Managing Leadership^®

Progressives are a diverse lot. Most mean well, and truly bend their efforts to the betterment of mankind. Others have little use, really, for mankind, and would just as soon not be troubled with it. Since they inescapably are, however, they are willing to bestir themselves to offer it the benefit of their labors on its behalf in exchange for power and privilege.

Still others take a peculiarly pragmatic view of the matter, believing simply that while everyone may have a respectable role in society, theirs is key to its advancement, and they should be left alone to pursue it, while mankind – empowered, enabled or inspired as it may be – ought to get to its job of following. That way, confusion and misplaced efforts will abate, and things will get done.

But for all that diversity, progressives uniformly see themselves as inherently endowed of greater intellectual probity, social morals, or personal enlightenment (or all of these) than the masses. They possess these attributes to so superior a degree that the people in general would be lost without them. Indeed, they believe this is demonstrated routinely by the manner in which events seem to unfold whenever they are not given their due in society or government.

It can be argued that the various expressions of the notion of superlative individual leadership might be described similarly. To be frank about it, many of the practitioners or proponents of this movement have and do speak of themselves and the general working public in ways that much resemble those described above.

Some are genuinely well-intentioned, if somewhat paternalistic. Others are dismissive of lesser beings, and grasp for power simply as their birthright. Still others see the world quite naturally as inherently striated into classes by worth and ability – with them, of course at the top; it is only in the natural order of things that they should lead and others follow.

But classical liberals (in the economic and original political sense) argue that ability and worth are not apportioned by social class. Neither are they inherent in birth, nationality, race or creed, but rather are widely distributed throughout society.

More importantly, whatever may be the actual state of affairs regarding ability and worth generally or at any specific point in time, sovereignty properly resides in the people. There is no good reason to believe it belongs to a noble or leadership class, and certainly no good evidence that it has been well tended there. So, the problem of society is how to organize it to give both meaningful expression to that sovereignty, and productive release to that ability and worth.

If you think generally this way about how society and the economy should work, it is my argument that you should view similarly the problem of how to organize business and the workplace. Where do ownership, management, and ability and worth fit in? When we create opportunity and progress, where do we think they really come from? When we plunge into crisis and retrenchment, in which direction do we turn for relief?

As we address those questions over the coming weeks and months in American society, how will we come to interpret and answer them, and what will the way we do so say about our view and organization of society? It is really not clear.

Many fear that the new President will unleash a retro-wave of initiative-deadening top down government regimentation that will be difficult to reverse once it has served its nominal purpose. Others are gravely concerned that he will fail to be bold enough to take the radical measures necessary to save us from a truly desperate situation. The way his plans appear to be shaping up seem to reflect a peculiar, and roughly equal, mix of spending on large-scale government programs on the one hand, and middle-class tax cuts on the other, both intended to stimulate the economy.

This all points to our anxiety about who we are and what really holds us all together. Collectively, we seem to acknowledge the risks of our ignorance. We certainly hesitate to surrender our fates to one or another strenuously contending ideologue in this fight, fearing that any victory will turn out to be Pyrrhic – as disastrous for the victor as for the vanquished. Perhaps we could be more sure of the ground, the nature of the contending parties, and how the latter really suit the former, before committing to the contest.

This series, intended to look at those issues, is prompted by a comment Gannon Beck made to a previous post, Gaming Capitalism. There could be no better introduction, really, to the series than to take a moment to read his excellent perspectives on the topic. He points to much of what we will cover here about capitalism and its opponents generally, and also how these factors have played out within, rather than merely among, our businesses.

Please do stop in. Let us know what you agree with, what you don’t, and what you think is not being addressed that should. We’ll start tomorrow. See you then!

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This post is a part of a series. You can learn about and link to the other articles here: Conceptualizing capitalism

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Today’s tips: Speaking of what the organization of our workplace environment says about our view of ourselves and our ability to make progress, please see this piece on creating culture, by Miki Saxon, at Leadership Turn.

And if we’re going to do state-of-the-art armchair quarterbacking for both society and the office, we’ll need to have state-of-the-art seating. You will definitely want to see this post by Molly DiBianca, at The Delaware Employment Law Blog, to learn more about your choices in this crucial matter.

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Did you know that as a subscriber to this blog (by either RSS reader or email), you are entitled to a FREE download (.pdf format, 344KB) of the first chapter from Jim’s critically-acclaimed book, Managing Leadership? Download your free chapter now! (Even if you haven’t subscribed, yet – download it anyway! – (and then subscribe!))

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