The power of three (or four) times three (or ‘how chief executives with too much time on their hands build sandcastles in the air’)
As the New Year approaches, thinking about the world, life and the RSA, it all falls into a pattern for a moment. The questions, with which I hope my reader friends will help me, are these; is this original (I fear not only that I have written it all before but that there are a hundred and one other ways of thinking that are, to all intents and purposes, the same), is it useful (it may be true that I am made of the same sub atomic particles as a filing cabinet, but so what?) is there anything that can be done with it (how could these ideas be tested, debated, developed?)……..
As in nature, the infinite complexity of individual and collective thought derives from the interplay of a finite number of base elements. This is the starting point for theories of plural rationality. I have written a great deal about one of these, labouring under the unhelpful name cultural theory. It argues that perspectives on change in organisations can be traced back to the interplay of four paradigms; the egalitarian, the hierarchical, the individualistic and the fatalistic. These four are always at play, continuously generating new demands, shaping conflicts and determining the success of solutions.
MRI scans, undertaken by neuro-scientists interested in the physiological basis of ways of seeing the world, have suggested that different perspectives seem to be consistently associated with activity in certain areas of the brain. It may seem far fetched (and reductionist) to suggest there is a piece of the brain reserved for, say, hierarchical thoughts, however, cultural theory’s four organisational paradigms could be seen to reflect broadly a more basic set of behavioural alternatives.
Faced with a social choice we can do what we want or feels right for us (individualistic impulse), do what the group expects/needs (egalitarian impulse), do what we have been told (hierarchical impulse) or ‘decide’ it’s not worth making a choice (fatalistic impulse). Is it credible and useful to think of the everyday experience of free will as the process of switching between these alternative responses?
Between moment to moment choices and collective strategies lies the narrative of our lives. Here too we can measure along three axes. We aspire to a good quality of life; to getting what we believe we deserve and gives us pleasure (nb this is not the same as selfishness). We want also to succeed; to make an impact (and be seen to make an impact) using the powers and skills we possess. And we want to feel we are doing good; to meet our responsibilities to the community in which we find meaning. (By the way, I have tried to map the sources of life satisfaction onto the choice options and the cultural theory paradigms but find any attempt obscures more than it illuminates)
The reason key aspects of our lives (e.g. family and friends, paid work and structured voluntary activity) satisfy us one day but, even though they have remain unchanged, not the next, may be because we view our life as a whole through distinct lenses. A job which meets our need for good pay and conditions and gives us plenty of status and control may feel empty and pointless when viewed through the lens of duty. Just as in an organisation – where the temporary dominance of one perspective generates a counter reaction along the lines of the other perspectives – so in our lives a period in which the fulfilment of duty has predominated will gradually generate dissatisfaction with a perceived lack of enjoyment or recognition.
Institutions are places where people make choices, pursue life wishes and respond together to challenges. Institutions that hope to endure and to fulfil a social mandate (like the RSA) need: to develop a set of norms (egalitarian impulse), rules (hierarchical) and incentives (individualistic) that make it more likely day to day choices will strengthen the institution, (in order to address the inevitability and danger of fatalism they must also allow sufficient space for reflection and autonomy). The institution will also seek to provide sustenance for the different sets of life wishes, so that through whatever lens a participant is looking at the institution (pleasure, duty, ambition) there are reasons for positive engagement. Finally, the institution will recognise, foster and seek to balance the different sources of organisational energy which derive from egalitarian, hierarchical, and individualistic ways of thinking about change (collective individualism is not an oxymoron as individualists can be united by their disdain for egalitarian, hierarchical and fatalistic views).
Needless to say there are many additional sources of complexity. For example, while certain people or certain positions within the institution may have a predisposition to a certain way of viewing change (managers to hierarchy for example), the perspectives are dynamically and unpredictably generated in relation to specific challenges. Also, an institution contains many different levels of organisation, each one of which contains the dynamics of plural rationality. For example, while the management team may adopt a hierarchical stance in relation to the organisation as institution, the team as an organisation itself is prone to dividing internally along the four paradigms (the hierarchically-inclined departmental supervisor may be an egalitarian subversive in the corporate management team).
The important thing for the leaders of an institution is to understand the core elements which structure choice, work satisfaction and collective approaches to change, to recognise that each element is inevitable and has something to give, and to understand how the dynamic interplay of the elements can never be resolved and indeed is the source of innovation and growth.
2009 – brave or empty?
Daniel suggested I might write a post looking back over the past year and, maybe, forward to the one ahead. 2009 feels like a year in suspended animation.
On the economy we came in to the year fearing meltdown. Things have been pretty bad but we end the year with a combination of relief – because the worst did not happen – and anxiety that we face a long slow recovery with the ever present danger of another dip.
In national politics too, many would have doubted Gordon Brown’s ability to last another year, while others in Labour’s ranks would have hoped for a recovery. The Conservatives might have expected 2009 to be the year they sealed the deal with the public. But despite the ups and downs, and the extremes of the spring elections, the polls have bumped along with the Tories around 40%, Labour around 30% and the Lib Dems around 20%. The question still seems to be; how big will David Cameron’s majority be but no one is quite willing to rule out some further twist.
In society the recession has impacted – especially on the young – but we haven’t seen the unrest on the streets or the widespread reaction against global finance or consumer capitalism that some predicted or hoped for. The public spending cuts and the unrest and pain they may cause has also been deferred.
In culture I rely on closer observers than me to comment. The scorn heaped on Damien Hirst’s paintings was another needle to pop the hubristic bubble of BritArt, but was there a discernable post credit crunch culture? In sport too this was a gap year before the World Cup in 2010 and the anticipation of the 2012 Games.
On the environment, Copenhagen failed to deliver but there was just enough momentum from the summit to hope for more in 2010.
For in the end, as is always the case, the significance of 2009 won’t be known for some time. If in 2010, one way of another, the political process generates some energy and enthusiasm, if the economy starts to get back on track, if the new processes set in play by Copenhagen start to pay off then maybe we will look back on this as a brave year whose fortitude laid the basis for the highs of 2010.
On the other hand, if Labour crash and burn, if the economy wobbles before being pulled down by the public sector defecit, if the global gaze simply moves away from climate change then 2009 will be remembered as a dead zone – a year best forgotten, of realities denied, challenges ducked, a year memorable only for the level of rage (against MPs, bankers and overpaid celebrities) and the obsession with celebrity trivia.
What do you think? Maybe it depends on whether you’re a postive thinker.
Perspectives on positivity
Yesterday’s post has generated some interesting comments, particularly a debate between Daniel Snell and Andrew Old concerning the distinction between positive thinking, low expectations and low aspirations.
There is a link between the debate and a row today over advice to the parents of unemployed graduates being offered by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. The advice, penned by a career coach, encourages parents to show ‘tough love’ (itself an idea which is becoming suspiciously fashionable); give your offspring support but discourage them from being unrealistic, and don’t make life so comfortable that they become couch potatoes.
The Conservatives are no doubt echoing a wider public response when they say that Lord Mandelson’s department ought to be putting its energies into getting the economy on track rather than paying consultants to provide trite advice on parenting.
The point is not whether the advice is correct, but whether this is the appropriate role of Government. I suspect that Barbara Ehrenreich might see this as another example of trying to pin the blame for socio-economic problems (ie the recession and graduate unemployment) on individual attitudes.
This is an incomplete line of thought, but it occurs to me that the key dimension of the debate over positive thinking and happiness is whether the focus is on society or the individual. An interest in aggregate social happiness has been associated with left of centre thinking: On the one hand, the Layard critique of free market consumerism that rising prosperity is no long associated with greater well-being; on the other hand the Wilkinson Pickett thesis that - in developing countries – the key to well-being is not greater aggregate prosperity bu lower levels of inequality.
But, as Ehrenreich argues, if the focus is the individual the tendency is to down play the impact of social factors like inequality or exclusion in favour of an emphasis on what every person can do to change the way they think about things, and through so doing up the chances of a material improvement in their circumstances.
This is obvious, I know.
The value of the debate lies in those who lean towards social determinism having to engage with the importance of culture and attitude while positive thinkers might usefully examine how certain social arrangements seem to have measurable impacts on well-being. This takes us back to the evidence, about which we can say; first, that there is a lot of interesting research being published at both the individual and social level, second, that it is not nearly as conclusive as many of the debate’s protagonists would have us imagine, and third, that even if the evidence was much stronger it would never resolve profound philosophical differences about what constitutes the good society and the good life.
Positively wrong
I have just read a fantastic new book by American social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich; ‘Smile or Die. How positive thinking fooled America and the world’. Barbara is speaking about the book at the RSA in the new year, come if you can, or tune in if we live cast the event.
The book tracks the origins and excesses of the ideology of positive thinking, looking at how it has become dominant in American religion, business and psychology. I was particularly intrigued – and challenged – by her chapter of positive psychology in which she is wittily scathing about the movement’s founding father, Martin Seligman (someone I have quoted favourably in the past).
In essence, Ehrenreich has three criticisms of the idea that positive thinking is the key to success and happiness. First, it is often based on mumbo jumbo or pseudo science. Second, it encourages victim blaming by suggesting that people’s misfortune is the result of a failure to think positively while arguing that the way to increase social welfare is for individuals to think differently rather than for society to be organised differently. Third, the bland pursuit of subjective happiness can make us blind to the real world; to risk, to pathos, to the often troubling nature of beauty, to suffering or injustice.
As I say, it is a brilliant book and a good corrective to reductionist, or simply ridiculous, accounts of what is a good life and how to live it. But the book also explores how positive thinking was in large part a reaction to the failings of earlier anti-humanistic ways of thinking; the harshness of Calvinism, the brutalism of organisational bureaucracy and the exclusive focus of psychiatry on pathology.
Going back once again to cultural theory; one of its insights is that each of the four ways of thinking about change in the world derive their power not so much from their own view as from their antagonism to the other views. What society does and believes at any time can only be fully understood as, in part, a reaction to what came before. I’ve never read Hegel, but perhaps I can rely on some of my brilliant readers to tel me whether this is the essence of the historical dialectic?
The idea that our attitude to life matters and that contentment and fulfilment are not just about material circumstances but also how we decide to approach life’s challenges is important – it goes back a lot further than the positive thinking fad. It is something to hold on to even while we look very critically at exaggerated – or just plain wrong – assertions that thinking positively helps us fight diseases, get rich or even - in the end – live fulfilled lives.
Me and my big mouth
I am more than a little surprised to find myself apparently at the centre of a plot to oust Gordon Brown. There was I thinking my biggest worry was whether cooked turkey lasts more than 72 hours or if West Brom would go in to the New Year in a promotion place, when I read of my status as backroom conspirator.
All this appears to be based on a couple of paragraphs in a post I wrote last August (the rest of which was about whether it was wise for Chris Grayling to compare crime and policing in England to the streets of Baltimore in ‘The Wire’). In these paragraphs I considered whether a way for Labour to reconcile its loyalty to its leader with its need for someone more voter friendly might be for Gordon Brown to remain Prime Minister until the General Election while Labour elected a new leader to fight that election. The was an option which was pursued in 2003/4 by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and would probably have succeeded for his People’s Party had it not been for his Government’s disastrous initial response to the Madrid train bombing.
As regular readers know, I have in recent times tried to avoid anything on my blog which could be construed as political strategising. I guess what I find strange – or perhaps I am just being naive – is that the months-old opinions of someone who has not been involved in front line politics for over three years, and who has little contact with Labour’s high command, can be used as the basis for ‘a plot against the Prime Minister’.
Maybe I should be flattered, but actually I feel a bit embarrassed and anxious. It’s almost enough to put me off my cold turkey and stuffing sandwiches.
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