To live in community and to work in
organizations requires the arrangement, design, and management of human
cooperation. The question is: How will we
choose to arrange, design, and manage human cooperation? The supermeme of
leadership leads us to believe the only way to do so is through the rank-based
authority of leadership positions, where some one or some few are placed in
charge over others to do the commanding and controlling of their cooperation. The
supermeme of leadership is so unquestioned and all-powerful that most people
cannot even envision any other way to order human cooperation and manage work
than through leadership positions.
In the twentieth century, with the
rise of large and complex business organizations, the supermeme of leadership
naturally led to the professionalization of management. This, I believe, has
been disastrous for human wellbeing, and the twenty-first century is witnessing
the catastrophic failure of this, now global, management system. The
professional management taught in our business schools has systemized
unsustainable business practices and created economies, which can no longer
produce good jobs at livable wages.
With the professionalization of
management, we also lost the notion of work as a vocation, where the work
itself provided pleasure, meaning, and fulfillment. Today the goal is
promotion, to advance up the ranks of management, and the work is secondary to
maximizing profit. Work no longer possesses intrinsic value, but is to be
manipulated to give the appearance of value, where the only measure of success
is profit regardless of the affect on workers, society, or the environment.
We need to recover the notion of
the intrinsic value of work – that the skillful practice of our work is worthy
of our commitment and care. We must realize that we can bring this attitude of
skillful practice to almost any job to both ennoble the work and ourselves in
the process. Work as vocation is to see the worth of work and the nobility of
our dedication to produce meaningful goods and services, to improve our
talents, and to serve others through the skillful practice of our labor.
Of course, to recover the notion of
work as vocation and to create authentically valuable work will require we
reject the professionalization of management. To alienate decision-making from
the work itself and locate it in some separate management position turns the
skillful practice of work into the empty and meaningless repetition of coerced
movements, robbing the worker of joy and the labor of significance. No, the
management of decision-making must be both the responsibility and competence of
every community member and each worker in our business organizations.
For more insight into these topics,
please see my book - Deconstructing the SUPERMEME of Leadership:
A Brief Invitation to Creating Peer-Based Communities & Leaderless
Organizations. Available at amazon.com:
