Category: Humanity
October 5, 2022
Definitions of management
What is management?
Here are a few answers, found on my Ecosia search this morning:
- “the coordination and administration of tasks to achieve a goal through the application of available resources” (Indeed)
- “the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a non-profit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.” (Wikipedia)
- “the art of creating an environment in which people can perform and individuals and can co-operate towards attainment of group goals” (Harold Koontz)
None of these definitions presuppose that ‘management’ can only be carried out by a few people, or even just one person. So why do we assume that hierarchy or even dictatorship is the natural shape of management?
Perhaps because this definition of management comes top of the search results:
- “the process of dealing with or controlling things or people.” (Oxford Languages)
I don’t know about you, but I prefer Harold Koontz’s version.
I am not a thing. I am a human being. I control myself, thank you very much.
August 25, 2022
Inoculation
I’ve missed out on so many diseases – whooping cough, diptheria, rubella, polio, tuberculosis – as a result of being inoculataed against them at an early age. And I am very grateful.
Now it seems that people can be ‘inoculated’ against spreading misinformation too.
By showing people youtube videos explaining the techniques used to manipulate them into liking and sharing, it seems people are more able to spot the manipulation happening in other videos.
That’s good news I think.
The bad news is that these videos are being developed by Google, who will decide which societies are ‘in need of’ inoculation.
The techniques are well known and have been used for centuries by politicians, newspapers and advertisers.
Perhaps, instead of relying on the kindness of Google,we could inoculate people early, and just start teaching this stuff in schools?
August 24, 2022
The revenge of Muri – a reprise
When times look good, or you think nobody will notice, it’s tempting to overload systems, processes and people.
A little cut here, a small increase in workload there. A freeze on recruitment, a delay of re-equipping or upgrading. It has no visible effect on the bottom line. You get away with it.
So it becomes tempting to do it again. To ‘keep it lean’, ‘cut no slack’, ask people to ‘lean in’, commit 100% 110%, 120%, 150%.
And again.
And again.
Then, when you’ve cut everything to the bone and built your entire system on just in time, lowest cost, no slack, it doesn’t take much to bring the whole thing crashing down.
It’s not rocket science. We are part of a system. Overloading any part of it is not sensible behaviour. Overloading all of it at once is madness.
Freeloaders will try, of course, because it means they can extract a higher immediate return. Blind to the fact that they will not be able to enjoy it.
It’s up to the rest of us to prevent them. For their sakes as well as ours.
July 18, 2022
There’s no escape
No matter how much we might wish it away, there is no escaping the fact that we are all connected. That what we do in one place and time affects others in a different place and time.
In economics and big business, we like to pretend that this isn’t true. That there are things we don’t need to worry about because they happen outside our bubble.
We call these things externalities.
As if they don’t affect us.
But sooner or later they do.
Because the bubble is imaginary.
We live in a series of systems, and ultimately a closed system – planet Earth, and sooner or later the all the consequences of our actions will come back to bite us. Even those we choose not to see.
Time then to take responsibility, and dissolve our bubbles.
Climate change needs to be on the balance sheet. Or we need to do away with the system that gives us balance sheets.
There’s no escape.
July 13, 2022
It’s not too late
“It’s not too late but we need to begin changing our systems. And you can’t change a system until you see it.”
https://vimeo.com/727950704
You can order a copy now from here: https://thecarbonalmanac.org/book/, or pre-order from your favourite independent bookshop. Here’s mine.
There’s even a downloadable kids book and educators guide, a photobook, podcasts and a Daily Difference email. And more extras coming soon.
All designed to get us talking to each other about climate change. Because when we talk, we connect, and when we connect we can take action big enough to make a difference.
After all it’s our future we’re talking about.
It’s not too late, but we need to start changing our systems now.
July 12, 2022
Geography and geology
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
John Donne
“Of course, each of us is literally made of the Earth, as is all life on the planet.
The water in your body once flowed down the Nile, fell as monsoon rain onto India, and swirled around the Pacific.
The carbon in the organic molecules of your cells was mined from the air by the plants that we eat.
The salt in your sweat and tears, the calcium of your bones, and the iron in your blood all eroded out of the rocks of Earth’s crust;
and the sulphur of the protein molecules in your hair and muscles was spewed out by volcanoes.“
Lewis Dartnell, Origins.
It’s time we really learned to see ourselves as we really are.
Sawubona.
July 4, 2022
A tender impact
Patrick Hurley takes a huge blank piece of paper, thinks about what he wants to draw – ‘It’s going to be a ring, I want it to have depth, it will be made of squares‘ – marks a few points for guidance.
Then he draws. In a single continuous line.
From a distance the result has impact. There’s a clear structure, a vision – you might almost say a purpose to it.
Up close, you feel tenderness for the humanity of it. The wobbles, the inconsistencies, the variation, the failure to keep to the ‘perfect’ alignment.
‘It’s like life,‘ says Patrick ‘You can only go forward, if you make a mistake, do better next time, or do something that atones for it.’
Yes.
Work is part of life. So why not approach it this way too? Create a framework with clear boundaries, a goal and a method for achieving it. Then let everyone add their own humanity.
Impact with tenderness.
Find Patrick and more of his work on instagram: @hurleyman03.
June 29, 2022
In common
When everyone feels divided, when it seems that group is set against against group, right against right, and politicians openly sow discord, I find it helps to remember that we have a lot of things in common.
The biggest of which is our place in the ecology of the planet we share. A place we are jeopardising by our own short-sighted actions.
Its not too late to reverse that jeopardy. If we recognise that despite all our differences, we have this vulnerability in common, we’ll find we also have the power to reverse it.
In common, shared, to be used together.
Discipline makes Daring possible.
June 20, 2022
Going with the grain
We’re often told that left in a ‘state of nature’, humans would end up fighting a ‘war of all against all’, leaving life ‘nasty, brutish and short’.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen any evidence of that, not even in the dodgiest part of Manchester in the high-unemployment, welfare-cut-ridden 1980s.
This story is used (has been used for millenia) to justify hierarchy. ‘Someone needs to be in charge, because otherwise everying will go to pot.‘ And with hierarchy comes inequality. ‘I’m at the top, so I deserve more‘.
As I’m working through Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s ‘Mothers and Others‘, it’s becoming clear that flexibility, empathy, mutual care and co-operation aren’t just useful human traits, they are literally the traits that made us human. These behaviours evolved before our bigger brains, before language. They made our bigger brains possible. Without these behaviours, we would still be great apes, or extinct.
So a flexible, co-operative mindset based on empathy and care for others, including those currently ‘unproductive’ comes naturally to us. Anything else goes against the grain.
Suppressing our nature isn’t just bad for people’s mental health, it’s bad for business, and right now it’s sending us down the road to extinction.
We’ll need to mobilise all our natual proclivities for teamwork, ingenuity and mutual aid to prevent this.
And we’re out of practice.
That’s where small businesses come in.
Where better to get practicing empathy, co-operation and mutual support than a business that already feels more like a family than a corporation?
Who better to kick off this transition in the UK than the 1.2 million ‘bosses’ of family-sized businesses?
When better to start than now, when it’s not too late?
And why not, when you can grow your business with the grain instead of against it? Giving your business an evolutionary advantage, enabling scale without adding overhead or stress or losing what makes it unique?
Discipline really does make Daring possible.