Comfortably against the grain

Consultant Ben Tiggelaar is known for his successful training sessions under the name ‘MBA in a Day’. At the same time I know him as the author of provocative management critical columns in NRC. In it he shows himself comfortably against the grain.

Thus,  for example, he criticizes the fashionable emphasis on learning. That easily becomes a policy thing, he says, imposed by supervisors who are not really interested. Of them Tiggelaar says: “Do not misunderstand me, I am in favour of learning and development. But I am against impossible plans that you invent, and I must run”.

And when he reads a passage like this: “Employees in functiongroup 3 must with respect to the competence ‘situational awareness’ be at ‘expert level’”, he knows for sure: he would never again be employed. Tiggelaar actually wants not to have to do with managers any longer.

In reading his columns I sometimes wonder why Tiggelaar presents his training under the aegis of MBA. Indeed, does ‘Master of Business Administration’ not represent all those things he shoots in a refreshingly decisive way? Such as: an overemphasis on control via  budgets, financial planning and HR tools. Or, by extension, a unhealthily strong division between leaders and performers.

Tiggelaar,  I think,  fully agrees with Henry Mintzberg who in Managers, not MBA’s says about MBA’s that “too many of them are trapped in a regime of rational tunnel-thinking, schematic planning and calculating management”. Tiggelaar: “Many managers do more harm than good, they are the worst cause of stress. People do not quit jobs, they quit bosses”.

So why then this MBA advert for his trainings?

It could very well be of course that Tiggelaar puts that in his ads because the predicate MBA - rightly or not - has a strong reputation. I do not believe that the successful completion of the training day produces any title, but mentioning ‘MBA’ may act as bait. Mintzberg confirms that a scientific label, such as an MBA degree, is highly regarded in management circles.

But perhaps Tiggelaar, by the use of the term MBA, intended to for once give it a critical interpretation and to direct the managers’ attention to the absurdity of much  management rhetoric.

Given the brave waywardness of his columns I choose for this last explanation.

Ten bridges too far

I can not see it otherwise. Pleasant cooperation begins and ends with knowing of each other what you’re doing. Also in such a mega-organization like the municipality of Amsterdam.

Even if that means that policy makers sometimes have to know exactly some details of the logistics of a form or informationflow. And that a manager must be able to dive into the exact records of one of his products and must be able to follow the process of creation.

That’s ten bridges too far, I know that now too. Because they don’t wánt that at all, those managers and policy makers, for various reasons.

Therefore it is all the more remarkable that recently, just before my departure as ‘clarifyer of workprocesses’, I was allowed several times to experience the flow that occurs when six or seven people together harmonize their process – their daily bread – and feel taken seriously in it. That generates a specific relaxed kind of job satisfaction.

But now we are back again at the lonely, individual process-tinkerers. Or at the collective brown-paper products that are admittedly created with great flow, but of which after a year nobody knows where they are.

But one time it will be fixed well again – I can not see it otherwise.

Also see Live to see

Levinas and Kahneman

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman had just graduated when in 1955 as a conscript into the Israeli army he was commissioned to set up a new interview system for the entire army. The interviews were meant to produce a picture of the recruits and to judge whether these were suited for the officer training.

The existing system did no longer satisfy, because it gave the interviewers freedom to do what they found most interesting, which was to learn about the dynamics of the spiritual life of the interviewee. Ánd because the overall assessment of the recruit by the interviewers was decisive for the final decision, while scientific evidence indicated that such assessments were unreliable.

Kahneman attacked both objections. Instead of free interviews he opted for standardized, factual questions. And instead of interview summaries he preferred statistical summaries of seperately assessed characteristics of the recruit. The final score for fitness for combat tasks would be calculated using a standard formula, without further interference by the interviewers.

In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman justifies his choices as follows. “By focusing on standardized, factual questions I hoped to fight the halo effect, whereby favorable first impressions affect judgments later on. I told the interviewers that they did not have to worry about the future adjustment of the recruit to life in military service. Their only task was to get the relevant facts about their past and to use that information to score each personality dimension. ‘It is your job to provide reliable data’, I told them. Just leave the predictive validity to me’, by which I was referring to the formula that I would draft to combine their specific scores”.

Then he continues: “Among the interviewers an uprising almost broke out. These intelligent young people found it hard to accept that they were instructed by someone who was barely older than they were, to turn off their intuition and to concentrate fully on dull factual questions. One of them protested by saying: “You make robots of us!” That’s why I came up with a compromise. “If you do the interview exactly as I have said, then I will satisfy  your desire: then close your eyes, try to imagine the recruit as a soldier and give him a score on a scale from 1 to 5.”

The new interview procedure proved to be a significant improvement with respect to the old one. The sum of the six ratings predicted performance of the soldiers much more accurately than the summary reviews of the previous interview method, although still far from perfect. They were advanced, says Kahneman, from ‘totally useless’ to ‘somewhat useful’.

At the same time Kahneman observed, to his surprise, that the intuitive judgment formed by the interviewers at the time of the closed eyes, also satisfied very well, even as well as the sum of the six specific scores. He tells: “A general lesson I took from this episode was that one should not just rely on intuitive judgments – either of yourself or of others – but also that one should not automatically reject them.”

The question I ask myself in this story of Kahneman is: does the blindfolded intuition actually  function as a sop? Doesn’t he actually believe it? Should employees just accept that formulas are used and that they can not develop their creative involvement?

Kahneman is skeptical indeed. He believes that we in general grossly overestimate our own intuitive skills and expertise and human knowledge. And that therefore sober observations and measurements which are laid down in algorithms and formulas are preferable. Regardless whether it comes to the assessment of recruits, the prediction of wine prices or valuation of a painting.

Such a view easily provokes the kind of resistance that we already encountered above: “We are made into robots!” What then remains of our highly personal individuality and creativity? Do not our lives become dull and impersonal?

I do understand the resistance, but yet I tend to share Kahneman’s view. The reason is that  I am sufficiently soaked in the skepticism which also Levinas displays opposite the euphoria of the highly personal thinking which is so pleased with itself but permanently produces illusions. However much the glorification of the creative individual fits into the romantic society we still are, Levinas’s and Kahneman’s skepticism thereabout is very much in place. So, let Kahneman use his sop, because we can do without a lot of our self-righteous euphoria.

What can nót miss is a different kind of vividness. Namely that of the authentic encounter with another human being or beings. I even think that fulfillment of that desire can make redundant a lot of overly focused attention on individuality in our society. When it comes to that deficit Kahneman leaves us, apart from the sop, empty-handed. Because he speaks little about such encounters between people.

Levinas even more.

Also see Levinas and Empathy

Chefsache

It seems to percolate bit by bit now, even with top-executives: primary processes and information flows are Chefsache. We may learn this from the hitches in IT that shake government services, from the near-fatal neglect by Obama of the implementation of his health system, and from the imminent demise of Polare, a big Dutch booksellerschain.

This insight requires quite a mental change. Until not so long ago bosses were considered above all nót to be busy with the primary process. But for instance the crisis at Polare is attributed by some to precisely that lack of interest, namely because “the owners of Polare systematically neglect the primary process of a bookstore in favor of investment strategies, synergy and all kinds of other considerations. Management takes too little notice of substantive knowledge”.

But it is one thing to know that the primary process is essential, it is something else to act accordingly. Because acting accordingly means more than just changing priorities.

Indeed, this area requires a different way of approaching. It can not be operated the way one manages strategy or human resources or change management. On these topics, the chefs are used to think in broad lines, and to develop plans in a top-down way, roll them out and let them be implemented.

In a situation of real attention to the primary process, that way of operating might very well be less useful. Because such attention implies a certain involvement in the workplace, in the manner of implementation. Less distance. In addition to management skills the content becomes more important indeed.

The objection to this is predictable: the boss does not have time for that, of course. No, that’s true, that’s exactly what makes the change so dramatic. Such an approach would in fact mean that personal enterpreneurship of others, besides the boss, is of greater importance. That initiatives may be coming from more sides at once.

More attention to the primary process could very well lead to fewer Chef and more Sache .

Also see Blowing Bubbles

Begging for Feed-back

I recently read that in the short term we in the West must not expect revolutionary new technological inventions. Technological innovation will mainly need to build on existing technology and therefore productivity increase on this basis will be modest in size.

If that’s the case indeed, more profits and faster productivity growth are to be expected of social innovation. By which I mean the fixing of the energy leak which in many organizations exists because people do not or too little cooperate. And also I mean the stopping of the waste of money, time and talent which results from dysfunctional beliefs about management.

That energy leak and waste are usually not caused because employees or managers have bad intentions, but because the organization through budgets and powers is sometimes arranged in such way as to set people against each other instead of bringing them together. And that in its turn is caused because we are saddled with obsolete, dysfunctional beliefs about management and organization. These limit, consciously or unconsciously, our space for movement and improvement.

Take the views on management and leadership. In most organizations it are still mainly forms of hierarchical thinking and command structures that determine which concepts are associated with management. These include concepts such as power, competency, the ability to override others. And far fewer – apart from exceptions – a serving and facilitating attitude.

Then this is what you get: managers who get a kick out of their decision-making-power and who in intimate moments don’t keep secret that they are in that position because they cannot stand that others tell them what to do. But who at the same time do not but expect that others are able to do precisely that.

And you get relatively many frightened employees, who have effectively been silenced.

That pinches of course, and those managers may as well feel the pinching. They largely, despite their formal power, fail to achieve what they aim at. And they feel that more is needed, and – above all – something else: they should engage in genuine consultation with “their” people. But at this point also impotence enters the story: they have to listen but because of the way they have organized things and because of their character structure that does not work properly. They beg for feedback, but what follows is a deathly silence. Touching, almost.

This is not managable any longer by hurling in a top-down way some more behavioral science and communication tricks into the organization. Here another way of social interaction is required. Which justifiably may be called: social innovation.

Also see Trust

Collectivity and Individual

The relationship between collectivity and individual can be complicated. In the film Life of Brian the crowd shouts out oudly “We are all individuals” and so precisely confirms its herd character.

With (other) Jews it may be the other way round. They belong together in a shul or in Israel and pretend to be linked to each other by a shared tradition but then don’t miss an opportunity to emphasize their own individual positions.

It is interesting to observe the relation of the individual versus the collective through history for both the Jewish and the Christian tradition. Then it appears that the two traditions on this theme often are out of phase with each other, but at other times nicely match.

For the period - some two thousand years ago - in which the equation can be made for the first time, I would say that they are out of phase with each other. In the Jewish tradition learning is strongly emphasized, as a duty incumbent upon each individual. In the Christian tradition collective confession of the new faith is promoted under the leadership of clerics who tell the people what that faith must entail.

From the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance Judaism and Christianity in these matters moved towards each other. In the West humanism came to blossom, with great attention to the development and independence of the individual. This trend was only strengthened by the Enlightenment in the 18th and Romanticism in the 19th century.

Many Jews felt attracted by this development and joined with enthusiasm in the pursuit of greater individual freedom and fuller citizenship of the surrounding culture. The struggle for emancipation of the Jews was matched by that of other groups in society and the bourgeoisie as a whole.

In our own time, the developments seem to be somewhat out of phase again. Christians complain that the collective story is lost, that society consists only of loose individuals. What exactly connects these individual citizens to each other, according to the philosopher Marcel Gauchet, and how they relate to the state has become subordinate to the defense of their individual freedom. Which is not to be limited in any way.

Conversely, in the twentieth century Jews rediscovered, already before the Holocaust, their collectivity. This resulted in the Zionist movement and the creation of Israel. It may be true in general that, still, Jews don’t easily allow others to tell them what to do, not even their fellow Jews. But meanwhile, the Jewish tradition is alive and Israel, with all its shortcomings, is a thriving country. Paradoxically a certain connectedness stands out there.

Maybe it’s the connectedness of everyone who does not let himself be silenced: that creates a bond. But if that’s the case, then the Christian and the Jewish world at one point will be back in line with each other. Because, to wish that your voice is heard, isn’t that a universal human desire? Or as I heard say David Grossman recently: the least which must be awarded to each human being is the opportunity to speak in his own words about his own things.

Also see Parrhesia

Everybody CEO

I want to expand a bit on the observation of a paradigm shift by which I concluded the previous message. Because that is quite a thing, a suchlike overturning of values, through which what was low-valued acquires more respectability: the real work, the trivial. If it were true, of course.

Confirmation of this trend may be found in the book Everybody CEO by Menno Lanting. In the book the author elaborates on the said paradigm shift, from contempt to appreciation for ordinary work, but now with the focus on organizations. He indicates the implications of this shift in the way we talk about work, leadership and management.

The impact of this shift may in fact be very large. Because the high esteem which traditionally exists with respect to thinking, overview and policymaking was always accompanied by a prestige for a certain - rather narrowly conceived - form of leadership and concomitant reward. That can not continue of course, once you call ‘everyone CEO’, because who is going to pay for that? Moreover, if you take seriously that slogan, then the monolithic image of The Real Leader pulverizes into many images of leadership, because then anyone can be one.

Then a leader is no longer necessarily dominant, or to be found at a distance from work, or heroically taking his the difficult decisions in utter solitude. Then leaders, as Lanting says, suddenly are to be found in the middle of organizations, close to the workfloor. Then it might be that the same people are leaders in one situation and followers in another.

Then it becomes conceivable that more leaders arise like Jos de Blok of a Dutch Neighbourhood Care organization who mentions as his main concern “that I don’t make my own role and position too big. I keep talking about ordinary things and professional content. I’m not really into management and management language and prefer to talk about client situations and the problems that professionals encounter. My assumption is that everything can be solved in the teams. This makes me to have the least (management) consulting as possible”.

This is truly revolutionary. Paradoxically, it means that we (temporarily) still need to rely on the heroic leadership which traditionally is in so high esteem. Indeed, there should be somebody to reduce the number of management meetings, to cut out overhead and to eliminate the woolly language in which we imprison each other. In short, to saw off the branch on which he sits. For a while there is still room for (very) heroic managers.

Aristotle and the bonuses

The Dutch legal philosopher Thierry Baudet recently wrote a nice article on Ronald Dworkin, Martha Nussbaum and the sustainability of our morality. However interesting the content of the article, on this place I am primarily interested in the end of Baudet’s article. After his discussion of the subtle polemics of Dworkin with his opponents and the activism of Nussbaum, Baudet concludes with the observation that both thinkers don’t show any shortcoming when it comes to high ideals, but fail to translate these into concrete practice.

Is that never ever going to change? I wonder in bewilderment at such a conclusion every time again. Do thinkers time and again accept that they are not relevant to everyday practice and keep critics being satisfied with just noticing that lack of relevance?

Indeed, these observations on the tiresome relationship of thinking to daily life are anything but new. Thus I recently came across a statement of Goethe in which he denounces the speculative, unsensuous and disputatious nature of the work of his philosophical contemporaries. He opposes to them the fellow German countrymen “who, being businessmen, standing in the middle of life, just pay attention to practical matters: they write the best”. And the English of course, “being born as orators and as practical, reality-oriented people”. And Marx formulated his opposition to the prevailing philosophy by saying that it comes to changing the world instead of interpreting it theoretically.

But from that perspective, I find it equally appalling that Baudet promotes Aristotle as a possible remedy for too much high-mindedness and philosophical isolation. Aristotle! The one who said that knowledge of eternal things is much loftier than practical knowledge. And for whom there was nothing more preferable than to dwell in contemplation.

True, among the ancient Greeks Aristotle was the one with his feet most firmly on the ground. Probably it is even for that reason that Baudet recommends him in his article, he can serve as an example against the theorizing of Dworkin and Nussbaum. Indeed, Aristotle has, more than they have, an eye for the paradoxical character of man as a being that is constantly torn between conflicting desires and needs. Moreover, Aristotle gave more close attention to the manifestations of biological and social life than any other ancient thinker.

But when it comes to the point, as far as his fundamental orientation is concerned, Aristotle is entirely in the Greek tradition. He does not really get out of the circle of his ancient Greek colleagues who maintain a hierarchical world view with contemplation at the top and labor at the base. And where the main concern is to stay away as far as possible from labor and as close as possible to the top.

It seems to me that this focus is for a large part responsible for the continuing irrelevance of our Western thinking. As long as Plato and Aristotle remain the ultimate benchmark of our thinking this is not going to change easily. Then the gap keeps reproducing itself.

The intriguing thing is that this reproduction has a parallel in the world of management and organization. The fascination for reflection at a distance to working life is reflected in the practice of our organizations. Up to the striving to make the distance between the thinker / manager and the work as large as possible. The degree of frustration that this causes may be derived from reports, for instance from the world of care and nursing homes. “The distance between the top and the workfloor becomes astronomical. In fact, the two don’t meet anymore”. And the rewards grow along with the distance. Here the Greek ideal of a sublime distance to labor has been realized alsmost perfectly, I would say.

Almost ... and maybe not forever everywhere. Because for instance the Dutch Council for Social Development (RMO) recently gave a revolutionary opinion. It was about excellent social workers in child welfare, which now too often make the transition to management because it pays better and gives more prestige. The RMO wants to keep them in the operational work by better rewarding them, precisely if they refrain from a management position.

This actually is a paradigm shift of the first order, a break with the ancient Greeks.

Megatrend

The transition from bondage to freedom, is it a jump, or even an absolute break? Or, to put the question differently: a bit more freedom, is that possible to exist once you've got a taste of freedom? Or is a bit more freedom something like being a bit pregnant? Something that does not stop until the freedom or the fruit matures?

That question may be posed in response to the rebellions in North Africa. Are the ghosts completely out of control, will the insurgents in Tunis, Cairo and Benghazi still accept anything less than full democracy and participation? Or is there space left for a half-half situation, for a little more freedom within an autocratic framework?

So, for example, for a little more freedom in a state still run by the military, as now in Egypt. Or for greater involvement of the people while maintaining a powerful and popular king, as in Morocco. Or, as in China, for a bit of freedom in combination with rapid economic growth under an authoritarian party.

Or would half-half not last and should one radically march on? Have the Chinese leaders reached the borders of their ability to keep stupefying their population’s drive for freedom by offering prosperity and will they therefore have to allow more freedom? Will the Egyptian army have to give in to radical freedom-loving forces in the country? Or, if half-half is no option, are they going to choose, as in Iran, for completely stifling all freedom?

Closer to us in Western Europe the above question may be posed as well, be it that, fortunately, we know less physical and statedriven violence. And, another difference, I want to apply the question to the leadership in our companies. There we used to have directive and more or less top-down ways of leadership, but does that still work well? There is a growing number of voices that think it does not work any longer as a standard approach.

Carney and Getz for example state in their book Freedom, Inc. that the hierarchical model has run out. According to them the future belongs to companies that give their employees the freedom to do their job as they think it should be done. Because otherwise these freedom-loving people just walk away. Knowledge workers can not be managed in a controlling manner. The task of the leader is merely to create optimal acting space for his employees.

Another radical sound comes from Alan Murray. In his view managers are only a barrier to the full deployment of their employees and the prosperity of a company. "Their fundamental tendency is to maintain themselves. They are, almost by definition, averse to any change". Moreover, the younger generations don’t let themselves be commanded by parents or bosses. They listen to whát is being said. Not for nothing many people choose a position as worker without fixed tenure.

When you view the radicality of these statements, the opening question of this piece comes up again: once you have smelt freedom, will you not be at odds with any authority? Or is there space left for mixed forms of the authoritarian and the democratic, of hierarchy and freedom. Can these styles co-exist, or has the unfettered, free knowledge worker unmasked the manager as being a conservative potentate in such a way that the two are no longer compatible? That would mean the end of management. If so then we are living in historic times and experiencing a mega trend in both North Africa and in our own organizations.

But, to be honest, I think we must be prepared to manage with the hybrids. Complete freedom, both in North Africa and in our organizations, is something we will have to wait for a little longer. I feel strengthened in this thought – as far organizations are concerned – by a newspaper article that emphasized the indispensability of the organizational controlmodel. It was about the Belgian juridical system which had failed in an investigation into the murder of a student. The report on the police action can be read as a tribute to classical bureaucratic management because its absence is identified as the cause of failure: there was "no team manager, no file manager, no coordinator, (...) no structure, no information management, and leadership was absent. All this could be read as the chronicle of an announced failure".

Also see Must work be fun

Grief

The words ‘grief’ or ‘violence’ or ‘pain’ do not belong to the vocabulary of organizations. Because there grown-ups work together based on mutual consent and rational alignment. That’s what I sometimes hear from participants in my workshop Thinking for someone else, in which I – in the footsteps of the philosopher Levinas – regularly use those words, even if we discuss work situations. My answer is that some words may indeed sound strange in the context of organization and management, but that they really can tell us something about that reality. And that time may be ripe for a variety of unusual word connections.

As to that latter thought I feel strengthened by the publication of the book The judge’s new clothes by the Dutch judge Rinus Otte. Because the book calls forth a number of unusual associations. Of judges with misery, of organizations with grief, of management with being pathetic. These unusual connections are there already for some time, so Otte suggests, but something in our minds keeps us from associating the said things with one another.

The association of judges with misery gets profile only relatively recently. Namely, Otte tells us, since judges are locked up in planning and control cycles in which targets are fixed and results are measured. Because much of their work processes are standardized, judges from a center point turned into a link in a chain. They have little grip anymore on the organization of their daily work. The juridical process is planned for them, not by them. The thinking is being done for them, and thus they started to show increasingly dependent behavior. They started to make one another’s lifes a misery and to complain a lot, especially about the workload, says Otte.

That’s pretty miserable indeed, but – according to Otte – no more pathetic than the fate of many other professionals, because the planning and control bureaucracy has raged almost everywhere and made people mellow. That of course makes it no less severe, as the malaise now almost gets the features of a genuine cultural crisis.

The words organization and grief seem to stem from two incompatible vocabularies. Organization stands for ultimate rationality and functionality. There may be some links with the realm of emotions, but these connections are subject to strict censorship. Emotions in that context should invariably radiate positivity and enthusiasm and be about connectedness. The association of organization as a reasonable concept with grief keeps feeling uneasy, but Otte makes clear to what extent that association within the administration of justice is identifiable. The Dutch paper NRC reports that Otte was baffled about the “unhappiness” and the “organizational violence” that he encountered at his court (and, appearing from his quotationmarks, the reporter found it strange words a well in this context).

Something similarly uneasy applies to the coupling of managers and being pathetic. According to the prevailing perception managers are still mainly associated with vigor, coolness and, again, reasonableness. Yet, however often the words energy and charisma and connection may be used in those circles, Otte’s book makes quite clear, according to the NRC, that management of the criminal process is mainly rather tiresome. “Tensions have grown over the last five to ten years” and “What you see is a lot of communication between deaf, people don’t reach each other”.

The interesting question, of course, which lays behind those uncomfortable associations is: what makes our brain to take one kind of associations for granted and to find other kinds of associations odd, even though reality offers us many reasons for such an unusual association to be made? To be continued.

Also see Bauman, Levinas and business ethics

The kick of connection

The attraction of the word 'connection' is huge. And actually that applies to all words which come a bit near to it, such as communication, teamwork, directness.

Not for nothing these words are so often used to capture people. Not just in personal ads, but also in recruitment ads or reorganization plans. Apparently the need for being connected is high.

And for connecting. That appeared recently at a meeting for employees of the municipality of Amsterdam. At that occasion there were eight types of employees listed, each with its own qualities, which the city needs to function properly. These types included the 'networker' and the 'connector'. When subsequently the employees were asked to classify themselves into one of the types, the networker and the connector, together with the 'playmaker', scored by 75 percent of the points. The ‘finishers’ got no further than one and a half percent.

In Amsterdam nonetheless we know quite a few situations in which those connections are accidentally not in place, and not only with respect to the North-South metroline. Then we appoint coordinators or communication experts or social innovators. They, already by the sheer magic of their function names, respond to the need, even if this is just for a short time. In reality these solutions often lead only to more bubble blowing instead of connection.

The need for connection seems to have a physiological basis. I regularly read articles about the functioning of the brains in which the health of the brain is associated with the degree to which parts of the brain connect with one another. It appears that depression can be countered by removing hitches in the connections between braincells and that older people remain sharper when they continue to train their brains to create links.

I am inclined to believe that. The tying together - in a sensible way - of elements which in first instance are foreign to one another is stimulating. But in organizations you better don’t do that by primarily talking a lot about it, as in Amsterdam is the case a bit too much.

You better just do it. Literally. With a simple click I can connect one department of my work to other departments, through information which flows from the one to the other. And always based on a discussion between representatives of both departments. Each connecting click gives me a kick each time again.

Truly together

It is fairly popular with companies to present themselves in commercials as top performing symphony orchestras. With employees who are fully tuned in to one another, a perfect collective timing, a visionary conductor and of course resounding (financial) results. The orchestra as a metaphor for excellent corporate performance.

I always find that annoying. Not because I don’t enjoy the artistic creations that are to be heard through the symphony orchestra. Indeed, most of them are great monuments of culture. I almost die in the beauty of a well performed symphony of Beethoven or Mahler.

What’s annoying about those ads is that in them the orchestral playing together is presented as something special and exalted. While I think the orchestra as a model of cooperation is entirely outdated. It is in fact a military organization, dating from the eighteenth century. With a leader who can visibly fully express himself and gets one hundred percent space for initiative and flow, along with a number of sometimes solo-performing key players and finally a lot of bowing foot-soldiers.

In the world of music this situation has, according to the violinist Gordan Nikolic, led to collections of excellently performing artists of consistent quality, who nevertheless produce mediocre or boring music. In his view that has to do with a shortage of space for reflection and imagination with those musicians. And this in its turn is, I think, all about the hierarchical and rigid structure of a traditional symphony orchestra.

I infer this from an interview in which Nikolic states his preference for a certain democratic dynamics within groups of musicians. Nikolic is the artistic director of the Dutch Chamber Orchestra, but he leads that from the concertmaster chair. He emphatically does not want to be a conductor, because he values "the collective conscience of a group he belongs to" as much more important. "Have fun" Nikolic calls out to his orchestra at the beginning of a rehearsal. He even proposes to someday give a concert without any rehearsal beforehand because that would release an unimaginable amount of energy. Of course this includes the risk that at a time such a concert may completely founder.

Instead of a working situation where orchestra members ask him "What do you want from us" he managed to create an atmosphere in which all together tell a story. To have something like that in an ordinary labor organization seems to be very nice to me, but the reality in most cases looks more like a traditional symphony orchestra. In this respect, the metaphor of the commercials is still not that wrong at all. The only thing is: don’t present it as an ideal model.

Blowing Bubbles

For too long I have let the idea be foisted on me that thoughtfulness or philosophy is something unworldly, a sort of noncommittal blowing bubbles. Only the quantity and speed of delivered action would testify of maturity. But this is not true, I know now.

Of course, unworldly philosophers exist. But it is only in respect of their playing field that they differ from the financial whizkids who saddled us with billions of debt. Or from busy executives who hardly can be said to live normal lifes. Those bankers and managers easily measure up to unworldly philosophers, when it comes to unworldliness.

Yet common perception tends to assign to groups such as bankers and managers more effectiveness than to the group of philosophers. That has to do with the mixing up in common language of the word ‘action’, however unfocused it may be, with effectiveness. And that is no longer sustainable. Because we may perhaps perish in the amount of thoughtless action. To this area apparently applies that things are not always what they seem to be. Words and their meanings are not always adequate to reality. In particular, the words 'effective' and 'unworldly' are ripe to be detached from their usual associations.

Perhaps we knew that already for some time, but the new thing is that even within management it has become more difficult to maintain the old dichotomy in common language. What I note, for example, is that good managers are dealing nowadays with something philosophical like semantics. The use of ICT is forcing them to be very precise in the meaning of words, or at least to be able to value that kind of exactness. Because if you neglect that, any logistics and control system that you order to be build will make the confusion still bigger than it already was. So, deliberate reflection in this area is clearly more effective than display of decisiveness.

The same applies to reflection by managers about what it means for their employees to work in an organization. This kind of reflection appears to pay off in the sense that people often respond well to it and perform and innovate better. So these reflexive managers are simply more effective.

Therefore, what makes a person unworldly or not is not attributable any longer to the difference between action and lack of action, decisiveness and shyness. Rather it is the difference between meaningful action and senseless action.

Maybe it's the difference between Obama, who knows to await his time, and Sarkozy. The latter thought himself to be rather resolute when by presidential decree he prohibited French aid airplanes to take off from Haïti’s airport when they were not completely loaded with victims of the earthquake. The airport got completely blocked up.

So, who is blowing bubbles after all?

Also see Go with the flow