Joan you said
People follow because since birth they have been strongly influenced to
conform to what those in positions of authority want them to do. Parents,
peers, teachers, churches, the media, government and finally bosses all
tell them what to do and what to think. These authorities want us to
accept external direction rather than be internally directed by our own
values. The result is that the vast majority of people act to conform much
more than by their own values. This includes bosses as well as those not
in management. So bosses conform just as often as their juniors do.
-- end of quote --
At one level I agree, and I applaud your ideas for creating different
relationships at work but I think you do not get to the root of the
problem if you say it is just "these authorities telling us what to do
since birth".
*These authorities* and the social, economic and cultural institutions of
our society - human organisations in every sense of the word - are acting
as vehicles to transmit and replicate known patterns [aka memomes,
paradigms, 'rules', assumptions, mental models, traditions, meaning
spaces, language etc etc etc.]: patterns which work from their own
perspective independant of any one individual and enable, or seek to
preserve, structures which ensure their own replication. Each brain is the
living space of some set of patterns, which is what makes it a mind rather
than just a brain, and each of us needs to be ready to question our own
patterns if we want to learn.
Our -internal values- are unfortuately an expression of whatever patterns
infect our own minds, hence as Mike McMaster put it a few days back, we
end up acting perfectly consistently with how we see the world.
It then makes, I suggest, a big difference whether we end up displaying
trust, inegrity etc, because they are what we believe in per se or because
we see them as better ways to get more profit out of other people.
I do not see, as I have said before, the question of whether senior
managers will change as important. Will any of us change unless we are
ready to question whatever patterns have our brains in their grip?
If Price
The Harrow Partnership
Pewley Fort Guildford UK
101701.3454@compuserve.com
--Dr Ilfryn Price <101701.3454@compuserve.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>