Polarization, alienation and “change”
My own “fractal-association”-theory in mind, “organizations” ( any group of people working or interact together, so companies, as well as governments, communities etc. ) are prey to polarizations.
Polarizations that divide the mass basically into two groups, A and B .
I’m deliberately not calling them good or bad , black or white , poor or rich , dumb or smart , manager or executor , woman or man , parent or child , academic or scientist , or any other kind of labeling ...
So when a “leader” wants his “vision” to be followed or his “plan” to be executed he is considered to get his “team” to do it, swift, efficient, effective, cheap and without too many problems…. So tell me why we need “CHANGE” , LEAN, Six Sigma, ERP, AI , BPR , “Softskilling” ( or manipulate , lie and cheat, which are the old words for it) …
There are definitely “things “going wrong I would say. Those “things” are exactly the reasons that people alienate.
When it becomes obvious to “the mass” that the way their organization ( if you see it as a organic, living entity) works, takes decisions, makes up rules, provides help to the employers to execute their tasks, or generally treat “the mass” in a whole, is going the wrong way , than you get alienation!
If working in a group becomes a joke solely because people see “managers” following their own agenda, and not caring about the good of the company, they’ll go to that “minimum sufficient”-state of contributing .
I took position here and made a bold statement. The workforce (value adding part of an organization) puts the company first, and “managers” put themselves on the #1 position.
Could this be true ? Of course , because those value adding - employers (these could also be managers by the way) who just have the ambition of keeping their job, unconsciously know that the company should do well for them to keep them working. “Managers” on the other side , who have a personal, egoistic gold digging- attitude , couldn’t care less about what the company does, just what the company can do for him/her and get them that 7 figure remuneration.... (in both cases there are graduations of course but I’m not getting into this right now ) .
So when AN employer gets disillusioned, frustrated or nervous about decisions being taken or company policy being twisted into strange structures with a lot of “waste” (some studies say up to 50% of non-value adding processes ! ) , he will care a little less about the good of the organization an capitulate or “adapt” to that new ( worse) situation.
With each of those downturns these employers “alienate”, don’t care too much about rules anymore, and give up trying to contribute to “better & efficient” processes, and will participate a little less, work a little less, think a little less, until they finally get to the “minimum sufficient” state of working.
And than,in the end, when the “tipping point” is reached, we turn to “change” and all those “tools” to attack “issues” but forgetting to think about what actually provoked these “problems” in the first place.
We get overpaid consultants to come and do an easy job, coach “leaders” to teach them to get his message spread and his “management team” united , but still keep decision taking in a “dark - age version” , so alienation is what we should attack by taking another look at company policy, decision taking and participation by crowd sourcing for more involvement of all layers of the organization especially the value adding workforce,– So the effectiveness of decision taking in accordance to the company’s core business will increase the effectiveness of individuals , when individuals see and feel that they are useful and do useful work and feel part of a team AND feel important (by having their individual logical responsibility) .
It will not be a surprise that I have a different look on how an organizational structure should look like, it isn’t a “pyramid” anymore, it’s a “Christmas tree” , with balls, lights and a garland ,..how that works is for another article J .
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