Radical management is the most dangerous revolution: it changes people's hearts

“Is radical management really all that radical?” is a question I get asked a lot, most recently by Al Shaw in a comment on an earlier blog post here. “Why don’t we do something really radical, something really spectacular," they ask, "like ‘nationalizing failing corporations that are currently propped up by public finance, and breaking them up into small worker-owned businesses and co-operatives.’”

But if that’s all you do, then those small worker-owned businesses and cooperatives will start to succeed, and introduce management, and then grow into, guess what? More big hierarchical bureaucracies. So we are back to square one.

Robert Pirsig once wrote:

“If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.”

So tearing down the big corporations without changing the rationality which produced them will simply produce more corporations of the same ilk.

So it is in this sense that radical management is more revolutionary than it might look at first glance: it’s radical in the sense that uproots the rationality that created those organizations in the first place and recreates them with a rationality that is fundamentally different.

It is about a revolution that is to be achieved, not by guns or legislation or diktats, but by changing people’s minds and hearts. As a result, it’s a revolution that is capable of producing lasting change.

That’s why it’s the most dangerous kind of revolution, because it can’t be defeated by guns or force or diktat. By changing people’s hearts and minds, the old way of doing things is no longer viable. People see that it makes no sense. They wonder why anyone ever acted that way.

To learn more about radical management, read my article on the reinvention of management or my book, The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century (Jossey-Bass, 2010).

Comments

[Joe McCarthy]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of my favorite books (and the source of inspiration for naming my Typepad blog). I re-read it at least once every decade, and each time, new insights are revealed.

Another book I periodically revisit is George Orwell's 1984. In my most recent reading, I was struck by a cycle he describes that is very similar to what you've written here. I'll include some relevant excerpts from my blog post review of the book:

Many of these ideas are expressed in a book that is banned in Oceania -- often referred to as the book, or "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", allegedly written by Emanuel Goldstein, the allegedly traitorous archenemy of Big Brother:

"Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle and the Low. ... The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions in which all men shall be equal."

Over time, the High become inefficient, insecure, or otherwise ineffective (e.g., being too "liberal or cowardly" or unwilling to use adequate force) at governing, the Middle seize the opportunity and enlist the aid of the Low to rise up against the High, on the premise of liberty and justice for all, after which elements from the Middle become the new High, and the Low are relegated to their former status, and the cycle starts up again.

http://gumption.typepad.com/blog/2006/10/1984_big_brothe.html

[Bryan Murphy]

I agree entirely. For me the key questions relate to cultural norms and values . What changes are required in the value system to drive the culture so that one day organizations will be able to say (radical management ) this is the way we do it around here.
What will be the catalyst that will drive the values and cultural change required to adopt radical management?

[David Phillips]

At last we get to the point. This simple word 'values'.

Management and corporate values are at the heart of these discussions.

People migrate towards values held in common. It is the magnetic power that creates relationships.

The appeal of being of a group is a very powerful motivator.

Corporate management with well known and explicit values will attract and motivate other people with similar values and people (employees) then do have 'real jobs'.

The trivia and obfuscation, the mumbo jumbo of management gurus, marketers and company notices all conspire against relationships but the solution is really very simple.

I began this research several years ago (http://goo.gl/AW2vO) and now a number of my students have taken the work forward (http://goo.gl/yj33R). We do have a way forward.

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