealing company property, or somebody withholding important information to a project.
Corpocracy has led to worker cynicism with workers bringing their bodies to work but leaving their minds at home.
It is counterintuitive to suggest that the corporate design is anachronistic; that corporate society has overstayed its functional life; that this has led to corpocracy.
To illustrate, I once told the director of a department of sixty people that he didn’t need his ten manager-supervisors. He looked at me aghast, “How would we operate?”
I answered, “Better than you’re operating now.”
A nice man, he was literally dumbfounded by such a suggestion. He could not see getting anything done without all these overseers of work.
Well, he was wrong. These were professionals. In one section of his operation, there were seven Ph.D.’s. They were all treated as if children suspended in terminal adolescence waiting for instructions from above, which incidentally, were by people who had little knowledge of their discipline. It resulted in chaos.
These ten manager-supervisors, whom I describe here, took in $750,000 in salaries and benefits. It was the 1980s and they were essentially paper pushers and meeting holders, both now essentially replaced by electronic records and conferences.
VI WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM OUR ENEMIES
Another writer registered concern that Islam and its jihad could one day take over our way of life. I don’t think so, not if we learn important lessons from how this movement operates.
The Western belief is that if we could only take out Osama bin Laden the international jihad would collapse, and peace would be restored throughout the world. Nothing could be further from the truth.
What the terrorist movement should teach us is the wisdom of decentralization. There couldn’t be a looser confederation than this jihad. Yet, it has confounded the single super power of the world.
Consider this:
(1) There is no strong central authority with this jihad, although we like to identify certain members of the jihad as occupying this authority.
(2) We have erroneously looked at Islam as a group and failed to recognize these renegades are only a small splinter of the total Islam population.
(3) The best equipped, most technological advanced and electronically sophisticated military the world has ever known has failed to subdue this poorly trained, poorly led, poorly equipped, and relatively small insurgency movement.
(4) The reason is obvious.
(5) The jihad has mastered the wisdom of decentralization where the passion of individuals is the highest possible, along with the willingness to sacrifice their lives for the cause.
(6) The jihad’s only advantage is the knowledge that it can move swiftly and stealthily without the encumbrances of a lethargic, complex and complicated multilevel sophisticated organization of apparatchiks carrying out decisions made half a world away.
(7) The Roman Army made similar mistakes when the Visigoths and Germanic tribes sacked Rome.
(8) Rome refused to demand sacrifices of its Roman citizens, and instead entertained them in the coliseum.
(9) The Roman Army failed to adjust its military to deal effectively with these barbarians from the north and paid dearly for it.
(10) Rome fell.
(11) The Dark Middle Ages followed.
This elaboration on “corpocracy” is meant to show that a reluctance to learn from our enemies is not new, but has tracked man throughout history. Time will only tell if we will become unstuck and learn from our enemies.
Check out other essays by Dr. Fisher on his website: www.fisherofideas.com, where all his books are also available for purchase.
Monday, March 31, 2008
BUSH'S WAR -- CORPOCRACY STRIPPED NAKED -- A THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE FROM A READER
BUSH’S WAR – CORPOCRACY STRIPPED NAKED
A THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE FROM A READER
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 31, 2008
MY OBSERVATIONS:
The people in my email address book are doers. They have lived well, worked hard, and conducted their lives with honor and a sense of duty. They have been loyal to the programming of their souls. Unfortunately, this has left many echoing the rhetoric of their church or school, or, indeed, of one political party or another.
We desire our leaders to be our heroes. Often, without realizing it, we parrot the truth as it is dictated to us; even have a clash of wills when someone differs with our programming.
It is the purpose of my writing to uncover some of the truths disguised under all the rhetoric by bringing together a multitude of ideas and letting what is truly meaningful to us and for us to surface. The piece that follows represents the thoughts of one of my emailers.
Sigmund Freud wrote in the "The Future of an Illusion" (1927), addressing the question of religion, something that gives us pause regarding the question of truth:
"The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth.
"The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that newborn babies are brought by the stork. Here, too, we are telling the truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what the large bird signifies. But the child does not know it. He hears only the distorted part of what we say, and feels that he has been deceived; and we know how often his distrust of the grownups and his refractoriness actually take their start from this impression.
"We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level."
We are bombarded with information often devoid of any consistent symbolism with the truth buried in an avalanche of words.
The key idiom to the "Bush's War" piece that I wrote, as with many others, is an attempt to make truth naked so the reader will see it as he or she perceives truth.
There is some method to my madness. My approach is on the fallacy of the design. This finds me generating ideas not getting lost in information; on creative thinking not deductive reasoning; on provocation not on description; on movement off the dime not on judgment of the dime we're on; on looking at our problems holistically not in parts; on nonlinear thinking not linear logic; on systemic indicators not elemental meanings; on a way forward often by looking back; on challenging those in positions of power not on defending their actions; on gleaning some wisdom not on appearing clever; and on a pluralistic view not on a single perspective.
My whole purpose in writing in this genre is to encourage my readers to participate in this exercise.
We seem lost in a search to do the "right thing" rather than designing a way forward. The emailer here is aware of that. He is laying down a possibility of what may unfold rather than a polemical attack on "what is." He is working out a conceptual framework of understanding of what he perceives as a possibility. He is concerned, and rightly so, but is more interested in action rather than with description. He provides much food for thought.
A peculiar thing happens when we take the time to think our own thoughts rather than what we are told to believe is so. We become creative with information organizing itself around our ideas instead of the other way around, as is problematic of our culture. This comes out of creative thinking and self-organization instead of aping the words of the media, or our cultural programming.
JRF
AN EMAILERS REASONED REACTION TO “BUSH’S WAR -- Corpocracy Stripped Naked"
Some thoughts:
I think the clash between Islam and the West is much deeper and broader than Afghanistan, Iraq, Al Qaeda, the media, etc. It is something akin to a tectonic collision of philosophies, analogous to the earthquake-making, mountain-forming collision of continental plates. The resulting upheaval in human affairs is inevitable; the combination of modern technology and the sheer size of Islam are destined to make this a mighty storm.
To look at Iraq, or any of the battles, on its own, is thinking tactically. That is the most common mode of thinking, but often misses the big picture.
I suspect the WMD debacle was the attempt to create the simplistic and emotional rationale for public consumption, in the same manner that the “slavery” issue was used to rally northern sons to die for what at the root, were economic issues. It was weak to begin with, no WMD’s were found, and it collapsed to the detriment of the Administration.
The success or failure of “Bush’s War” will depend on whether or not democracy takes root in Iraq, spreads to other countries, and offers the Arab people an alternative to the current strain of Islam. That's one hell of a long shot, in my opinion.
In addition, the American people are not known for endurance and stamina in the face of extended difficulty, especially the current generations. To embark upon such a long commitment with the scaled down military, which the Administration inherited, was a bad choice; they're running out of steam.
We can only hope the other side runs out of steam first, and that may happen. Again, we just get lucky. Even if the Iraqi government achieves internal peace, they then have to be strong enough to fend off invasion by Iran or Syria or both after we leave. What are the odds?
None of this is to say there was not a goat rope within the Administration. Clearly, there was. But then, it has been my experience that every human organization is a goat rope to some degree. Some get lucky, others don't.
The winners write history. Both combatants believe they're ‘right’ as they wage conflict. The winner's view of ‘right’ goes on and the loser's is forgotten. It's the might that determines the winner, not their righteousness.
There seems to be very little ‘leadership,’ as you and I would define it, in our species. Rather, we have the summation of billions of tactical decisions made by individuals, with the resultant cacophony of outcomes. Because they are organized and persistent, Islam might conquer the world, seventh century thinking included. The technology magnifier might effectively end our species as part of this. Should that happen, nature will give yet another species their shot at world domination.
______
A THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE FROM A READER
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 31, 2008
MY OBSERVATIONS:
The people in my email address book are doers. They have lived well, worked hard, and conducted their lives with honor and a sense of duty. They have been loyal to the programming of their souls. Unfortunately, this has left many echoing the rhetoric of their church or school, or, indeed, of one political party or another.
We desire our leaders to be our heroes. Often, without realizing it, we parrot the truth as it is dictated to us; even have a clash of wills when someone differs with our programming.
It is the purpose of my writing to uncover some of the truths disguised under all the rhetoric by bringing together a multitude of ideas and letting what is truly meaningful to us and for us to surface. The piece that follows represents the thoughts of one of my emailers.
Sigmund Freud wrote in the "The Future of an Illusion" (1927), addressing the question of religion, something that gives us pause regarding the question of truth:
"The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth.
"The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that newborn babies are brought by the stork. Here, too, we are telling the truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what the large bird signifies. But the child does not know it. He hears only the distorted part of what we say, and feels that he has been deceived; and we know how often his distrust of the grownups and his refractoriness actually take their start from this impression.
"We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level."
We are bombarded with information often devoid of any consistent symbolism with the truth buried in an avalanche of words.
The key idiom to the "Bush's War" piece that I wrote, as with many others, is an attempt to make truth naked so the reader will see it as he or she perceives truth.
There is some method to my madness. My approach is on the fallacy of the design. This finds me generating ideas not getting lost in information; on creative thinking not deductive reasoning; on provocation not on description; on movement off the dime not on judgment of the dime we're on; on looking at our problems holistically not in parts; on nonlinear thinking not linear logic; on systemic indicators not elemental meanings; on a way forward often by looking back; on challenging those in positions of power not on defending their actions; on gleaning some wisdom not on appearing clever; and on a pluralistic view not on a single perspective.
My whole purpose in writing in this genre is to encourage my readers to participate in this exercise.
We seem lost in a search to do the "right thing" rather than designing a way forward. The emailer here is aware of that. He is laying down a possibility of what may unfold rather than a polemical attack on "what is." He is working out a conceptual framework of understanding of what he perceives as a possibility. He is concerned, and rightly so, but is more interested in action rather than with description. He provides much food for thought.
A peculiar thing happens when we take the time to think our own thoughts rather than what we are told to believe is so. We become creative with information organizing itself around our ideas instead of the other way around, as is problematic of our culture. This comes out of creative thinking and self-organization instead of aping the words of the media, or our cultural programming.
JRF
AN EMAILERS REASONED REACTION TO “BUSH’S WAR -- Corpocracy Stripped Naked"
Some thoughts:
I think the clash between Islam and the West is much deeper and broader than Afghanistan, Iraq, Al Qaeda, the media, etc. It is something akin to a tectonic collision of philosophies, analogous to the earthquake-making, mountain-forming collision of continental plates. The resulting upheaval in human affairs is inevitable; the combination of modern technology and the sheer size of Islam are destined to make this a mighty storm.
To look at Iraq, or any of the battles, on its own, is thinking tactically. That is the most common mode of thinking, but often misses the big picture.
I suspect the WMD debacle was the attempt to create the simplistic and emotional rationale for public consumption, in the same manner that the “slavery” issue was used to rally northern sons to die for what at the root, were economic issues. It was weak to begin with, no WMD’s were found, and it collapsed to the detriment of the Administration.
The success or failure of “Bush’s War” will depend on whether or not democracy takes root in Iraq, spreads to other countries, and offers the Arab people an alternative to the current strain of Islam. That's one hell of a long shot, in my opinion.
In addition, the American people are not known for endurance and stamina in the face of extended difficulty, especially the current generations. To embark upon such a long commitment with the scaled down military, which the Administration inherited, was a bad choice; they're running out of steam.
We can only hope the other side runs out of steam first, and that may happen. Again, we just get lucky. Even if the Iraqi government achieves internal peace, they then have to be strong enough to fend off invasion by Iran or Syria or both after we leave. What are the odds?
None of this is to say there was not a goat rope within the Administration. Clearly, there was. But then, it has been my experience that every human organization is a goat rope to some degree. Some get lucky, others don't.
The winners write history. Both combatants believe they're ‘right’ as they wage conflict. The winner's view of ‘right’ goes on and the loser's is forgotten. It's the might that determines the winner, not their righteousness.
There seems to be very little ‘leadership,’ as you and I would define it, in our species. Rather, we have the summation of billions of tactical decisions made by individuals, with the resultant cacophony of outcomes. Because they are organized and persistent, Islam might conquer the world, seventh century thinking included. The technology magnifier might effectively end our species as part of this. Should that happen, nature will give yet another species their shot at world domination.
______
Sunday, March 30, 2008
SOUTH AFRICA, MINDSET & SELF-IMAGE!
TODAY’S TAMPA TRIBUNE COLUMN (March 30, 2008), SOUTH AFRICA, MINDSET & SELF-IMAGE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 30, 2008
Tampa Tribune chief editorial writer is Joseph Brown. Today's column dealt with the progress and failure over the past forty years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. This dovetails with some of my work now on my novel GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA, which juxtaposes 1968 in the US versus the same time in South Africa.
JRF
-----------------
Joseph,
My wife and I had Shabbat dinner with two Jewish couples Friday. I was impressed with the simplicity and sense of community with which the Jewish Sabbath is celebrated.
By nature, I am not very gregarious, actually somewhat of a recluse, but stimulated by the conversation of my host, Dean of Students, USF Medical School, and his other guest, a physicist.
I've often said I would have little to read were it not for Jewish writers. This respect and admiration for the Jewish culture extends back to my college days.
One Christmas vacation, many years ago, when I was making my typical trip to Clinton (Iowa) Public Library, while most others were otherwise occupied, my mother asked me, "Did you see any of your friends there?"
I answered, "Only my Jewish friends."
When I shared this with my Jewish friends, the physicist said, "In many ways, I think, you had a Jewish mother." I think I did in the sense that we shared a common culture in striving for excellence.
The Medical educator, who is something of a sports fan, asked us, who we thought was the greatest leader in sport. The physicist and I shrugged our shoulders.
"Vince Lombardi," the doctor replied. Then he quoted the famous Green Bay Packers coach.
"Everyone remembers Lombardi's famous quote," he said, "'Winning isn't everything; winning is the only thing,' but what I think is a more significant quote is this, ''Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.'"
The Jewish culture has striven for perfection and often achieved excellence, experiencing prejudice and exclusion along the way, but changing the world in the process. Look no further than Freud and Einstein.
You write that April 4, 2008 will be forty years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. African Americans, as you point out, exploded into violence across the nation in shock and frustration that day.
1968 was also the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the Democratic Convention in Chicago, where the "Chicago Seven" used their anger to disrupt proceedings, while the Republican Convention in Miami found presidential candidate Richard Nixon embracing Sammy Davis, Jr., as a surreal cloud descended on that convention.
Now, imagine experiencing all this through the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail in South Africa.
The Brits and Afrikaners alike delighted in the racial and political chaos in the United States, especially those sympathetic to the draconian Afrikaans policy of apartheid.
Now fast forward to 2008. The African National Congress is in power with the majority population no longer under the scourge of apartheid.
I have not been back to South Africa in nearly forty years. What I hear and read about South Africa today is discouraging. The country is in apparent chaos with crime out of control, as is AIDS. The Bantu people who lived in impoverished conditions in SOWETO in 1968 when I was there, if anything, finding themselves living in worse conditions today in 2008.
South African illiteracy has failed to improve, school dropout rates are at an all-time high, corruption in government seems part of the modus operandi, and this great country is, to put it politely, floundering.
The magnificent Carlton Hotel in downtown Johannesburg was being built in 1968. Forty years later, it is closed and an eyesore on the Johannesburg skyline.
Because of the oppressive climate and chaos in Johannesburg, white South African doctors I know have immigrated to the Tampa Bay area in Florida.
You and other journalists, educators, scholars, and advocates -- Bill Cosby for one has profiled an upwardly mobile family on television -- imply the country has never left the mindset of slavery, and sadly, I agree.
In South Africa, as elsewhere on this beautiful African continent, the ghost of colonialism pervades the mindset of the populace. Colonialism has left its scar on Africa.
As Freud and others have pointed out -- he in "Civilization and Its Discontent" -- our inclination is to go quickly from pain to pleasure, and in this avoidance process from self-realization to self-destruction. We see it everywhere.
This is unfortunate as embracing pain is the only way to grow, as the Jewish culture has demonstrated, and as all those who have succeeded overcoming major impediments know only too well.
I am in the autumn of my years, and something of an idealist, thinking that by this late stage in my life "right would triumph over might, good over evil, community over corruption."
None of this has happened as might and evil and corruption have become only more sophisticated.
Likewise, change has found us developing more sophisticated toys of distraction, while complicating our lives with them without improving the content of our character.
We have preferred to put off the pain and to retreat into the surreal world of pleasure. Narcissism and hedonism are common conditions. It is why the times are still called the "Age of Anxiety," as the times were in the 1970s. This “pathology of normalcy” led me to write LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007).
What is the answer?
I worked and lived in Europe in the late 1980s, and the sin of the Nazis was palpable wherever I went in Germany, or whenever I was in the company of Germans in the Netherlands. Now, sixty years later, Germans suffer for something they only know in history books. The mindset of Nazism persists.
You can apology for slavery, colonialism, Nazism or some other ism forever and your apologies will not make any of these isms go away. It will remain a scapegoat as long as people fail to get beyond them.
In 1968, I went to a Museum in Belgium, which displayed exclusively Belgium Congo artifacts, and found it chilling. I asked the curator how these artifacts were obtained. He dismissed my question without an answer. Later, I read a history of this tiny country's colonial experience. It was haunting. Belgium colonizers were brutal and they stole Belgium Congo art as if they had the right without consent or compensation.
This defined the colonial experience, which strangely, I felt I was experiencing in Johannesburg in the 1980s, living like royalty, when I was a lower middle class guy from Iowa, whose father had been a brakeman on the railroad. It was obscene and troubling.
Much of the trouble in Africa, here as elsewhere, is connected to this horrifying and cruel exploitation of the people.
When people are exploited, invariably they take their anger and hostility out on their own. I saw this in a small way in my da, who was badgered by his bosses on the railroad, and unconsciously badgered his family when he came home with his booming voice and earthy expletives.
Gretchen Parker, in another article today on race relations, mentioned senator Joseph Biden saying, Barak Obama was "clean-cut." We seldom realize how patronizing attempts to be "with it" turn out to be.
I'm not into "You Tube" Internet exchanging, but a woman I know accidentally found herself witnessing a conversation between two African Americans girls. "They used ugly racial slurs to describe each other in the conversation." She said it made Don Imus sound like a choirboy.
It may seem weird to mention IBM in this context, but years ago, when I was first joining the workforce as a professional; some of my colleagues were with IBM.
It was a requirement for IBM salesmen, then, to address each other as "Mr." and to dress in dark suits, black shoes and knee high sox, white shirts and solid color ties. The hair had to be short, no sideburns, no mustaches or beards, and clean-shaven. Their appearance had to pass muster every day.
The IBM culture was designed to promote professionalism to the nth degree with the idea if you looked professional, talked professional, you would be professional.
Image is reality and my company, Nalco Chemical Company, adopted the IBM look to the letter.
We cannot undo the sins of the past that our people, in my case the white race, has done against African Americans and American Indians.
It is appalling how little attention is given Native Americans when it comes to discrimination. Yet American Indians have the highest death rate from alcoholism, and the highest death rate of babies born suffering from toxic alcohol.
Sure, there are successful African Americans and American Indians. And, yes, they could probably do more for their poorer members. But as Bill Cosby puts it, the poor could do a lot more for themselves. Challenging words but words don't seem to mean much when they aren't translated into action. And what prevents this?
My sense is that it all starts with SELF-IMAGE.
We forget that there is discrimination amongst successful whites against unsuccessful members of their own race. We are never going to dissolve discrimination; nor can we ever repair the damage done by slavery, colonialism, Nazism, or any other terrible ism.
I've encountered discrimination, as I'm sure you have, every phase of my life from a child to that of a man in his advanced years, and yet I have survived to the point of prevailing, as have you.
I give the total credit for this to my mother who programmed a powerful self-image in me, while my da tried equally strenuously to tear it down. It was this tension that made me, and I believe, makes every individual, not a group, no matter what their color, ethnicity, or culture.
If every child, black, white, red or yellow were given a powerful positive self-image, the pain of life would not only be endured but also embraced, and that person would soar on it to heights he or she might not even imagine in his or her wildest dreams.
The content of character builds on this but it needs nurturing from the very beginning of life so that the person will accept himself or herself as he or she is. Because of this acceptance, that person will in turn accept others as he or she finds them. This will in turn embolden that person to face all challenges with a spirit of can do.
Be always well,
Jim
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 30, 2008
Tampa Tribune chief editorial writer is Joseph Brown. Today's column dealt with the progress and failure over the past forty years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. This dovetails with some of my work now on my novel GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA, which juxtaposes 1968 in the US versus the same time in South Africa.
JRF
-----------------
Joseph,
My wife and I had Shabbat dinner with two Jewish couples Friday. I was impressed with the simplicity and sense of community with which the Jewish Sabbath is celebrated.
By nature, I am not very gregarious, actually somewhat of a recluse, but stimulated by the conversation of my host, Dean of Students, USF Medical School, and his other guest, a physicist.
I've often said I would have little to read were it not for Jewish writers. This respect and admiration for the Jewish culture extends back to my college days.
One Christmas vacation, many years ago, when I was making my typical trip to Clinton (Iowa) Public Library, while most others were otherwise occupied, my mother asked me, "Did you see any of your friends there?"
I answered, "Only my Jewish friends."
When I shared this with my Jewish friends, the physicist said, "In many ways, I think, you had a Jewish mother." I think I did in the sense that we shared a common culture in striving for excellence.
(Dr. Fisher at Kruger National Park South Africa with his Children 1968)
"Vince Lombardi," the doctor replied. Then he quoted the famous Green Bay Packers coach.
"Everyone remembers Lombardi's famous quote," he said, "'Winning isn't everything; winning is the only thing,' but what I think is a more significant quote is this, ''Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.'"
The Jewish culture has striven for perfection and often achieved excellence, experiencing prejudice and exclusion along the way, but changing the world in the process. Look no further than Freud and Einstein.
You write that April 4, 2008 will be forty years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. African Americans, as you point out, exploded into violence across the nation in shock and frustration that day.
1968 was also the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the Democratic Convention in Chicago, where the "Chicago Seven" used their anger to disrupt proceedings, while the Republican Convention in Miami found presidential candidate Richard Nixon embracing Sammy Davis, Jr., as a surreal cloud descended on that convention.
Now, imagine experiencing all this through the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail in South Africa.
The Brits and Afrikaners alike delighted in the racial and political chaos in the United States, especially those sympathetic to the draconian Afrikaans policy of apartheid.
Now fast forward to 2008. The African National Congress is in power with the majority population no longer under the scourge of apartheid.
I have not been back to South Africa in nearly forty years. What I hear and read about South Africa today is discouraging. The country is in apparent chaos with crime out of control, as is AIDS. The Bantu people who lived in impoverished conditions in SOWETO in 1968 when I was there, if anything, finding themselves living in worse conditions today in 2008.
South African illiteracy has failed to improve, school dropout rates are at an all-time high, corruption in government seems part of the modus operandi, and this great country is, to put it politely, floundering.
The magnificent Carlton Hotel in downtown Johannesburg was being built in 1968. Forty years later, it is closed and an eyesore on the Johannesburg skyline.
Because of the oppressive climate and chaos in Johannesburg, white South African doctors I know have immigrated to the Tampa Bay area in Florida.
You and other journalists, educators, scholars, and advocates -- Bill Cosby for one has profiled an upwardly mobile family on television -- imply the country has never left the mindset of slavery, and sadly, I agree.
In South Africa, as elsewhere on this beautiful African continent, the ghost of colonialism pervades the mindset of the populace. Colonialism has left its scar on Africa.
As Freud and others have pointed out -- he in "Civilization and Its Discontent" -- our inclination is to go quickly from pain to pleasure, and in this avoidance process from self-realization to self-destruction. We see it everywhere.
This is unfortunate as embracing pain is the only way to grow, as the Jewish culture has demonstrated, and as all those who have succeeded overcoming major impediments know only too well.
I am in the autumn of my years, and something of an idealist, thinking that by this late stage in my life "right would triumph over might, good over evil, community over corruption."
None of this has happened as might and evil and corruption have become only more sophisticated.
Likewise, change has found us developing more sophisticated toys of distraction, while complicating our lives with them without improving the content of our character.
We have preferred to put off the pain and to retreat into the surreal world of pleasure. Narcissism and hedonism are common conditions. It is why the times are still called the "Age of Anxiety," as the times were in the 1970s. This “pathology of normalcy” led me to write LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007).
What is the answer?
I worked and lived in Europe in the late 1980s, and the sin of the Nazis was palpable wherever I went in Germany, or whenever I was in the company of Germans in the Netherlands. Now, sixty years later, Germans suffer for something they only know in history books. The mindset of Nazism persists.
You can apology for slavery, colonialism, Nazism or some other ism forever and your apologies will not make any of these isms go away. It will remain a scapegoat as long as people fail to get beyond them.
In 1968, I went to a Museum in Belgium, which displayed exclusively Belgium Congo artifacts, and found it chilling. I asked the curator how these artifacts were obtained. He dismissed my question without an answer. Later, I read a history of this tiny country's colonial experience. It was haunting. Belgium colonizers were brutal and they stole Belgium Congo art as if they had the right without consent or compensation.
This defined the colonial experience, which strangely, I felt I was experiencing in Johannesburg in the 1980s, living like royalty, when I was a lower middle class guy from Iowa, whose father had been a brakeman on the railroad. It was obscene and troubling.
Much of the trouble in Africa, here as elsewhere, is connected to this horrifying and cruel exploitation of the people.
When people are exploited, invariably they take their anger and hostility out on their own. I saw this in a small way in my da, who was badgered by his bosses on the railroad, and unconsciously badgered his family when he came home with his booming voice and earthy expletives.
Gretchen Parker, in another article today on race relations, mentioned senator Joseph Biden saying, Barak Obama was "clean-cut." We seldom realize how patronizing attempts to be "with it" turn out to be.
I'm not into "You Tube" Internet exchanging, but a woman I know accidentally found herself witnessing a conversation between two African Americans girls. "They used ugly racial slurs to describe each other in the conversation." She said it made Don Imus sound like a choirboy.
It may seem weird to mention IBM in this context, but years ago, when I was first joining the workforce as a professional; some of my colleagues were with IBM.
It was a requirement for IBM salesmen, then, to address each other as "Mr." and to dress in dark suits, black shoes and knee high sox, white shirts and solid color ties. The hair had to be short, no sideburns, no mustaches or beards, and clean-shaven. Their appearance had to pass muster every day.
The IBM culture was designed to promote professionalism to the nth degree with the idea if you looked professional, talked professional, you would be professional.
Image is reality and my company, Nalco Chemical Company, adopted the IBM look to the letter.
We cannot undo the sins of the past that our people, in my case the white race, has done against African Americans and American Indians.
It is appalling how little attention is given Native Americans when it comes to discrimination. Yet American Indians have the highest death rate from alcoholism, and the highest death rate of babies born suffering from toxic alcohol.
Sure, there are successful African Americans and American Indians. And, yes, they could probably do more for their poorer members. But as Bill Cosby puts it, the poor could do a lot more for themselves. Challenging words but words don't seem to mean much when they aren't translated into action. And what prevents this?
My sense is that it all starts with SELF-IMAGE.
We forget that there is discrimination amongst successful whites against unsuccessful members of their own race. We are never going to dissolve discrimination; nor can we ever repair the damage done by slavery, colonialism, Nazism, or any other terrible ism.
I've encountered discrimination, as I'm sure you have, every phase of my life from a child to that of a man in his advanced years, and yet I have survived to the point of prevailing, as have you.
I give the total credit for this to my mother who programmed a powerful self-image in me, while my da tried equally strenuously to tear it down. It was this tension that made me, and I believe, makes every individual, not a group, no matter what their color, ethnicity, or culture.
If every child, black, white, red or yellow were given a powerful positive self-image, the pain of life would not only be endured but also embraced, and that person would soar on it to heights he or she might not even imagine in his or her wildest dreams.
The content of character builds on this but it needs nurturing from the very beginning of life so that the person will accept himself or herself as he or she is. Because of this acceptance, that person will in turn accept others as he or she finds them. This will in turn embolden that person to face all challenges with a spirit of can do.
Be always well,
Jim
Saturday, March 29, 2008
BUSH'S WAR -- CORPOCRACY STRIPPED NAKED!
BUSH’S WAR – CORPOCRACY STRIPPED NAKED!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 26, 2008
“Being a confidante of a CEO is not the same thing as being the CEO’s organization development (OD) adviser and consultant. Confusing the two roles is a certain route to disaster. One calls for improving the spirit of the CEO to face the day; the other calls for spoiling it by confronting him (or her) with news the CEO would rather not hear; exposing him (or her) to ideas he (or she) would rather not think about much less face, while presenting irrefutable evidence that certain decisions must be made now, decisions the CEO would prefer to table for another time.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., Leaderless Leadership in the Twenty-first Century
I PRESIDENT BUSH’S ADMINISTRATION: IN SEARCH OF AN IDEA
In case you missed it, I would urge you to watch the PBS television rendition of “Bush’s War” when it is rebroadcast. Recently (March 24 – 25, 2008), I watched this program suspended between disbelief and horror. No presidency has failed so gloriously upward as this administration over the past seven and one-quarter years. The Bush Administration, as a consequence, has been stripped naked for all to see the folly of man.
The “Bush’s War” is a four and one-half hour presentation over these two nights, which takes us to the present. It distills 40 hours of taping, hundreds of interviews and other sources to create this snapshot of Bush’s War.
For the last score of years, I have been pointing out the disintegration of American leadership in all phases of American life. My interest is not academic or intellectual, but that of a pedestrian scholar viewing the deconstruction as if a sidewalk superintendent watching an edifice tumble to dust before my very eyes.
This has been the equivalent of a reverse moral metamorphoses signaling the collapse from high moral purpose, duty and honor to cynicism, hubris and uncharacteristic hegemony.
It would seem that the Bush Administration in search of an idea has settled on the bellicose policy of “preemption” to be its legacy. This has been a reverse moral metamorphoses free of ideology, free of realism, and even free of a clear defense of freedom. It appears to be predominantly emotional and irrational based on old histories and grudges with a passion to win, to stick it to an old enemy left off the hook, Iraq.
It is no accident that neo conservatives behind this charge into the blind were schooled in corporate America.
The “war on terror” was first launched against the perpetrators of 9/11 trained in Afghanistan, but neo conservatives bristled to widen the war to a larger target, Iraq. President Bush the Elder left Iraq as unfinished business, which president Bush the Younger was determined to finish.
It made no sense from the first, as leadership never does when the heart leads the head. There was no selective service draft, only a relatively small volunteer army, quite inadequate for a major war.
Once again, the National Guard was being asked to take up the slack as it did so well in Bosnia, leaving the nation with inadequate reserve support for national disasters, as Katrina proved. President Bush the Younger insisted he was not supportive of a nation building strategy, but found to his embarrassment that he had backed into this conundrum. It was the old corporate game of “ready, fire, aim!”
What PBS’s “Bush’s War” shows so dramatically is the divisiveness between the State Department headed by Colin Powell and the Department of Defense headed by Vice President Chaney’s old pal, Donald Rumsfeld.
One looks at this snapshot of Bush’s War and remembers his own corporate days like déjà vu. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld cuts off the input of think tanks and state department experts on Iraq and the Middle East in favor of his like-minded cronies in the Department of Defense. It is the old corporate saw of “divide & conquer,” and then decide, “what is so,” even if it is not, and then feverishly collect evidence of dubious content and suspect sources to solidify one’s position.
II ORGANIZATION DESIGNED AGAINST ITSELF
Every corporation has ass kisser, and bullies. In most cases, despite their countervailing presence, business gets done. When the bully is the chief honcho and bullying is his preferred arsenal of attack, taking no enemies, it is the making of catastrophe from the beginning.
The reason for going to war with Iraq was ostensibly because Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). The CIA was unable to uncover conclusive evidence of such weapons, and CIA director Tenner told the president so. Chaney and Rumsfeld then badgered the CIA to come up with a “white paper” that suggested otherwise. They eventually complied, applying incredible pressure on the CIA director and his people to be complicit in this charade. When the final “white paper” on evidence of WMDs was presented to President Bush, he said, “Is this all you’ve got?”
It was then, at this point, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, as OD consultant to the president, should have said to the CIA director, “Go back and make the case for war or not.” But she was the president’s pal, a confidante and friend, and remained silent. CIA director Tenner, who had been harassed into submission by Chaney and Rumsfeld, told the president it was a “slam dunk.” It was in this theatre of the absurd that the go-cart of war was pushed down the hill into the eventual abyss.
In the middle of this theatre of the absurd, the generals were saying that 400,000 troops would be needed, while Rumsfeld suggested 70,000 would be adequate. He compromised eventually on 120,000. The generals also said that the hard part would be the occupation and dealing with the ethnic tensions that already existed in a population of nearly 30 million with three powerful cultural tribes. Rumsfeld soft-pedaled this. He became a television fixture in a culture that loves its soap opera icons that titillate their fancies with swashbuckling bravado of the United States strutting its stuff as the “lone superpower.”
None of this is real to 99 percent of a nation not asked to make any sacrifices, but very real to the families of the men and women of the 1 percent fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the early low points of this tragic-comedy was the appearance of the Secretary of State, not the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, presenting the case for going to war with Iraq with CIA Director Tenner sitting behind him. The Neocons had successfully created a full-court fiction of WMDs, while two otherwise honorable and long serving patriotic Americans were made history’s stooges in this psychodrama.
Former national security adviser to President Bush the Elder, Brent Scowcroft, sponsor and mentor to Condoleezza Rice, wrote an Op-Ed article in The Wall Street Journal entitled “Don’t Attack Saddam.” He warned in the piece that invading Iraq would lead to a long, bloody, and costly occupation, while diverting the US from the war on terror, which was then concentrated on Afghanistan. Rice and President Bush were furious. They felt betrayed. This was not however true of his father who received an advance copy of the article and gave it his tacit approval.
President Bush the Younger won the 2001 election by the fabled record of the Florida ballot. After graduating from Yale, he was like a prodigal son who rejected the comfort and affluence of his family and sought his fortune on his own prospecting for oil, and eventually striking it rich. He rejoined the family on his own terms demonstrating a high risk, decisive and entrepreneurial spirit. Prior to being president, he showed little interest in foreign affairs or intellectual pursuits, preferring straight talking men-of-action, men who never second-guessed themselves. What he did as president is common in corpocracy, that is, he surrounded himself with like thinking, acting and feeling individuals. The consequences of this inclination are to magnify personal strengths while compounding personal weaknesses. Leadership, unfortunately, is not a zero sum game.
III WHEN LEADERSHIP WAS NOT CONFUSED WITH GENERALSHIP
The dominant components of leadership are strategic vision along with a clear understanding on the ground, that is, where you are, where you want to go, and what the requirements are to get there. Historian David McCullough, author of “1776” (2007) claims George Washington, our first president, was a great leader, but not a great Revolutionary War general. Nathaniel Greene was a far superior general. McCullough concludes, however, that Washington, in his opinion, was our greatest president because of his leadership.
Washington was a pondering decision maker, a deeply spiritual man but certainly not a conventional Christian. He frequently thanked God for watching over the revolution and blessing the republic, but he rarely spoke of sin or Christ. He often described God as the “Grand Architect” of the universe, “Supreme Dispenser of every Good,” and the clockmaker God of deism. He knew the importance of symbolism and used it to the nth degree. More importantly, he made an accurate assessment of where his new country was and what it would take to move it in the direction of stability.
When the Revolutionary War was going badly in 1776, General Horatio Gates launched a conspiracy of a coterie of ambitious generals to humiliate and embarrass Washington into resigning as Supreme Commander of Army. If you could picture the times, the army was low on ammunition, food and supplies; it had suffered defeat after defeat; the Continental Congress was discussing possible replacements for General Washington; and the enlistments of many of Washington’s men were coming to an end, vastly depleting his army of any ability to compete with the most powerful military force in the world, the British army and navy.
It was in this climate that he opened a letter by accident addressed to general Gates, which disclosed the plot to unseat him. He closed the letter, wrote on it that it had been opened by mistake thinking it was command business, and sent it on to the general. This quelled the conspiracy. Washington knew he needed every man including disenchanted generals.
With the majority of his troops soon to end enlistments in December 1776, he brought them all together and announced that he would give each man a $10 bonus, which was more than a month’s pay, if they would reenlist. The majority did. Washington had no way of keeping his promise, as the Continental Congress was nearly broke. His vision of the final outcome never diminished in the darkest days.
With regard to running the war, Washington knew his assets and limitations. He counted on wiser generals and used his capital to rally the troops. He had an eye for organization, discipline, accountability, and assessment. He also demonstrated a facility for recognizing and developing nascent leadership in his men. It was evident with Nathaniel Greene and Benedict Arnold.
Had Arnold died, for instance, at Saratoga where he proved a brilliant strategist and tactician, he would have been the hero of the revolution. This most decisive victory of the revolution motivated France to finance the war. When the credit for the victory went to general Horatio Gates, who had little to do with the victory, Arnold became increasingly disenchanted, ultimately spying for the British. So, today, a “Benedict Arnold” is known as a traitor or betrayer of trust.
Once the war was won, many in the Continental Congress wanted to make Washington king for life. He rejected this, and instead served two four-year terms as president with no desire to serve beyond that time, endorsing his vice president, John Adams, as the second president. Thus, he set a precedence that was maintained until the four-term election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, who died early in his fourth term (April 12, 1945).
Washington was offered a handsome salary as president, which he refused, suggesting that he only be provided with expenses. Ironically, his expenses in today’s dollars would exceed the president’s present salary.
We have not enjoyed Washingtonian leadership of late, as we have created technocrats as leaders, specifically in this instance the neocons. These people are never elected to office but are brought in by those elected.
IV WHERE HAVE ALL THE LEADERS GONE?
We know Barak Obama has a silver tongue not unlike Abraham Lincoln. Both were first term junior senators in the United States Senate from the state of Illinois; both had previously served in the house; both at an early age knew the powerful theatre of the spoken word.
We have Hillary Clinton, a United States Senator, who has served her country well, and is the wife of former President Bill Clinton, who demonstrated leadership qualities similar to previous leaders.
We have John McCain, a United States Senator, who has served his country well in the senate and on the battlefield. He is in the autumn of his years, and if elected, would be the oldest president in our history to be elected. He shares some of the personality traits of President John Adams, who was a no nonsense president, and who never had any slaves, and always said what he meant and meant what he said.
Each of these candidates have demons in their system that could knock them off their center as George Bush the Younger has been knocked off his. Did George Washington have any demons? Indeed, he did.
Washington loved affluence, pomp and circumstance, and the comfort of the elite. He loved the whole theatre of society. He didn’t like to be touched, and it was nearly theatrical when he would be forced to engage in conversation with underlings. He lacked Benjamin Franklin’s ease with everyone. He had a presence but wasn’t open or affable.
He had many critics similar to President Roosevelt. Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed FDR had a first rate personality and a second rate mind. Washington’s critics saw him second rate in both instances. What made him exceptional is that he recognized this also in himself, and in his new nation, and used it to proceed with caution and care. His vision was never clouded by his demons.
As General of the Continental Army, he parried the thrusts of Gates and his allies with the dexterity of the master politician. But when necessary, he could deflect the thrusts of his covert enemies, and when thought necessary, strike back with ferocity and guile.
Washington was an exceedingly complex man, who appreciated brilliance while knowing he lacked such brilliance. There was no hesitation to surround himself with able men, men such as Greene that could out general him. That said he maneuvered politically to retain his command, even as he simultaneously struggled to prevent the Continental Army from dissolving into mutiny.
He was a pondering man, a handsome man, a striking man, and he used this uniqueness to power him to fulfill his ambitions. He is a leader of a type that we could once again see as being our Commander in Chief.
V THE LEADER’S CONTENT OF CHARACTER
Throughout American history, we have had to endure the dalliances of the power brokers and power pursuers. These people are indigenous to all organizations in every line of endeavor. They have no real ideology, no idealism or realism, or commitment to defending the integrity of the American way of life or the citadels of freedom, although they use elements of this in the rhetoric of their essence. Their real ideology is in succeeding big time at any cost.
The temperance with which President George Washington dealt with these distracting human components is a model for all leaders to consider. It is in his letters, speeches and biographies. He was ambitious; he wanted to be the Supreme Commander of the Continental Army, but feigned that that was the furthest thing from his mind. He even wrote to his wife Martha complaining that he was doing everything to avoid this role, when he wanted nothing more desperately. Washington hid his ambition. The fire in his eyes countermanded the composure of his will.
President of the Continental Congress, John Hancock, thought it should be his to refuse, but John Adams, looking at the tall, handsome, graceful Washington, resplendent in his uniform with powdered wig, nominated the general with enthusiasm. Congress concurred.
There is nothing wrong with ambition providing you have the vision to serve and the content of character to absorb attacks from within and outside your sphere of influences, without becoming paranoid, or losing your grip on the focus of your objective. Washington had this; so did Lincoln. They looked like leaders, acted like leaders, comported themselves like leaders. Eisenhower never rose to this level as president, but he did so in war.
Like Washington, Eisenhower showed great leadership as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II. But again like Washington, he was an unremarkable general in the field. Truman used his paranoia as a motivator whereas Nixon was consumed by this demon. Brilliant in many other senses, Nixon and several other presidents found it difficulty to get past their demons without scandal or disruption.
VI THE FALLACIES OF CORPORATE SOCIETY
The United States has progressed to being a corporate society, that is, a corporate structure built around its central nucleus of power.
The corporation has evolved into corpocracy where there is a concentric technocratic reporting system from the center to the corporate periphery. This perfection of Machine Age Thinking is as cumbersome and faulty as any that man has ever developed. It looks good, sounds good, but fails to work efficiently if at all, while human activity is stuck with it as a societal boilerplate. Unfortunately, if flawed in the center, where power is meant to reside, but doesn’t, then a vacuum of power is created with the entire sphere collapsing in on the center.
In this scenario, everyone appears to be sharing power without anyone exercising leadership consistent with the organization’s design. The faultiness of this power structure has been well documented.
We see it in the conduct of the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq; in the subprime real estate crisis; in the collapse of the economy in on itself as the dollar plummets, oil prices surge, and wheat fields are turned into cornfields to make ethanol causing food prices to soar; in the stalled immigration policy; in the laxity of the FDA that allows drugs on the market that kill people; in our mega corporations that solve their economic woes by downsizing, exporting jobs abroad, or merging with other failed businesses; in FEMA being folded under the umbrella of Homeland Security, reduced in staff, facilities, and budget, then forgotten until Katrina; in the pride of greed on Wall Street where reality never touches until a recession threatens.
We see it in Bush’s War, which is a mirror image of all of these other components; in the that presidency as it limps to the end of its administration in worse shape than when it started nearly eight years ago; in the trade deficit in 2008 being the largest in US history; in the loss of 3.5 million manufacturing jobs since 2001; in the collapse of the dollar with the price of Gold rising from $260 an ounce in to $1,000 in the past seven plus years; and in oil going from $28 a barrel to more than $100 today.
The paradoxical dilemma of this presidency is that it unwittingly promoted a marginal extremist terrorist movement to global prominence by preemptive action, and in doing so, energized it into a far more formidable enemy than it was at first. It is a failure of leadership. One man cannot be singled out for such failure. The corporate model of construction is designed for such failure.
VII THE CHALLENGE AHEAD, CULTURE
This little piece is designed to illustrate what happens when the system is designed against itself, when departments sabotage each other instead of working in synergy; when the answers that the power center will accept are the answers it expects regardless of relevance; when leadership has devolved to leaderless leadership.
We have forgotten that human society is not a corporate group, but has evolved as a systemic diverse human entity. That system is displayed as culture. Culture is unique, diverse and individualistic. Together, these cultures form a tapestry of life as the human race, which is systemically organic, but which requires every ounce of its diversity, uniqueness and individuality to enrich the fabric of mankind.
For man to survive as human beings, this system must operate in complementary rather than competitive fashion. It starts with the single unit and progresses on to include all human society. I take the liberty of paraphrasing system researcher Russell Ackoff in this context:
“If you take a system apart to identify its central components, and then operate these central components in such a way that every component behaves as well as it possibly can irrespective of every other central component, then there is one thing of which you can be certain. The entire system will fail to behave as well as it can, and may collapse in on itself.
“Now, this is counterintuitive to Machine Age Thinking, but it is absolutely essential to System Thinking, which is the way the whole human community works or fails to work together. It is way governments work or fail to work from their central power nucleus.
“The corollary to this thinking is that if you have a system that is behaving as well as it can from its central components to its most peripheral components, then none of its components will be working as well as they might. Each component is supporting complementary components at some price to its own ultimate possible achievement. In doing so, synergy is realized and the possible is exceeded because the decisive outcome is much greater than the sum of the system’s component parts.”
We are on the brink of a new presidential election with our military forces stretched to the limit. The Bush’s War has been a failed policy despite all the rhetoric to the contrary. But the war is emblematic of many other societal failures. We have failed inner city schools in metropolitan areas, but we also have failed schools in the suburbs. We have crime in the poorest and most affluent of neighborhoods. We have empty houses because of the subprime debacle, but also empty factories because of failed industrial leadership. We have our best students in high schools and colleges across the land bored to tears attending classes because that is their job, and not because they are committed to learning anything. We have middle aged men and women who have never caught hold because they have never totally left their adolescence, extending it from their teens into their 30s and 40s. We have our great cities attempting to balance between the electronic Silicon Valley and failed Detroit factory model trying to survive. Our entire society is collapsing in on itself because the nucleus of central power has proven essentially a leaderless leadership vacuum.
As if the gods were upon us at this critical moment, we have one of the most refreshing moments in American history in a presidential candidate that is African American, a presidential candidate who is a woman, and a presidential candidate that is a throwback to our second great president, John Adams. Never has the challenge of culture, and the opportunities to heal differences in a common cause been greater than now.
The good paying factory jobs of Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia are never to return. These candidates are talking about saving these jobs or retraining workers in new technologies. The irony is that our school system from grammar school through college is a preparatory factory, which is now anachronistic.
Corporate society has a factory mentality and discharges its problems with a factory mindset. Indeed, education is a defunct institution because of this. Corpocracy attacks problems at the periphery rather than at the nuclear core or power center, as power brokers, power pursuers, and politicians are wont to do.
A cosmetic approach to the problem solving doesn’t disturb the status quo. Item: create a new course, design a new curriculum, or launch a new corporate intervention, always being careful not to disturb the technocrats in the core center. We must move beyond this; we must start by introducing our little ones to the real world they are about to join.
Ergo, I propose that no student be given a high school diploma or college degree that is not proficient in a foreign language. No college graduate should be allowed to sneak through the system dodging language courses with computer proficiency. Computer literacy is not the equivalent of culture literacy. The only way to truly enter another culture is through its language, and we are now a world society.
Culture is destiny. Culture is not isolated but pervasive. Appreciation of culture is what is missing in education.
For within a culture, there are several subcultures. Often these subcultures compete subversively against the primary culture. This was the case of the Department of Defense subverting the Department of State, and intimidating the CIA to capitulate to its preconceived notion of the presence of WMDs in Iraq, when clearly there were none. Unfortunately, this was at the expense of the integrity of the Office of the President, where the nucleus of central power resided.
When the center collapses in on itself, all subcultures across the spectrum from the farthest dimensions of the corporate structure do as well. This succinctly describes the disaster of the Bush’s War and the present socio-economic state of American society.
Likewise, every nation, as well as every corporation, has a culture, and within its culture a myriad of competing subcultures often contrasting with or in direct competition with the primary culture. It is the role of leadership to first recognize this condition, and then to mount an exercise to integrate these differences into an assimilated pattern of focused determination while acknowledging the respective unique constructions of the subcultures. This sounds simple in expression but is extremely difficult to accomplish in deed. It is why culture is the challenge ahead of true leadership.
_______________
Dr. Fisher is a former corporate executive of Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe Ltd., a prolific author, and a registered Republican for more than forty years. See his website and blog: www.fisherofideas.com.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 26, 2008
“Being a confidante of a CEO is not the same thing as being the CEO’s organization development (OD) adviser and consultant. Confusing the two roles is a certain route to disaster. One calls for improving the spirit of the CEO to face the day; the other calls for spoiling it by confronting him (or her) with news the CEO would rather not hear; exposing him (or her) to ideas he (or she) would rather not think about much less face, while presenting irrefutable evidence that certain decisions must be made now, decisions the CEO would prefer to table for another time.”
James R. Fisher, Jr., Leaderless Leadership in the Twenty-first Century
I PRESIDENT BUSH’S ADMINISTRATION: IN SEARCH OF AN IDEA
In case you missed it, I would urge you to watch the PBS television rendition of “Bush’s War” when it is rebroadcast. Recently (March 24 – 25, 2008), I watched this program suspended between disbelief and horror. No presidency has failed so gloriously upward as this administration over the past seven and one-quarter years. The Bush Administration, as a consequence, has been stripped naked for all to see the folly of man.
The “Bush’s War” is a four and one-half hour presentation over these two nights, which takes us to the present. It distills 40 hours of taping, hundreds of interviews and other sources to create this snapshot of Bush’s War.
For the last score of years, I have been pointing out the disintegration of American leadership in all phases of American life. My interest is not academic or intellectual, but that of a pedestrian scholar viewing the deconstruction as if a sidewalk superintendent watching an edifice tumble to dust before my very eyes.
This has been the equivalent of a reverse moral metamorphoses signaling the collapse from high moral purpose, duty and honor to cynicism, hubris and uncharacteristic hegemony.
It would seem that the Bush Administration in search of an idea has settled on the bellicose policy of “preemption” to be its legacy. This has been a reverse moral metamorphoses free of ideology, free of realism, and even free of a clear defense of freedom. It appears to be predominantly emotional and irrational based on old histories and grudges with a passion to win, to stick it to an old enemy left off the hook, Iraq.
It is no accident that neo conservatives behind this charge into the blind were schooled in corporate America.
The “war on terror” was first launched against the perpetrators of 9/11 trained in Afghanistan, but neo conservatives bristled to widen the war to a larger target, Iraq. President Bush the Elder left Iraq as unfinished business, which president Bush the Younger was determined to finish.
It made no sense from the first, as leadership never does when the heart leads the head. There was no selective service draft, only a relatively small volunteer army, quite inadequate for a major war.
Once again, the National Guard was being asked to take up the slack as it did so well in Bosnia, leaving the nation with inadequate reserve support for national disasters, as Katrina proved. President Bush the Younger insisted he was not supportive of a nation building strategy, but found to his embarrassment that he had backed into this conundrum. It was the old corporate game of “ready, fire, aim!”
What PBS’s “Bush’s War” shows so dramatically is the divisiveness between the State Department headed by Colin Powell and the Department of Defense headed by Vice President Chaney’s old pal, Donald Rumsfeld.
One looks at this snapshot of Bush’s War and remembers his own corporate days like déjà vu. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld cuts off the input of think tanks and state department experts on Iraq and the Middle East in favor of his like-minded cronies in the Department of Defense. It is the old corporate saw of “divide & conquer,” and then decide, “what is so,” even if it is not, and then feverishly collect evidence of dubious content and suspect sources to solidify one’s position.
II ORGANIZATION DESIGNED AGAINST ITSELF
Every corporation has ass kisser, and bullies. In most cases, despite their countervailing presence, business gets done. When the bully is the chief honcho and bullying is his preferred arsenal of attack, taking no enemies, it is the making of catastrophe from the beginning.
The reason for going to war with Iraq was ostensibly because Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). The CIA was unable to uncover conclusive evidence of such weapons, and CIA director Tenner told the president so. Chaney and Rumsfeld then badgered the CIA to come up with a “white paper” that suggested otherwise. They eventually complied, applying incredible pressure on the CIA director and his people to be complicit in this charade. When the final “white paper” on evidence of WMDs was presented to President Bush, he said, “Is this all you’ve got?”
It was then, at this point, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, as OD consultant to the president, should have said to the CIA director, “Go back and make the case for war or not.” But she was the president’s pal, a confidante and friend, and remained silent. CIA director Tenner, who had been harassed into submission by Chaney and Rumsfeld, told the president it was a “slam dunk.” It was in this theatre of the absurd that the go-cart of war was pushed down the hill into the eventual abyss.
In the middle of this theatre of the absurd, the generals were saying that 400,000 troops would be needed, while Rumsfeld suggested 70,000 would be adequate. He compromised eventually on 120,000. The generals also said that the hard part would be the occupation and dealing with the ethnic tensions that already existed in a population of nearly 30 million with three powerful cultural tribes. Rumsfeld soft-pedaled this. He became a television fixture in a culture that loves its soap opera icons that titillate their fancies with swashbuckling bravado of the United States strutting its stuff as the “lone superpower.”
None of this is real to 99 percent of a nation not asked to make any sacrifices, but very real to the families of the men and women of the 1 percent fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the early low points of this tragic-comedy was the appearance of the Secretary of State, not the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, presenting the case for going to war with Iraq with CIA Director Tenner sitting behind him. The Neocons had successfully created a full-court fiction of WMDs, while two otherwise honorable and long serving patriotic Americans were made history’s stooges in this psychodrama.
Former national security adviser to President Bush the Elder, Brent Scowcroft, sponsor and mentor to Condoleezza Rice, wrote an Op-Ed article in The Wall Street Journal entitled “Don’t Attack Saddam.” He warned in the piece that invading Iraq would lead to a long, bloody, and costly occupation, while diverting the US from the war on terror, which was then concentrated on Afghanistan. Rice and President Bush were furious. They felt betrayed. This was not however true of his father who received an advance copy of the article and gave it his tacit approval.
President Bush the Younger won the 2001 election by the fabled record of the Florida ballot. After graduating from Yale, he was like a prodigal son who rejected the comfort and affluence of his family and sought his fortune on his own prospecting for oil, and eventually striking it rich. He rejoined the family on his own terms demonstrating a high risk, decisive and entrepreneurial spirit. Prior to being president, he showed little interest in foreign affairs or intellectual pursuits, preferring straight talking men-of-action, men who never second-guessed themselves. What he did as president is common in corpocracy, that is, he surrounded himself with like thinking, acting and feeling individuals. The consequences of this inclination are to magnify personal strengths while compounding personal weaknesses. Leadership, unfortunately, is not a zero sum game.
III WHEN LEADERSHIP WAS NOT CONFUSED WITH GENERALSHIP
The dominant components of leadership are strategic vision along with a clear understanding on the ground, that is, where you are, where you want to go, and what the requirements are to get there. Historian David McCullough, author of “1776” (2007) claims George Washington, our first president, was a great leader, but not a great Revolutionary War general. Nathaniel Greene was a far superior general. McCullough concludes, however, that Washington, in his opinion, was our greatest president because of his leadership.
Washington was a pondering decision maker, a deeply spiritual man but certainly not a conventional Christian. He frequently thanked God for watching over the revolution and blessing the republic, but he rarely spoke of sin or Christ. He often described God as the “Grand Architect” of the universe, “Supreme Dispenser of every Good,” and the clockmaker God of deism. He knew the importance of symbolism and used it to the nth degree. More importantly, he made an accurate assessment of where his new country was and what it would take to move it in the direction of stability.
When the Revolutionary War was going badly in 1776, General Horatio Gates launched a conspiracy of a coterie of ambitious generals to humiliate and embarrass Washington into resigning as Supreme Commander of Army. If you could picture the times, the army was low on ammunition, food and supplies; it had suffered defeat after defeat; the Continental Congress was discussing possible replacements for General Washington; and the enlistments of many of Washington’s men were coming to an end, vastly depleting his army of any ability to compete with the most powerful military force in the world, the British army and navy.
It was in this climate that he opened a letter by accident addressed to general Gates, which disclosed the plot to unseat him. He closed the letter, wrote on it that it had been opened by mistake thinking it was command business, and sent it on to the general. This quelled the conspiracy. Washington knew he needed every man including disenchanted generals.
With the majority of his troops soon to end enlistments in December 1776, he brought them all together and announced that he would give each man a $10 bonus, which was more than a month’s pay, if they would reenlist. The majority did. Washington had no way of keeping his promise, as the Continental Congress was nearly broke. His vision of the final outcome never diminished in the darkest days.
With regard to running the war, Washington knew his assets and limitations. He counted on wiser generals and used his capital to rally the troops. He had an eye for organization, discipline, accountability, and assessment. He also demonstrated a facility for recognizing and developing nascent leadership in his men. It was evident with Nathaniel Greene and Benedict Arnold.
Had Arnold died, for instance, at Saratoga where he proved a brilliant strategist and tactician, he would have been the hero of the revolution. This most decisive victory of the revolution motivated France to finance the war. When the credit for the victory went to general Horatio Gates, who had little to do with the victory, Arnold became increasingly disenchanted, ultimately spying for the British. So, today, a “Benedict Arnold” is known as a traitor or betrayer of trust.
Once the war was won, many in the Continental Congress wanted to make Washington king for life. He rejected this, and instead served two four-year terms as president with no desire to serve beyond that time, endorsing his vice president, John Adams, as the second president. Thus, he set a precedence that was maintained until the four-term election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, who died early in his fourth term (April 12, 1945).
Washington was offered a handsome salary as president, which he refused, suggesting that he only be provided with expenses. Ironically, his expenses in today’s dollars would exceed the president’s present salary.
We have not enjoyed Washingtonian leadership of late, as we have created technocrats as leaders, specifically in this instance the neocons. These people are never elected to office but are brought in by those elected.
IV WHERE HAVE ALL THE LEADERS GONE?
We know Barak Obama has a silver tongue not unlike Abraham Lincoln. Both were first term junior senators in the United States Senate from the state of Illinois; both had previously served in the house; both at an early age knew the powerful theatre of the spoken word.
We have Hillary Clinton, a United States Senator, who has served her country well, and is the wife of former President Bill Clinton, who demonstrated leadership qualities similar to previous leaders.
We have John McCain, a United States Senator, who has served his country well in the senate and on the battlefield. He is in the autumn of his years, and if elected, would be the oldest president in our history to be elected. He shares some of the personality traits of President John Adams, who was a no nonsense president, and who never had any slaves, and always said what he meant and meant what he said.
Each of these candidates have demons in their system that could knock them off their center as George Bush the Younger has been knocked off his. Did George Washington have any demons? Indeed, he did.
Washington loved affluence, pomp and circumstance, and the comfort of the elite. He loved the whole theatre of society. He didn’t like to be touched, and it was nearly theatrical when he would be forced to engage in conversation with underlings. He lacked Benjamin Franklin’s ease with everyone. He had a presence but wasn’t open or affable.
He had many critics similar to President Roosevelt. Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed FDR had a first rate personality and a second rate mind. Washington’s critics saw him second rate in both instances. What made him exceptional is that he recognized this also in himself, and in his new nation, and used it to proceed with caution and care. His vision was never clouded by his demons.
As General of the Continental Army, he parried the thrusts of Gates and his allies with the dexterity of the master politician. But when necessary, he could deflect the thrusts of his covert enemies, and when thought necessary, strike back with ferocity and guile.
Washington was an exceedingly complex man, who appreciated brilliance while knowing he lacked such brilliance. There was no hesitation to surround himself with able men, men such as Greene that could out general him. That said he maneuvered politically to retain his command, even as he simultaneously struggled to prevent the Continental Army from dissolving into mutiny.
He was a pondering man, a handsome man, a striking man, and he used this uniqueness to power him to fulfill his ambitions. He is a leader of a type that we could once again see as being our Commander in Chief.
V THE LEADER’S CONTENT OF CHARACTER
Throughout American history, we have had to endure the dalliances of the power brokers and power pursuers. These people are indigenous to all organizations in every line of endeavor. They have no real ideology, no idealism or realism, or commitment to defending the integrity of the American way of life or the citadels of freedom, although they use elements of this in the rhetoric of their essence. Their real ideology is in succeeding big time at any cost.
The temperance with which President George Washington dealt with these distracting human components is a model for all leaders to consider. It is in his letters, speeches and biographies. He was ambitious; he wanted to be the Supreme Commander of the Continental Army, but feigned that that was the furthest thing from his mind. He even wrote to his wife Martha complaining that he was doing everything to avoid this role, when he wanted nothing more desperately. Washington hid his ambition. The fire in his eyes countermanded the composure of his will.
President of the Continental Congress, John Hancock, thought it should be his to refuse, but John Adams, looking at the tall, handsome, graceful Washington, resplendent in his uniform with powdered wig, nominated the general with enthusiasm. Congress concurred.
There is nothing wrong with ambition providing you have the vision to serve and the content of character to absorb attacks from within and outside your sphere of influences, without becoming paranoid, or losing your grip on the focus of your objective. Washington had this; so did Lincoln. They looked like leaders, acted like leaders, comported themselves like leaders. Eisenhower never rose to this level as president, but he did so in war.
Like Washington, Eisenhower showed great leadership as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II. But again like Washington, he was an unremarkable general in the field. Truman used his paranoia as a motivator whereas Nixon was consumed by this demon. Brilliant in many other senses, Nixon and several other presidents found it difficulty to get past their demons without scandal or disruption.
VI THE FALLACIES OF CORPORATE SOCIETY
The United States has progressed to being a corporate society, that is, a corporate structure built around its central nucleus of power.
The corporation has evolved into corpocracy where there is a concentric technocratic reporting system from the center to the corporate periphery. This perfection of Machine Age Thinking is as cumbersome and faulty as any that man has ever developed. It looks good, sounds good, but fails to work efficiently if at all, while human activity is stuck with it as a societal boilerplate. Unfortunately, if flawed in the center, where power is meant to reside, but doesn’t, then a vacuum of power is created with the entire sphere collapsing in on the center.
In this scenario, everyone appears to be sharing power without anyone exercising leadership consistent with the organization’s design. The faultiness of this power structure has been well documented.
We see it in the conduct of the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq; in the subprime real estate crisis; in the collapse of the economy in on itself as the dollar plummets, oil prices surge, and wheat fields are turned into cornfields to make ethanol causing food prices to soar; in the stalled immigration policy; in the laxity of the FDA that allows drugs on the market that kill people; in our mega corporations that solve their economic woes by downsizing, exporting jobs abroad, or merging with other failed businesses; in FEMA being folded under the umbrella of Homeland Security, reduced in staff, facilities, and budget, then forgotten until Katrina; in the pride of greed on Wall Street where reality never touches until a recession threatens.
We see it in Bush’s War, which is a mirror image of all of these other components; in the that presidency as it limps to the end of its administration in worse shape than when it started nearly eight years ago; in the trade deficit in 2008 being the largest in US history; in the loss of 3.5 million manufacturing jobs since 2001; in the collapse of the dollar with the price of Gold rising from $260 an ounce in to $1,000 in the past seven plus years; and in oil going from $28 a barrel to more than $100 today.
The paradoxical dilemma of this presidency is that it unwittingly promoted a marginal extremist terrorist movement to global prominence by preemptive action, and in doing so, energized it into a far more formidable enemy than it was at first. It is a failure of leadership. One man cannot be singled out for such failure. The corporate model of construction is designed for such failure.
VII THE CHALLENGE AHEAD, CULTURE
This little piece is designed to illustrate what happens when the system is designed against itself, when departments sabotage each other instead of working in synergy; when the answers that the power center will accept are the answers it expects regardless of relevance; when leadership has devolved to leaderless leadership.
We have forgotten that human society is not a corporate group, but has evolved as a systemic diverse human entity. That system is displayed as culture. Culture is unique, diverse and individualistic. Together, these cultures form a tapestry of life as the human race, which is systemically organic, but which requires every ounce of its diversity, uniqueness and individuality to enrich the fabric of mankind.
For man to survive as human beings, this system must operate in complementary rather than competitive fashion. It starts with the single unit and progresses on to include all human society. I take the liberty of paraphrasing system researcher Russell Ackoff in this context:
“If you take a system apart to identify its central components, and then operate these central components in such a way that every component behaves as well as it possibly can irrespective of every other central component, then there is one thing of which you can be certain. The entire system will fail to behave as well as it can, and may collapse in on itself.
“Now, this is counterintuitive to Machine Age Thinking, but it is absolutely essential to System Thinking, which is the way the whole human community works or fails to work together. It is way governments work or fail to work from their central power nucleus.
“The corollary to this thinking is that if you have a system that is behaving as well as it can from its central components to its most peripheral components, then none of its components will be working as well as they might. Each component is supporting complementary components at some price to its own ultimate possible achievement. In doing so, synergy is realized and the possible is exceeded because the decisive outcome is much greater than the sum of the system’s component parts.”
We are on the brink of a new presidential election with our military forces stretched to the limit. The Bush’s War has been a failed policy despite all the rhetoric to the contrary. But the war is emblematic of many other societal failures. We have failed inner city schools in metropolitan areas, but we also have failed schools in the suburbs. We have crime in the poorest and most affluent of neighborhoods. We have empty houses because of the subprime debacle, but also empty factories because of failed industrial leadership. We have our best students in high schools and colleges across the land bored to tears attending classes because that is their job, and not because they are committed to learning anything. We have middle aged men and women who have never caught hold because they have never totally left their adolescence, extending it from their teens into their 30s and 40s. We have our great cities attempting to balance between the electronic Silicon Valley and failed Detroit factory model trying to survive. Our entire society is collapsing in on itself because the nucleus of central power has proven essentially a leaderless leadership vacuum.
As if the gods were upon us at this critical moment, we have one of the most refreshing moments in American history in a presidential candidate that is African American, a presidential candidate who is a woman, and a presidential candidate that is a throwback to our second great president, John Adams. Never has the challenge of culture, and the opportunities to heal differences in a common cause been greater than now.
The good paying factory jobs of Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia are never to return. These candidates are talking about saving these jobs or retraining workers in new technologies. The irony is that our school system from grammar school through college is a preparatory factory, which is now anachronistic.
Corporate society has a factory mentality and discharges its problems with a factory mindset. Indeed, education is a defunct institution because of this. Corpocracy attacks problems at the periphery rather than at the nuclear core or power center, as power brokers, power pursuers, and politicians are wont to do.
A cosmetic approach to the problem solving doesn’t disturb the status quo. Item: create a new course, design a new curriculum, or launch a new corporate intervention, always being careful not to disturb the technocrats in the core center. We must move beyond this; we must start by introducing our little ones to the real world they are about to join.
Ergo, I propose that no student be given a high school diploma or college degree that is not proficient in a foreign language. No college graduate should be allowed to sneak through the system dodging language courses with computer proficiency. Computer literacy is not the equivalent of culture literacy. The only way to truly enter another culture is through its language, and we are now a world society.
Culture is destiny. Culture is not isolated but pervasive. Appreciation of culture is what is missing in education.
For within a culture, there are several subcultures. Often these subcultures compete subversively against the primary culture. This was the case of the Department of Defense subverting the Department of State, and intimidating the CIA to capitulate to its preconceived notion of the presence of WMDs in Iraq, when clearly there were none. Unfortunately, this was at the expense of the integrity of the Office of the President, where the nucleus of central power resided.
When the center collapses in on itself, all subcultures across the spectrum from the farthest dimensions of the corporate structure do as well. This succinctly describes the disaster of the Bush’s War and the present socio-economic state of American society.
Likewise, every nation, as well as every corporation, has a culture, and within its culture a myriad of competing subcultures often contrasting with or in direct competition with the primary culture. It is the role of leadership to first recognize this condition, and then to mount an exercise to integrate these differences into an assimilated pattern of focused determination while acknowledging the respective unique constructions of the subcultures. This sounds simple in expression but is extremely difficult to accomplish in deed. It is why culture is the challenge ahead of true leadership.
_______________
Dr. Fisher is a former corporate executive of Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe Ltd., a prolific author, and a registered Republican for more than forty years. See his website and blog: www.fisherofideas.com.
Friday, March 21, 2008
AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICANS!
AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICANS!
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© Good Friday, March 21, 2008
Some twenty years ago, I retired as a corporate executive who had worked over a good share of the world. Since that time, I have published hundreds of articles and several books on the subject of leaderless leadership as I have experienced it in my corporate career. I have witnessed a pusillanimous slide of American society into cultural ambivalence.
Here we are in the most important season of the Christian faith, and educators, government officials, corporate leaders, religious leaders and citizens in general are waffling.
There appears to be no clear sense in this United States of America as being a Christian nation. Christian pilgrims founded America, the Founding Fathers were Christians, even the Hussein mercenaries and the British troops of King George III during the American Revolution were Christian. Our history is that of a Christian people.
Today, more than 80 percent of the American population of more than 300 million claims to be devout or tacit Christians, while more than 80 percent of Americans claim to believe in God.
Now, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution separate church from state, while giving all Americans the right to express their religious preference.
Still, these minority religions are residents of a Christian country. This is not their country if they do not assimilate themselves into the American language, the American value system, and the American system of law and order, as this is a society of laws and not men.
What may be construed as magnanimous tolerance by suborning the American value system to placate minorities is, in fact, demonstrating leaderless leadership. Such indecision throws American society off course and away from what has made it great. It is the Christian religion, the Protestant work ethic, and the Calvinistic determination to be all we can be that has produced a society second to none.
Imagine if you will, if this American population of more than 80 percent Christians were to boycott merchants, the economy would collapse; if it boycotted work, the country would come to a standstill; if it boycotted the public school system it, too, would collapse.
Yet, in a strange way, when a sliver of the population takes a stand in opposition to an open expression of the American Christian culture, merchants, workplaces and schools capitulate in a frantic effort not to offend, disregarding the majority population without compunction.
Merchants do this by no longer putting up Christmas trees, but holiday trees; no longer saying, "Merry Christmas" to customers, but "Happy Holidays"; no longer publishing Christmas cards but Holiday cards; no longer celebrating the Birth of Jesus, but having an end of the year celebration. The schools and workplaces and the government, indeed, the media are equally complicit in this rush away from our cultural roots.
Today. it is Good Friday, the day that Jesus died on the Cross, a day, traditionally, that schools were closed, workplaces and government offices, too, but no longer for fear of offending this or that minority that has chosen to take residence in this Christian country.
Should you dispute this being a Christian culture on the basis that all religions are legitimate you beg the question of America's history and culture, making it a moot point. It is the identity of the American character.
Unfortunately, for wont of leadership, we have an identity issue here. The seeds of our society have sprung many weeds that are choking out the life of our identity. The American character and its content has been diminished like that person who always says to your face what you want to hear, and does the same to the next person, and the next, until the face is faceless without any distinguishable characteristics.
Sadly, the American character has become faceless, purposeless, and shameless in regard to the question of what it is, why it is, how it became so, and what it has lost.
Every minority should have the same rights as the American majority. At the same time, the minority has a choice to make: assimilate themselves into American society, and adopt American values, and profit from what has made America great, or leave. Instead, too frequently, some in the minority community denigrate the American way, and blaspheme the United States in their native language publications, while experiencing the largesse and comfort of American society.
Americans have an amazing capacity to absorb disrespect. Respect is something you must earn, but you don't earn respect without roots: that is, without beliefs, values, and cultural doctrines that identify you as American.
This is my worry. I have several grandchildren, many teenagers, some ready to take their place in society, and others who already have. My grandchildren are essentially without religious convictions, without belief in anything. The major beliefs of the teenagers are in their electronic toys or some fantasy television programs, while those about to graduate from college, or now in the workplace are principally interested in "making it" in an amoral society.
For this, we have lost something. These young people are in or soon will be taking leadership positions in society, and if they don't know who they are, have little sense of identity, chances are they will try to be everything to everybody and end up being no one to everyone, and mainly to themselves.
The Christian culture is our center, and without it, we have no roots.
We cannot blame these young people for this predicament. It is American society that has shrunk from its culture and its roots, giving these young people little guidance or sense of identity much less direction in the most challenging era ever known to this nation. It is a time to take inventory and then action to redress this wrong.
----------------------
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
6714 Jennifer Drive
Tampa, FL 33617-2504
Dr. Fisher is a former corporate executive of Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. He is a trained chemist and chemical engineer who has worked and lived in South America, Europe and South Africa aside from his roots in Clinton, Iowa, and his present residence is Tampa, Florida with his wife Betty. He has thirteen grandchildren spread across the United States from two sets of 3 years old twins to a 31 year old. He earned a Ph.D. in organization/industrial psychology. He has more than 300 published articles and nine books one of which is a memoir as a novel. His most recent book sees the sins of the 1970s being replicated today with almost frightening consistency. The book is titled A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007). His website is: www.fisherofideas.com and his email address is: thedeltagrpfl@cs.com.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© Good Friday, March 21, 2008
Some twenty years ago, I retired as a corporate executive who had worked over a good share of the world. Since that time, I have published hundreds of articles and several books on the subject of leaderless leadership as I have experienced it in my corporate career. I have witnessed a pusillanimous slide of American society into cultural ambivalence.
Here we are in the most important season of the Christian faith, and educators, government officials, corporate leaders, religious leaders and citizens in general are waffling.
There appears to be no clear sense in this United States of America as being a Christian nation. Christian pilgrims founded America, the Founding Fathers were Christians, even the Hussein mercenaries and the British troops of King George III during the American Revolution were Christian. Our history is that of a Christian people.
Today, more than 80 percent of the American population of more than 300 million claims to be devout or tacit Christians, while more than 80 percent of Americans claim to believe in God.
Now, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution separate church from state, while giving all Americans the right to express their religious preference.
Still, these minority religions are residents of a Christian country. This is not their country if they do not assimilate themselves into the American language, the American value system, and the American system of law and order, as this is a society of laws and not men.
What may be construed as magnanimous tolerance by suborning the American value system to placate minorities is, in fact, demonstrating leaderless leadership. Such indecision throws American society off course and away from what has made it great. It is the Christian religion, the Protestant work ethic, and the Calvinistic determination to be all we can be that has produced a society second to none.
Imagine if you will, if this American population of more than 80 percent Christians were to boycott merchants, the economy would collapse; if it boycotted work, the country would come to a standstill; if it boycotted the public school system it, too, would collapse.
Yet, in a strange way, when a sliver of the population takes a stand in opposition to an open expression of the American Christian culture, merchants, workplaces and schools capitulate in a frantic effort not to offend, disregarding the majority population without compunction.
Merchants do this by no longer putting up Christmas trees, but holiday trees; no longer saying, "Merry Christmas" to customers, but "Happy Holidays"; no longer publishing Christmas cards but Holiday cards; no longer celebrating the Birth of Jesus, but having an end of the year celebration. The schools and workplaces and the government, indeed, the media are equally complicit in this rush away from our cultural roots.
Today. it is Good Friday, the day that Jesus died on the Cross, a day, traditionally, that schools were closed, workplaces and government offices, too, but no longer for fear of offending this or that minority that has chosen to take residence in this Christian country.
Should you dispute this being a Christian culture on the basis that all religions are legitimate you beg the question of America's history and culture, making it a moot point. It is the identity of the American character.
Unfortunately, for wont of leadership, we have an identity issue here. The seeds of our society have sprung many weeds that are choking out the life of our identity. The American character and its content has been diminished like that person who always says to your face what you want to hear, and does the same to the next person, and the next, until the face is faceless without any distinguishable characteristics.
Sadly, the American character has become faceless, purposeless, and shameless in regard to the question of what it is, why it is, how it became so, and what it has lost.
Every minority should have the same rights as the American majority. At the same time, the minority has a choice to make: assimilate themselves into American society, and adopt American values, and profit from what has made America great, or leave. Instead, too frequently, some in the minority community denigrate the American way, and blaspheme the United States in their native language publications, while experiencing the largesse and comfort of American society.
Americans have an amazing capacity to absorb disrespect. Respect is something you must earn, but you don't earn respect without roots: that is, without beliefs, values, and cultural doctrines that identify you as American.
This is my worry. I have several grandchildren, many teenagers, some ready to take their place in society, and others who already have. My grandchildren are essentially without religious convictions, without belief in anything. The major beliefs of the teenagers are in their electronic toys or some fantasy television programs, while those about to graduate from college, or now in the workplace are principally interested in "making it" in an amoral society.
For this, we have lost something. These young people are in or soon will be taking leadership positions in society, and if they don't know who they are, have little sense of identity, chances are they will try to be everything to everybody and end up being no one to everyone, and mainly to themselves.
The Christian culture is our center, and without it, we have no roots.
We cannot blame these young people for this predicament. It is American society that has shrunk from its culture and its roots, giving these young people little guidance or sense of identity much less direction in the most challenging era ever known to this nation. It is a time to take inventory and then action to redress this wrong.
----------------------
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
6714 Jennifer Drive
Tampa, FL 33617-2504
Dr. Fisher is a former corporate executive of Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, Ltd. He is a trained chemist and chemical engineer who has worked and lived in South America, Europe and South Africa aside from his roots in Clinton, Iowa, and his present residence is Tampa, Florida with his wife Betty. He has thirteen grandchildren spread across the United States from two sets of 3 years old twins to a 31 year old. He earned a Ph.D. in organization/industrial psychology. He has more than 300 published articles and nine books one of which is a memoir as a novel. His most recent book sees the sins of the 1970s being replicated today with almost frightening consistency. The book is titled A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (AuthorHouse 2007). His website is: www.fisherofideas.com and his email address is: thedeltagrpfl@cs.com.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
THE NATURE OF A THINK TANK
THE NAPLES INSTITUTE IS A THINK TANK
What is a think tank?
In our busy lives, it is necessary for most people to think on the run. A think tank separates itself from this daily rush to consider current and future relevant concerns.
Think tanks are not generic but dedicated to specific areas of concern. The Naples Institute is focused on social justice. This means it can find cause with many more specifically directed think tanks, and possibly joint problem solve with them.
A think tank is an idea factory. The Naples Institute sponsors original research on leadership as the key to social justice problem solving.
The Naples Institute is dedicated to original scholarship and empirical studies by working in the field solving problems relating to the poor, indigent, and marginalized.
Why a think tank for ideas?
Ideas generate change. Think tanks are often the catalyst for an idea whose time has come. A think tank is like the advance scout who examines ideas on the horizon to anticipate what is ahead, and how to deal with its challenges. Think tanks are often special branches of universities or industrial complexes where members of such establishments are free to think without restrictions.
How do ideas cause change?
An idea requires an advocate and facilitator to make the nascent idea (1) take hold; (2) be found useful, and then (3) be perpetuated. That takes leadership.
An idea filters from intellectual speculation and germinates into a theoretical concept. Papers are written and presented at conferences profiling the idea. Should the idea survive this rigorous scrutiny, and subsequent controlled trials, it most likely finds purchase with the wider audience, and eventually becomes part of the fabric of society.
Often, a special interest finds the idea to its liking and helps it along. Gradually, or swiftly, as the case may be, the idea is disseminated, implemented, evaluated, and if right for the times, assimilated into the culture.
Changes invariably occur as the idea goes through this process. It takes leadership to maintain the integrity of this process. Stated otherwise, no idea will take hold if the culture to which it is to be introduced is not understood totally, or the special problems that the new idea might spawn in the process of implementation.
How does a think tank function?
A think tank is composed of an eclectic group of scholars, academics, corporate change agents and social thinkers with diverse academic and/or empirical backgrounds.
It functions as a collaborative effort, while preserving individual integrity of its members as they address questions of concern.
Diverse points of view and scholarly interests make for a creative climate in face-to-face exchange. Even in this age of the Internet, there is a substantive advantage to a place dedicated to intense discussion of important questions of the day.
How does a think tank market its ideas, more specifically, THE NAPLES INSTITUTE?
The Internet is an important conduit. The Naples Institute has a website that profiles its members, their credentials, their special interests, along with its current and long term goals, and the status of current projects.
Plans have been created for a bookstore, a publishing company, a speaking bureau, and a traveling seminar to market the Institute’s newest ideas. A newsletter is also planned with executive summaries of what ideas are currently in the mill. Long range, the Institute plans to create a magazine and to broadcast its activities across the globe by satellite radio.
In addition, training films, videos, and DVDs as leadership aids are to be made available with the eventual creation of a School of Social Justice.
The “State of The Naples Institute” will be published in an annual report listing all philanthropic organizations that are assisting the Institute in its work.
The Naples Institute will be constantly canvassing for new scholars, field researchers, and academics to join in its quest for social justice. It is currently looking into the possibility affiliating with several universities.
What is the role of entrepreneurs in THE NAPLES INSTITUTE?
Entrepreneurs who have been involved in philanthropic work have founded The Naples Institute. One founder created Walden University, a fully accredited graduate institution of some 20,000 students; another established a successful restaurant chain across the nation (Chuck e Cheese); another has created a foundation for the poor (The Coine Foundation, Inc.); and a fourth is an international author of several books on leadership.
Is this think tank a business?
Yes, The Naples Institute is a for profit business.
Where is THE NAPLES INSTITUTE located?
Naples, Florida on the West Coast of Florida.
What is the difference between a think tank and an advocacy group?
This is a very good question because a think tank and an advocacy group have different functions, which can be conflicting and pusillanimous. Well intentions notwithstanding, their respective functions may be complementary, but decidedly different. A think tank is an idea factory generating ideas, or a reflective organization. An advocacy group has a specific cause and is action oriented.
The Naples Institute creates ideas that support the Institute’s vision of fighting for social justice. It develops instruments to assist in this fight.
An advocacy group is dedicated to a single issue, and measures its success by the impact it makes into that cause. Advocacy groups could be considered lobbyists for single-track ideas, and because of this, might receive the backing of special interests.
Should a think tank conform to special interests, it would compromise its mission. As sharp a difference as this might be considered, a wider divergence is that think tanks are led by intellectuals, who are comfortable in the abstract world of ideas, whereas advocacy groups are led by pragmatists who prefer the concrete world of the problem solving. Think tanks encourage diverse thinking, while advocacy groups resist prefer consensus building to tangible results.
Consequently, by definition, think tanks have a wide perspective and comprehensive goal, whereas an advocacy group has a narrow perspective and an even narrower goal. This is so because advocacy groups are looking for specific self-interested financial backers. A think tank is often endowed similar to a university to pursue general research with no specific outcomes expected.
What is the role of politics in a think tank?
The role of ideology in a think tank is specific. Every think tank has an ideology. The Naples Group is fighting for social justice. Should it depart from its ideology in favor of a political party, its function could quickly be compromised.
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Prepared by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr.
What is a think tank?
In our busy lives, it is necessary for most people to think on the run. A think tank separates itself from this daily rush to consider current and future relevant concerns.
Think tanks are not generic but dedicated to specific areas of concern. The Naples Institute is focused on social justice. This means it can find cause with many more specifically directed think tanks, and possibly joint problem solve with them.
A think tank is an idea factory. The Naples Institute sponsors original research on leadership as the key to social justice problem solving.
The Naples Institute is dedicated to original scholarship and empirical studies by working in the field solving problems relating to the poor, indigent, and marginalized.
Why a think tank for ideas?
Ideas generate change. Think tanks are often the catalyst for an idea whose time has come. A think tank is like the advance scout who examines ideas on the horizon to anticipate what is ahead, and how to deal with its challenges. Think tanks are often special branches of universities or industrial complexes where members of such establishments are free to think without restrictions.
How do ideas cause change?
An idea requires an advocate and facilitator to make the nascent idea (1) take hold; (2) be found useful, and then (3) be perpetuated. That takes leadership.
An idea filters from intellectual speculation and germinates into a theoretical concept. Papers are written and presented at conferences profiling the idea. Should the idea survive this rigorous scrutiny, and subsequent controlled trials, it most likely finds purchase with the wider audience, and eventually becomes part of the fabric of society.
Often, a special interest finds the idea to its liking and helps it along. Gradually, or swiftly, as the case may be, the idea is disseminated, implemented, evaluated, and if right for the times, assimilated into the culture.
Changes invariably occur as the idea goes through this process. It takes leadership to maintain the integrity of this process. Stated otherwise, no idea will take hold if the culture to which it is to be introduced is not understood totally, or the special problems that the new idea might spawn in the process of implementation.
How does a think tank function?
A think tank is composed of an eclectic group of scholars, academics, corporate change agents and social thinkers with diverse academic and/or empirical backgrounds.
It functions as a collaborative effort, while preserving individual integrity of its members as they address questions of concern.
Diverse points of view and scholarly interests make for a creative climate in face-to-face exchange. Even in this age of the Internet, there is a substantive advantage to a place dedicated to intense discussion of important questions of the day.
How does a think tank market its ideas, more specifically, THE NAPLES INSTITUTE?
The Internet is an important conduit. The Naples Institute has a website that profiles its members, their credentials, their special interests, along with its current and long term goals, and the status of current projects.
Plans have been created for a bookstore, a publishing company, a speaking bureau, and a traveling seminar to market the Institute’s newest ideas. A newsletter is also planned with executive summaries of what ideas are currently in the mill. Long range, the Institute plans to create a magazine and to broadcast its activities across the globe by satellite radio.
In addition, training films, videos, and DVDs as leadership aids are to be made available with the eventual creation of a School of Social Justice.
The “State of The Naples Institute” will be published in an annual report listing all philanthropic organizations that are assisting the Institute in its work.
The Naples Institute will be constantly canvassing for new scholars, field researchers, and academics to join in its quest for social justice. It is currently looking into the possibility affiliating with several universities.
What is the role of entrepreneurs in THE NAPLES INSTITUTE?
Entrepreneurs who have been involved in philanthropic work have founded The Naples Institute. One founder created Walden University, a fully accredited graduate institution of some 20,000 students; another established a successful restaurant chain across the nation (Chuck e Cheese); another has created a foundation for the poor (The Coine Foundation, Inc.); and a fourth is an international author of several books on leadership.
Is this think tank a business?
Yes, The Naples Institute is a for profit business.
Where is THE NAPLES INSTITUTE located?
Naples, Florida on the West Coast of Florida.
What is the difference between a think tank and an advocacy group?
This is a very good question because a think tank and an advocacy group have different functions, which can be conflicting and pusillanimous. Well intentions notwithstanding, their respective functions may be complementary, but decidedly different. A think tank is an idea factory generating ideas, or a reflective organization. An advocacy group has a specific cause and is action oriented.
The Naples Institute creates ideas that support the Institute’s vision of fighting for social justice. It develops instruments to assist in this fight.
An advocacy group is dedicated to a single issue, and measures its success by the impact it makes into that cause. Advocacy groups could be considered lobbyists for single-track ideas, and because of this, might receive the backing of special interests.
Should a think tank conform to special interests, it would compromise its mission. As sharp a difference as this might be considered, a wider divergence is that think tanks are led by intellectuals, who are comfortable in the abstract world of ideas, whereas advocacy groups are led by pragmatists who prefer the concrete world of the problem solving. Think tanks encourage diverse thinking, while advocacy groups resist prefer consensus building to tangible results.
Consequently, by definition, think tanks have a wide perspective and comprehensive goal, whereas an advocacy group has a narrow perspective and an even narrower goal. This is so because advocacy groups are looking for specific self-interested financial backers. A think tank is often endowed similar to a university to pursue general research with no specific outcomes expected.
What is the role of politics in a think tank?
The role of ideology in a think tank is specific. Every think tank has an ideology. The Naples Group is fighting for social justice. Should it depart from its ideology in favor of a political party, its function could quickly be compromised.
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Prepared by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr.
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