Somebody said we were allowed to think out loud. Pardon the mess.

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Tigers and pyschopaths and companies, oh my

Ain't irony great? In the post prior to this one I streamed a bit on Tigers as metaphor for ambitious people and letting them run in organizations. Then, I check out one of my favorite blogs, BusinessPundit, and the proprietor, Rob, has a piece on the new film, The Corporation.
I have a feeling I won't like this movie.
.... People on both sides of the globalisation debate should pay attention. Unlike much of the soggy thinking peddled by too many anti-globalisers, “The Corporation” is a surprisingly rational and coherent attack on capitalism's most important institution.
It's central premise is that Corporations are afforded the rights of "people," and that they then exercise their peoplehood in the form of the Pyschopath. There's even a checklist of red flag behaviors and, yep, Corps fit them all.

Rob's comments box is filling with the usual yeas and nays, from the expected points of view, predominantly business-person-centric, but sage. Commenter Jonathan had this:
The Wall Street Journal covered this as well, part of what they had to say:

.... Soon, all the boxes are checked off--from 'callous unconcern for the feelings of others' to 'an incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.' On screen, Robert Hare, a psychiatrist who consults on psychopaths for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, concludes: 'In many respects, corporations are the prototypical psychopath.'"
Back to the "irony." After reading Jonathan's snippet I realized that, viewed a certain way, Tigers are psychopaths too. "Callous unconcern for the feelings of others." "An incapacity to maintain enduring relationships." Tigers are eating, procreating Sharks of the land. They're biological machines whose prime directive is to survive. Since they're animals, we don't call them psychopaths though, yes? They just are. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly. Tigers hafta hunt you down and kill you.

But we're animals too. I know this because I read it in a book somewhere. We eat, we procreate, we attack, we defend. And, like some animals, we use tools. But unlike the rock an otter uses to bash open a mussel--aah, psychopath! Murder!--our tools increasingly come with warning labels. Usually, the result of someone with the brain of an otter deciding that, oh, I dunno, blow drying your hair while still in the tub was smart time-management.

So remember: No otters, tigers or blow dryers while you're still in the tub.

How about corporations?

Seriously, the corporation is a device, a tool, a machine operated by sentient things called people, isn't it? I can take my tool, a hammer say, and build a chair with it. Nice service. That helps people. Or, I can take my tool, my hammer, and bash someone's kneecaps with it.

Now, I can say "a hammer is just a hammer, birds gotta sing, hammer's gotta swing." I can say "in the course of swinging my hammer to drive the final nail in my beautiful chair, I didn't see the gentleman behind me who's now wearing the tang of that hammer in his skull."

Ladies and gents (NRA members especially), tools don't kill people, careless people with tools kill people. Sure. We ask our kids to beware of the swing as they "help" us make their treehouse. We warily observe and cautiously guide as they try swinging themselves. To yield craft, not good-intended but negligent wreckage, tools require maturity, skill, foresight, knowledge and conscience.

These elements are not check boxes on any business licence I've seen posted lately. Nor any 10k. They require self-policing virtues like fortitude, justice, charity, hope, patience....


[click]


They require effort. They require character. Since these things are not standard on your typical P&L alongside Cost of Goods Sold, it seems they require official encouragement. So we get prescriptives like Sarbox Governance (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002). What we know about communities, that they need laws and cops because people cut corners when left to their own devices, somehow seems onerous to virtual people like Corporations. And so Sarbox is but another crude leash grudgingly submitted to and externally applied on a habitual bad actor who wants restraint for others, but free reign for itself. Anti-social people suffer this necessary indignity all the time. It keeps the streets safer. But a reckless and crazy man is not hard to define. A crazy company, however.... well, I refer you to the above table again.

Corporations are not psychopaths. They are schizophrenics. At once bullies and Florence Nightingale. They are collective personalities that, like humans under stress, revert to their shadow, baser personalities of self-preservation at any cost. (Remember R-Complex?) It's funny, but 100s of billions are spent on refinement of collective standards of excellence and reward for collective entities, virtual people, called corporations. But bring up a collective corporate conscience to your average business leader and you might as well suggest jump starting a car with a fish. That would be their take. Not because they don't "get" the import of humane behavior. Hell, they demand it of their spouse, their kids, their neigbor and their tailor. They may even mandate and enforce its liberal application towards their own customers. But what about those doing the applying, providing the human customer service face for the virtual person called "work"? More and more they're asked to check their personal conscience at the elevator. Their values still matter, they just have to visit them on weekends like the children of divorce.

Big trouble. Because, in an era of accelerating fluidity, our hunger for humanity, for something--anything--that's not subject to drastic revision or obsolescence next week, or next year will be the only differentiator of sustainable business models or engines of profit. I know this because I feel it in my gut, hear it in mail rooms and board rooms, and because Rolf Jensen, Director of the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies told me so:
We are in the twilight of a society based on data. As information and intelligence become the domain of computers, society will place a new value on the one human ability that can't be automated: Emotion
That is the problem. As-built, companies are amoral tools amongst moral beings. This is not news. But the frequency, reach and signal-to-noise of corporations trumpeting their virtue while failing at the internal act is now deafening within business. It puts their modus operandi at odds with those it needs, and from whom it needs favor. That IS news. Our great-great grandparents interacted with, in a whole year, the number of people we now bump into in a single day. Those added people, being fallible people, are no more polite or perfect in their execution, just more polished in their presentation. But they and their official mistakes and oversights, excused by systemic, inert officialdom and firewalls of deniability feel like a hailstorm. The insults to psyche and the resulting overload stands to soon tilt things on their axis. It must. Turbocharged entropy will do that to systems. They get manic. They generate shrapnel.

Corporations are collective entities that through branding and PR try to appear like, and accrue, the trust, feeling, grace and goodwill accorded between fellow human beings. But, these branded entities, the false selves with factual rights, insist on claiming their ad-hoc need to freely wield dangerous implements in the presence of unarmed others. I know this because I have eyes and ears, and hang out in places with "Inc" and "Co" after their names.

In exalting the frontier, and the gold piece, while leaving the compass of empathy back East with Grandma, we get lost. We turn into the wrong kind of tigers. We get frontier injustice. We get tigers who, just like the real thing, sometimes eat their young.

Let's face it: free markets, like tigers, are not known for their humanity. Nor should they be. They wouldn't be free or be tigers otherwise. In the free-market wild, where the tigers like to play, we never leave home without our American Express card. And our gun. Amongst polite company, alongside our fellow zoo-goers, we still have the credit card, but a cage substitutes for the gun. Either-or. But definitely, something.

Oddly, the suggestion that Tigers are Nature's eating machine-tools, doesn't get people pondering your liberalness or conservatism. Warnings about tiger-safety and healthy, vigorous suspicion don't elicit yelps of "Kitty Hater!" or "Anti-animal."

We don't feel the urge to debate the need or logic of a cage or a gun in the precence of stripey carnivores, animals whose biological mission statement is "Hey, it's not personal, it's Tiger business." Perhaps most interestingly, Tiger handlers (they laugh at "tamer") have no illusions about the creatures they steward. And brave folks they are, no "paper tigers" there.

Aha. "Paper Tiger." that's a term for ineffectualness, like "All hat no cattle," "All show, no go."

Not any more. Corporations, as amoral, virtual and legal pad entities, are paper tigers of a different sort. They have all the tools--virtual teeth, claws, and far more killing weight--than the real thing. Unlike the real thing, they more and more invasively populate our daily lives and previously safe, off-limits, private areas. And, unlike the real thing, they get a voice, the loudest and most arresting roar, on the makeup of their restraints.

They usually opt for a paper cage or a pop gun.

Remember Schizophrenia? Bullies who think they're Florence Nightingale? They opt for quixotic: Idealistic without regard to practicality.

But "hope is not a plan."

As a parent, I wouldn't take my children to a zoo that demonstrates that lack of seriousness and care for its patrons' safety and comfort. I would be delusional if I did. Wouldn't I? As workers in the zoo, as builders of Paper Cages, as confiscators of guns, pop or otherwise, we'd be criminally negligent. Wouldn't we?

And, as the zookeeper, if I hushed you to hear the wonders of Nature at work as my animals mowed down the visitors, well, now that would be Pyschopathic. Wouldn't it?

Posted by: fouro / 12:36 AM |

Friday, May 14, 2004

Feed the tigers, ride the horses, shoot the dogs.

If you want tiger quality output, you must feed them. It doesn't say poke the tigers. Or, complain when they roar. Feed them. Not horse chow. Not dog chow. Not kitty chow. Tiger chow. You can't complain that tiger chow is more expensive or rarer or harder to dole out. You can't remind the tigers how lucky they are to have a generous tiger lover around. Don't parade them about. Don't pet them on the head and say, "Good tiger," or "Look at my Tigers." Just feed them. By finding more Tiger things for them to do. Tigers intuit by actions and opportunity. They master awareness and opportunity cost. They measure by ambience and tone; by pattern and inflection, not by words themselves. Tigers are Tigers. Your job is to prevent other people from mistaking them for an orange-striped horse. And, to keep the Tiger food fresh. Portions growing. Your job is to collect the tickets. And count the box office.


[next: Horses are not shiny mules]
Posted by: fouro / 9:35 PM |
Harvard Business School To Honor Bush With New Degree
In honor of the "CEO President," and in recognition of the fine advances he has brought to modern management techniques, the Harvard Business School will offer a new degree, called the "M.B.A.": Master Of Bush Administration.

Professor Stephen Hambone, Ph.D.Th. (Doctor of Thinkology), explained, "President Bush has taken delegation to an entirely new level. We used to teach that you should delegate to the most competent and intelligent individuals in your organization. But President Bush has taught us that you can delegate to anyone, as long as you don't read their reports."

Professor Hambone also lauded the President for cutting down on executive reading: "You don't have to read critical documents anymore -- or any documents, really -- and in fact, it's preferable. Cuts down on the likelihood of shareholder litigation or impeachment."

Professor Hambone was effusive in his praise of Bush's "no-minute management style," and related other Bush lessons: "Always call the work of top supervisors 'superb,' even when they've endangered a core mission. When you say your supervisors look good, you look good. And blameless."

The school will be taking applications only from those nominally serving in the National Guard, starting this July.
From Opinions you should have. Of course, they're not The Onion...
Seth Poole's employee-identification card is a revealing indicator of the toll that two years of work at Blue Juice, Inc. has taken on the internal auditor's appearance and overall health, sources close to the 37-year-old revealed Monday....


Before. [After]


Blue Juice, whose sales topped $50 million last year, is one of the fastest-growing organic-juice brands in the country. Hired by Blue Juice CEO Benjamin Valdavia, Poole said he was initially excited to join the small but rapidly expanding company.

....Keefer estimated that, every time Valdavia says "vision can't be charted on spreadsheets," Poole loses 75 hairs.

....Leo Drake, president of Safeguard Solutions, the security-consultant firm that sold Blue Juice its ID-card machine, recommends that companies update their employees' photo IDs annually to prevent a "reverse Dorian Gray" effect.

"Regularly renewed IDs will reflect the subject's likeness with greater accuracy, improving the ID's functionality as a tool for identity verification," Drake said. "In addition, employees won't be confronted every day with proof of their ongoing personal decline."

Drake added: "By no means should employees be allowed to keep their old IDs, lest they make the connection between their workplace struggles and their unnaturally aged appearances."
Once overheard at a company-mandated "Wellness Initiative" orientation. "Uhh, ma'am? ...liquor, coffee and cigarettes is the only way I continue to work here.
Posted by: fouro / 2:47 PM |

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Plato's Cave. (A/K/A: The Places We Work. And how.)
The allegory pictures an underground cave with its mouth open toward the light of a blazing fire. Within the cave are people chained so that they cannot move. They can see only the cave wall directly in front of them. This is illuminated by the light of the fire, which throws shadows of people and objects onto the wall. The cave dwellers equate the shadows with reality, naming them, talking about them, and even linking sounds from outside the cave with the movements on the wall. Truth and reality for the prisoners rest in this shadowy world, because they have no knowledge of any other.

However, as Socrates relates, if one of the inhabitants were allowed to leave the cave, he would realize that the shadows are but dark reflections of a more complex reality, and that the knowledge and perceptions of his fellow cave dwellers are distorted and flawed. If he were then to return to the cave, he would never be able to live in the old way, since for him the world would be a very different place. No doubt he would find difficulty in accepting his confinement, and would pity the plight of his fellows. However, if he were to try and share his new knowledge with them, he would probably be ridiculed for his views.

For the cave prisoners, the familiar images of the cave would be much more meaningful than any story about a world they had never seen. Moreover, since the person espousing this new knowledge would now no longer be able to function in the old way, since he would no longer be able to act with conviction in relation to the shadows, his fellow inmates would no doubt view his knowledge as being extremely dangerous. They would probably regard the world outside the cave as a potential source of danger, to be avoided rather than embraced as a source of wisdom and insight. The experience of the person who left the cave could thus actually lead the cave dwellers to tighten their grip on their familiar way of seeing.

The cave stands for the world of appearances and the journey outside stands for the ascent to knowledge. People in everyday life are trapped by illusions, hence the way they understand reality is limited and flawed. By appreciating this, and by making a determined effort to see beyond the superficial, people have an ability to free themselves from imperfect ways of seeing. However, as the allegory suggests, many of us often resist or ridicule efforts at enlightenment, preferring to remain in the dark rather than to risk exposure to a new world and its threat to the old ways.
The above is from Gareth Morgan's Images of Organization, a book that changes the view of companies, and their power, and their innovative potential for pretty much anyone I know who has read it.

And published too late for some of these cave dwellers?
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
-- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what ... is it good for?"
-- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face not Gary Cooper."
-- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
-- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields'Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
-- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.
More predictions
Posted by: fouro / 12:37 AM |

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