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. 

Are Change Agents "Spoilsports"? OR The Politeness of Organizational Politics

I recently read a great article by Mark Kingwell in the April 2009 edition of Walrus Magazine called Obama: All in the Game. In that article, I was struck by this:

To refuse the collective illusion of the game is not to cheat; it is
much worse — it’s to be a spoilsport.

What does this mean for those who question the rule book? Organizational culture tends to be self-replicating. In other words, organizations are hegemonic. Following the narrative of the organization means not being a spoilsport, and if you follow it well, you can get ahead. Change is difficult to get off the ground, as it is those who adapt best to the existing narrative that are supported in their career development, while innovators can be seen as threats.

In public life, there is more often than not a misfit between our real emotions and our professional persona. Emotion is a response to the world's response to our desires. Some of our desires are selfish, but more often they are desires for fair treatment and the resolution of distress-producing circumstances, which would benefit the organization generally.

This is a clue to the objectivity of a political malaise - that it disturbs people, even while they work hard to rationalize it away, repress or deny it, or even take personal responsibility for it, when it is ultimately the product of a collectively produced socio-cultural dynamic. Organizational stress and health issues are in ample evidence, unfortunately.

As long as our desires are healthy, our emotions are healthy. In contrast, having "emotional intelligence" (EQ) means you have managed to be on the same page as other adherents to a narrative, i.e, that you are savvy enough not to question the rule book, and that you are not digging too deeply into causes, disturbing the apparent comfort of the confines of the status quo. EQ means that you put your professional health before your emotional health.

In other words, EQ represents your capacity for diplomacy, not innovation. That will make you a survivor. For no matter how well-intentioned you might be in looking for solutions to problems that distress you and others, it is more often the collective will that the narrative be preserved. 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 organizational power structures. For better or for worse, power structures represent "the very fabric of society" and resistance to change should not be underestimated. This is the reason why initiatives meant to introduce organizational change are undertaken superficially and this superficiality is supported with tick-box metrics that show "concrete measurements" of desired changes. People nervy enough to question the rules deeply are swiftly marginalized as the spoilsports who "just don't get it."

So what does it take to be a successful change agent?