Revolution
in Business as a Basis for Political Reform
Introduction
Wonder
of wonders! Miracle of miracles? Irony of ironies! -- business as an incubator
of practices and models for political reform! Who'd a'thunk it back in the
'60's (or even now?), when there was (is) a strong current of opinion that held
(still holds) business to be the source of backwardness in politics -- of
retrograde conservatism supporting backward powers that resist
"progressive" change. Yet, it is both the gurus and practitioners of
the new economy and even some leaders of "old" big corporations that
write and talk of "revolution." When was the last time you heard that
incendiary word being used in politics? The subtitle of Tom Peters'
"summa,"THRIVING ON CHAOS, is "The Management Revolution."
The book's first chapter is entitled "Facing Up to the Need for
Revolution." When was the last time a so-called political
"leader" even felt "the need," let alone faced or expressed
it?
There
are a number of ironic contrasts that might cause Jedediah Purdy to cry in his
carrot juice:[1]
|
REFORM |
POLITICS |
BUSINESS |
|
Increase
participation (P) |
N.A.T.O.;[2]
P diminished by the growing influence of money and other influences discussed
in this book |
Increasingly
effected via teaming, visioning, flat-tening hierarchies and other ways |
|
Reinvent
relationships |
Not
at all or in the wrong direction |
More
emphasis on relation- ships that are mutually collaborative &
satisfactory |
|
Promote
self-organization & self-management |
Nil;
people & local political committees expected to toe the party line |
Encouraged
and enabled |
|
Increase
responsiveness to "customers," clients or constituents |
Only
via form letters, if at all |
Improved,
often inter-actively, in keeping with "the customer is king"[3] |
|
Empower
people to be more effective in their roles |
Nil;
even dis-empowerment except for check writing & Internet chat rooms |
Employees
provided with tools, information & authority |
|
Promote
entrepreneurship & innovation |
Favoring
wealthy candidates or the already politically self-interested. |
Encouraging
& enabling much broader segments of the population |
|
Improve
flows and quality of information |
Top
down |
Bottom
up and 3-way (up, down and across) |
|
Better
leadership |
Traditional
organizational hierarchy plus media |
Enabling,
mentoring, facilitating |
|
Better
accountability |
Lacking
but for government agency self-evaluation. |
Via
performance measure-ment; increasingly trans-parent, even "open
book" |
|
Experimentation |
Nil;
"Civil society" experi-ments divorced from politics[4] |
Increasingly
employed using sophisticated tools |
|
Truthfulness |
Not
a goal; sacrificed when expedient. "Spin" the way. |
Increasingly
honored internally; in advertising much less so. |
|
Enhance
the power of choice |
Power
lessened |
Power
increased |
|
Build
community |
Divide
and conquer; political parties in decline |
Recognizing
the need to, and increasingly so doing, both internally and externally |
|
Search
for excellence |
Not
widely practiced; good examples scattered & ignored |
Greatly
increased since Peters' 1982 book.[5] |
|
Upgrade
human resources |
Limited
political training; decline of "civics" education in schools |
Raised
to a prime concern; billions expended on training and education |
These
are just an obvious "baker's dozen" of differences among the most
familiar features of reform. To the extent they are not obvious, the shorthand
contrasts will be elaborated as this section continues. Before belaboring the
"obvious," however, note several contrasts that are not. The reason
that some of the most important contrasts are less than obvious is because they
appear at what Bill Bradley would call a "higher level of the game"
or what philosophers refer to as a "higher level of discourse." That
is like moving the level of conversation up a notch from a barroom exchange to
a seminar debate. What is interesting to note here is that, unlike politicians,
business men and women have addressed their issues at all levels, from the
highest to the lowest, from the nitty gritty to the philosophical.
What
is even more remarkable is that business people, unlike their political
counterparts, have learned not to segregate issues arbitrarily into categories
that presume that some are "higher" and some are "lower."
The most detailed features of business practice; e.g., how a "low level"
company representative interacts with customers, may have "high
level" implications. Thus, unlike political "leaders," business
leaders have increasingly looked to encourage two-way flows of communications
between "lower" and "higher" levels. The "management
revolution" which Peters and others have promoted has occurred at all
levels to effect changes in basic attitudes, behaviors and structures. Starting
in the '80's, "industrial policy" in the U.S. proceeded "from
the shop floor and the bottom up."[6]
The Japanese, once touted as models for U.S. policymakers, have continued to
view "industrial policy" as a higher level, primarily governmental
concern.[7]
Thus,
the higher level(s) at which the American business community has addressed
issues neglected by those in the political world have to do, not with
hierarchy, but with the breadth or comprehensiveness of approaches to change,.
These include:
·
A
systems or systemic approach -- business people have really worked to honor
what '60's activists only talked about; that is, "changing the system"(s).
·
Structural
changes that go beyond the '80's fads of "reinvention" and
"downsizing" to decentralization via subsidiarity, flattening
hierarchies, self-organization, self-management, broadening ownership, and
"disintermediation."[8]
·
Reducing
or eliminating barriers and constraints to change, so that an on-going process
of change is built into business systems.
·
Transforming
business systems into "learning organizations" so that, not only can
people learn from past mistakes, they can proactively learn how to face the
future.[9]
·
Renewing
and refreshing the springs of competition; overcoming some of the faults and
failings of market systems;.
·
"Balancing
inquiry and advocacy," of which one finds little in the political arena.[10]
·
Recognition
of the usefulness and importance of metaphor -- largely lost in politics as the
quality of political speaking and writing has markedly decreased.
·
Recognition
of the importance of "environment," not only the natural environment
but man-made, organizational environments within which people spend most of
their lives, and hence, the need to transform these to make them more
people-goals' enabling and "user friendly."
·
Institutionalizing
science and technology so that the processes through which discoveries are made
and applied are integral features of "the system."
·
Changing
business cultures.
·
Identifying
and constructively employing structure, patterns and opportunities in the
"chaos" or turbulence of our times.
·
What
Tom Peters and other business writers call "Mastering Paradox." This
is so generic and fundamental a shift in the very perception of what change is
about that we will devote a whole section to it further on.
Nevertheless,
all the changes brought about in U.S. business, even those that can be labeled
"radical" or "revolutionary," have not succeeded in
improving U.S. politics, democracy or government, nor could they be expected to
do so. Business has changed the "system"(s) for which business
leaders have direct responsibility -- their own. From the standpoint of the
larger, overall business-political (etc.) system called the U.S.A., the changes
in the business system are a mixed blessing, amounting to what systems analysts
would call "sub-optimization." The resultant, growing gap between the
business sub-system and the political/governmental subsystem -- one progressive
(guess which one!); the other backward -- is problematic and may be
destabilizing for the country’s system-as-a-whole unless we can also succeed in
changing our political system, too. Many of the changes that business
leadership has effected have been highlighted. By returning to the
"baker's dozen" identified in the boxes above, the nature of the
political challenge we face may become clearer if not "obvious."
Note that the reference to business "best
practices" in the next section does not imply that the practices
identified have been adopted by the entire American business community or even
a significant proportion of businesses. The degrees to which they have spread
among businesses vary greatly by industry, area, firm-size and other factors.
The purpose of what follows is to identify business policy and practice models
that can help inform a political reform agenda.
Business Best Practices as
Good Examples for Political Reform
One
of the innovations in business practice that was first to achieve widespread
adoption is a systematic way for business to diagnose its own weaknesses and
identify ways to improve relative to the "best practices" of
competitors. This is "performance benchmarking" (PBM). PBM has found
only limited application within the interlocking worlds of politics and
government.[11] By itself,
this lies at the core of a basic reform question: How to achieve accountability
in those worlds? This issue is discussed further on. At this point, the focus
remains on "best practices" in business that can help inform a
political reform agenda. So let's now return to the topics highlighted by the
beginning set of boxes.
Increase Participation: The importance of
political participation, as well as the ways it has declined, is discussed at
length in Chapter 3 of the author’s forthcoming book.[12]
Thus, the many ways that businesses have increased; indeed,
"empowered" employees' participation in workplace decisions may be
relevant to a broader politics, not just to the internal politics of
corporations.[13] These
include flexible teaming arrangements, inclusion of employees in processes by
which corporate visions, missions and strategic plans are defined, and
encouragement of self-organizing, self-managing work groups.
Business'
drive to democratize the workplace began in response to the Japanese threat --
the drive to achieve quality assurance. Senge describes the changes that
result:
"Levels of supervisory management are
removed…Quality inspectors are eliminated permanently. Authority to study and
improve work processes is pushed down to front-line workers."[14]
Little
of the latter "authority" is enabled or even allowed by the state
committees of the major political parties, while grass roots political
participation is devalued.[15]
The debate on campaign finance reform, moreover -- the only form of
"reform" receiving serious consideration, reveals (by omission) how
the value of any time that people voluntarily invest in political participation
is discounted or denied.
Reinvent relationships: In order to spawn the
collegial, cooperative, communicative (in all directions), collaborative and
interactive arrangements required by the new economy, businesses have found
that they need to "reinvent" relationships. The implications have
been most telling at intermediate supervisory levels. Large numbers of foremen
and other supervisors were let go, in spite of strenuous efforts to retrain
them, because they were unable to relinquish old attitudes and behaviors in
order to develop new relationships based on facilitation and mentoring rather
than command and control.
Relative
to the business world, the worlds of politics and government exhibit far less
awareness of the need to reinvent relationships. It is if the "Third
Wave" hasn't yet even curled its lip, when in fact it has long since
broken like a tsunami to flood our shores. These worlds still largely rely on
hierarchical relationships, one-way information.flows; guarded, self-protective
bureaucratic ("CYA") behavior, and intra- and inter-organizational
competition.
Promote self-organization
& self-management: A prime concept in the new economy is that of self-organizing
systems. The concept arose from natural scientists' attempts to understand the
dynamics of physical systems.[16]
"Self management" arose in a very different context -- out of 19th
century attempts to bridge the gap between capital and labor by promoting labor
owned and managed companies. The two now come together at three levels:
n
System-wide:
Systems designed for human beings and/or that emerge from their interactions in
situations where organizational patterns are perceived, observed and
deliberately adapted;
n
At
the company level in the form of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) among
some companies (even though most ESOPs are not self-organizing); and…
n
At
the intra-company or micro-micro level in the form of self-organized,
self-managed teams.
Political
parties and their various units are not "self-organizing;" moreover,
they are "self-managed" only within constraints that severely limit
their ability to provide dynamic, developmental.responses to emerging political
problems and opportunities.[17]
Their hierarchical and bureaucratic forms of organization and management are
derived from old economy forces that Toffler called "Second Wave."
Relative to developments in the rest of American society, business included,
our political parties seem like dinosaurs. Their adoption of the Internet
represents a technological overlay, not a revolution in their organization,
management or behavior. When will parties truly graduate from the 19th
century to the 21st and "get with the program" of the new
economy?
Increase responsiveness to
"customers," clients or constituents: The private sector in the
U.S. has led the way towards achieving greater responsiveness to customers. The
public sector has been playing copy cat by urging its agencies to become
"customer sensitive" as part of government "reinvention"
initiatives. Some agencies have improved their performance substantially in
this regard. Political responsiveness is quite another matter. Neither parties
nor politicians are especially responsive to citizens' letters, suggestions or
complaints. Nowadays, it is unusual for a citizen who has taken the time to
write a letter to an elected official to receive back even a canned, form
letter of acknowledgement. As for any
sort of truly, un-canned, reasonably thoughtful responses, dream on; don't even
dare to hope. Write to a national party official and the likelihood of a
response is even less. The only letters that the author has received in
response to anything sent to a politician are boilerplate thank you's for
campaign contributions. Submissions of ideas, comments, complaints or
constructive criticism do not seem to count. As a South Philadelphia
Congressman of ill-repute once said: "Money talks and bullshit
walks."
Empower people to be more
effective in their roles: Businesses have effectively empowered people in
their organizations through:
§
Inclusion, in processes of
corporate-wide "visioning" to generate and adapt company mission
statements and strategies;
§
Information flows -- Requiring and facilitating improved flows of information
every which way -- vertically, both up and down; horizontally, internally and
externally.
§
Provision of Tools, such as intranets,
extranets, mobile data entry tools and computer-guided equipment,
§
Education and Training -- that is not just narrowly job or
task-specific -- via education benefits as well as classroom and on-the-job
training.
§
Enabling…
Ø
Self-organization
and/or self-management, as indicated earlier;
Ø
Employees
to get involved as volunteers in activities that benefit their communities.
How
much of this does one find in the world of politics? -- very little. Many party
state committees provide training, but it's primarily for candidates. There is
very little training for local committee members to enable them to do their
jobs better. There is little "inclusion" in top level strategizing or
planning exercises. Information flows are primarily one-way. There is
insufficient provision of "tools," "enabling" or other
efforts to build the capacity of local political party committees.[18]
Party committee members and committees get little or no encouragement from their
parties, individually or organizationally, to get involved with others in
community projects that don't appear to have some direct or immediate political
payoff.
Improve flows and quality of
information:
Flows
of information from the shop floor have developed way beyond the old employee
"suggestion box" model. Pro-actively and systematically listening to
people, and engaging them in processes to identify how things can be done
better, have been keys to improvements in businesses' productivity and
competitiveness. In other words, "micro"-level changes have been keys
to the "macro"-level trends that marked the longest U.S. economic
expansion in history. Improvements in the flows of information every which way
have already been noted. But the quality of information conveyed through these
flows is at least as important as the quantity. The quality lies in concerted
efforts to engage everyone in a company, from the bottom up, in processes of
"continuous improvement," including changes in business organization
and systems, not just incremental changes in small tasks.
Meanwhile,
on the political side of our society, what have we seen by way of improvements
in "the flows and quality of information?" We have seen the rise of
C-SPAN, but this is watched by only a minor portion of the American electorate.
We have seen an explosion in the quantity of information we can access through
the Internet and increasing numbers of Cable TV channels. Who among us,
however, would claim that there has been any increase in the quality of
information on matters political from major media?; rather the contrary.
More
specifically, what have political leaders, elected officials and parties been
doing to improve the flows and quality of information? Damn little. The
newsletters of elected officials are good examples of self-promotion rather
than information provision. Parties do not engage their members in processes of
self-critical self-improvement. Communications run from the top down rather
than the bottom up. The ability of parties to provide useful information
directly to voters has decreased as parties have let their local
"infrastructure" atrophy. Campaign decisions and information
provision have been relegated to "experts," P.R. people and "spinmeisters."
Better Leadership:
The
concept of "servant leader" has found its way into the business
community but not into the mainstream political arena. Parker Palmer introduced
the concept in an inspiring sermon ten years ago.[19]
The more enlightened segments of the business press and leadership picked it
up, gave it currency in the business community and adapted it for application
by other business leaders. According to Palmer, a servant leader is one who
creates "settings which give you
identity, which empower you to be
someone." The italicization for emphasis is Palmer's own.[20]
What
is it you say? -- we elect "public servants," so that our elected
officials are "servant leaders"? Look again. The servants of our
political system have become its masters. When you hear a candidate say:
"Elect me so that I can serve you;" in most cases, you can translate
this to mean, "Elect me so that I can advance my political career."
When you ask a candidate to sacrifice family, income and peace of mind to be
your "public servant," recognize that, if elected, he is likely to
act like a devoted servant, even a "Step'n Fetchit" in terms of
constituent services. This serves to purchase your continuing support and thus
obtain the leeway he wants to exercise power and effect policy at higher levels
rather than via grassroots’ political hustings. In other words, by playing
"servant," most politicians aim to become “master”(s); that is, to
empower themselves, not you.
More Accountability:
The American business community has made
considerable progress in improving its accountability to the public. The most
remarkable development in this vein is the adoption of "open book"
accounting and management by many businesses, as reported by several articles
in INC magazine and some business books.[21]
The workings of the political community remain obscure to any except insiders
or political junkies.
Experimentation &
Learning from Experience:
Even
the "old" business community has adopted "new" science.
This is evident not only with respect to corporate R&D to exploit advances
in the natural sciences but with respect to the application of scientific
methods to the many human sides of business. With respect to the latter, the
reader familiar with Taylorism and "scientific management" might say,
'So what else is new?' What's new is science. It has evolved far beyond the
crude attempts to apply the mechanistic, bastardized "paradigm" of
the "old," Newtonian science to business in order to better control
the workforce via "time and motion" studies, et. al..
Relative to the old, the new science enables
liberation of human beings rather than its misuse to achieve control of people
and domination over them.[22]
The best examples are provided by businesses that are working to transform
themselves into "learning organizations" following Senge,
et.al., as referenced earlier.
Experiments, both controlled and uncontrolled, are keys to enabling a more
systematic approach to business development than simply "learning by
doing." Many alternative ways to effect a sense of "ownership"
of businesses among employees, for example, have arisen in the business world.
Many studies have shown that actual ownership by employees in the form of
"ESOP's" (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) leads to significant
improvements in businesses' performance. Thus, former U.S. Senator Russell Long
(D, LA) and his former staffer on the Senate Finance Committee, Jeff Gates
worked to encourage and enable the adoption of ESOP's by the American business
community. Gates' efforts continue to this day. See his recently published book
THE
OWNERSHIP SOLUTION: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century.
By
contrast, what do we observe in the political world? -- continued misuse of the
old science to increase domination and control of the political class relative
to the great majority of citizens. "Scientific tools" such as focus
groups, polling, statistics, controlled experiments and market studies are
employed in order to better "sell" political candidates, parties and
proposals like business sells soap. This is not science but scientism run amok.
Ironically, political consultants have adopted marketing methods from business
while ignoring the more progressive scientific directions in which business has
been moving. They and their political "science" colleagues can claim
to be "scientific," but they are pedaling an already outdated,
ideological, reduced form of science in service to narrow political analysis or
winning campaigns. To them, "Power to the People" is just an
irrelevant old saying from the sixties.
Further
on, we will see that there are "experiments" going on to try to
demonstrate how people can be "empowered," but they are outside of
the mainstream of politics. They are not really empowering, politically, with
respect to people's participation in electoral politics where allocation of
power is the aim of the game. Organizations devoted to electoral politics, such
as political parties, are not conducting experiments to test how to empower
people. They do not even have any systematic ways of learning from their own
experience.
Seek the Truth & Try to
Effect Truthfulness:
The
latter section is closely connected to this one. For experimentation and
learning are major ways to seek the truth about ourselves, how we act and what
we can accomplish together. For all the "spin" that businesses may
include in their advertising, business has learned that better products and
services are based upon truth seeking procedures, not upon the manufacture of
illusions as in "The Unreality Industry."[23]
A business that, among other things, does not seek to know the sources of
defects in its products or how its customers are using them, is a business that
may fail or at least be severely punished for its lack of attention.[24]
As
both scientific and religious communities have demonstrated for hundreds of
years, truth-seeking is a community activity, not simply an individual
undertaking. Thus, Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian at Duke University, shows how
it is hard for any of us, individually, to be truthful if we do not live in a
"truthful community."[25]
More recently, Os Guiness warns us that we are in danger of losing our freedom
nationwide as an American community whose:
Ø
Behavior,
standards of judgement, language and attitudes have been so corrupted by the
moral relativism of a "post-modern" philosophy that truthfulness has
little or no currency; and…
Ø
Politicians,
exemplified by a sitting President, have so corrupted public discourse and
political life through their un-truthfulness that we now live (un-free,
Guinness would say) in a "world of lies, hype and spin."
Business
professors Mitroff and Bennis had issued an earlier warning:
"A pervading, powerful sense of unreality
infiltrates the land…to avoid coping with a complex world…Unreality is big
business." They go on to write that the "end result" is an
inability to distinguish between reality and unreality (or between truth and
falsehood) and "a society less and less able to face its true problems
directly, honestly and intelligently."[26]
Thus,
building a truthful American political community should be a major goal for us
all.
Build Community
Having
been a major factor in the destruction of the traditional American community
over
the past century,[27]
American business has nevertheless rediscovered the value of
"community"
over the past decade or so, both within and without the context of its own
organizations.[28] Many
businesses are encouraging community spirit, activities and formations as, for
example, via:
·
Formation
of intra-corporate communities such as teams and R&D "skunk
works," as well as promoting the corporation as a working community with a
shared vision and/or mission overall;
·
Incentives
for employees to volunteer to participate in activities that help to build or
improve communities, both place-based and issue- or "good
cause"-based;
·
Advertising
businesses as good corporate citizens of various communities, such as
environmental, place-based or American-national.
Meanwhile,
our political process seems bent on undermining whatever semblance of political
community has been inherited from the past. Our local, community-based
political infrastructure has been re-gressively (one dare not say
"pro"-) left to atrophy, deteriorate or fall into limbo. Political
advertising is often designed to divide the electorate or play upon deeply
rooted divisions. The local political "infrastructure," such as it
is, is effectively divorced or separated from other community-based
organizations (CBO's) whose prime roles are building or maintaining
communities. Thus, pointing the way towards rebuilding the American political
community from the ground up is one of the prime goals of the author’s
forthcoming book.
Broaden the range of choice: Few would deny that
businesses in our consumer-oriented economy have served to broaden the range of
purchasers' choices enormously. Development of new products and services plus
products'/services' differentiation keep multiplying the variety of offerings
available to buyers of all kinds.
By
contrast, even though the political class tends to view voters like businesses
view consumers, it has been offering a diminishing range of choices to its
"customers." Increasingly, we hear citizens say that they have had to
vote "for the lesser of two evils." Increasingly, many elected
offices are uncontested. Increasingly, people interested in public life are
declining to run for office. Increasingly, it seems that politics is becoming a
game for the rich and famous. The supply-side of politics is drying up.
"Mr. Smith goes to Washington" has become a myth.
Search for Excellence
Ever
since the Japanese challenge of the '80's and Peters' and Waterman's 1982 book
of
the
same title, American business has been engaged in a "search for
excellence." What about the world of politics and government? No such search
process seems to prevail. There may even be a process of adverse selection.
Candidates are often elected if they can present an image of being more like
us; that is, more like the average Joe rather than someone who has excelled in
a demanding field. Politics is demanding but there are also prevailing "go
along, get along" pressures. Thus, rather than elect someone who has
succeeded in a field outside of politics, voters are more likely to go for
someone who has shown how he or she can get along in a political environment
featuring lowest common denominators.
Consider
education, for example. It's now issue #1. But only two states pay teachers on
a merit basis by providing bonuses and other stipends to reward exceptional
performance. Educational excellence anyone?
Upgrade Human Resources
Many
leading large corporations have traditionally provided aggressive education and
training programs for their employees. Now, much broader segments of the
American business community are engaged in efforts to upgrade their human
resources. Some of these efforts are self-defensive or remedial -- to make up
for shortcomings in public education systems. Obviously, they are driven by the
self-interest of companies in having competent workforces in an era of rapid technological
change.
What
about the interest of a self-interested political system in upgrading human
resources? Candidates and volunteers need to be trained. Citizens need to be
informed. The founders of our republic emphasized that the health of democracy
rests upon an educated citizenry. Yet, training programs traditionally run by
political parties are dwindling. What passes for "civics" education
in the schools is sadly deficient, even a disgrace in many areas. Successive
reports document increasing ignorance of American history among young people,
not to mention practical knowledge of how American democracy works. The human
resource base of our democratic system is decreasing in quality at a time when
it needs to be increasing.
Master & Manage Paradox
Another
Professor of Business Administration, Kim Cameron, has identified mastery and
management of "paradox" as keys to "organizational
effectiveness" in a time of turbulent change.[29]
In the course of so doing, Cameron provides a definition of paradox that is
clear and useful. It avoids the confusion that often surrounds use of the term.
"Paradox…involves contradictory, mutually
exclusive elements that are present and operate…at the same time. Paradoxes
differ in nature from other similar concepts often used as synonyms such as
dilemma, irony, inconsistency, dialectic, ambivalence or conflict….Paradox
differs from each of these concepts in that no choice need be made between two
or more contradictions. Both contradictions in a paradox are accepted and
present. Both operate simultaneously."[30]
Cameron
borrows from an author whose book on paradox provides an additional slant
germane to "truth seeking:"
"A paradox is an idea involving two opposing
thoughts…which…are equally necessary to convey a more imposing, illuminating,
life-related or provocative insight into truth than either factor can muster in
its own right."[31]
In other words, truth is a two-sided coin.
Paradoxical
combinations of qualities in organizations enable them to successfully adapt to
changing conditions. Such combinations as can be observed in the business world
are highlighted in the sections to follow. They include:
>
Ends – Means: Advanced
management practice views business as a system of inter-acting elements, not as
a bundle of "means" quite separable from a bunch of "ends."
End products or services are designed so that they also serve as means to other
ends. Thus, products are sold in packaging designed to enhance the companies
overall image in the mind of the buyer. "Means" are selected and
implemented so that they also contribute to desired "ends." So a
piece of CNC (computer numerically controlled) machinery is not just a tool to
produce product; it is a tool that enables quality assurance, higher precision,
on-the-job training, product development, et. al. Services and tools developed
within companies for internal use (as "means") have been found to be
the basis for a new market niche serving external customers ("ends").
The separation and isolation of means and ends helps turn an organization into
a non-adaptive creature like a dinosaur.
The
latter is one reason why political organizations are quite
"non-adaptive" and why so-called political "leaders" are
not genuine sources of leadership. Not only do they operate on the basis of
artificial, "separation and isolation," the way they do so is often
downright unethical, as in "the end justifies the means." More
specifically, any political organization or campaign involves at least two
paradoxical ends/means elements: winning elections and building for the future.
Even though it is well known to those involved in politics that a truly good
campaign brings "new blood" into politics, the benefit of
"building for the future" has been increasingly less apparent on the
radar screen or agenda of the political class. The goals' tension is real; it
will never go away, but the possibility of its creative management -- to
balance ends and means -- is lost when a "winner takes all"
philosophy takes hold.
>
Acting – Learning: Real-time
business process monitoring and evaluation systems enable producers to
systematically learn from experience; for example, to trace the sources of
higher product defect rates. More generally, some businesses have been turned
into "learning organizations," a la Senge, as indicated earlier. The
conventional, long-standing view, that acting and learning are quite separate
and conflicting activities, runs contrary to the notion of a dynamic
organization trying to adapt to a changing environment.
What
do we see in the world of political actors that amounts to systematic attempts
to learn from experience? -- nothing in the political world per se. There are,
of course, a variety of external agencies such as institutes, "think
tanks" and academic political science programs, but they do not address
what is at issue here. One can even question to what extent such agencies
comprise a "learning system" for those engaged in political-electoral
or party activities. Campaign after campaign, as well as in other ways, whatever
has been learned on the basis of hard experience is often lost and so has to be
relearned another time around. Even though some of the experience gets codified
into the practice(s) of political consultants, this means that knowledge
obtained in the public arena has been appropriated for private gain. There is
no evidence that political consultants, unlike some of the leading business
counterparts, are helping clients to transform themselves into political
learning organizations. If they did so, perhaps there would be less future
demand for their services.
>
Higher -- Lower: The growing
debate on the issue of growing inequality rests, in part, on an assumption that
higher and lower strata represent opposite segments of society in conflict. A
similar attitude was long prevalent in the American business community, but
many businesses have moved away from it over the past 10-12 years by
recognizing that there are elements of "higher" in "lower"
and "lower" in "higher." As indicated earlier, for example,
businesses have "flattened hierarchies," involved lower level
employees in higher level discussions, enabled two-way flows of information,
and "empowered" their employees. Here, too, there will always be
tension, but it can be more creatively managed for the benefit of all.
The
political world is more strictly hierarchical, as the business community once
was. Local committee people defer to state committee people; state to national.
Similar pecking orders pertain to candidates, elected officials and appointed
officials. Higher is higher and lower is lower, and that's that. Yet, more and
more problems come home to roost at the local level as both state and national
authorities devolve or impose mandates on localities, etc.
>
Small – Large: In the past,
"small" and "large" were viewed as opposites. A business
was one or the other. Successful businesses in the new economy, however, have
learned how to be both, simultaneously. Large corporations decentralize,
devolve or spin-off operating responsibility to small-scale units so that they
can be run in more entrepreneurial ways. Networks and consortia of small firms
can operate as if they were large, by sharing resources and/or engaging in
joint marketing, R&D, product design or purchasing.
Corresponding
to a stricter hierarchy of "higher" and "lower" roles, the
political world also displays greater divides between "small" and
"large." For all the talk of decentralization and local initiative,
neither national nor state governments have learned how to enable creative
localism; that is, how best to pass power and money to "small"(er),
"lower" level organizations.
And whatever happened to the interest in "neighborhood
government" that surfaced during the '60''s?[32]
>
Public -- Private: The larger
the company, the more its activities are likely to impact people, areas or
factors that fall into the public domain. In fact, a strong case can be made
that any company, whatever its size, exhibits a mix of both public and private
features. The larger the business size, the more public its nature and the less
credible the claim that it should be treated as a legal person similar to an
individual. Perhaps
the most obvious example of the mix is the private 501©(3) corporation serving
public goals. Like other paradoxical combinations, this one, too, spells
tension between the poles. Some businesses manage this tension well; most
don't. The ways of mixing and balancing the two continue to evolve.
Public/private "partnerships," for example, appear in a variety of
mutable forms.
What
is most important to note from the business side of society is that private
businesses have created organizational forms that explicitly recognize, embody
and express their public sector side(s). We may not like some of these; e.g.,
in the form of trade associations and
lobbying organizations, but they exist for a reason to serve legitimate
purposes.
The
boundary between "public" and "private" has been blurred,
some would say warped.[33]
What is "private" depends a great deal on what rules, customs and/or
conventions regarding "privacy" are honored by the media and others.
If the government can require "private" entities to reveal
information about themselves, or the media are not constrained in their ability
to release their revelations, then the "veil" separating public and
private has been pierced.
Indeed,
it has already been pierced; some would say shredded, in the political arena.
No instance or private behavior by public officials, however prurient, is
beyond public scrutiny. The likelihood that private "dirty laundry"
may be aired in the media has become a deterrent to many people getting
involved in politics.
>Quantitative --
Qualitative: These terms from social science denote another genuine, paradoxical
tension within most organizations. On the one hand, nearly any organization has
a need to generate numbers that reflect, at least for management purposes, the
financial health and some features of performance of the organization. This is
the "quantitative" side of accountability. On the other hand, there's
a need to pay some attention, albeit less frequently, to features of
organizational structure, incentives, relationships, attitudes and behaviors
that cannot be appropriately or completely represented by numbers. This is the
"qualitative" side. The latter, in fact, takes priority, Numbers only
make sense within a certain context which qualitative descriptors describe.
The
tension between the two arises from more than one source. For example, there is
the familiar tension between the "bean counters" and the
"decision makers" as to what accounting measures are measuring. This
tension is aggravated during a time of increased competition and change, when
organizations are challenged to measure their performance at the same time that
they may be "reinventing" in ways that undermine the efficacy of
existing measures.
As
some of what was noted earlier indicates, drawn from a renaissance of business
literature that says far more, a significant portion of the American business
community over the past 12-20 years has succeeded in managing this tension
quite well, by…
1.
Implementing
performance benchmarking, activity-based costing and other sophisticated
methods of measuring and diagnosing business performance;
2.
Aggressively
addressing the "qualitative" side as well, by making significant
changes in the attitudes, structures and behaviors that influence business
performance; and…
3.
Progressively
interating between 1.and 2.; that is, using quantitative diagnostics to make
qualitative changes and qualitative changes to improve quantitative
diagnostics.
Political
bean counters prevail. They love numbers -- the kinds derived from polls,
surveys, Census, political focus groups, market research and other techniques
borrowed from business and political science curricula. They use these numbers
to do superficially quantitative analysis via statistics that they use to do
targeting, profiling and priority-setting for political fund raising and
campaigns.
This
is quantification, all right, with a vengeance. But it is schlock social
science, designed to provide a veneer of analytic authority for an old agenda
-- political manipulation rather than political empowerment; marketing rather
than informing. The "qualitative" side is missing -- like looking at
the foreground and ignoring the background. The so-called
"quantitative" analysis is anti-structural and a-historical. In order
to learn anything of the deeper, longer-run "structural" factors that
might help to explain the snapshots provided by political analysts, we'd have
to go back to school and study things other than the political non-science we
are being fed. There is no "creative tension" or management of the
quantitative/qualitative paradox as in business. It is as if politics had
fallen in love with only one industry and one aspect of business success --
advertising and marketing.
>
Loose/flexible organization --
Tight/functional organization: Cameron states that:
"loose-coupling…encourages wide search,
initiation of innovation, and functional
autonomy…tight-coupling…encourages quick execution,
implementing…and functional reciprocity…"[34]
Thus,
as with other paradoxical features, an effective business organization needs to
be able to effect both, together, even though they are conflicting qualities.
Cameron's studies of business organizations found that "effective"
businesses were able to do so.
Political
organizations are both too loose and too tight -- "too loose" in the
sense that lower level committees are left too much to their own devices
without knowing what is expected of them; "too tight" in the sense
that higher level people would be surprised and concerned if there was a
resurgence of lower level initiative. One reason is that the higher levels have
become increasingly focused on fund raising and some of their power has shifted
to campaign committees dominated by existing elected leadership. The
hierarchical, overly bureaucratic nature of the organization of the major
political parties has already been highlighted.
>
Specialization -- Diversification:
The tension between these poles owes to the fact that any organization needs to
build on its strengths at the same time that it needs to diversify in response
to new challenges or opportunities. Since the '80's, American business has been
managing this tension more sensibly and strategically than during the last wave
of mergers and acquisitions (M&A's). That became known as a
"conglomerate" fad -- the tendency to buy up businesses in unrelated
lines of business. During the 90's, conglomerates sold off much of what they
had acquired. M&A activity has come to focus on related lines of business.
Nevertheless, balancing the conflicting goals of specialization and
diversification remains a great challenge. How it is struck both internally and
externally depends upon:
(1)
leeway
in the form of investible resources;
(2)
the
need for diversification -- whether specialization shows signs of reaching
diminishing returns; and
(3)
size
of the market (specialization is associated with greater market size).
Corporations
have also learned to appreciate what lines of business they are in so that they
do not become too narrowly specialized. Thus, railroads are in the
"transportation" business; steel companies are part of the
"materials" sector.
The
"business" of politics is also changing. Unlike corporate business
changes, however, it is not changing strategically so that the tension between
specialization and diversification works to improve development, organization
or participation. Political organizations per se, those mandated by election
laws, are becoming more specialized -- as fund raising vehicles and money
laundries. Diversification is occurring by way of politics as a business, as
political consultants, political internet firms, political paraphrenalia supply
firms and others gradually take over more of the functions of old-fashioned
political committees and campaigns, financed by money that the latter have
raised. An overriding focus on money is self-destructive for traditional
political organizations, and this trend represents no "creative
management" of paradox.
>
Continuity -- Change: Here is
another basic, paradoxical source of tension. As Cameron notes:
"Continuity…permits stability, long-term
planning and institutional memory." Change… permits increased innovation,
adaptability and currency."[35]
Many
"old economy" corporations have succeeded in managing this tension
very well, maintaining a sense of corporate history, tradition and mission
while changing substantially to take advantage of "new economy"
opportunities. Some have not; e.g., a major old-line, insurance company that is
being sued by its shareholders.
Meanwhile,
one of the "Big 6" management consulting firms has been advising
clients to honor its "First Paradox Principle" -- that "positive
change requires significant stability."[36]
This
"Principle" is not honored by political organizations. They hardly
seem aware of the tension. Thus, they are not consciously managing it at all
and, unconsciously, managing it poorly. The big change is Internet use --
political web-page design(s), "chat rooms," e-mail networks, et. al.
This leaves most local political organizations behind and traditional, direct,
person-to-person politics unattended. This amounts to placing a premium on dis-continuity. Only a small
minority of local political party committees have their own web page.[37]
>
Expansion / Outreach -- Consolidation
/ Integration: Another source of strategic tension is that between
expansion into new areas and/or new markets and the consolidation or
integration of existing activities. This is obviously related to other
paradoxes of the "stand pat" vs."develop" variety.
Effective business organizations have recognized this paradox and managed it
well. Recognition of it, reinforced by improved company communications and
teamwork, has often pointed to improvements in existing products as
opportunities for expansion. This has been the case in the housewares industry,
for example, with respect to better design and imaginative use of new materials
that have given a whole new lease on market life to many of the most
commonplace household items, such as pots and pans.
Political
"leaders" and organizations are so fixated on expanding their
political base(s) and reaching towards higher office(s) that they neglect or
lose sight of the base(s) that they came from and the people that voted them
into office. Local political committees can and should be the focal points for
consolidation and effective integration of political activities and
participants.
>
Entrepreneurial -- Bureaucratic:
We have touched this polarity earlier, but as a trade-off rather than a
paradox. Most organizations need to maintain both types of features even though
the degree to which one or the other prevails at any time will depend on
several factors, including organizations' stage of development. Organizations
of any significant size need to effect both innovation and control. Many
"old economy" corporations have transformed themselves from
conventional corporate bureaucracies such as those that gave rise to "the
organization man" into enterprises that promote
"intra-preneurship."[38]
Thus, Price Waterhouse also recommends "The Second Paradox Principle: To
build an enterprise, focus upon the individual," an anti-bureaucratic
advisory.[39] Another
major source of advice to business leaders, Peter Senge, advises in a way that
is more directly paradoxical. Much of his approach enables a " focus upon
the individual" while he also counsels "the primacy of the
whole" (organization or enterprise).[40]
Political
organizations haven't followed the lead of their business counterparts to shift
emphasis from bureaucracy to entrepreneurship during what President Reagan
hailed as the new "age of the entrepreneur." It seems as if fear of
political incorrectness has reinforced reliance upon conventional control
systems. Meanwhile, political entrepreneurship is alive and well among
politically interested individuals who typically invest considerable time and
money to build a political base and mount campaigns to get elected to
something. This important brand of entrepreneurship, however, seems more and
more to favor those who have either inherited money or invested in building
financial assets before they turn to public life. The potentially creative
tension between entrepreneurship and bureaucracy is being mis-managed to the
detriment of both in public life. Two major reasons may be the following:
1.
Higher
level political organizations are too often leaving political entrepreneurs who
are promising but not wealthy to "hang out to dry" on their own resources,
by providing little support in terms of money or manpower. Ironically, this
aggravates political parties' decline because, as more people get elected on
the basis of their own individual resources, they owe little or nothing to the
parties once elected.
2.
Public
entrepreneurship is alive and well among many not-for-profit organizations,
especially some of those that are issue-oriented, but these have intermittent,
weak or opportunistic relationships with political parties.
In his book THE IMAGE, Nobel Laureate Kenneth
Boulding remarked that any political system that can't attract talent able to
address pressing public issues will be hard put to survive. Political and
business systems in the U.S. are competing for talent. Guess which sector is winning?
>
External – Internal: This is
analogous to the paradox of "Expansion -- Consolidation" mentioned
earlier. Tension is implicit in the underlying question: Should we "tend
to our own washing" as customary or should we diversify our repertory with
and/or for a somewhat different set of others? The answer to this question that
is evident in the business community is clear: We need to identify and develop
relationships with a diverse set of "external" others in a variety of
ways -- outsourcing, joint ventures, affiliations, partnerships,
collaboratives, et. al. Thus, both "internal" resources and
"external" markets are augmented and enriched.
Higher
level political organizations appear to be following the lead of corporations
towards one ("external") end of this dichotomy like lemmings going
over a cliff, somewhat like their fascination for business' marketing
techniques. They are outsourcing to political consultants, et.al., with a
vengeance while neglecting internal capacity-building. Yet they are far from
exploiting the full potential of joint ventures, collaborations and the like
with "non-political" public interest groups representing various
aspects of "civil society."
>
Symbol – Substance: These are
often viewed as opposites, especially by intellectuals who love to carp over
fine distinctions that they believe to be substantive. Indeed, advertising and
P.R. often seem to favor one over the other (guess which!). Yet, one of the
accomplishments of the "top leadership" of effective businesses,
according to Cameron, is that they "paid a great deal of attention"
to both, as follows:
"On the one hand, structural, personnel and
curricular changes were instituted, so that the basic fiber of the institution
was altered. On the other hand, substance was ignored in favor of image…to help
constituencies interpret events favorably (so that the) core culture…of
successful institutions was reinforced…The management of symbols and
interpretations was a critical difference between successful managers and
others who failed."
Politics
has veered towards one end of this paradox, too -- "symbol" over
"substance." Unless political parties and others can succeed in
managing the tension between them better in order to redress the imbalance,
they will consign themselves to a state to which many feel they have already
fallen -- irrelevance and disrepute.
>
Creation -- Destruction: At
least since Shumpeter, business and economic development in a market economy
have been recognized as processes of "creative destruction" in which
the paradoxical, seemingly polar opposites come together. This has been quite
evident in recent years, as business organizations of all types have been
"reinventing" themselves via "downsizing,"
"outsourcing," a massive wave of M&A's, rapid technological
changes, etc. At the same time, we have experienced the longest economic
expansion and period of sustained prosperity since series of key economic
statistics began. It is also well-known that higher rates of entrepreneurship
(new enterprise formations) go hand in hand with higher rates of business
failures.
How
the inherent tension between creation and destruction is managed within
enterprises in order to exploit their development potential as conjoined
processes is, of course, one of the on-going challenges of business management
in the new economy, so much so that several books have been written for
business readers on how to employ "paradox as a dynamic tool."[41]
"The Fifth Paradox Principle" advocated by one of the "Big
6" management consulting firms, for example is: "In order to build,
you must tear down."[42]
A
question implied by much of the debate over political reform(s) is: How much of
conventional politics needs to be torn down or cleared away before we can
create a system that works? No one has yet answered this question. See the
final chapter of the author’s forthcoming book.
Paradox: Revolution in
Business a Prelude to Political Reform?
The
revolution in American business can and should be considered a prelude to
political reform because, if our political system does not adopt or adapt much
of what we have seen heralded by business publications and advanced practices,
then:
n
The
political system will fall farther and farther behind the business system
and/or…
n
The
political system may fail…
with adverse consequences most of us would
not want to contemplate.
The inability of our political system, relative
to the business community, to attract requisite talents has also been
mentioned. Partly because major segments of the business community has
transformed themselves and their modus operandi, business appears to increasing
numbers of young people to be more dynamic, interesting, challenging and
powerful than politics or government.
There
are two matters most at issue here. One is the quality of the political
process, a concern which runs through this whole article. The other is power.
Business is only a subsystem of the economy and of American society. Polanyi
(1957) refers to the market system as "embedded" in society. So it
should be, really as well as desirably. Yet, ironically, the "new
economy" seems to be a replay of the '50's in one key respect. It seems to
many as if the market has entered into virtually all spheres of American life
and that "the
business of American is business" or, to paraphrase former GM Chairman
Charlie Miller, as if 'what's best for business is best for America.' The
organizational development gap(s) that we have observed between business and
political sectors of American society -- progressive vs. regressive -- spells a
disparity in power that can only worsen if the political sector continues to
lag. This means that Charlie Miller may turn out to be a live prophet, not just
a deceased business executive. His statement may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The great majority of the American people will be increasingly powerless to the
extent that they do not take charge of a political reform process that
incorporates many of the elements demonstrated by the American business
community. The most important of these is people's empowerment. "We, the
people..." should be far more than just the opening words of our
Constitution.