Teaching Leadership LO7063

John Conover (john@johncon.johncon.com)
Mon, 29 Apr 1996 22:31:10 -0700

Replying to LO7047 --

Christian Giroux writes:
> Replying to LO6975 --
>
> > >During this conversation, Peter Drucker said something that really struck me.
> > It was along those lines:
> >
> > >"Historically, a country needed 10 to 20 leaders to be effective, a King,
> > a Fieldmarshall, and so on. Typically these people were brought up,
> > educated from day one, to become leaders. We're now in a totally different
> > situation, where thousands of leaders are necessary in our society. This is
> > unprecedented. We do not know how to teach people to become leaders if we
> > don't start at the most tender age..."
> >

There are related works on the game-theoretic foundations of such
things. For a formal presentation see:

"Games and Decisions," R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa, John
Wiley & Sons, New York, New York, 1957, Chapter 14, pp. 327.

For a "light/lay" presentation, see:

"Archimedes' Revenge," Paul Hoffman, Fawcett Crest New York, New
York, 1993, Section IV, chapters 12 and 13, pp. 213.

For a historical persptective, see:

"History of Mathematical Programming," Edited by, J.K. Lenstra and
A. H. G. Rinnooy Kan and A. Schrijver, CWI, Amsterdam, Holland,
1991, "The Origins of the Impossibilty Theorem," Kenneth Arrow,
pp. 1.

>From a strict, theoretical standpoint, with 3 leaders or more, (your
milage may very-but 3 is the limit,) troubles may ensue, and the least
desirable ranking of priorities for all leaders may be instituted as a
compromise solution, (as opposed to the "best" ranking, consolidating all
the leader's perspectives.) The issue is that the ranking of priorities is
mathematically/logically intransitive with 3 or more lists of priorities,
(ie., players in the "game.") It becomes a "system" problem when there are
more than 2 players.

John

BTW, astonishingly, Arrow was working on the social welfare function at
RAND, circa mid 1950's (ie., the optimal amount of resources to spend on
social welfare issues-see the Clinton/Newt/Dole arguments for details,)
when he won the Nobel for proving that such an optimization does not exist
for more than two lists of priorities. Might explain why two party social
administrative systems are more successful, historically, than multi-party
systems-not to mention the traditional anthropological issues of child
rearing systematic functionalities.

-- 

John Conover, 631 Lamont Ct., Campbell, CA., 95008, USA. VOX 408.370.2688, FAX 408.379.9602 john@johncon.com

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