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RIDING THE WAVES OF CHANGE
THINKING ALLOWED Conversations On The Leading Edge Of Knowledge and Discovery With Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove COPYRIGHT (C) 1998 THINKING ALLOWED PRODUCTIONS Reprinted with permission from Thinking Allowed Productions MISHLOVE: Well, I think it's fair to say that in our culture, in this general time, this archetype of the ronin, or the samurai warrior, or the shaman warrior, or the spiritual master, is appearing in many, many different forms, from the writings of Castaneda to the popularity of Japanese literature and Zen philosophy, and so on. It's as if there's a need for it. POTTER: Well, I think there is, and I think that's what it takes to deal with this rapid change -- that we don't know; we're facing an unknown out there. And it's not just that there's a bunch of computers and we have fancier cars or different ways of playing music or things like that. In fact the way in which people work together is changing dramatically. There are a lot of people that are maintaining -- and I think this is true -- that we're on the verge of a corporate renaissance, that we're finally leaving the dark ages of work, thank God, where you slave away and you put in your time; that work is really a place where you go and you develop yourself, and everything you encounter becomes part of this adventure of self-development, and not just self-development, but going out into the world with power, accumulating power, and using power -- not what we think of as the negative, four-letter word power, but power to make things happen in the world. And where is that power? It's in the corporation. I tell you, they've got power. MISHLOVE: I guess at one time many people -- and I'm sure that I was guilty of this myself, certainly, twenty years ago -- felt that the corporate world was a cultural backwater, that really it involved selling soap or something on television; that it was the least creative, most oppressive part of our whole culture. And I guess we're developing a new understanding of that. POTTER: Well, I quite frankly felt the same way, and I think in fact that's what it was. There's no denying it -- corporate feudalism, this rigid, controlling system. But it's changing; it's not that way at all anymore. Corporations are referred to in literature as elastic. The first time I read that I thought, elastic? Are you kidding me? Elastic? What a strange concept. But they are; they're changing so fast. And it's across the board. I go into all kinds of different cultures. I recently did a training session in the IRS, and it was happening there too -- these tremendous changes in people's roles, and what they do is becoming less and less defined. People are inventing their work these day. They're doing things -- problems are assigned that nobody's ever done before. In the old system of work, you have a boss; the boss used to do your job; it's very defined what it is; and they know more than you do about what it is, because they used to do it, so they tell you how to do it. That is just absolutely antiquated, because whether you're putting in a computer system, or whatever it is that people are doing these days, the "boss" never did it before. Nobody ever did it before. So they are by definition inventing their work. Bosses are all of a sudden in a very strange place vis-a-vis work, because if you are a manager -- "boss" I'm using to be whatever, the manager, all those people -- in the old days you were supposed to know everything and tell people what to do. Now that's completely out. Even delegating is on its way out. Now you are supposed to be -- Naisbitt quotes in one of his books -- a teacher, mentor, and developer of human potential. That sounds to me like something out of the sixties. MISHLOVE: But it seems to me that a change like that, so dramatic -- from an oppressive, feudal culture is the metaphor that you used -- to one which fosters personal growth and liberation, even that kind of a change can't occur painlessly. POTTER: Oh, there are a lot of casualties. There are a lot of people who are going to -- just as in any one of these major transitions. And we're seeing them. One of the major casualties are middle management. Now, it's slowed down a bit, but certainly in the middle eighties, the middle-level managers were just being laid off in droves. These were people who were, say, forty-five, fifty years old, who did what they were supposed to do in school, they climbed the corporate ladder, they were good boys and girls essentially. MISHLOVE: Pursuing the American dream. They did everything they were told they needed to do to achieve success. POTTER: That's right. And now when they reach the middle level, they're supposed to be able to coast, skate. They have some security; that's what people were promised -- security. There is no security. These people, if they were lucky, they got early retirement and pensions. If they were unlucky, they simply got laid off and they have nowhere to go. And companies became lean and mean. Now, that's one casualty. Another are all the people who have computer phobia; I mean, you have to be computer literate these days. So you have to make such an incredible transition that the whole field of self-management -- in my training I often ask people, "How many people here have ever had a class in high school -- that's where it ought to be, or maybe grade school -- in self-management?" I've never had anybody raise their hand. How do you set goals? How do your break down your work? How do you build your motivation? This is an essential job skill. You don't know what you're going to be doing; I don't know what I'm going to be doing. Nobody really knows what they're going to be doing in a couple of years, what kinds of issues they're going to be confronting. We have to keep teaching ourselves while we're doing it. MISHLOVE: I think kindergarten is like that a little bit. POTTER: They do it a little bit there. We put little gold stars up there, something like that. MISHLOVE: Someone has written a book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, and I think it does deal with self-management, but we stop there. POTTER: Right.
Please join us next month for a continuation of this
discussion.
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