Change Discourse: Power Relationships

I’m starting to get an inkling about why people resist change and, believe me, if you think words like “attitude” might sum it up, you’re just going to have nightmares reading this.  In the process of reading Ian Morris’s Why the West Rules - for Now, it became quite evident to me that it was during the so-called “Enlightenment” that people’s thought structures began to detach from the hierarchically inspired mythos of the preceding eras of history and the idea of democracy and ideal of the “rule of law” occurred to people. It was wonderful, however brief. 

Up until that time, political organization was roughly the same as a grand protection racket. Some of you may think that little has changed, but in fact things have changed immensely. Nevertheless, we are backsliding.

What does the pre-enlightenment “divine right of kings” mythos give us? How does it feed and nurture the so stable pillars of our mindset? How does it keep us holding on to something we see as sane in a complex and dangerous world?

It gives us a self-contained little cosmos with us at the centre.

It gives us clear cut rules of social engagement.

It gives us the acceptable routes to and rites of kinship (e.g., the walk down the aisle and father giving his daughter as a bride to his son-in-law)

It gives us the limits of acceptable convention and the unacceptably unconventional or "weird". 

It gives us the limits of civilized and uncivilized behaviour, e.g., the ideal of professionalism that allows you to bring only 10% of yourself to work.

It gives a small group of people full permission to lead and direct the course of events to their own advantage.

So, what has changed? 

The introduction of the “rule of law” is a vast improvement over the "divine right of kings" mythos if it protects the ideal that each person can be the captain of their destiny, the ideal of everyone having the right to develop and express themselves in mutually beneficial ways (or in ways that do no harm to others).  

But let's face it, we remain to a large extent under the yoke of the ancient mythos, this vestigial patriarchy and hierarchy that so many on the modern ideological bandwagon think had been overthrown three hundred years ago. 

We have sold away a lot of our enlightenment thinking to buy swiffer-clean houses, big box convenience and the North Pacific Garbage Patch. So the rule of law reverts to might is right - until the yoke gets tight. Given that our identities are inexorably tied to the worldview of the group or community we identify with and measure ourselves against.

Seems that we are only the least bit interested in liberty when it is obviously threatened. I think today our numbing of the intellect to avoid facing the Darth Vader that haunts our economic and socio-political realities is what threatens us most. The most disturbing thing is that the numbing is the Darth Vader. 

It takes courage and humanity to develop real understanding in any era, Enlightenment, post-Enlightenment. We think we look better in the dark, perhaps. 

Change Discourse: Public and Private Worlds

No doubt, we all have our secrets, but even those are framed using the belief systems available to us through public discourse. Our lives are lived in the public domain. 

Who each of us is in the public world is very much a part of our identities as private people. If you are a woman, for instance, your personal and social identity is still largely defined by the roles you play in the lives of men.  In turn, the roles of men and women evolve with the types of division of labour required to support the economy given a level of technology. 

Women's lives throughout history were until very recently restricted to the private sphere. While it is said that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, in fact, to express any of her thoughts, women must conceive and articulate their thoughts in terms that are comprehended in a public world that has been almost entirely defined by men who had economic power.  Women's personal identities were defined through the interests and needs of the men: Mother, lover, madonna, whore... Woman means wooed by man; i.e., wife of man.  Consider also the distinction in language between matter and spirit, and the patriarchal nature of religion, and also the symbols for masculine (mind) and feminine (body). Matter/Mater... More on this later.

The default gender is the masculine. Political power (political majority) is not measured in terms of how many women there are in relation to men, or even how many women there are in boardrooms in relation to men, but that we have to relate woman's success to that of the norm, the default gender, male.

Every thought we have can be articulated, but then it has already been forged in the public discourse. Even if we keep to ourselves, our selves are more publicly determined than self-determined because our opportunities to articulate our identities to ourselves are framed and validated in the public sphere. If there's too much of a discrepancy between how we view ourselves and our public reception, we lack legitimacy and credibility (and it is assumed the fault lies with us) and we feel alienated, disenfranchised, marginalized, even crazy. 

So what is the "private sphere"? Is it the sphere dominated by women? No, it's the sphere demarcated, defined and dominated by the historical economy. The economics of the home is publicly defined, and that definition informs our expectations of the roles of women and types of discussion men will engage in about their private lives. The default reality is the public world.

Due to changes in how we produce and distribute goods, larger numbers of women have access to the public domain than ever before. But being a woman doesn't make one's talk less patriarchal. If the discourse is becoming less patriarchal, it is because social organization around the modes of production requires it, or it is because we are becoming more aware of the affect of our institutions during times of change, and more aware of the effect of the terms of discourse. We no longer see our social institutions as natural arrangements, but as historical developments and therefore we can question them.

Change Discourse

It's been a long time since I posted a blog entry on Peripheral Vision.

I've decided to contribute something a little different now - on subjects that I have been thinking about for a very long time.  I was going to open another blog, but thought that it would save distractions if I just continued here.

I should warn you that this is going to be pretty "big picture" but for all that, it is definitely not going to be abstract. Over the next few months of postings (I hope) you'll come across terms such as "narrative" and "social discourse" but let's be clear - those are not abstract concepts like "the average family" or the GDP.

Social discourse is that living sea of language that you inherit from the many cultures in which you were raised. It's the theatre of your cognition, the shaper of your experiences and what allows you to communicate a wealth of information to others by means of these mere marks on the screen, or those little puffs of air that resonate throughout the cafe. It's the window through which you look out from your inner self to the world around you. It's the sedimented history of thousands and thousands of years of human existence.  It sorts, organizes and informs your basic, habitual awareness.  It exists in the world around you. (If you still think that's abstract, you can blame that label on several trends in the evolution of social discourse ;). Social discourse or narrative is mainly about the habitual tags, labels and markers we give to all of our personal experiences in the private or public sphere. It's the channel through which things make sense to us and amongst us when we take in, think or talk about them.

Social discourse traverses generations and changes the conditions of our understanding over time. It carries a set of key connotations that have some very strong influences on our experiences. They arise from living in a natural world and the social organization demanded from a given level of technology. Social discourse influences and is influenced by the needs that a level of technology produces:  The needs that organize us around gathering, changing and distributing nature's provisions, the ideals that support that organization. The core ideas in our cognition and evaluations are:

• The definition of private versus public
• Gender, family, and reproductive relationships
• Power relationships (e.g., boss, employee; government, capitalist)
• Values (e.g., "freedom" "kindness" or "success" - what are they?)
• Human beings and our understanding relation to the planet Earth
• What we take to be real in the universe

However, there's usually a lag and some upheaval before the brain and heart catch up with the hands but now, all of our core ideas are about to change markedly .... and therefore so will our experience.

Overcoming Institutional Inertia

Change is difficult in large institutions.  In a previous post, I wrote:

I'm not even sure that it's that "people prefer the devil they know," as the old saying has it. It's just that it is dangerous to both the authors of the narrative and those subject to it to question the rules, to disturb the "collective illusion" that sustains the power structures. For better or for worse, power structures represent "the very fabric of society" and resistance to change should not be underestimated. 

There I argued that it would be technology that would inevitably drive changes. I was thinking, for example, that the Web 2.0 phenomenon that has emerged in recent years presents a platform for horizontal, collaborative, collegial and networked dialogue.  

But to get on board with these technologies to solve work related problems and issues, your heart just has to be in it. You have to care enough about doing things well, or creating an environment where people can be more effective, that you're willing to share your ideas and have them peer reviewed. Before you can do that, you have to be able to identify where changes and improvements are needed, and where people can make a difference.  But even before that, you need the hope that your individual or collective efforts can make a difference.  You have to believe that making a difference is possible.  


Employees can sidestep these risks by focusing on processes and tasks, rather than the broader purposes and the overall efficacy of these activities.   Managers can sidestep institutional roadblocks by behaving "Quantophrenically" or they can simply take roadblocks as natural and eternal aspects of the managerial landscape. In so doing, employees and managers contribute passively to institutional inertia.


These approaches are either products or results of cynicism, which is unfortunate.  Where does the root of the cynicism reside?  How can the tide be turned, now that we have such amazing opportunities to make changes?  


This may be much more about cultural ideology than about individuals. IMO, there has been massive oversimplification with rationalizing and standardizing over the history of business culture in general, and so much of a focus on means and methods (e.g., money, processes, perpetual "growth" in economic terms).  This means that we are cogs in a big economic machine that is, as Charles Taylor put it, "all dressed up with nowhere to go."  In order to make the changes we need now, we need to refocus on things that are intrinsically valuable (growing and sustaining mental, emotional and ecological well-being). The focus on means, methods and quantophrenics has in the past eclipsed discussion on the more intrinsically valuable objectives. 


I do think the tide is turning, however, and that a newer, richer understanding of the complexity of our natural and social systems is causing our more human values to surface, and new voices will increasingly be heard. 

Engagement and Leadership -- Creating Space

I've been keeping track of various discussions and blogs out there, and my interest in the subject of competency, motivation and opportunity (CMO) has carried over from the ideas expressed in the preceding post to thoughts on leadership.  People have been talking about qualities of leaders and one that sticks with me is the emphasis on the fact that leaders create space.  I'd have to agree. If you think about it, that jives with the Opportunity part of the CMO triad.

Sadly, that there have been times where I observed that not enough was done to create space...well, to be starkly honest, I have seen that when people have potentially transformative ideas, management can sometimes react territorially, inspiring colleagues of the would-be change agent to ignore (and even disparage) his or her new ideas, since there was no leadership that would create a way to adopt, or even discuss new ways of doing things. The constricted workplace is a culture of inertia, and since creativity always has to go somewhere, the constricted workplace becomes a toxic workplace where a lack of trust is self-reproducing.

On more positive fronts, I have also observed that when those in charge ask for and are open to their employees' input on decisions and are not afraid to delegate, the enthusiasm for work increases exponentially.

That says to me that under it all, people already have the motivation to engage and use discretionary effort (and where they have motivation and opportunity, they will develop the competencies in a risk-tolerant environment) so what's most important is the ability of those in charge to create the space to let it happen.

So, in the end, it seems to me that a leader is someone who creates space (a values-based approach) rather than someone who constricts it, identifying leadership with control (a rules-based approach.).  Leaders create a culture of trust and opportunity.

Employee Engagement: Competence, Motivation, Opportunity

In his Contrarian Thinking blog, Etienne Laliberté posted a link to a discussion paper entitled "An HR Director's Guide to Employee Engagement". I think the authors really underscore the limitation of the competency approach here:

The long-standing focus on ‘skills’ as key to increasing productivity is too limited. The ‘people and performance’ model identifies the three requirements for releasing employees’ discretionary effort as ability, motivation and opportunity. The skills agenda addresses only the first of these – employee engagement addresses all three. There is an historic opportunity for the Government to demonstrate that it understands the drivers of...performance.

Their Main Point: You not only need the relevant competencies, you need opportunity and motivation.

But here's the tricky question: Which is more important?

First, consider whether relevant competencies are something people are born with. Generally they are learned. They are abilities that people learn both formally and informally, in the classroom, and more often on the job.

Second, consider what are called "generic competencies". Who cannot learn them? Apart from the tragic cases, people have capacity to learn most generic competencies, and it's a matter of motivation and opportunity whether they realize these capacities or not.

I can understand that for jobs in which professional certification and/or very well-developed technical skills are required, these requirements would be included in a job description or a job posting. But it is very important to understand that competencies are not like standard features on a car, like horsepower, or doors, or seating. They are not static givens that people are born with, they are things that, given the opportunity and motivation people will learn, develop and display.

The fact that competencies are learned, not givens, raises questions about the value of hiring on the basis of lists of generic competencies. We should be looking for potential and providing opportunities, not looking for static givens thereby ruling out potential.

If I were hiring someone for for a job, I would certainly ensure they had the key professional technical expertise required, but on the more generic competencies, I'd forgo the standard list, except perhaps for communication skills, and look for what they enjoy:

What did they do or what ideas do they have that make their eyes light up when they tell you about them? Are they interested in the fine details, or are they interested in the big picture? Do they prefer action or contemplation? Do they feel anxious if things are not perfectly clear and stable, or can they tolerate a certain level of ambiguity? Are they more comfortable dealing with "just the facts" (task masters) or do they explore possibilities (experimenters)? Are they motivated primarily to climb the ladder (careerists) or to express creativity (innovators)? Do they enjoy working alone or in groups? What balance of direction/discretion are they most comfortable with? In what way do they really want to make a difference in their professional lives?

Understanding people's preferences, their motivations, would tell me most of what I'd need to know, if not more, than checking off the standard lists. And given the opportunity to act in accordance with their preferences and motivations, they would continually develop the relevant competencies.

So motivation and opportunity do not merely "complete" the trio of elements of employee engagement necessary to improve performance, they actually are the basis for learning, developing and displaying competence.

On Risk Aversion

Is risk aversion a fear of auditors or bad press...or is it denial of the natural transformation that is occurring now towards models of complexity and resilience? It seems we prefer the illusion of control, delivered by models that are
- analytical,
- artificial,
- compartmentalized,
- categorical
- linear,
- mechanical, and
- simplistic.

To be able to achieve manageable simplicity, we would have to be able to identify and control the context, the boundaries, the parameters in which we operate. It is no longer possible to imagine that that we can. The flurry of performance measurement gone mad is probably a reaction formation. Facile metrics are a tragic and total waste of resources, and that's one of the few simple things we do really all know.