Why the hell should it be good weekend fun and passionating, good time to read a blog about changing organizations and the way how we lead them? Management theory is something for business people only, right? This here is interesting, of course, for people who try to change and improve the world, especially who want to change organizations to achieve that. But it can not be a passionate thing for everybody who is just looking for some fun and enlightenment around ‘pooping in Iceland’ or ‘my neighbour has an axe’ or about the newest news of his favorite glamour star. However, in a survey in Great Britain, more than 60 percent of the people answered, that if they could, they would exchange their manager tomorrow, right away. Might it be, that this blog theme is right in the middle of our lives, but we just don’t want to see it, because it is too frustrating and too complicated?

Yes, of course it is. I think, many of us have ended up in believing that this (changing how we are being managed) will, unfortunately, not be possible. We say, conscicously or unconsciously “It is like it is and can not be different, can not be changed. Let’s look at the more promising sides of life.” Many of us have resigned into the status-quo without knowing it, concentrating on the really important part of life, the fun part in their spare time. Where the manager and the company, where the work has no influence. At least not a direct influence.

But let’s be realistic, even if we don’t like that thought: Our job, our experience with it, that influences the rest of our life much more than we like to admit, or if we admit it, more than we would like to. So we stand there and live with it, as it is. Some complain, some are just unhappy, but stay calm and carry on. Others are successful in diverting themselves with all these nice things that make life rich: Soccer, dancing, opera, glamour magazines, shopping, disco, books, films, knitting and painting, beach and pool and biking and skiing and hiking and hanging around with friends for no reasonable sense at all but for pure subjective fun and being a human being as only a child can be.

Only a child, yes, unfortunately can be it the whole day, the whole week (well at least nearly, always when parents do not ask for some kind of educationally necessary bending of their natural energy and dynamic, unreflected, unreasonable drive of life). Unfortunately, adults can not, because they must feed their private life and passions and basic needs themselves – with a job. However, unfortunately, or more correct: fortunately, I must add, there are other needs that we need, no, that we feel as soon as they are not fulfilled: Self-fulfillment, for example. Recognition, and, why not, having fun and a a good time. Or simply to have time and occasion to enjoy beauty. (I get it both, right now, writing this, by the way. And because I do it just for fun, today: If you want a more properly thought through list and systematic of human needs and motivations, please read Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of needs – a theory of human motivation’ – I mean: Read it! Do not just watch a picture of a hierarchy of needs as a short cut to motivational theory wisdom – it might cut your possibility of benefiting from his insights, significantly).

Imagine that you go to an after-work-party and you do a survey today. If you asked the people there “what are you celebrating?”, I bet that you get between 60 and 80 percent responding “I celebrate that I am now finally free to enjoy life, after work (which is something that is not made to and not able to let me enjoy life)”. And only 20 percent would answer: “I celebrate that I had such a good day at work, it gives me so much energy and inspiration, deep satisfaction and pride, strength and ideas.”

So here is the short and rational answer, the naked truth to the question, why this here should be interesting (and inspiring fun) for more than a small, specialized minority of change-experts and management trainers:  

Because that is where you spend so much time of your life – where you waste so much of your lifetime in old-fashioned organizational designs and work conditions. 

But I could also phrase it in a different way: Because this is for the real dreamers. For the dreamers that see a reality where 80% at the after-work party will answer: “I am celebrating a good workday and a fulfilled life where I know the purpose of what I do the whole day, where that purpose very well matches my personal purpose and individuality and where I am not inclined to kick the cat out of my deep frustrations and desperation, when I turn back home” *

Dreamers create the world of tomorrow, because it all starts in your mind and with your very human instincts. Inspiration is one of the most powerful weapons that humanity has ever used. Theory leads the way to successful practice. And diversity, talent and passion can carry dreams to become reality. That is another reason why this is not just interesting for the growing group of ‘organizational change experts’ who see the huge opportunities in going a better way. Because you might be the one who has the talent, the passion, the fun-hobby, that will offer the king’s way to change the world under whose influence we spend most of our lifetime: Organizations and management. You might be able to offer the access that inspires others to stop assuming that it is either not important or something that will never change, anyways. You might be the leader by hazard to start a revolution.

I want to demonstrate how that works: This blog entry is inspired by a podcast on ‘point of inquiry’ – a podcast that fosters the use of scientific and critical thinking and that is quite cool in demystifying nonsense and in highlighting people and approaches that are standing for the use of scientific thinking and rationality (of course this is not the official definition of what they are or doing, just my personal perception of what they achieve). In that blog you listen for more than 30 mins to a man who talks about hip hop as a means to bring scientific thinking to school kids (who are basically not at all concerned about scientific thinking, to stay within the good tradition of understatement). I listened to this interview and thought: That man can talk so fast (he probably practiced rap a lot) – a hard time to listen on one hand for a non-English-native, but what he talks about is important and inspiring and of great value. He just tells us that he practices an approach to bring scientific thinking to youngsters by using hip hop – two things that we well-educated, adult people from the last century would not bring together usually, easily (the one is for fun and distraction, the other is for serious research to heal the world and create progress – a bit like that, we would see it). For example, he suggests to sing scientific theory in hip hop form, to let youngsters access that. Probably I have not understood all the detail and depth of his philosophy, art and methods – but that does not matter for what I want to pull out of it: What he tells us is that the separation of science and daily life is just a synthetic, constructed and limiting barrier that we have made up in our minds. It is not natural law or necessity or logic constraint or the only and good way to see the world. If you remove that thought and practiced separation, you gain back possibilities that you have lost long ago, that our societies and organizations have lost long ago. The separation of fun and serious efforts for progress, the separation of being a human being and working seriously, the separation of being at work and being at home or with friends or at an after work party or in the activity and interest that we like most, the belief that it is about producing perfect and right results before showing them to anybody else – all that belongs to the same category of limiting mind barriers. It either limits our feeling for what is wrong and not serving the purpose of human life and what it does to us (work is work and free time is free time and they do not influence each other – if we go long enough with that story, we end up to think that we can only escape wrong conditions at work by lying to ourselves that this would not influence our whole life) or it limits our possibilities to bring good things to people who need and merit it (miss to use hip hop fun to teach scientific thinking at school; changing leadership behaviour without talking about life and purpose and real value and their families and their precious lifetime, pride and personal integrity) or it simply cuts away this important, rich resource of imagination, of playing around and of just being crazy with new ideas that are breaking out of old, limiting frames.

Apropos playing: Playing is the way how our children explore the world and learn to use its possibilities and to respect its natural limits (at least some of them). Playing is a king’s way of learning. Science calls this form of learning ‘experimenting’ and ‘formulating hypothesis’ and ‘observing what happens’ and ‘coming up with creative new ways’ and has added some very adult and very rational and systematic practices to make playing something that can produce ‘controllable’ results – that means results that are objective and can be followed-after objectively, reliably. I don’t know what your work experience is, but I have seen many occasions, where ‘playing around’, ‘getting distracted’ and ‘collecting crazy ideas’ have lead or would have lead to faster and better result for complex tasks, difficult challenges or innovative new products – see the example of a completely unexpected and successful new approach in education, called ‘hip hop for science education’. I have not researched that, but I think that man has just – for whatever reasons – followed what he liked most in life, what gave him a good feeling (good value) for his life and efforts (it is an effort and exercise and a certain discipline to become a good rapper, for example – just try it, I wish good fun in failing to talk as fast as the best rappers do!). He just did what he liked and was good at and was so close to life and what makes life valuable that he one day discovered that this is a great way to bring to young people what allows progress and opens possibilities and new futures to them: Science and experimentation and learning by leaving the best-practiced, majority paths. Unfortunately, there are so many managers and organizations that seem to seriously believe that you can create innovation, progress and outstanding success (value for your customers) by doing always more and a bit more optimized of what is already there as known practice – what a strange, contradictory belief, isn’t it, after all?   

Wouldn’t it be great to have as much fun being there at work (sorry within a meaningful, productive activity) the whole day, the whole week, the whole year, just as youngsters are doing it while listening and dancing to hip hop and rap music? While playing around with various ways of producing a product to find out what works best? Wouldn’t it be great to play around with the best of your talents, inspirations and passions at work to let others fully benefit from it to allow them to unfold what they are good at doing – for example in being orderly and precise and eager to perfectly execute what we know as best so far? I even put one on top of all that: Wouldn’t if be great if you could just walk home in the middle of the day and do what interests you most just today, just in that hour – to refresh your mind and soul and to satisfy your very human need of exploring things that you find interesting and fun? As soon as your work bores you or as soon as you are stuck with what you need to do – or when you are just so tired and exhausted of being an overloaded physician in a hospital that you have not any patience left for your patients any more?

Oh my god, where would the world end up if we all did that? Injured people coming to hospitals where no doctor is available – they are sitting at home instead, drinking wine and tea and coffee or taking a nice little nap in the middle of the afternoon?

Sure, some discipline and organization and responsibility is needed to have a good life for all and to be able to deal effectively with the less fun sides of life that we can not ignore for the sake of our own well being – but on the other hand, how can you know that it would be like that, if we have never tried? And who can prove to me that how we do it today is really better in fulfilling the purpose, in giving to patients what they need and what is good for them? I know it is not working out well in many countries currently – happy to listen to your stories and facts to learn the contrary 🙂

How much discipline do we need if work and getting results feels just like playing and doing what we like doing most? Did you know that little children loose fun and motivation to draw pictures as soon as they are offered money to do it? The reward does not make it better…or more performant, or more effective – one of the myths that are leading to the disorientation of today’s management practices. 

This was the dreamer speaking. The dreamer that knows that much of this, very much of this is possible and good for us – I have enough evidence and theory that supports it. Science has much better evidence than I think I have (go and research topics like motivation, reward, bonus, impact of individual performance versus organizational performance, stakeholder interest versus share holder interest, you will find many well-spread, but wrong assumptions) – it just leads us back to what really counts for a human being in life.

Now this is just a blog, not a scientific article and not even a well developed hip hop rhyme with a melody that was composed over many days of work. However, it might be one of those melodies that were played and written down during a lucky and relaxed fun-evening with friends, one that was just well inspired, one that catches our hearts. This was written within an hour, based on what I have got to know and to experience and based on what inspires me (and based on what others have found out in passionate work of science). Usually I would keep it for a draft for two days, three days, one week of re-reading and revisions, because I am aware of how much I throw up in it and how few of the available evidence and fact I list in it. However, I want to practice what I preach: This is just a blog, it should be a lot of fun first, to free our spirits (for me at least!) and: This is a big piece of playing around to see what I get from it.

Let’s see what I get from you – maybe your talent to carry this even further?

By the way, today, on a Friday at work, when my work bored me and gave me such big challenges that my brain and soul just pushed me so much to turn away from it for a while, I turned away and started to read about the battle of Austerlitz. One of Napoleon’s biggest triumphs and performances. I am working in a company where this is possible, it was a day where it was possible, I am in a job that gives me a lot of freedom, and I respect my company and my manager for all the trust. This is like that, because this company has always said it counts a lot on more modern views of work and on the talents of their employees. I still can do it, here and there, but many feel they can’t any more, because the culture, the style of management has changed a lot – unfortunately. I can see a lot of evidence that this is causing a certain, slight and creeping decline in (company and individual) performance and a striking occurrence of demotivation and loss of passion and talent-use. The hone-hour-journey to Austerlitz after Lunch was very beneficial for my company. You will see why in my next blog.  

The hip-hop-education story: You find it here: http://pointofinquiry.libsyn.com/rss – just search for the podcast titled: “

Chris Emdin – Hip Hop Archivist and Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University“

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p>* The story with the cat-kicking at home after work is a nice metaphor that I borrowed from one of the great training sessions of my dear friend Stephen Parry. Of course he would never kick his cat if he had one, no need to even feel tempted, just because he already lives and makes possible what I describe as a ‘future dream’ here – get inspired by his leadership and approach to changing organizations: www.lloydparry.com – a must for the exclusive group of change experts and managers who want to work with the best available and most advanced approaches to bring real progress to organizations – and inspiring for everybody to see how close management theory and a purposeful life are in reality. 

Each person has a so called trigger point. The trigger point is the thing, that somebody says to you (I do not mean an insult, of course) and that makes you upset very fast – usually faster than you would like to. This week, my trigger point was pushed by the statement “I struggle to understand what you mean with inventions in business? – I would say that all changes in the way how we do business that came up during the last 100 years have in reality been enhancements of what existed already.”

Why that hit my trigger point so easily is also the way how it was said: Not like a question, not like a thesis, not with any doubt in the voice – it was stated as if that was the core of life wisdom, as if it was a fact. When I think about it now, funny enough, he might be absolutely right in a particular sense, without knowing it and without understanding it himself: What the majority of (traditionally thinking) management (including himself) is doing today is nothing else than an enhanced application of the same old mass production thinking and organizational design principles that have been invented 100 years ago – unfortunately, because there are much better options today and we see nice cases where new principles work better. So, he might have simply made a very true statement about his own world of thinking and acting. Tragically enough, the company where we both are working has become successful just by starting off with a good bunch of such new and different, non-traditional principles. How far has my company come in a decline of culture and leader-spirit to let such a statement be part of a serious discussion in management?

The point of the discussion where this statement came up was the question if our organization should be an can be in a role to enable or even drive the invention of new ways of how our customers are operating and managing their business. Or if it is only a unit to pick up technological inventions and to make them operable for the customer business. The discussion was not if management and business invention exists – because there is a pile of evidence and examples that invention of course happens in management and business. Not in the traditional management that still goes with the 100 years old mass production thinking – but in many other corners with people who are able to rethink and to question their own assumptions.

I belong to those who fight and work for change and innovation of management in our company – that’s why such as statement hits my trigger. It comes out of an attitude that new management principles and new concepts of how to lead and operate a business can not work and do only exist in theory and ideas, but not in practice. That attitude might be driven by an unconscious fear of change, of loosing the currently practiced form of control over a difficult, tough business – maybe going hand in hand with the big resigning assumption, that our type of business can not be other than tough and difficult. But it is certainly also based on a lack of knowledge of basic concepts and theory about management and organizational design (and of course, it is very hard to get these people into trainings where they could get such basic knowledge – they have ‘more important things to do’ and prefer to waste their time being busy with traditional management).

Why that statement makes me so upset, too, is the fact that because of people with such an attitude and distorted perception of reality, indeed frequently we are not able to bring such new concepts to life in our company – concepts that are already reality elsewhere. He is one of the ‘practitioners’ in management who define ‘practice’ as the part of existing reality that they personally are living and that does not include ideas or practices or theory that they do not know or do not understand. I thus sit in that meeting in such a discussion, hear that statement and all my knowledge and instincts push me to reply with a loud ‘No, that can not be true’ reaction.

And again I become aware of how change- and innovation-resistant some of our own managers are. While they are pretending to be the ones who are driving and keeping up and successful this business, in reality they are just about to ride it to death. They are complaining about how much customers demand from them and that it would be an impossible claim that they do ‘more with less’ (please! Come back to what economic activity means, wake up, this is what you call ‘productivity-gains’- everybody wants it, because it either saves effort and time or brings more wealth!) – and in reality they are the ballast that holds their company back from moving into the future. By saying that there is nothing new beyond what they know and do today, by simply going on to do what they have always done, by going on to think what they have always thought, they produce the evidence to support their own thesis: There is nothing new and better that can work in their area of influence. An expensive and tragic self-fulfilling prophecy.

For myself, I choose a better way: I look at the evidence that humanity has delivered with progress of all kind: Invention is the core result of the two most important natural human talents: Imagination and learning from reality by doing things differently.
Unfortunately, for the moment, there is a lot of ballast and debris to move out of the way if I want to walk it in my company: I see the gentlemen sit there, denying that better options exist, laughing at these ‘funny new concepts’ while they have admitted 10 minutes before, that they did not even understand them. And I see the others, the better educated, the smarter guys, who know it better, who feel the pretence – but they just do not speak up enough to get rid of these opinions. Opinions that do not help anybody to create a better future or to stay successful in an environment where the competition does not go with the assumption that invention does not exist in management.

After the day, I noticed that driven by my trigger point, for my part I have probably spoken up too much again to leave the impression of a doubtfree, knowing man who has the wisdom about management. Because giving the impression of having the truth without saying much is still weighting more in discussions in my company than argumentation, good theory and evidence. To leave such an impression, I just should have pretended that my view is clearly the important truth – with a few words only out of a deep bariton, not giving any sign of doubt that openness for different views and new ideas might be worth the effort. But you know what: I don’t really believe that last sentence that I have just written here. There are too many smart people who might not always say much, but who listen and recognize good arguments and who appreciate a drive for liberating new possibilities. I just wonder, when they will finally be as fed up by such talking as I am today. What are they waiting for?