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Here is some context for what is a
difficult, complex, multi-faceted notion of why people do what
they do, most unconsciously rewarded for going
with the flow?
In our 1FLOS group, Herb wrote:
...I was interviewing the head of
one of the companies in the group you and I were working on.
He told me about relationships he had built between the group
and certain government ministries and he told me about his
strategy. Your point was that the company owners drove
the strategy and the relationships. The strategy and
relationships were artifacts, if I understand your use of the
term, but they were artifacts of the owners’ creation, not of
the interviewee’s.
Mike’s response was:
I... I would say this figuratively,
and that is that often we find people talking, about, or are
able to language a more complex notion, than they themselves
can generate...and it is the vicarious ability we have to
mimic, and assimilate other's ideas, thoughts and language as
our own, without having to generate it as the original
idea--or as I might suggest, going with the
flow.
Testing this is key. That is probably why Jaques relied
on the manager's discretionary judgment of performance, over
time, to coincide with the CIP, or Complexity of Information
Processing Model, for the research in human capability, if I’m
making sense out of his research as it was intended...
Since I have made a number of these
capability-vicariousness--arguments, and seen the mis-judgment
of capability, I started looking to artifacts
to add another dimension to the assessment of
capability. As noted in one of the
TPOVs--Job Fit--I have added
other pieces as well to "round" out the portfolio of
capability assessment in terms of job fit.
The reason for identifying this portfolio of factors leading
to our understanding of role creation, role fulfillment and
role design, is an outgrowth of my research that I have done
over the past 15 years using adult developmental models in
business situations around the world.
The portfolio approach, albeit more involved and expensive,
gives more detailed information about why development is what
it is and what we can do, to not just assess it, but to begin
to look at how to design
scaffolding
for it, which has been brought about by my experiences with
the paradigm shift from
BS to
FLOW.
As Jaques indicated, it doesn't do any good to wish people
higher on a ladder of striving...or whatever...because people
are going to be happiest when they are in FLOW, not when they
are achieving goals that are not necessarily related to
their own happiness; albeit some use indirect associations to
cross the meta-boundaries where one action is done to benefit
a related action, and the utility of that first action is
unrelated to our desires, yet key in supporting the next
action, which does do so.
So the idea of striving fits well
with those in the 1-5%
matched alignment. It becomes a
composite
standard built of best practices that we
lemmings then follow over the cliff...the problem being, we
can't fly...<G>
What is difficult but a major aspect of the
paradigm shift from BS to FLOW is this:
It is very difficult (albeit naturally for a larger group than
we think probably who are still other-directed, and or
motivationally aligned with seeking rapport, approval,
respect, blessings) for most people to deny the trends in the
crowds because that brings about FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and
Doubt) about their "acceptance" as a result and that is yet
another reason to not only notice, sense and adopt...going
with the flow.
So in part, people are following and striving
for those standards, not to achieve them,
but to keep from being singled out, or falling out of favor.
You have motivational systems which all dictate that going
along with the flow maybe more favorable than resisting, in
affiliation and avoidance, and even in many cases where power
and achievement are residing in some degree --> in the towards
direction, it may be a power or achieving strategy to go with
the flow, at times, more beneficial than resisting it, for
sure!
Boyatzis mentioned that in the social motive research, that
there are only about 30% of us who will even respond to goals.
The other 70% are not naturally inclined to seek goal
achievement by and of itself as do those involved in
achievement, such as many directions could be at different
points directly and indirectly.
So, for me, the most difficult concept to grok is
how then does most of the population seem to want to
follow the mutual best practices BS has generated?
Why aren't they waking up to the
notion that it might not be the most optimal path for
them...and it has to do with the socializing aspects of
society and what happens when you don't fit in--why is
going with the flow so essential to
everyday life for a lot more people than we think?
Even Jaques mentions a number of
times, how the flow of information, and tasks, and managerial
practices, all generate the ease with which things seem to
flow together, as in going with the flow, from another
perspective, perhaps I am underestimating the power emergent
from going with the flow?
Therefore, even though it would seem...that one is not as
happy following the best practices and composite standards
that we have accumulated as right, or at least
acceptable--never being able to grasp them. It would
make a lot of people less
happy to fall from the grace of society and be disapproved of
if they resisted going with the flow?
Most will, I think, find that if they do their jobs and manage
their p's & q's, that they will have "freedom" both economic
and political to then do what they really want to do, when no
one is looking, or watching, per se.
So, tradeoffs are made in order to keep the paradigm
cohesive...which explains why change is so difficult and why
societal inertia is so powerful.
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