Conversation 1: Change and Its Repercussions

Hello.

Hi.

I understand that you have been studying the process of management and leadership for more than fifty years. What is it? What does it mean to you?

We first need to define what the word manage means. Later we will define leadership and discuss the differences.

The Traditional Theory of Management

I’ve found that in various languages, such as Swedish, the Slavic languages, and Spanish too, the concept “to manage” does not have a literal translation. In those languages, words like direct, lead, or administer are often used instead. In Spanish, for example, the word manejar, the literal translation for manage, means “to handle” and is used only when referring to horses or cars.

When other languages want to say “manage” in the American sense of the word, they use direct or administer, or they use the American word management.

Take the French language: They insist on using only French words but when it comes to “management” they use the English word. They have no literal translation. And Russians, although they try to distance themselves from the USA, nevertheless use the English word management too.

I suggest to you that if there is no translation, the concept is not that clear. Moreover, the process is not universally applied; different countries manage differently.

In the Yugoslav self-management system of the 1960s, the managerial process, as it is practiced in the United States and taught in American business schools, was prohibited by law. If a manager made a unilateral decision for a company, he could be prosecuted. It would be considered a negation of the industrial democratic process that was required by law. A manager had to suggest, while the workers decided. In this system they applied the princi- ples of democracy at the enterprise level. The same is true in Israeli kibbutzim, communal self-managed organizations. The secretary of a kibbutz, who holds a managerial position, is periodically elected so that no one can claim permanence in governing others.

You mean the kibbutz secretaries manage for a while and then go back to milking the cows?

Or back to serving in the dining room or washing dishes. Management is not a long-term, permanent appointment there, just as no democratically elected leadership is permanent. That would negate democracy. In a democracy, leadership-management is not a profession. It is a calling.

What, then, is management, if some languages don’t have a direct translation and some sociopolitical systems negate it, or practically forbid it? Would the synonyms in the dictionary provide a sufficient definition?

Well, what synonyms would you suggest?

Decide, operate, plan, control, organize, rule, achieve goals, lead, motivate, accomplish...

In several dictionaries the synonyms for manage are the ones you have mentioned. There are other intriguing synonyms, like dominate and govern, from the American Collegiate Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary adds manipulate and connive.

I do not feel comfortable with the synonyms manipulate and connive.

I do not blame you, but there is a reason why those synonyms exist. Let’s analyze the com- mon denominator shared by all the synonyms you have mentioned, excluding, for a moment, manipulate and connive. Imagine the process described by each of these synonyms; animate their meaning. Can you identify the common denominator? Operate...plan...control...orga- nize...rule...achieve...accomplish.

They are all a one-way process. The managing person is telling the managed person what to do. The manager determines what should be done and the managed person is expected to carry it out. Abide.

That’s why we call a manager the “head” of the department, and a valued subordinate is called the “right hand.” The right hand does exactly what the head tells it to do, while the left hand behaves as if it had a will of its own. It is not fully controllable.

But managers are also called supervisors.

The managerial process, or leadership, is not a value-free process. It is not only a science and an art, but also an expression of sociopolitical values.

Because a supervisor is supposed to have superior vision. Look at the insignia for military officers. You can compare the progressive ranks represented by United States military insignia to climbing a tree and then ascending to the sky. The lieutenants have bars representing the branches of a tree. The captain has more bars; he is going up the tree. The major has a leaf representing the top of the tree. Then the colo- nel soars like an eagle, and the general has a star. The higher they go up the organizational hierarchy, the better their vision should be.

So?

The problem with such a frame of mind is the lowliness of the subordinates. The lower they are on the tree, the less they can see and can be expected to know. Listen to the word: subor- dinates. They are sub-ordinary.

You mean to say that the words connote that the manager is superior and the subordinates are inferior?

In Hebrew, subordinates are literally called “bent,” kfufeem, as if the managers had bent them to the desired mold.

I never paid attention to this connotation. What is the cause of this?

The managerial process, or leadership, as it is taught and practiced, is not a value-free pro- cess. It is not only a science and an art, but also an expression of sociopolitical values. It is a value-loaded political process, and it originates with the patriarchic family, I believe.

But what about the word motivate? Does not this synonym redeem the process of management from what appears to be its hierarchical, one- way-street connotation?

In the context of management as superior and those reporting to him or her as subordinates, where the manager decides and then has to motivate sub-ordinary people to execute his or her wishes, what would you say is the meaning of motivate?

As a manager or leader, I know what I want the subordinates to do. My challenge is finding the way to motivate them to do what I have already unilaterally decided. If I can’t control them, maybe I can motivate them to do what I want them to do; they have no say, they should just execute my decisions willingly.

What does that sound like?

Manipulation.

Right! I remember a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine. A mother who is a psychologist is trying to convince her son to take out the trash. Wearily, the boy says, “Okay, okay! I’ll take out the trash, but pleeeease, Mom, don’t try to motivate me.” Even the child sees motivation as a manipulation. What he must do has already been decided. It’s only a matter of how to make him do it.

I can see now why some labor unions often oppose programs such as job enrichment or enlargement, which management uses to “motivate” workers. Unions view these programs as ploys to increase productivity and profitability for the good of management and stockholders. The only benefit to the workers is that they may keep their jobs.

The same connotation of manipulation comes up in the synonym to lead. Some theories of leadership, if you read them carefully, present the leadership function as the way to make the followers follow enthusiastically a decision that was already made. Note this quote from Dwight Eisenhower as an example: “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done, because he wants to do it.” Notice that the decision has been made. The followers should be happy to implement the decision as if it was theirs to make. That can be seen as a manipulation, no?

In some industries, management is a dirty word. In the fine arts, in the United States, it is often synonymous with exploitation. Soon, I believe, if the paradigm does not change the same will happen with the concept of leadership.

So, what do you suggest?

The Nature of Change

We have to understand the role of management, or the leadership role, by the function it performs: why do we need it? The function should be value-free, without any sociopolitical or cultural biases and applicable to any organization, in any industry, of any size, on any level—micro, mezzo, or macro—and with whatever goals the organization might have, for profit or not for profit.

The more change, the more problems we will have.

It should be the same, whether we are managing our- selves, our family, a business, a non-profit organization, or leading a nation. Whether we speak of managing, leading, parenting, or governing, it should be one and the same process conceptually. It should be a universal theory of management, of leadership.

This sounds very ambitious. Where do we start?

Do you agree with one thing, that change is constant? The process has been going on since the beginning of time and will continue forever. The world is changing physically, socially, and economically. Even you are changing this very minute. Change is here to stay.

Yes?

Change creates problems. Because what is change? Something new has emerged. Now we have to decide what to do about it and then we have to implement that decision.

Since it is a new phenomenon or event, we cannot have all the information we might want to have. Thus, to decide about something new means that there is uncertainty. If we implement the decision there is risk: It might not work as well as we wanted.

Making decisions under uncertainty and implementing them, which entails risk, is a problem. We scratch our head: What should we do (uncertainty) and should we do it (risk)? Thus we consider a new phenomenon that impacts us as “a problem.”

The more change, the more problems we will have.

Now let us assume we did decide, and implemented our decision. What happens now? We had a solution and implemented it. Right?

Notice that our solution created change, too. We can diagram the sequence like this:

INSERTAR IMAGEN

Now, looking at the diagram, if change is here to stay, what else is here to stay?

Problems.

And the greater the quantity and velocity of the changes, the greater the quantity and complexity of the problems we will have.

The greater the quantity and velocity of the changes, the greater the quantity and complexity of the problems we will have.

Right. Email and computer systems were supposed to increase our effectiveness and efficiency of work. But instead of having less work to do I have more work, more problems that face me even faster than before.

I have the same experience. Change is accelerating, and the environment is becoming increasingly overlapping, and interdependent. A technological change can have an almost instantaneous impact on the economic or social or even political environment. Take the internet, which was a technological innovation. It impacted how retail works so it had economic repercussions. But it was also used to mobilize people to demonstrate. It had political repercussions. It also has social repercussions: how people find another person to date. . . . The environment we operate in is becoming more and more complex. Simple solutions do not work anymore. For complex problems we need complex solutions.

Furthermore change is accelerating. If our grandparents made one strategic decision in a lifetime, and our parents, let’s say, every ten or fifteen years, we are making strategic decisions every five years, and our children will have to make them annually. Life is becoming increasingly stressful.

The higher the standard of living, the lower the quality of life.

In my travels, I hear more laughter in one day in a developing country than in a whole year in a developed country. The more developed, the more so-called advanced, a country, it seems the less time is there for people to just laugh and enjoy life. They are all stressed.

Every problem can be an opportunity in disguise and every opportunity can be a problem in disguise.

Yes, it seems that the higher the standard of living, the lower the quality of life. It all has to do with the velocity of change.

But not all events caused by change are “problems.” Some are opportunities.

Absolutely so. Interesting that in the Chinese language the word problem or threat and the word opportunity are one and the same word: wēijī, 危机. This means every problem can be an opportunity in disguise and every opportunity can be a problem in disguise.

Have you ever had a problem that, by the time you solved it, you learned a lot and became much stronger because of it? That problem was really an opportunity to learn. And I am sure there were times when you saw an opportunity and tried to capitalize on it, and this opportu- nity turned out to be a major problem for you.

All opportunities are a response to a problem. There would not have been opportunities if there were no problems. The problems your competition has are your opportunity. And the problems you have in your company are an opportunity for your competition. But if you are smart and understand this, then why should your problems be opportunities for your competition. Why not see them as your opportunity to improve your company, to learn from your problems?

Every problem is an opportunity to learn and improve. Problems and opportunities are one and the same thing. It depends how we look at them. As we will discuss later, it has much to do with personality. For some people a problem is an opportunity; for others an opportunity is a problem.

It is all up to you whether the new event caused by change is an opportunity or a problem. It all depends on your frame of mind and on how you handle the event. Since problems are the same as opportunities, I translate the Chinese word wēijī to English, literarily, as oppor-threat.

This reminds me of a joke I read in a book by Osho, the Indian philosopher:

A man goes to a mental hospital, and walking down the corridor sees a man in a room tearing his hair and crying: “Natasha, Natasha.”

So he asked, “What happened to him?”

“He fell in love with Natasha. She left him and he lost his mind.”

Our man continues walking down that corridor, and a few rooms later there is another guy, now even more distraught: “Natasha, Natasha.” Banging his head against the wall.

“What about this guy?” asks our visitor.

“Ah, he married Natasha…”

INSETAR DIAGRAMA

We will stop encountering problems only when there is no more change.

Notice the following: Whenever we decide and implement our decision to solve a problem, we are causing more change. We are the source of change too. The change can come from the outside or the inside, caused by our own decisions. And that has repercussions.

If change is here to stay—it has been here forever and will stay here a bit longer—what else is here to stay forever?

Problems and opportunities.

Yes. The point is that people should not expect to permanently solve all problems. As long as there is change, it will not happen. It cannot happen. When one set of problems is solved, a new generation of problems will emerge. We will stop encountering problems only when there is no more change, and that will happen only when we are…

Dead.

Right! Living means solving problems, and growing up means being able to solve bigger problems. “Big” people deal with big problems. “Small” people (in spirit) deal with small problems. The more change, the more problems the system will have, whether we are talking about a human being, a marriage, a company, or a country.

The purpose of management, leadership, parenting, or governing is exactly that: to manage change.

Having fewer problems is not a sign of growing but of dying. A young child has a lot of problems. A very old person who is dying has only one problem: how to stay alive.

And the more change, the more stress.

Yes. There is a psychological test for stress. You are supposed to fill out a form and for every event you note how many points of stress it gives you. For example, being fired: so many points; death in the family: so many points…going on vaca- tion: so many points. What is the common denominator to all those events?

Change!

The purpose of management, leadership, parenting, or governing is exactly that: to manage change. To solve today’s problems that were generated in the past and get ready to deal with future problems we create with our decisions today. No management is needed when there are no problems, and there are no problems only when we are…

Dead.

To manage is to be alive, and to be alive means to experience change with the accompanying problems it brings.

To lead, manage, parent, govern a nation…means to solve problems caused by change.

If you are not managing change—that is, solving problems caused by change—you are not managing. You are not leading. That is the essence of management, of leadership, of parenting, and of governing.

So the anarchist political theory that tries to eliminate government and management is utopian.

I think so.

Change can be your friend or your foe. Here is a story you might want to remember: My friend Peter Shutz, when he was appointed president of the Porsche car company, he vis- ited all the departments of the company. When he was at the engineering department he asked those there if Porsche competes at Le Mans, which is a premier car-racing event where Porsche, a sports car company, should compete.

“We don’t,” they said.

“We should and next year we should win, and I rely on you to make that happen,” he said.

The engineering department worked around the clock, designed and tested a racing car. The company went to the races and won. Big celebration.

The next day they found that the racing committee had changed the rules for next year’s competition and they had to go back to the drawing board all over again. The engineers were depressed.

If there is no change the mediocre eventually catch up.

Peter responded with a sentence, which I believe should be a mantra repeated by all executives: “If there is no change the mediocre eventually catch up.”

Change is the best thing that can happen for a well-managed company. Change enables the well-managed company to distance itself from the poorly managed competition because it deals with change better.

Change is an opportunity for the well-managed and a problem, some- times even a fatal problem, for the poorly managed organization.

Change fast or die slowly.

I repeat: Whether you are managing your own life or a company or a department, leading, governing, parenting, whatever…you have to decide and implement your decisions to deal with change, and since change is constant, this role we call management or leadership is constant too and cannot be eliminated.

How well you manage depends on how effective your decisions are and how efficiently you implement them.

The Origin of Problems (Opportunities)

Is there an underlying reason why problems or opportunities emerge with change?

Everything you see around you is a system. By system I mean that there is interdependency in and in between everything in this world. Even the stars are interdependent.

Now, every system is composed of subsystems, which are composed again of their own sub- systems, down to the nano level, and even there I believe there are yet more subsystems we will discover in time.

Problems are manifestations of disintegration.

So?

When there is change, the subsystems do not advance, change, in synchronicity. Some change faster than others.

Take yourself as an example, or any other human being. You are a system composed of subsystems: You have the physical subsystem, the intellectual subsystem, the emotional subsystem, and the spiritual subsystem. They do not necessarily change in synchronicity. You might be physically 40 years old, intellectually much older because of life experiences and education, but emotionally you are still a teenager, and spiritually not born yet.

You see what might happen? There will be cracks in the system. You are “not together.” Those cracks are manifested by what we call problems.

Problems are manifestations of...

Disintegration.

That is why when someone has too many problems we say he is falling apart, he is coming unglued. And when we are impressed with someone or a system we say this person has it all together, or this family has it all together, or this country has it all together.

Integration is the sign of health, disintegration of a malady. All problems are caused by disintegration caused by change. Show me a high rate of change and I will show you significant signs of disintegration. A house on the beach needs more maintenance than a house in the mountains. Why? The beach house is subject to more changing weather.

Any problem we might have—I repeat, any problem, whether it is a medical problem or a problem in our marriage, or that our car does not start, or there is a crime in our neighborhood—is caused by disintegration: Something has fallen apart because of change.

You go to the doctor to complain about some pain you have. What does the doctor ask you? “When did it start?” What is he looking for? What has changed? What has fallen apart?

Your car does not start? The mechanic will try to find out what has broken apart, disintegrated.

To diagnose a problem ask yourself what has changed. What has fallen apart?

You have a problem with your spouse? Your marriage is “falling apart.” The disintegration, most probably, is caused by something that has changed. Maybe the change is a new child, a new job, or new needs that were dormant until now. Who knows? But one thing is for sure: Something has fallen apart. Something has changed.

To diagnose a problem ask yourself what has changed. What has fallen apart?

The ongoing problem the Western world has with Muslim terrorists then is a manifestation of disintegration caused by change.

I think so. Modern society has advanced technologically, politically, and socially, and some parts of the world do not accept those changes. Like the changing role of women in society, for example.

But notice it is not only a reaction of fanatic Muslims; all religions have fanatics who resist change. But is there a system, a process for how to manage change that works? Change without destructive forces? I notice people hate change, or they support change as long as nothing changes. I think that they want the benefits of change without the pain of change.

That is what I have spent over fifty years studying and testing in over fifty-two countries with companies of every size, including the largest on earth, and with governments as well. That is what this conversation, as an introduction to the subject, aims to do.

I can’t wait.

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