Purposive Drift

No one is in control

Dave Pollard usually manages to find something interesting or provocative to say - and for someone who claims to suffer from procrastination he seems staggering productive. His site "how to save the world" is yet another one that deserves exploring rather than just dropping to see the latest thing he has to say.

In a recent entry he attacks the cult of leadership,taking on Peter Block's view that leadership is often a form of paternalism that infantalises the led. But, the point he makes that resonates most strongly with me is this one:

"Block understands the essence of complex systems: No one is in control. What gets done (for better or worse) gets done as a result of the staggeringly complex interactions and personal decisions of everyone. Even in the most hierarchical organizations, far more energy is expended finding workarounds for incompetent management decisions and policies (without offending management, of course) than is spent implementing the odd intelligent insight that management, with all the resources at its disposal, 'manages' to come up with. Employees, and customers (who are often treated only slightly less paternalistically than employees), actually have almost all the good ideas that would be needed to make any organization much more successful, but it is taboo to listen to them, to even be accessible to them. That would make the leaders look weak, as if perhaps they don't have all the answers. And that, of course, is unthinkable."

Most of us recognise, at least on occasion, that "no one is in control", but tend to shy away from the notion, because it seems too frightening. But, equally, it can be seen as a very liberating idea, with the caveat that if no one is control, then we all bear some responsibility for what is going on.