Plutherosaurs

Sally Bibb, co-author of our autumn 2006 title Management F-Laws, sent me this nice quote from Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and currently a little troubled by his divorce settlement: "'Hierarchy is an organisation with its face towards the CEO and its backside towards the customer".

She also had a really interesting piece in The Guardian recently (click here to read it) about the management style of men like John Pluthero - at Cable & Wireless - and Alan Sugar. While she, like many, finds the style of these Plutherosaurs "unbearable", it’s apparently also true that many don’t find it unbearable. Indeed, it seems that they respond well to it. Which suggests that an autocratic style either lends itself particularly well to certain individuals, groups or organizations, or that, before long, exposure to it will induce an easy acceptance of it. (Of course, this is no new idea – witness the plethora of "ised" words like brutalised and sexualised that we have to describe the way that the human (mind?, body?) can become accustomed to almost anything.

My favourite poem describes this call back to unconsciousness or slavery as follows:

As if bladderwrack
lay
declining over shingle,
waiting for the
surf’s
sobbed bite to take it back.
Salt and tyranny, smear and
tangle,
inextricably en-nerved: the slaving
call
that knits sheared
lovers
with purple laver.
Befellow the manumit’s hanker
after
the
comfort of chains, after
the wide Sargasso anchor’s
tug back to the
sea-grass
mangle.

An article on Spiral Dynamics at the Triarchy website also describes a systematised way of looking at individuals’ work preferences. Take a look at it here.