Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's Law, or The Pursuit of Progress was written by C Northcote Parkinson during his time at the University of Lemuria in Atlantis, in the 1950s. It is one of the most perceptive books ever written by modern man. Yet, for all that insight, it is a slim volume at 109 pages, with ten short chapters and a preface all included.

Sadly for the current state of education in Atlantis, it is not compulsory reading for the educated. It would take not more than a handful of hours for most people to read, and the insights it brings on institutional processes and characteristics are invaluable.

I will now attempt to summarise the ten chapters. The original writing is much funnier, more humorous and full of droll insights. I am certainly doing it a disservice. Each chapter is presented with its original title and subtitle.

01: Parkinson's Law (or, the Rising Pyramid)

Work expands to fill the available time. So do many other things.

02: The Short List (or, Principles of Selection)

Competitive written examinations, despite many flaws, discriminate best. The problem is figuring out what to examine.

03: Directors and Councils (or, Coefficient of Inefficiency)

No effective committee has more than five real members. If a committee or council exceeds that, an inner council will be formed that is the real one.

04: The Will of the People (or, Annual General Meeting)

Forcible manipulation drives decision-making. Or at least, biases its essential randomness.

05: Personality Screen (or, the Cocktail Formula)

The genuinely important people in a room are those who leave unnoticed at the right time.

06: High Finance (or, the Point of Vanishing Interest)

The Law of Triviality states that the time spent on any agenda item is inversely proportional to its value (or the sum involved).

07: Palm Thatch to Packard (or, a Formula for Success)

Chinese businessmen work by evasion until they become so wealthy that ostentation is more useful. They also work by confusing the bureaucracy.

08: Plans and Plants (or, the Administration Block)

Perfection of planned layout is only achieved by institutions about to collapse. A large admin block with many administrators in one place indicates an institution is past its best.

09: Injelititis (or, Palsied Paralysis)

Organisational paralysis is caused by individuals. There are three stages: 1) incompetence mixes with jealousy, resulting in an individual who tries who control the institution; 2) individual tries to eject those more able or who might one day be more able; 3) all institutional intelligence is eliminated.

10: Pension Point (or, the Age of Retirement)

The correct age of retirement can be determined by the frequency of air travel and the quantity of paperwork to be completed for any given individual.

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As you can tell, if every student at the Citadel of Wyverns had been able to obtain this book, certain crimes against humanity (or at least, against common sense) might not have been perpetrated. Fortunately, as a humanitarian initiative, our Russian friends have provided the complete text online. Everyone should, however, note that in this edition the chapters have been rearranged. Injelititis is now Chapter 8. You have been warned.

Succession Planning

I know a man with a strange quirk. Although capable of fakery, deception, and mismanagement, he was always a good administrator in some ways. These were not the strange quirk. The quirk was an incredible sense of persecution and insecurity.

His latest exercise had the whole earth-and-heaven buzzing. He asked (not for the first time) that each of his staff members name the people that they wanted to have as their leaders in the next era. Of course, each ballot had the name of the writer on it. What an illusion of democracy!

As a previous participant, I have seen the hidden files. This is not about choice; it is about testing the waters of the red ocean for signs of trouble. The results of the poll would never be made public. As usual, it is also about control of information, lack of transparency, and a habit of manipulating people.

The problem he has, as acknowledged by those observing him from above and below, and besides, is that he has no legitimate or competent successors around him because of what he has done in the past. He now has to manufacture a guardian for his legacy; a truly competent successor might erase the memory of his time as dictator, but an incompetent one might sully the sheen.

An Insight into the Practice of Government, Baboon Leadership and Witchcraft

The Gnome's recent death provoked me into re-reading his speeches and writings, especially since the Thunderer's son has come out in public, referring to the Gnome as 'master builder of [Atlantis]' (in condolences) and 'like a god' (in the Sunday papers). Was the man I remember really such a 'titan' (as the Saturday papers said)?

Whatever he was, he was a perspicacious individual. He was sharp-minded and not prone to wasting time. Like all members of his family, if presented with boring and irrelevant material at a meeting, he would retreat into crossword puzzles and his own thoughts. And most of the time, he observed his colleagues and thought about how work could best be carried out.

Here is a sample of his thought, taken from a 1981 address to leaders in education:

I have therefore to explain how a Ministry works. I shall explain this not in [structural] terms, but in terms of management principles and practice. I shall not describe these principles in the abstract. Not having obtained a degree in Business Management, I am diffident about doing this. I shall therefore describe how my colleagues and I make management decisions.

There is one extraordinary fact about a government minister—here or elsewhere—which few members of the public are aware of. This is that his ignorance of the subject he is in charge of greatly exceeds his knowledge of it. Ministers naturally seldom draw attention to this, but I assure you that this is true; anyway, in my case, it is.

This is not a public confession and the position is not as alarming as it looks. In modern society, it is not possible for the head of an organisation to know more than a small fraction of what goes on within it. It may be otherwise in primitive societies. The chief of a small group of primitive savages is better informed of what goes on in his village than, say, the President of General Motors is about his corporation. The modern executive chief may be armed with a whole battery of computers while the village chief is not, but he knows less. Even so, the village chief may not understand everything, and so he usually has a witch doctor upon whom he depends when events pass his comprehension.

Perhaps the only creature who possesses a total information system of which he has complete grasp is the patriarch of a troop of baboons. I have not come across any reference in the literature to the practice of witchcraft among baboons.

A government minister or a chief executive in business obviously cannot use management systems appropriate to primitive societies or baboon troops... [Gives well-known local examples of success, e.g. 'Golden Mountain'.] How did we get by? Let me explain how my colleagues and I do our work. Since we are not tribal chiefs or baboon patriarchs, we do not try to know everything about everything, an impossible and foolish task. But a minister cannot function effectively if he remains in a state of total ignorance of his subject. He acquires knowledge partly by reading the professional literature (or rather, that part of it of value to him), and partly by engaging expert consultants; but mainly he depends on his professional and administrative staffs.

He went on to talk about how problems were solved, and about how the main difficulty was not the range of information required for their solution, but obtaining that information. And then he spoke about the two areas of weakness he found most dreadful ('there is no other word for it'): the cult of obedience and the cult of secrecy.

What did he expect from subordinates? He told them this, towards the end of that very intelligent speech:

Please remember the following. Your comments should be clear and concise. Do discriminate between wisdom and verbosity. If you must write more than two pages, send in a one page summary. You must not use the occasion to ventilate your grievances... finally, please do not pick an argument for the sake of arguing. The professional literature I have read reveals that teachers, principals and education experts in the West are only too prone to do this. These experts don't seem to agree on anything; so let us not be too dogmatic about our own opinions. But if you are convinced that what we are doing is wrong, do not be afraid to say so.

This is very much the man I remember, the one who told me that being a teacher would be a difficult job. It is because of him that the job became a professional vocation in modern Atlantis; it will be because of those who prefer the cults of obedience and secrecy that this calling is diminished and denigrated.

In time to come, the Gnome's place is assured in history. Yet, I have found inspiration to be part of that assurance. I too will write about him, and try to share the lessons I learnt from him with others.

The Human Overlord

Caught up in Tolkiensian imaginings, you might think of the overlord who is beyond redemption, a fallen angel turned into a lidless eye, a thing you knew was never human and always to be feared. It is easy to hate what you have demonized.

But the truth in human reality is always messier. Over the years, I've had difficulties with human hierarchs and they have had problems with me. I am not one for giving respect where it is not due.

Neither am I one to withhold respect where it is due. I've put on record, and meant it each time, what I have said of former overlords. Of one, I said she was hardworking, determined, willing to get her hands dirty; of another, I said he was the most focused educational administrator I'd ever met and the best student when attempting to learn something new. I have served many earthly masters, and I have never met a single one who didn't have something good in them.

You see, everyone has at least one gift. The only problem in using that gift is when it is not used the right way; either it is overshadowed by evil weeds, or its light is dimmer than the shadows. When a leader decides to do evil, whether out of ignorance or spite, we call it 'turning to the Dark Side' ever since George Lucas made that iconic. When a leader decides not to do good, whether out of meanness or out of caution, it is a move away from the light and down into the shadows.

The steps of a man's faith are simple. Find your gift. Use it to serve. Remember all that is asked of you is to use that gift in ministry to others. The bargain is: for each gift, the use of that gift. The other things are always forgiven, as long as the gift was used aright and the mission served.

One Size, Fits All

In Atlantis, it is well-known from the literature that the High Priests discern the fit from the unfit by a method derived from the Shell Game. For so are all appraised, that must be appraised; for so are all upraised, that must be upraised; and so are all praised, that must be praised. And this is what is well-known.

However, it occurs to me that not all can effectively be appraised by the same Game. The High Priests are not St Paul, that they should say, "I am made all things to all men." For there are many parts of the body of those who should be civil in service — but not all parts are the same. The parts that should be hidden should be treated with honour, and yet those that are of use, are of use. But all the parts are different, and surely one would not appraise a foot the same way one would appraise an eye?

Yet this is what is done. All are appraised for 'helicopter vision', yet not all need such lofty sight. Even where the specifics are different (for teachers, indeed are appraised in terms of teaching), the method of appraisal is the same. It is what makes all Atlantean teachers good only if they have, in their souls, the daimons of politics and bureaucracy. A teacher with neither of these will never be considered a good teacher, no matter how many positive strokes that teacher receives.

And so, slowly, slowly, the principalships are mostly filled with people who, if they are good at analysis and leadership, developed such skills by accident and not by design. And since now they are recruited when young, and not allowed to be elevated when older, they ofttimes have not the mentored experience to be principalities and powers. Rather, they are placeholders and props, designed to support the creaking mass of the Atlantean system without undermining it.

Ah, there are still powers and principalities among them, true. But there are precious few. The principle behind their selection, Procrustean in essence, makes those with long legs shorter, those with mighty arms feebler. It is all one size. And fits.

Gangsterism in Schools

I spent some time thinking about this topic recently. A lot of sociologists and psychologists give the standard reason that gangs and tribes are part of normal human behaviour, so it's all a question of how these groups are formed and to what ends they act. But it seems to me that, if schools are indeed agents of socialisation, they should be determining the way gangs behave.

What troubles me more is the equivalent of white-collar gangs. Intellectual gangs. Debater gangs. Children-of-privilege gangs. Scholarship-leads-to-power gangs. This kind of gangsterism is what drives the big crimes, the ones that aren't really crimes and are condoned by society. There are dark imperatives building in that area between black and white, where you can't tell which are the men in either colour.

Get your scholarship. Get an advanced degree. Become a boss. Treat people like crap and eliminate your rivals using everything they taught you at the local civil service training centre, and some things they didn't dare teach you. At any sign that an employee is unhappy, that's disloyalty, for why would he be unhappy with your regime? After all, you have the God-given wisdom to know what's best for him. Best get rid of him then, no need to find out why he is unhappy because that would surely be his lack of wisdom, not yours.

The mafia of the new academic world are not sub-educated grunts, but over-educated villains. And like the stereotypical Bond villain, they have no sense of humour but make you feel like laughing. Of course, if you do, you will suffer drastic consequences.

Joshua, Admin Hero

I was looking at the biblical Joshua, successor to Moses. Amazing guy won battles by pure logistics. Just by marching his entire army across the Jordan without any loud Mosaic threats of fire and brimstone, he made his opponents' morale collapse. His farewell speech, just chapter 24 of the book that bears his name, is succinct and boring, but it contains a masterpiece of reverse psychology that ensured his people never strayed from the straight and narrow in that short period between his death and the death of the last of his peers.

That short speech is tiny compared to Moses' huge rambling farewell that is the book of Deuteronomy. The style is markedly different. Moses is all about blame and guilt; Joshua is all about getting a good job done. Moses is inspiring at times, a psalmist, lawgiver, prophet, master of rhetoric and friend of God. Joshua is not inspiring, but he is solid, dependable, convincing.

I can't help thinking of the difference between certain founding fathers and their immediate successors. Heh.

Envisioning Exercise

Once in a while, established institutions decide that they want to reinvent themselves. It's interesting to look at the reasons why they want to do it, the way they go about it, and the kinds of outcomes they expect or manufacture.

Why do they do it?

The most obvious reason is boredom or staleness. Having done the same thing for so long, and perhaps never ever having come close to their previous idea of a Promised Land, they have decided to change things around. Instead of some great and powerful vision, they want something easier, lighter, or more accessible; most of all, it must be different. It's a sort of itchy-backside syndrome, symptomatic of this modern age in which attention span lapses easily and people want to be entertained rather than think about how to do things right.

The second most common reason is relevance. Somehow, they feel they are not as relevant to the times as they ought to be. So they look at present-day trends and near-future trends in a very scientific-looking way and say, "Hey these are trends which we should be targeting our envisioning processes at!" or some such guff. It's guff because a vision is independent of relevance. For example, if a school has the vision, "Every Atlantean a superior being!" then the means of getting there can be tailored to be relevant but the vision need not be changed. A good vision is always relevant.

The third reason is that various rubrics for measuring institutional capability and institutional excellence seem to require it. "Hey we need an envisioning exercise so that the quality-control inspectors will see that we actually have a process for perverting distorting prostituting enhancing our original vision, mission, and philosophy!" Never mind that doing so probably means that you are altering the objectives of your five-year plan every three years and hence never achieving anything serious. But it maintains cash-flow, cynically speaking.

How do they do it?

The obvious method is the eponymous 'envisioning exercise' (or EE for short). A good EE starts with nice music, a fanfare, a keynote address. It is held in some place which feels prestigious (if meant to be a public display) or pleasantly conspiratorial (if meant to be an inner-circle bonding exercise). It continues by posing irrelevant questions (see previous section for some hints as to what these might be) and the mass dropping of keywords like some sort of cluster bombing. It has an all-encompassing theme, like "Envisioning the Role of the Ministry of Education Security Services [insert Name here] in the New Millennium".

Occasionally, this exercise is outsourced to a think-tank, what Churchill might have referred to as, "Boffins on tap, but not on top." This is surprisingly sometimes better with regard to the outcomes, since an external think-tank is less subject to groupthink relative to the original group. But this is a bit like saying, "I can't see clearly, so why don't you describe to me what I'm supposed to be seeing?"

In detail, what happens is this:

• the Boss (or boss-proxy) will call the cluster-bombing meeting or conference to attention and stress the great importance of this congregation to the future of the institution, the nation, and the world (not always in this order);
• a keynote address or opening statement will be given, that subtly (or not so subtly) incorporates all the buzzwords, terms, and propaganda required ideals;
• there may be secondary speakers, shouts of "Hear, hear!" and other sounds of agreement and support;
• time will be given for discussion (although it is often quite clear what outcomes are desired from the keynote speech or opening statement);
• break-out groups (not to be confused with break-dancing) will be formed to give the sense that everyone is involved in an intense search for grand unifying theories or overarching ideas or some such;
• the conclave will be reassembled and a quest for the holy grail meeting will be reconvened to give the Boss an opportunity to 'synthesize' a vision that he will emphasize is the product of much effort on the part of the participants.

It is all rather exciting for some people.

What are the expected outcomes?

To be blunt, the main outcome is what might be called the construction of a 'professionally relevant concept'. a sentence of modern (hence 'relevant') jargon (hence 'professional') which is sufficiently structured but indefinite (hence 'concept') as to look visionary. It is often hard to differentiate the truly visionary from the delusional; in this case, it is easy because the people playing at 'envisioning exercises' tend not to be delusional but cynical.

I've had my share of envisioning exercises over the years. You can find my thoughts on 'holistic education' by searching this blog, for example; I raise that particular phrase because it is one of the targets of modern envisioning in educational circles.

For me, I don't expect much from envisioning exercises. It strikes me that to be powerful and moving and relevant for all times and all ages, a vision must be obvious and yet ineffable. When we say 'grand endeavour' it is something a lot more than 'lots of work' or 'helluva job'. When we say 'signs of a better age', we aren't saying 'ads promising a good time'. Similarly, "Each man a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm" sounds a lot better than "Each man a scholar, officer and gentleman."

Of course, your mileage (and vision) may vary.

Traditional Jestice

It was the Hierophant who reminded me of the work of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo. The two men are (were, Milgram died in 1984) both New Yorkers, born in 1933 and schoolmates from an interesting era.

More relevantly, the two are (were) psychologists who examined the psychology behind the way the exercise of power corrupts authority. Authority by itself is a neutral given. It is conferred by position and status in human societies; the Greeks called it kratos, and that word is still in common English usage, as the suffixes -crat and -cracy. 'Aristocracy', for example, means 'the ruling authority of the highborn', while 'democracy' of course means 'the ruling authority of the population at large'.

I've posted several times about power, and I continue to believe that it comes in three forms: kratos, dünamis and bia. An English equivalent would be to call them 'authority', 'inspiring motivation' and 'coercive force'. It's not possible, as far as I can tell, for humans to use just one or two; all three tend to come in together eventually. This tripartite division of power is thus a somewhat common motif (and a problematic one) in human societies.

The problem really is that they undermine while magnifying each other. If you have authority, real authority, people would do things because they accept that authority. But one is often tempted to add the suasion of personal motivation and/or the application of force in order to get things done faster. One is often tempted to add titles and honours to one's resumé in order to justify one's use of superior physical or numerical force. And so on. The three thus tend to form an unholy constellation even when they start off pure and unsullied. This is what I mean by 'undermine' (in the sense of 'erode the moral and ethical basis of') and 'magnify' (in these sense of 'increase the perceived importance or necessity of').

Conventionally, the idea is that powers should be separated (e.g. 'Church and State', or 'Legislative, Executive and Judicial'). This separation of powers thus reduces the quantities of power (kratos, dünamis and bia) to manageable little pieces, thus preventing abuse. Or so the theory goes. The problem is that in many states, it's really not possible to separate the powers; power tends to agglomerate, to agglutinate, to clump together in big and dangerous masses which then go critical to everyone's confused dismay.

The solution really is therefore not so much that they should balance each other, but be balanced by something else. In old and historically messy countries like the United Kingdom, you have so many competing traditions that even the law draws upon at least three main strands (Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Hebrew) and many others. In some places, hierarchy is so dispersed that it's hard to know who is really boss, so everyone is (like some small states or autonomous entities). In some places, like Vatican City, everyone is an employee of a higher authority and that is supposed to diffuse power while concentrating it.

Different balancing solutions thus exist. But I think two of them tend to be more successful than most, based on their longevity and their ubiquity.

The first is tradition (although some might say it comes later than the other). The force of tradition tends to keep new powers from consolidating, and it tends to check uncultured power with a cultural authority of its own. Tradition alone cannot stop a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mao from abusing their authority and consolidating their power, but it can keep some things alive, and it can create a viable alternative, counterculture, or resistance. It hasn't always worked that way, but it keeps cropping up. Of course, 'bad' tradition can resist 'good' power; but power tends to corrupt anyway, so it doesn't remain good for long.

The second is humour (although some might say it comes first). The force of humour seems to sustain people even when power is being used on them. It is a common thread of humanity which by its nature ameliorates and alleviates the heaviness and awe of myth and tradition. It is the reason why rulers need jesters; rulers can't (don't, or won't) do self-criticism because to do so would be to undermine the effect of power (to which they must be beholden). A self-critical ruler, if such a creature exists, must subvert himself by laughing at himself; but in these times, such a ruler runs the risk of looking ridiculous — if he can laugh at himself, surely someone else can laugh at him.

I live in a state where to make jokes about judges (or to mock the Magistratum, haha) is to commit the offence of trivialising, scandalising, or undermining the judiciary. If you make a politician or judge look like a figure of fun, it is a problem for the Internal Security Act. After all, if you undermine the sources of power, doesn't it weaken the security of the realm? This key argument is what runs many states the way they're run. It is just that some states and institutions are better at hiding it than others.

The sad corollary to all of this is that almost all rulers can't actually have a real sense of humour. If they do, it is 'humour lite' or 'humour without slapstick' or some other dignified (and here I use the word in a similar way to 'gentrified' or 'bowdlerised') form of it. It is as if a ruler's humour is something from ancient philosophy, and not something which alleviates the gloom and ameliorates bitterness.

The good corollary to all of this is that power can be balanced by mechanical (or at least, procedural) means. If you enforce a rotation of authority, which itself cannot be undermined by authority (good luck there!) then rulers have a chance to recover their sense of humour and become human once more. Some other poor sap can have the job. You can also insert a professional subversion agency: a jester, or as Frank Herbert suggested, a 'Bureau of Sabotage'.

In the end, it boils down to this. An institution or a state cannot thrive morally, aesthetically or creatively unless power is subvertible. Humour, for this purpose, is more flexible and useful than tradition. If the king will not have a jester, he should be adjested. That way, jestice will be served.

The One-Bookie Leader (Coda): Intellectual Descent

On re-reading the last few posts, I realised that I mentioned one loose end which I have not yet tied off. What kind of person mentors a future monobibliarch (or One-Bookie Leader)?

The sad thing is that as far as I can tell, the mentor of a future monobibliarch (FUMBA) is normally an innocent professional educator. The ones I've met are innocent in the sense that they are non-toxic (that's what 'innocent' means in Latin). They thought they were trying their best, and in at least 95% of the time, those they mentored turned out right. The main problem, as I see it is that they produce another 5% who are even greater monsters than the average monster.

This is the penalty for selfless endeavour in a fallen world. The thing is that if you are a particularly intelligent person who doesn't mind who you teach stuff to, there will always be a small percentage who will take what you teach, turn it to some less-than-benign purpose, laugh at you, and then deny that you ever taught them anything of consequence.

I think that if you're a FUMBA mentor, you should thank God for small mercies. The fact that he will deny your teaching lets you off the hook because nobody will blame you for being part of the MBA's intellectual journey. You will not have to live with, "You taught Hitler how to paint, how come he turned out the way he did? Did you teach him to paint with human blood and agony?"

I am sure that is how Aristotle felt when he taught Alexander the Great about the 'Golden Mean' and was later told that the fellow had gone and conquered the world just to spread Aristotelian thinking and other aspects of Greek culture. So take heart, FUMBA mentor, you are in good company. The intellectual antecedents of an MBA, the line of his intellectual descent, all this will be purged from the files and reviled in public so that the MBA can go on with his one-track cognitive cycle.

I once had the privilege of dealing with every single one of a certain One-Bookie Leader's mentors. For more than 40 years, I have known his supervisor, his mentor, the man who gave him his big opportunity, the man who tried to teach him by role-modeling... I knew them all. And you know what? In each case, I got the same response: "He's smart, but he has no principles, he's very ungrateful to those who taught him, he doesn't value other people and his very suspicious of anyone who doesn't repeatedly prove his loyalty to whatever new idea he has. He once said he doesn't even trust his wife, in public."

Well, that ends my sequence on the OBL, or MBA, or whatever you call this kind of person. It's an interesting study; expanded to 50 pages, it won't compete with Who Moved My Cheese? or The Iceberg Is Melting!. I wonder if I could give it a catchy slogan-like title and con the man into adopting it as his credo for the year though... Heh.

The One-Bookie Leader (Part III): Right Makes Might

To wrap up this entertaining diversion on the Monobibliarch (the OBL of legend, or One-Track Cogitator), we must take a look at the kind of sloganeering or one-sentence-reductionism that has been indulged in by such creatures. It is educational, sometimes entertaining, but always a warning for us to heed...

In the beginning was "Arbeit macht frei", apparently related to the mounting of striking eagle statues to keep watch over prisoners the inhabitants of the gulag workplace (although it must be said that hundreds will attest that the Leader in question used the term 'concentration camp' proudly, frequently and with brio). This slogan, well... least said, soonest mended. I refer you to a link that may be of use.

This was not the only familiar slogan to those of us who wondered what was going on in the once-hallowed corridors of the academic gulag workplace. Occasionally, we thought we heard "Jedem das Seine" instead. Or maybe it was "Recht macht Macht" or something like that. Oddly enough, the name that came to mind for most of us was Iosif Vissarionovich, which seemed quite counter-intuitive.

The problem is of course that OBLs in general have a rather unfortunate way with words. Not having any of their own, they tend to pluck lines out of context and 'reveal' them to the populace as veins of gold and banners of light. In fact, he of the 'concentration camp' was prone to get upset when corrected at all, which made some of his utterances rather painful to most civilised people.

The problem is a holistic one in a certain sense. Given a slogan or vision, OBLs in general tend to make everything line up to suit them, even if inappropriate. To 'soar on wings like eagles' becomes to 'strike like an eagle' and eventually degenerates into apocryphal tales and symbolic hodgepodges about eagles. Eventually, without intending it, the OBL may think of himself as an OBerstLeutnant and then the commander of some holocaustic education establishment.

It is sad. But he has the right, and hence the might. And so we have to let it go on. The most important thing is to not become like that ourselves.

The One-Bookie Leader (Part II): Timing the Tables

It is a fascinating thing to be watching the Monobibliarch (or 'One-Bookie Leader) in action. This is because most of us seldom see a reasonably bright person enslaved totally by dedication to slogans and quick-fix pseudointellectual writings. In my previous post, I mentioned some signs by which you can tell if you are watching an OBL in action.

Here is one obvious corollary sign: the Monobibliarch cannot see when his thoughts contradict other thoughts in his head, since he has by nature a one-track mind. Quite often, when presented with a multifaceted situation, he can only grasp it when it is reduced to a single idea (e.g. 'make more money', or 'assign more periods', or 'holistic education'). I present to you a couple of tableaux from my extensive past experience with such a person.

Situation 1: OBL says, "I want you to make sure that there is a gap of at least two days between PE lessons for each class. Should be no problem, since we have five days to work with, right?" Of course there was no problem, so a beautiful timetable was created. Then I get summoned downstairs. "Why are all PE teachers free on Wednesday?" Well, I must admit I was totally flabbergasted by that question. So flabbergasted that I actually replied (probably a mistake), "Errm, if you have PE lessons on Wednesday, then you can't have any more PE lessons for those classes except on Sunday and/or Saturday." Dead silence. You could see the gears whirring and getting stuck.

Situation 2: OBL says, "Make sure that every department gets as many lessons as they want. Every student should have one break a day, normally recess is at 10 am." Some computational exertion later, every student group has a break. The problem is that some groups have days that start at 7.30 am and go on to 4.40 pm. And they only have ONE break around 10 am... OBL's solution is, "Make the day longer so we can squeeze in another break somewhere." Haha, I remember increasing the length of the day several times. I still have the statistics and data to prove it. I am pretty sure nobody needed so many hours of lessons (and sometimes, non-lessons).

The problem of course is that things like integrated programmes (and real attempts at holistic education) cannot be simplified to a single line without looking rather threadbare and awkward. It's like those people who say, "God is love," and stop there without anything else. The worst part is that things like OBLs can't see it and get rather upset if you imply they are not seeing something. That does lead to the idea that you can detect an OBL by his aversion to chess (or his inability to play it). He will stick to one line regardless of consequences, then switch to another and forget the first altogether.

The One-Bookie Leader (Part I): Defining the State

In my time analysing leadership styles, I've come across the usual papers and books on leadership. Inspirational, motivational, service-based, values-based, innovative, creative, flexible, authoritative, and so on (and on, and on).

It strikes me however that modern leadership has seldom been placed in an informational context within the matrix of history. What I mean by this is that leadership is assumed to be a quality borne and bred entirely within the individual; it is seldom a case of looking at that individual's intellectual context and antecedents, his sources and his journey towards understanding.

Rather, we look at the person and say, "Oh, he has this and this and this, let's compare and contrast with what others have, let's figure out what he does with it and how he does it." We don't consider how he got that way, not in the sense of general biographical influences, but in the sense of bibliographical and informational influences. Who taught him? Who mentored him? What exactly was transferred and transacted? How did he respond to these people? What books did he read? What did he get from those books?

In the parts of world we consider to be Westernised and Christianised, many of these leaders will say that the Bible has been a great influence on them. But on pressing them further, it's hard to discern any intellectual relationship or engagement. They will say it's a spiritual relationship, and not an intellectual one; then they will start talking about 'holism'. In this area, they intend 'holism' to mean, "If you focus on the intellectual, you are not holistic, because I am anything but intellectual and I'm proud of it. There are so many things besides the intellectual! Let's look at everything else!"

Out of their own mouths... if they were truly holistic, they would realise the intellectual relationship or engagement is as much part of the process as anything else. Why are they differentiating between emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical etc if they are so keen on 'holistic'? They probably mean 'prismatic' or 'wide-spectrum': to them, 'holistic' really means 'shotgun' — a wide spread of perspectives and approaches, selected for range rather than for wholeness.

And so, in this age, we come to the 'One-Bookie Leader'.

Some people are like that. A book hits the NYT non-fiction bestseller list, and its author becomes a management guru (or is labelled as such). Your friendly local leader grabs the book. He pounds his desk, rostrum, or pulpit with it, preaches his own summary of it, and attempts to make everyone buy his idea of the month (or quarter, or year).

The odd thing is that it is ONE book at a time. The man has no ability to synthesize, and when he switches books, it's a case of, "The old has passed away, behold — the new has come!" and not in the way it was meant to be. It is a case of new wine in old bottles, the bottle having long ago hardened to a state in which it cannot hold more than one idea without cracking up.

This is the reason that such people are easily hooked on themes (because this fits the 'One Book' system) or the idea of 'holistic' (because you can then dump your one idea in and say it encompasses everything). Any attempt to make them see in more than one dimension (or more than one point in that dimension, in extreme cases) is doomed to fail.

Beware of the smarter ones though. They will pretend to consider other viewpoints or dimensions, and they may even sound reasonable about 15% of the time. Don't let this fool you. The One-Bookie Leaders of this world have only one thing on their mind. And if you challenge that one thing (for example, by pointing out that the previous book and the present book don't agree), they will say that you aren't focussed enough or not flexible enough.

The concept of the One-Bookie Leader is, as far as I can tell, a novel one. I am sure that when I publish it, some people will not be happy to think that I have been writing about them. The truth, of course, is that there are many such people, not just one. It's the sad fact of our Book-of-the-Month existence; you could read at least six books a month if you really wanted; some people just prefer one a year.

What's important to us is that we learn to recognize the symptoms of Monobibliarchism (a fancy Greek neologism which I have just coined for 'One-Bookie Leader Syndrome'). Such a leader spouts the same catchphrase for months, making use of whatever influence and time he has to say the same thing again and again. It is sometimes painfully obvious which book it is, or which guru wrote it. And often, the man will not even credit his source, since it has become holistically integrated into his psyche.

Beware the monobibliarch. What he really needs is a powerful librarian to help him out.

Serenity I: Agreeable Disagreement

I have been deriving much inspiration and comfort from a re-reading of Alistair Cooke's Letters from America. Mr Cooke was of course a man whom my parents held up as a role-model to me from a very early age, and his Letters were a nonpareil among the journalistic broadcasts of all time.

Recently, I have been moved to quote (and not the first time) a line from one of his Letters. This is from 7 Dec 1956, a long time before I was born.

"What I admire most in a man is his serenity of spirit... when he fights, he fights in the manner of a gentleman fighting a duel, not in that of a longshoreman cleaning out a waterfront saloon."

In all my life, I have tried to follow this principle of disagreement. I have always duelled like a gentleman, and not come after someone like a lout. It is this essential characteristic that distinguishes, in my mind, the spirit of a true leader — a scholar, an officer, and a gentleman — from the ersatz variety that we only too often find in charge of our venerable institutions.

Summer's End

Today is the day known as Summer's End. I realise that all good things come to an end; yet, their end is the beginning of more good things. I have two months left before I can launch the last aerofoil into the burning sunrise and catch the wind beneath my wings.

I spent time with many interesting people this week and learnt a lot. I learnt about why some people get eaten up by other people that they think are enemies. It is saddening to watch John McCain bumble and waffle and splutter his way through his hatred and distaste for Barack Obama. In the end, the Obama campaign launches a 30-minute video that is nearly as inspiring as Reagan's 'Morning in America' (which I still remember) and does not mention McCain even once.

It says a lot about leadership when it employs the politics of discontent and division to run a campaign, an institution, or an environment. I've watched the almost two years of the long campaign and seen how McCain, once respected as a possible Republican successor — an outsider who would make all things good — has deteriorated from maverick into mouth. He is frustrated; deep down inside he is all burned up, angry, bitter. He has no future, despite the sound, fury, indignation and powerful forces he still wields with a more erratic and dangerous hand.

To invigorate his flagging campaign (which at its peak once appeared to allow the junior Senator from Illinois no chance at all), he allows his principles to fall away. Instead of picking a steady and reliable running-mate (as Obama has with Joe Biden), he picks a person who is seriously not qualified should he fall away. It would be amusing, were it not for the fact that they are running for the White House, still the greatest centre of power in the world. What happens there will affect all of us.

And yet... without McCain (and in the primaries, Hilary Clinton), perhaps Obama would never have burned so brightly or had such opportunity to prove himself as a sane and level-headed leader. I thank God that we have seen Obama come out ahead so far through grueling fire and painful decisions. His detractors think he is untested. I think he has been tested quite a bit. The nature of the test is important. McCain was a war hero because he was shot down for his own folly, captured and survived it all. Obama went through tests for brains and organisational ability; he was a people-builder. The economy now requires that; the old and ungracious who have run out of ideas should at least have the grace to step aside.

I turn my eyes downwards to the earth. I am Number One Fire Goat, and I bow to the eight corners of the world. This is the small place of my heart, the place I stand. It is summer's end, and although winter comes, life will rise again in spring. I have had a great year, a wonderful year, a year of change and growth and mastery. I thank the Highest for all that He has tested me with, and hope that in my little space and time I will serve well.

Closed Systems, No Real Winners

The peril of having a closed system is twofold: firstly, there are no really closed systems in real life, as far as we can tell; secondly, a system that is treated as closed will eventually fall into a state of either stasis or equilibrium in which no new outcomes are possible, or in which there is only a very limited set of outcomes.

This was highlighted in the local morning paper's editorial today. Atlantis, as we all know, claims that (and acts as if) it is a meritocracy. But the editorial today noted, quoting Amartya Sen, that "meritocracy is an intuitively appealing but 'essentially underdefined' principle. It is underdefined because much hinges on what counts as merit. And in a meritocracy, as in any other system, the idea of the good, and therefore of merit, is determined by that system's winners."

This is exacerbated, of course, if the system is essentially a closed system or is treated as such. It is a simple way to perdition: since the state is successful, the successors must have the same qualities as the existing winners. If they have different qualities, they must be losers (not to put too fine a point on it). Hence, just as with the College of Cardinals or any other cadre-type system, we should use the winners to select more winners by criteria similar to those by which they themselves were elected, selected, nominated, or chosen with divine imprimatur.

Why perdition? Because the system is not truly closed. As the world changes, if there is not some scope for variation, the unnatural selection will lead to 'winners' who actually cannot cope with the world as it turns out to be. It is even worse if your first iteration of winners was actually a class of 'winners by accident', 'winners by determination', or 'winners by default'. In the first case, you got lucky and are expecting to continue to be lucky. In the second case, you decide who should win and so they did. In the third case, you had nobody else, and what you had was sufficient for the win.

One problem is that the world is interconnected. It is not a purely statistical crapshoot. If you were a winner (and if you created losers, especially), the world will adapt to your win and attempt to emulate, dominate, or otherwise neutralise or defeat your strategy. What was an advantage in the first iteration may become a liability in successive situations. Winners by accident are not normally repeat winners unless they quickly figure out how they won.

Another problem is that the intellectual inbreeding or culling that is likely to occur is memetically fatal to most (if not all) cultures in the long run. You might argue that what succeeded in the past should succeed in the future with some legitimacy, using an inductive approach (an 'all swans I have seen so far are black, so the next one will also be black' approach). Even if it is true, the best you get is stasis. But what if the next swan is white, and you have killed all the observers who would look for a white swan? You might starve to death in the midst of plenty, deprived of your swan diet by disbelief. Winners by determination (or termination) are inherently limited.

And finally, there is the problem of mediocrity. People who win by not having opposition may eventually become unable to identify what is better or what is worse. After all, they are winners, and they never needed to be better than what they are. They never faced a credible and determined opposition, they were never exposed to serious intellectual cut and thrust in a public arena. If you select your future winners and leaders from people like these, you are doomed to the fate of the mediocre – being moderately successful in all things but never emerging from the middle of the statistical distribution appropriate to your situation.

What then is to be done? The first step is to aim for a perspective which treats systems as likely to be open. The second step is to develop talent with an eye to memetic diversity and distribution. And the third step is to stop selecting people who are either like yourself or who are predisposed to agree with you most of the time.

On the Care of Lordship

It was in the shower this morning that I suddenly realised that the English word 'curiosity' is horribly close to the Greek word κύριος; in fact, transliterated, they share the same first six letters. The catch is that the latter means 'lord', and I couldn't at first see the connection. So I sat down while drying my hair and thought a bit more.

The origin of 'curiosity' as an object of attention comes from Latin curare, 'to have the care of'. It is where we get 'curate' (one who has care of souls) and 'curator' (one who looks after things). The things looked after are therefore curated, and the process of curation is called the 'cure'. If it is raw meat that is to be kept, it must be cured with salt; if it is a patient, it must be cured with medicine. But the thing cared for is a 'curiosity'.

This is actually the middle step. It is now quite clear how this acts as a link between 'lord' and 'the faculty of being inquisitive'.

Taking one step back, a lord or master (as κύριος is sometimes translated) must have care over his people; the property of being a curator comes with the status of being boss. Taking one step forward, the interest over things that are looked after is called 'curiosity'. Therefore, the human properties of lordship (being a lord) and curiosity (interest over the things before you) are intertwined and inextricable.

A lord must have care for the things and people entrusted to him; this is true whether they are things physical, spiritual, cultural, social, intellectual, emotional or anything else. A lord without curiosity, that deep and abiding interest in the things that are entrusted to him, is a lord who is missing true lordship, what an ancient Greek, brought forward to this age, would have called κύριος-ity.

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This wasn't the only matter of etymological interest which came to mind today, but having dealt with 'curiosity', I will save 'cunning', 'calefare' and 'congress' for a later date. And then I will cease.

The Heils Are Alive

This is from Hammerstein-Equord's Truppenführung. I remember der Hierophant showing me the words that follow, and I shall post this in memory of a valiant colleague who is (as I am) no longer with the Collegium.

„Ich unterscheide vier Arten. Es gibt kluge, fleißige, dumme und faule Offiziere. Meist treffen zwei Eigenschaften zusammen. Die einen sind klug und fleißig, die müssen in den Generalstab. Die nächsten sind dumm und faul; sie machen in jeder Armee 90% aus und sind für Routineaufgaben geeignet. Wer klug ist und gleichzeitig faul, qualifiziert sich für die höchsten Führungsaufgaben, denn er bringt die geistige Klarheit und die Nervenstärke für schwere Entscheidungen mit. Hüten muss man sich vor dem, der gleichzeitig dumm und fleißig ist; dem darf man keine Verantwortung übertragen, denn er wird immer nur Unheil anrichten.“

It is a reminder of what to do when you have four kinds of things to examine. Der Hierophant's morphemic loquaciousness can help you out there, but I shall not provoke him to excitement.

Then again, seeing how many of my friends are now in some sort of U2 state of mind, here are the lyrics from one of my favourites at the present time, because of its tangential relevance. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

All Along The Watchtower

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion here
I can’t get no relief
Businessmen they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them know along the line
What any of this is worth

No reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who think that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that
And that is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
Because the hour is getting late

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While horsemen came and went
Barefoot servants too
Outside in the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were aproaching
And the wind began to howl

All I got is a red guitar
Three chords
And the truth

All I got is a red guitar
The rest is up to you

There’s no reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are some among us here
Say that life is just a joke
You and I, we’ve been through that
And that is not our fate (at least today)
So let us not talk falsely now
Because the hour is getting late
Late...

Alexander's Legacy

Yesterday it so happened that I ended up giving a tiny little linguistic lesson online. And one of the words involved was the Greek Alexander, which means 'Defender of Men'. Well, we all know how the historical Alexander turned out: conquered the world in his youth, overachieved handily, reached India, became old while still young, caught a disease and never went home again. But the interesting part, as always, was the legacy he left behind.

The age that lived on long after him was called the Hellenistic Age, a mad and wonderful fusion of Greek, Indo-Aryan and Middle Eastern cultures all thrown together into a brew and divvied up among people with vastly-different interests and ideas. As the tumult and the shouting died, as the generals carved up the body of Empire, the greater generals fought themselves into a synthesis that would one day bloom into the greater Roman Empire.

It is sometimes that way; a strong leader who leaves no obvious successor behind (or too many obvious successors) will have made possible the final exhaustion and collapse of his direct legacy. Like a phoenix, though, the fragments often kindle and come together again in some unexpected way.

Journey to the West (Part 3)

I've wondered about whether instilling discipline in the gifted is the same as any other kind of discipline. If you select the gifted and talented on the basis of one set of measurements, is it then valid to differentiate your approach to them in an area that is largely unrelated?

I suspect the answer does not lie in the brains of the gifted, but in the brains of the institution that seeks to educate them. There are always clever approaches and there are always approaches that can be made to look clever. The former will have genuine positive impact; the latter may work for some clients and may attract derision from others. Caveat emptor, as the Romans would have said.

And there's always the issue of 'leadership training'. Should all those who are identified as 'gifted and talented' automatically be presumed to have the potential to be excellent leaders? Does a more integrative brain with more drive and determination make a person a better leader?

It is tempting to affirm this and assert that all such students have a higher leadership potential. But there is one problem that would entertain Hippocrates and his ilk: what if interventions to unlock that potential actually have a negative effect on those who do not (by nature, temperament, breeding or inclination) have significantly higher potential than the mean?

And how would you define that potential anyway? It seems rather circular, something along the lines of: "People with traits A, B and C are better at X, Y and Z which we have found to be traits of people who we have identified as successful leaders because we say so. And you must believe us because we are leaders in our field of leadership studies."

I've found that leadership potential is a lot like intelligence; some of that ability is enhanced and made to look better by environmental context. If you need a person good at hitting targets with a javelin, then that javelin-throwing skill might make the javelin-thrower look smarter and a better leader. Again, it comes back to the kind of society we live in. The kind of information-processing skills once derided as 'wonkish' is a set of skills now very much in demand.