Given the statistics on death by disease, auto, and accidents: military threats would seem to be the least of security concerns in America. And yet, our government spends more on the military than all other nations combined. As so many asked themselves in the wake of 9-11, we should take a closer look at the military itself and ask ourselves “how did this happen?” How did we come to spend the bulk of our tax dollars on not just the current military, but on past war debts, research and development, military recruitment and the like, For it is not altogether clear that a large and powerful military constitutes the best policy of national defense.
There is an old Taoist tale about two kings, one from the east and one from the west. Together they would travel to the kingdom in between, the land of No Form, where they would rest and relax and contemplate their alliance. It was a sort of Camp David, if you will, where No Form treated them quite well. But No-Form had an upcoming election, and lacking a solid agenda, was accused of emptiness. Well, the two kings thought they could help. So they punched a hole here and a hole there and carved out an agenda. Then No Form was deflated and expired.
Sometimes we need a little space in our politics. Sharply defined parties lack members. Sharply defined agendas lack support. For when we draw our boundaries too tight, we invite others to do the same. Then politics becomes a fight. And when there are several parties to a fight, rarely does anybody come out winning. Such is the way of partisan politics.
So, when I hear people speak of the emptiness of Obama, I tend to think they’re missing far more than he is. It would be a grave error to contend that Obama moves people merely because of his poetic prose. After all, every serious presidential candidate has access to some of the best speech writers in the world. But few give great speeches.
When same sex couples want to live the conventional life of marriage, conservatives balk. And yet same sex marriages would do more to put a focus on the family in America’s liberal communities than the strongest of conservative coalitions could ever succeed in accomplishing.George Lakoff has suggested same sex marriage needs to be reframed as a right. After all, what kind of monster would oppose the right to marriage? But same sex marriage isn’t only about demanding more rights. As in the case of conventional marriage, same sex marriage is about taking on more duties. It is not about breaking up the family with some new social experiment, but rather it is about creating a new legal relationship which builds up and places emphasis on family in a newly transformed world. Same sex marriage needs to be reframed as an urgent issue of re-establishing commitment across the cultural board of American life.
The American military establishment may be the largest bureaucracy in the world. To argue against bureaucracy per se is to make an argument which applies to all bureaucracies. So why do the people making these arguments against bureaucracy almost always leave out the military? How is it that anti-government conservatives so often miss the relevance of their arguments to what is often their most cherished bureaucracy? And why does the anti-militaristic left almost never seek to apply the conservative argument against all bureaucracies to the one it likes the least?. Read the rest of this entry »
Most management solutions remind me of the “Mao Suits” the Chinese used to wear just after the communists took over. Much care went into the development of these suits, as they attained to a perfect fit over time. While the sixties raged in America, all Chinese men came to wear the exact same clothes on a daily basis, often to hide themselves from their own more bitter cultural revolution. Didn’t Mao know that you can’t mass produce style?
Management trends tend to be a bit like the Mao Suit. Strategy, innovation, change management, consulting: when we find out how to do it, we apply our solutions universally, like some vaccine against eccentricity. Even as we talk of discovering specific business cultures, we have developed a universal culture of business that stifles and stultifies, even as it prods us to find our niche.
But perhaps this is unfair. Most management solutions are an aid to the discovery of originality. Just because all pants have two legs doesn’t mean there aren’t incredible variations in size, color, and style. Crafting a mission statement or doing a SWAT analysis should provide a space for our style to emerge in the same way the basic structure of pants do. But somehow it doesn’t seem to work like this.
Perhaps the most salient feature of information age businesses is their overwhelming complexity. Writing a business plan should make running a business easier, but often times it is the most difficult part. The simple fact is that implementing the solutions to complexity are often the most challenging part of running a business. Rather than adapting the solutions to our own unique culture, we adapt ourselves to the solutions. Thus, we learn how to do strategy, write business plans, and set up policy guidlines. And it is these solutions that have become our Mao Suits.
The problem it that the variations in business structure and culture are staggering and more like snowflakes than the sizes and shapes of a human body. Every business is different, with its own structure, size, strategy, and market conditions. So also are the employees different, with their own unique skills and capacities, motivations, aspirations, visions, and values. The differences are structural and cultural. And we all too often forget that they are developmental as well.
For a business to thrive; for it to unleash the full potential of it’s employees; for it to build a unique culture and find its niche: it is essential that the management tools it uses remain tools. So many of these tools and procedures are a blessing and a necessity. But all too often they leave us living under the hammer or cut to shreds as we attempt to use them.