We have made character, virtue or goodness uncomfortable terms in the organization. They seem to provoke some sort of red face. We see them as aliens to the clinical, sanitized, uncontaminated management thinking and language. We need to bring them back, welcome them to a home they should never have left. Imagine this: hiring a leader of high moral character. How many people will laugh? Why have we sterilized management?
We have made character, virtue or goodness uncomfortable terms in the organization. Management sanitised itself a long time ago from humanistic contaminations. Ok, the real, confident alfa management. Bring character back! If you want something more ‘modern’, try David Brooks [1]’ The Road to Character (2016) or his latest ‘The Second Mountain’ (2019). Brooks is a conservative writer and columnist in The New York Times, who most liberals read. It tends to disappoint both sides. Passionate about the ‘fabric of society’ he leads an initiative within The Aspen Institute called ‘Weave: The Social Fabric Project’ [2]. Worth a read on their website.
Who needs field experience with Amazonian tribes, when all the surviving exotics are on the payroll?
I have met a big boss who wrote memos, long hand, for his secretary to type and send by normal mail. Another one who had his secretary printing his emails and sending them by FedEx to him. A client who did not know the password for his computer since he had never ‘been’ in the corner of his large office, where the never-used computer screen lived. Another who played golf in his office and moved the furniture around each time. Another who gave her direct report clear advice for her team: let them fail. Who needs field experience with Amazonian tribes to gain an anthropological degree, when all the surviving exotics are on the payroll?
I have met a big boss who wrote memos, long hand, for his secretary to type and send by normal mail. I used to collect oddities until I discovered that they were normalities. Today we have normalised being untruthful and people with severe personality disorders hold high offices so, frankly, this is a flipping world.
Extracts taken from my new book The Flipping Point. [3] A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs to be reached. The Flipping Point [3] contains 200 short vignettes exploring what ’deprogramming management’ may look like. Read a recent review [4].
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Feed Forward webinar series [5] – the organization now, under new management
Machines work on feed-back. Minds work on feed-forward. We don’t need thermostats; we need new compasses. There is no ‘back to normal’. Normal has not been waiting for us. Leandro Herrero
To change to ‘the new normal’ we must think and act differently in the management of our organizations. Join Leandro Herrero and his team of organizational architects for these 4, free webinars as they debunk uncontested assumptions and uncover the alternatives, whilst considering why this is even more relevant today in the current exceptional environment. Join them and bring your critical thinking brain, switched on. It’s a serious business. It may also be fun. Register Now! [5]
Each participant who attends any of the live webinars of the Feed Forward series will be eligible for one copy of The Flipping Point [3].