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Quoting Bill Swallow <wswallow -at- nycap -dot- rr -dot- com>:
> Thanks for paraphrasing me. :) Except for that last part... You confused
> me
> there. It's never confusing to be able to identify a leader.
I disagree. It is confusing to employees when the source of organizational
vision (put a man on Mars, broad band for everyone by 2007, peace in our time,
a model democracy in the Middle East, etc.)is the same source directing the
assembly of a widget. They are fundamentally different activities, and mixing
them is not recommended. Organizational vision and organizational reality are
two very different things. The concept is easier to grasp in Russian, which has
a particular syntactic construction used for "futures that are likely," as
opposed to "futures that would be nice, but probably won't happen."
> By the same token, I can easily
> generalize that people who share your viewpoint of managers are
> narrow-minded and bitter, and would not make good employees because
> they
> have conditioned themselves to distrust anyone within a position of
> authority.
If anything, the opposite is true. I distrust incompetents maintained in
positions of authority because they have successfully manipulated superiors
into believing they are competent. It isn't personal.
>
> ::: Specifically, a manager should be able to encourage and
> ::: facilitate a high level
> ::: of task accomplishment WITHOUT resorting to either
> ::: conventional rewards or
> ::: punishments. If he or she cannot, then he or she is simply
> ::: a hack feeding
> ::: off "legitimate authority." In short, "you have to do it
> ::: because I say you have
> ::: to and I'm the mommy."
>
> Again, it would be helpful to know the background for your posts so we
> can
> understand why you are writing what you are writing. It seems you're
> looking
> for agreement to appease something that's eating you. If you let it out
> so
> we may understand where you're coming from, perhaps we can be of help.
> Otherwise, well... The replies speak for themselves.
It is always easier to pigeonhole something than it is to think critically
about it. Without invoking Korzybski, the basic process is that once a person
can attach a label to something, he or she can stop thinking about it, and
respond to the label as if it were the thing labeled. In some cases it is
useful. but not in managing virtual teams. Probably not even in management of
any type, because it both creates and fosters an impoverished response set to
complex events.
Thanks for your comments,
Edwin
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