Without Fear Or Favour

Some time ago, I had the pleasure of reading an article by a senior physician at a local institution. In it, she said that the fear of having one's career path negatively affected often makes people less inclined to speak out. She continued, saying that this reflected poorly on leadership, and in many organisations, superiors did not like being contradicted by their subordinates, to the detriment of all. She found this deplorable. She should know; many organisations her family members have been in have suffered such problems.

Her detractors frequently point out that if she were less privileged in terms of family members, she might not be so inclined to speak her mind. I have a feeling that it is partly the other way around; one reason some families rise to pre-eminence is that the family culture invites them to speak their minds, and in the familial sparring (and the trials of in-house debate) the mind is honed and developed. Because people cannot understand why a member of a Family disagrees publicly with the perceived business policies of that Family, she is termed a maverick and (sometimes, in dark places) worse.

These people don't know how the Families work. When you look at an 'establishment family', a Family, you should realise that barring the more extreme cases of royal bloodlines, these clans have worked themselves into pre-eminence over time. They overthrew their establishments, they have become 'establishment', and one day, someone else will be there in their place.

But the strongest Families are those with a high level of fierce, coherent, well-considered, structured and deliberate internal debate. Those which brook no dissent are merely sowing the seeds of their own disintegration; those which only allow controllable dissent and debate are just playing with forms and will meet a similar fate.