A post of Laura from the thread: http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=415 , sort of triggered this next “energy disbursement” and made me end up right here.
An excerpt:
I also agree with the bottom up strategy. It reminds me of the question that I once posed to the management of the company I work for. After a presentation of the new management style that was going to be implemented, I could only distill a strict top down style of management, with a lot of organisational trickery and chicanery that would only result in divide et impera. I was missing the “bottom up” part in the business model that was going to be implemented and I was predicting that such would inevitably lead to serious problems, for which I presented some examples. They promised me that once the new system got rolling the bottom up part would follow within two years. Oh no, I was not so naïve. Five years have passed since then, and the leash around the bottom people’s neck gets tighter and tighter.
Very often, it has been stated over here at the other side of the Atlantic, that what first starts in America (correction! that is US that I am pointing at), is later followed in Europe.
How true this seems to be. Apart from the few companies in Europe that already did have an American style of management, similar systems have been adopted in our company, in our governmental departments, in ALL other companies, with try outs in our service sector, in our educational system, in the Academic world and even in our postal offices. Postmen (mail carriers), now get 10 seconds to post a standard letter, 30 seconds to deliver the retirement pay for the elder and so on, and all this in the name of rational management and cost effectiveness??!
This not only happens in my country but ALL over Europe in ALL “working” places that did not have such a system yet, and all this in the time span of a meager 4 to 5 years.
Heck, maybe it is all over the world. You see, there seems to be a perfect correlation between the ban on smoking tobacco and how that is demonized, and the installment of new management systems in the corporate world. It’s like an all-in package. I have a colleague, who travels a lot to the Middle East, Afghanistan (surprised me too), and further East, to India and China. He refuses to go to Japan. He told me, that everywhere he goes there is this ban on smoking tobacco, and that everywhere it has been implemented since 5 years. I recently met a visitor from Japan while smoking a cigarette outside, so I asked him about a possible ban, and since when such was implemented. Hmm, maybe four, five years, and he adds that there was one particular stretch along the West Coast where smoking was banned altogether.
This is simply amazing, This is happening ALL over the world, in a meager time span of FOUR to FIVE years. And a lot of people notice it.
For instance.
When I informed friends or colleagues about some thorny issues five years ago, most of them would still react by hushing up, and placating the problem that it has always been that way. “Look at history” they said. But right now, they (a lot of my direct colleagues for instance) no longer say such thing. It has been going too fast, and too aggressively and people notice it and are coming to the conclusion that something is up.
Before, and when you looked at things from a distance you could also see how the leash around peoples neck was ever tightening. But when it became noticeable, the process was stopped temporarily, or the leash was even loosened a little, only to restart the process once they fell back to sleep of course. It seems that there’s no longer “time” for this. How comes? Something is up, and people feel it.
To come back to ponerology, and more particularly the work of Lobaczewski, I think it is invaluable. It is a true eye-opener. But we should not leave it at this. When I go over all those character traits that are displayed by the various pathologies described, I have a very hard time, to connect this information with the processes I have just described, i.e. the installment of certain managerial systems. Our top management simply does not seem to fit the descriptions in the work of Lobaczewski. Rather I have the impression that these systems are taken over because they are presented and shown to “work” (in this I totally disagree!). I think that we are not only dealing with neurotic paranoid control freaks, or psychopaths for that matter, but also with a big bunch of simple profiteers (of the systems they helped to install), and down-right ignorant people who do not see what the systems do to cooperation and communication at ALL levels and the motivation of people at the working floor. But they have been trained that way. It was indeed that simple maybe. After all the false knowledge that they consumed, they no longer see what they are actually doing (referring to the modern managerial systems). They’ve split, from reality. Maybe that too is cognitive dissonance. There is another thing that seems to bind most of the top managers. They could miss creativity, and surely hate it in others. It is not manageable. Oooh just imagine what would happen.
The usual explanation for the installment of those various management systems is … money on the table, cost-effectiveness, yield, or profitability. Guess what? This is NOT what I see after five years of having to survive such a system. Than why is it installed ? What is the aim ?
Maybe we should expand the work of Lobaczewski so that it becomes more recognizable within our current predicament. After all, our heroic author has studied the ponerogenic process in the former Soviet-Union. And there was no corporate world as we have it nowadays. There were only ‘governmental orders’ and control, OSIT.
Some more (small) references:
Ok, and now with some personal remarks,
Just some examples :
Hmm, as if the CEO would be able to do a good job with our modern management systems.
Six Sigma, could be used as a tool, for certain tasks, but here again I see that it comes as an “all-in package”, and nests itself into the very dynamic of people "working" together.
An excerpt:
I agree that informing people about ponerology, pathocracy, and the incredibly high incidence of psychopathy would be a very down to earth thing to do actually.Laura said:"I think that the best thing we could do is to spread the word about Ponerology, psychopathy, Pathocrats, and help people to develop better psychological knowledge about their world from the bottom up. I think that, instead of trying to first get people to see anything about 9-11, it might be better to help them to understand what kind of people could and would do something like that."
I also agree with the bottom up strategy. It reminds me of the question that I once posed to the management of the company I work for. After a presentation of the new management style that was going to be implemented, I could only distill a strict top down style of management, with a lot of organisational trickery and chicanery that would only result in divide et impera. I was missing the “bottom up” part in the business model that was going to be implemented and I was predicting that such would inevitably lead to serious problems, for which I presented some examples. They promised me that once the new system got rolling the bottom up part would follow within two years. Oh no, I was not so naïve. Five years have passed since then, and the leash around the bottom people’s neck gets tighter and tighter.
"I think we have more freedom now than we've ever had before and it's increasing…the government is less powerful in our lives than it ever has been and it's becoming less powerful in our lives."
And thusly started a treatise by Jonathan Metcalfe called “ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERIKA".So said Ms. Ranthum on the Jeff Rense radio program causing its host, and no doubt the listeners, to momentarily pause and wonder if they had slipped into some strange hyper-dimension of dark humour. Ms. Ranthum professed to be an optimist, however, this brand of positivism was at the expense of the facts which lead us to believe that she may be an example of the rather dangerous fantasy world of denial or naiveté that many Americans seem to be living in. It is also starkly macabre coming from a former military war-gamer.
Very often, it has been stated over here at the other side of the Atlantic, that what first starts in America (correction! that is US that I am pointing at), is later followed in Europe.
How true this seems to be. Apart from the few companies in Europe that already did have an American style of management, similar systems have been adopted in our company, in our governmental departments, in ALL other companies, with try outs in our service sector, in our educational system, in the Academic world and even in our postal offices. Postmen (mail carriers), now get 10 seconds to post a standard letter, 30 seconds to deliver the retirement pay for the elder and so on, and all this in the name of rational management and cost effectiveness??!
This not only happens in my country but ALL over Europe in ALL “working” places that did not have such a system yet, and all this in the time span of a meager 4 to 5 years.
Heck, maybe it is all over the world. You see, there seems to be a perfect correlation between the ban on smoking tobacco and how that is demonized, and the installment of new management systems in the corporate world. It’s like an all-in package. I have a colleague, who travels a lot to the Middle East, Afghanistan (surprised me too), and further East, to India and China. He refuses to go to Japan. He told me, that everywhere he goes there is this ban on smoking tobacco, and that everywhere it has been implemented since 5 years. I recently met a visitor from Japan while smoking a cigarette outside, so I asked him about a possible ban, and since when such was implemented. Hmm, maybe four, five years, and he adds that there was one particular stretch along the West Coast where smoking was banned altogether.
This is simply amazing, This is happening ALL over the world, in a meager time span of FOUR to FIVE years. And a lot of people notice it.
For instance.
When I informed friends or colleagues about some thorny issues five years ago, most of them would still react by hushing up, and placating the problem that it has always been that way. “Look at history” they said. But right now, they (a lot of my direct colleagues for instance) no longer say such thing. It has been going too fast, and too aggressively and people notice it and are coming to the conclusion that something is up.
Before, and when you looked at things from a distance you could also see how the leash around peoples neck was ever tightening. But when it became noticeable, the process was stopped temporarily, or the leash was even loosened a little, only to restart the process once they fell back to sleep of course. It seems that there’s no longer “time” for this. How comes? Something is up, and people feel it.
To come back to ponerology, and more particularly the work of Lobaczewski, I think it is invaluable. It is a true eye-opener. But we should not leave it at this. When I go over all those character traits that are displayed by the various pathologies described, I have a very hard time, to connect this information with the processes I have just described, i.e. the installment of certain managerial systems. Our top management simply does not seem to fit the descriptions in the work of Lobaczewski. Rather I have the impression that these systems are taken over because they are presented and shown to “work” (in this I totally disagree!). I think that we are not only dealing with neurotic paranoid control freaks, or psychopaths for that matter, but also with a big bunch of simple profiteers (of the systems they helped to install), and down-right ignorant people who do not see what the systems do to cooperation and communication at ALL levels and the motivation of people at the working floor. But they have been trained that way. It was indeed that simple maybe. After all the false knowledge that they consumed, they no longer see what they are actually doing (referring to the modern managerial systems). They’ve split, from reality. Maybe that too is cognitive dissonance. There is another thing that seems to bind most of the top managers. They could miss creativity, and surely hate it in others. It is not manageable. Oooh just imagine what would happen.
(Don Juan – maybe with slightly different phrasing)There is no thing that breaks the spirit of man as much as somebody that is constantly saying over his/her shoulder what he/she should do or not.
The usual explanation for the installment of those various management systems is … money on the table, cost-effectiveness, yield, or profitability. Guess what? This is NOT what I see after five years of having to survive such a system. Than why is it installed ? What is the aim ?
Maybe we should expand the work of Lobaczewski so that it becomes more recognizable within our current predicament. After all, our heroic author has studied the ponerogenic process in the former Soviet-Union. And there was no corporate world as we have it nowadays. There were only ‘governmental orders’ and control, OSIT.
Some more (small) references:
From: http://www.sixsig.info/six-sigma-black-belt/189.htmlIn turn, Mikel Harry quipped, “In essence, Six Sigma is driven by a divide and conquer strategy. It begins by first dividing the quality pie into comprehensive compartments, or dimensions, that form a holistic focus at all levels of the business enterprise.” These compartments or dimensions are translated into teams, or project teams. This statement explains what top-level management supports to achieve an effective continuous improvement system.
Ok, and now with some personal remarks,
I couldn’t agree more! Also, have we not heard this before? That “the thing” sort of outs itself before and towards self-destruction?“In essence, Six Sigma is driven by a divide and conquer strategy.
The quality pie huh? To me the pie with highest quality is still that of the people or what has been termed Human Resources. I never invented that term but to me, it is like we are a … exactly cattle, or crude oil or something like that. I am sure it is easy to make them believe (during some training for instance) that we are some form of crude oil that has to be refined somehow, so that it would fit their ends of course. But there is a blind blob above that latter consequence of such thinking. They’d feel oh so important and above it all.It begins by first dividing the quality pie into comprehensive compartments,
There is no form of any holism applied whatsoever. They only use matrices and spreadsheets and chicanery to set people up against each other. By the fruits I see the tree! And I am learning to know that tree.or dimensions, that form a holistic focus at all levels of the business enterprise.”
Just some examples :
From: http://www.asq.org/pub/qualityprogress/past/0102/27TheEssential0102.htmlSix Sigma implementation
Six Sigma implementation is top-down: The CEO is usually the driving force, and an executive management team provides the Champion for each project.
Hmm, as if the CEO would be able to do a good job with our modern management systems.
Six Sigma, could be used as a tool, for certain tasks, but here again I see that it comes as an “all-in package”, and nests itself into the very dynamic of people "working" together.