Hi Carman, As always, your posts are both intellectually enriching and poetic.
Years ago, Alfonso Montuori and I wrote an essay on how our philosophical paradigm and guiding metaphors have shaped organizations and leadership, and created the blind spots that now limit organizations. A very perceptive reviewer suggested the article would be all the more impactful if it was written from the voice that naturally emerges from the perspective we descibe. You write in that voice.
You make an excellent point about humanizing systems, and I appreciate your references to Weber and Havel. It raises the question: Are we meant to serve our systems, or are they meant to serve us? There is so much more to be said here about human and social psychology in a “mechanistic system” or a “theocracy.” But, for the moment, I, too, am drawn to explore more creative and fulfilling possibilities. ..
Towards that end, I would like to offer an additional perspective. In our essay, Alfonso Montuori observes that we tend to emphasize and value either the individual or the group — one in opposition to the other. For example, capitalism vs. communism; the lone hero fighting the oppressive organization.
However, Montuori also observes that sense of opposition itself reflects a worldview of separation (which I would loosely associate with our ideas of left brain cognition). Rather, from a systems point of view, he suggests, it’s a matter of “both/and. ” The organization and individual are part of a single continuum. In a sense, each is in and shapes the other. In a healthy organic system, groups exist to serve their members, and members serve the group so that it continues to sustain them. We could also add that a healthy organic system also recognizes that its own sustainability requires a healthy environment…
A key distinction between a healthy organic system and bureaucratic systems is that, as rational systems, bureaucratic systems tend to make objects of their members. Using the machine analogy, the “subject” is the operator of the machine, and the experience of organizational members is not considered as important as the economic and other outcomes of the organizational machine. Often it could be said of these organizations that the experience of organizational members only makes a difference in so much as as it affects the bottom line.
This machine also exists inside many of its members — who learn not to value our own subjective experience. For example, there have been times in my organizational career, where I had so much to do (produce) that I literally felt machine-like and disconnected from my feelings.
My perspective is that in a hierarchal, bureacratic system (which emphasizes external power relations), we are enculturated to feel primarily those emotions associated with our dynamic place in the pecking order: anxiety, anger, depression and for the lack of a better word, “glory.” But, in as much as we are encouraged to subordinate the quality of our experience to economic and other outcomes, there is an inclination to shut down other feelings, including empathy, which is considered to be “soft” and “feminine” and therefore, less appropriate to an organizational environment.
Being a biological organism myself 🙂 I believe that when one of my bodily subsystems is in distress (or very healthy), I feel it — either unconsciously or consciously. Conversely, when I am happy or in distress, every system in my body is impacted by that. In other words, I think that the quality of holism arises, at least in part, from mutual feeling (of parts and the whole). [I’m very influenced in this train of thought by Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy.]
So, I think the restoration of feeling and the revalorization of the quality of our subjective and inter-subjective experience is key to a more cognitively balanced (Partnership) approach to organizations… To come full circle, this is a quality I hear in your writing.
thank you so much for this inspiring conversation!
Habermas and Happy Cows
http://www.takegreatpictures.com/content/images/home_cover_cows.jpg
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for the intellectual oasis you’ve created here! Like a jeweler examining a precious stone, I’ve spent the week reading and re-reading your comments. Every facet enriched my “lifeworld” (the source of human activity, connectedness and meaningfulness according to Habermas). I was especially enamored by your comment, “in a healthy organic system, groups exist to serve their members, and members serve the group so that it continues to sustain them.”
Adult educator Michael Welton agrees with you: “the bedrock of the lifeworld is the provision of safety, security and sustenance for all of us.” Welton also says that harmful, anxiety-producing and unstable conditions distort the socialization process, giving rise to various pathologies…” With your forbearance I would like to apply Habermas’ concepts of Instrumental, Communicative and Emancipatory learning to cows.
Cows
Studies in Britain have shown that an average dairy-sized farm could see production increase by an extra 6,800 gallons a year based on the following:
• Naming and treating cows as individuals cuts stress levels and boosts yields
• Giving cows one-to-one attention so makes cows feel happier and more relaxed
• Naming cows makes them more docile and less likely to kick during milking
• Treating cows like “one of the family” is believed to cut levels of cortisol—a stress hormone known to inhibit milk production
• Placing importance on the individual cow improves their welfare and their “perception of humans and increases milk production
http://www.berwickshire-news.co.uk/news/Happy-cows-produce-higher-milk.
Instrumental learning and action might approach the cow as an object to be controlled or manipulated. Many farmers, on the other hand, enjoy Lifeworld concepts wherein the cow is more than a milking machine—she is “one of the family!” They can now challenge the distorted meaning perspectives of those systems (driven by money and power) which invade their Lifeworld and undermine the dignity of the cow.
I am reminded of Senge’s Systems Law: “Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.” Living ‘systems’ like the cow have integrity. Senge says that violating the boundaries results in a “mess”—we recall the BSE scandal—which evidently started by feeding cows diseased sheep brains.
I love your comment, “in as much as we are encouraged to subordinate the quality of our experience to economic and other outcomes, there is an inclination to shut down other feelings, including empathy, which is considered to be “soft” and “feminine” and therefore, less appropriate for an organizational environment.” For me, the cow symbolizes the subjective under siege from the system: the host hostage to the parasite.
To illustrate, workers in one Canadian organization 😉 tethered to a telephone all day long are treated to “soft” skills training. Ironic given that most are female and most have exemplified “soft” skills for decades. In this scenario, the workers’ Lifeworld did not legitimate the system; the systems media (which eschews face-to-face interaction) are “colonizing” their Lifeworld—despite respectful protestations from the workers.
Your insightful references to “holism” and “the revalorization of the quality of our subjective and inter-subjective experience” are key to the reclamation of the beleaguered Lifeworld. Lisa, I am wondering how Montuori would achieve the “healthy organic system”? Does he see any antagonism between the Lifeworld and the systems world?
Bye for now!
Carman
p.s. I’ve talked about cows—how about a duck? From Reader’s Digest—the only joke I know.
This duck walks into a store, and asks the storekeeper, “Do you have any grapes”?
The storekeeper says, “Sorry, No.” The duck leaves.
The next day the duck walks back into the store and asks the storekeeper, “Do you have any grapes”?
The storekeeper says, “No.” So the duck leaves”
The next day the duck walks into the store and asks the storekeeper, “Do you have any grapes”? The storekeeper says, “No, and if you ask me one more time I’m going to staple your feet to the floor!” The duck leaves.
The following day, the duck walks back into the store and asks the shopkeeper, “Do you have any staples?” The shopkeeper says, “No.” The duck replies, “Do you have any grapes?”
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