Listics

Incipient RageBoyism, the compulsive acquisition of vast numbers of books, is upon me. From “Moral Mazes” and “Who Really Matters,” it seemed important to dig a little deeper into the organizational potential for change. Hence my Amazon order this morning: Malone’s “The Future of Work;” and Malone et al., “Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century.”

I remember when I used to “go to work.” Recently the phrase has crept back into my active vocabulary due to my good fortune in working on a long term contract at a desk at my customer’s location. William Dietrich observes,

The ancient Greeks knew all about work. Their word for it was ponos, which meant not just toil but suffering. And pain. Work was for slaves. The role of free men, according to the thinkers, was to avoid work as much as possible so they’d have time for war, philosophy and art.

Them were the days.

Nowadays, everybody works, even Bill Gates, richest man in the world. We’re supposed to (Protestant Work Ethic), most of us have to (Money) and in theory we want to (Personal Fulfillment, or Meaning).

This month I’m building an awareness of the structural conditions that bound my work. Where do I fit in an organization, and why? Since the dim light of pre-history (back into the sixties), we have spoken of imbuing our systems with “goodness.” What constitutes “goodness” in an organization by my lights? What does a good organization look like? What does it deliver and how does it deliver?

I don’t know if I’ll find my way past the intersection of quarterly financial goals and corporate values this month, but I hope so. The American b-school emphasis on short term returns at the expense of foundational values seems to be one of the toxic conditions of business culture that poisons the larger culture that contains the corporate model. Is there imperical evidence for that? I dunno. We’ll see what turns up.