Complexity LO7813

Eric Bohlman (ebohlman@netcom.com)
Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:14:24 -0700 (PDT)

Replying to LO7790 --

On Sat, 8 Jun 1996, jpomo@gate.net wrote:

> Leaders must always be right about values, but not about things. A boss'
> juniors follow leads by extracting the value standard they reflect and
> then using that standard in performing their work. No boss has any more
> chance of being right about things or technical issues than juniors and
> perhaps far less. Not to openly admit to this leads toward arrogance, not
> humility - toward mediocrity rather than excellence - and results in a
> degradation of performance. Besides, the more the leader allows juniors
> to strut their stuff and take charge, the less robotic and the more
> creative/innovative they become. This is a part of the road to LO.
>
> If you meant to indicate that leaders too often act as if they are always
> correct, I would be forced to sadly agree. But it certainly is
> self-defeating and counter-productive.

The analogy I use for the authoritarian "I'm right about the facts because
I'm the boss" attitude is a magic windshield that always shows your car to
be perfectly centered in your lane regardless of where it actually is.
What would happen if you tried to drive with one? You'd sooner or later
crash, regardless of how much of an ego boost it gave you initially.

In _A Dream Deferred_, Philip Slater points out that the main reason why
authoritarian organizations eventually must fail is that the people at the
top become increasingly insulated from reality and, lacking any meaningful
feedback, start to believe their own press and make decisions on the
assumption that things are going the way they want them to be, not the way
they actually are. A good example would be Saddam Hussein's decision to
invade Kuwait; any of his advisors could have told him that he would have
lost more than he gained by doing it, but none of them dared to.

Eric Bohlman (ebohlman@netcom.com)

-- 

Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@netcom.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>