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The Corporate Fool
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The Corporate Fool David Firth And Alan Leigh
Copyright © David Firth and Alan Leigh 1998 The right of David Firth and Alan Leigh to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First Published 1998 Capstone Publishing Limited Oxford Centre for Innovation Mill Street Oxford OX2 0JX United Kingdom http://www.capstone.co.uk Reprinted 1998 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1-900961-51-2 Typeset in 9/12 Galliard by Sparks Computer Solutions, Oxford http://www.sparks.co.uk Printed and bound by T.J. International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-free paper
`The clown reminds us of the irrational within our universe, the Dionysian forces within the human society that must be balanced rather than suppressed or denied, and the futility of our quest for certainty, control, and absolute power.' F. David Peat `The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the Sage steers by.' Chaung Tzu `The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.' George Orwell
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The Corporate Fool CONTENTS Why On Earth Would You Read This Book? Acknowledgements Introduction by David Firth Part One: Understand Beneath the Jester's costume
ix xi xiii 1
Fool: the movie Old Fool: a short history of Fooling The Tarot Fool: a journey Jung Fool: the dark side of organisations
2 10 13 20
Part Two: Imagine Fragments from a manifesto for change
27
The Fool and the end of history? Changing organisations from the `Foolside' The Nine Roles of The Corporate Fool Alienator Confidante Contrarian Midwife Mapper Jester Mediator Satirist Truthseeker The Tao of the Fool The User's Manual
28 39 44 45 48 53 58 64 67 72 77 82 86 91
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A Fool's Handbook Home: The Foolish Building Advice from an Old Fool Job Titles to Die For ... Re-envisaging the Organisation as Foolish
101 114 121 126 135
Part Three: Become A personal quest for Foolishness
143
Foolish work, Foolish wisdom
146
Appendices 1. Change: a guide 2. It's a bit like 3. FoolWeb
159 179 191
Index
193
Why On Earth Would You Read This Book? Fools have been with us always and, pretty much, in all ways. Fools speak out against those who have power, question accepted wisdom, embody controversy and taboo, cast doubt in the face of faith, bring chaos to order, point out the obvious when everybody else is apparently too scared to, throw a spanner in the proverbial works, turn the world upside down. It's the best job spec you'll ever read — unless you happen to be a Bad King. It would seem that an old Fool would thrive on the world of business and organisations. What fun he1 would have mocking its symbols of power, its sacred cows, its pomposity, its hypocrisy and dubious morality, its unquestioning adherence to profit above principle and its haughty dismissal of the parts of life that are the Fool's domain — silliness, mistakes, laughter, darkness ... And all this the Fool does not to destroy our (business) society but to recreate it, to remind us of the imperfections we'd rather ignore, to bring a sane balance to the things we'd rather separate, to rebirth fragmented life as a new whole. If you feel that you'd like to do more of what Fools do, or if you suspect you're already a Fool and would like some confirmation that you are not alone, you really should, on Earth, read this book. The Corporate Fool follows its subject over three main sections. PART ONE seeks to understand the figure of the Fool, from both a historical, mythological and psychological perspective. It answers the question: why the Fool? PART TWO seeks a home for the Fool in our modern organisations. It answers the question: what would a Corporate Fool do all day? If you suddenly have a moment of clarity or insanity and want to hire a Fool for your company, this section suggests how you might find one, hire one, `appraise' one, and generally keep him in mischief.
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PART THREE comes over all sensible and accepts that there aren't many people who are going to be taken in by PART TWO. This time next year, our board rooms are unlikely to have found a place for the Corporate Fool. Microsoft's Fool? Glaxo/SMB's Fool? Yeah, right. But Foolishness, as we'll discover, is about being creative and constructive, is about seeking a way to make good things happen. So this third part answers the question: if our organisations can't have official Corporate Fools, can we release their benefits by us each becoming a little more Foolish? On the cover of this book, for example, a Fool-like character peers back at our cartoon businessman: it is himself. He has found his own best Fool. Here's to you discovering yours.
Note 1
The Fool figure, in literature and myth, is almost always masculine. Foolishness, as presented in this book, is without sex, or, rather, both masculine and feminine. For ease of typing and reading, we have kept to he and his rather than s/he and his/her or other variants. Please excuse these shortcuts if you might be offended by them.
Acknowledgements Alan With thanks to Peter Sole for his sage guidance and inspiring sense of fun. Thanks also to Leslie Durschinger for her perfect cottage in the snow and to the bar in Bruges where the idea of the Corporate Fool was really established... Thanks, in particular, to Anna Stephenson who has brighter ideas and a sharper mind than anyone I know. David And I want to say thank you to the kind anonymous person who came round one morning and dug us out of the snow at Leslie's cottage... I'd like to add my thanks to Mark, Richard and Catherine at Capstone, who are wonderfully tolerant of my eccentric definition of the word `deadline'; and to my contributors Richard, Paul, Philip, Barak and Ian `don't think!' Pollock. Frank Humphries has given untold support of all kinds: love and peace, man. Finally, this one is for Sam, The Trickster, who proved to Keri and I that sometimes you really do get what you ask for...
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Introduction By David Firth I don't know about you, but I knew the world was going mad when, three years after my first book How to Make Work Fun! was published, I met someone who was doing an MBA in making work fun. Why was this my reaction? I should have been delighted at this confirmation that things were changing. And part of me was. But another equally strong part of me thought it was a sign of insanity. Surely, this part of me reasoned, we don't need credentials in fun (having a book was bad enough): we need actions. These then were two points of view (and I'm sure there are many more; for example, the horrible urge business has to formalise everything...) which seemed equally valid, and which, quite happily, I seemed able to hold on to at the same time. perhaps that was the true sign of my own madness. Yet the leading management thinkers of our day have been urging us to accept paradox as a constant for years, and to embrace other tokens of madness such as `craziness' and `unreason': `... discontinuous change requires discontinuous, upside-down thinking to deal with it, even if both thinkers and thoughts appear absurd at first sight.' Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason `It's an insane world, and in an insane world, sane organisations make no sense.' Tom Peters, The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organisations
So much is changing in our society that, often, as we spend another day hurtling through time-freefall from task to task, from meeting to meeting, from decision to decision, from crisis to crisis, we may lose track of what we're part of.
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`Maybe you should start keeping a diary. Years from now people will want to know what it was like in the great business revolution of the late 20th century. They will look back in awe at enormous changes-globalisation, the rise of networked information technology, radical new ways of organising work, the emergence of a knowledge-based economy — and how these converged in that historic period. They will wonder how on earth you got through it.' Fortune, 13 December 1993
[`No they won't, a nihilistic colleague once said to me, `They'll say: "The 90s were nothing; you should see how fast things are moving now!'".] It's no illusion: by most measures (growth of world trade, speed of communication over time and so on) the world is moving faster and faster and, since we seem unwilling to apply the brake, it isn't likely to slow down. That's because our love affair is still with speed, despite the fact that the by-product of constant speed is ambiguity, stress and confusion, not exhilaration. We find ourselves existing in a reality we undoubtedly created but hardly intended. And at the heart of this reality are inescapable paradoxes. The computer promised to make the 1990s the leisure decade, which is either God's idea of a joke, or Bill Gates'. Computers have made things both easier and harder. It's very easy to write a letter on the Powerbook I'm using now, but many's the time I've wondered, as I sit waiting for my printer to decide it can be bothered to make itself available to the network and I've clicked on the `Continue' button for the tenth time, how complicated letter writing has become. E-mail promised to free our time up for the valuable job of using our intellectual capital and it has; but only after we've spent the morning wading through the messages tual flooded our mailboxes overnight. Things just don't seem to be working in the way that reason dictated that they should. But paradox goes deeper than these annoying, bewildering (and foolish!) difficulties — it appears to be woven into the very tapestry of our lives and work. Look at the following arbitrary list of tensions, between:
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work/home career/family top down/bottom up task/process innovation/replication big picture/detail vision/reality give me direction/give me my freedom global/local Perhaps if we felt we had the time to take a step back and reflect on a larger view that encompasses both sides of such paradoxes, we might see creative solutions that are invisible at the moment. As it is, the speed at which things are moving only adds to the pressure we are under to make quick decisions. The paradoxes become unbearable and we hasten to act decisively, choosing either one side or the other. The problem is that consistently selecting one aspect over the other in the end creates more tension, not less. A company that focuses on being excellent today at the expense of envisioning an even better future is in danger of looking up from its work to find that the world has moved on, and its customers with it. An organisation that always forces its workers to choose work over home does not dissipate home/work tension, it exacerbates it. Moreover, the tension transmutes into another form of energy — resentment, for example, or deceit. The impulse we have to deal with paradox by taking `easy', pressurised, either/or decisions is understandable. It appears to resolve dilemma. It keeps things moving along. It means that we appear unequivocal and in control. The other option, embracing the paradox, would leave us open to complexity, ambiguity and not-knowing. We'd be mad to try it. Handy, Peters and many others suggest that by mimicking the reality of paradox and craziness with our thinking and behaviour, we could grow to a healthier, more inclusive view of life and business and learn from what is happening rather than be bewildered and exhausted by it. But have our organisations really embraced craziness, really embraced unreason?
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Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but I don't think so. I think that is because organisations cannot become anything unless we, as individuals, become it first. And our personal conditioning causes us to react against `craziness'. We are reasonable creatures — and business, especially, is the domain of sane, sensible, reasonable thoughts, actions and people. One of the premises of this book is that all that sanity is tremendously limiting. As a result of our cultural conditioning towards reasonableness, those who dare to deny accepted truth by expressing a new truth are in danger of being labelled mad (which was Cassandra's curse) — or, at least, `no longer a team player'. Potentially even more difficult is establishing that a new truth can exist alongside an old truth. New ideas are always first met with scepticism and ridicule because it's easier to deny or negate than it is to yield and accept. Accepting an addition to truth is harder for us than dismissing such a breakthrough as an illusion or a deceit; dismissing it means that we don't have to change ourselves or accept that our previous viewpoint was flawed. Yet ours is an era crying out for open, inclusive, flexible thinking. It seems to me that none of our human disciplines — science, technology, religion, psychology, the arts — have succeeded in giving us The Answer to Our Questions. Instead they have given us many, many Answers, and it is our challenge to make sense of them as best we can, even when there appears to be no(n)sense everywhere. Living with complexity and being comfortable with ambiguity have become two of the most essential competencies of the age. I would suggest that the ability to see these competencies as `healthy, nurturing and fulfilling' as opposed to `hard but necessary' will be the next breakthrough. How so? Because paradox demands that we think X and Y rather than X or Y — paradoxical thinking is a process of growth. Insisting that experience is either black or white is a reduction of reality to simplicity and is an indication of our naiveté. If we can develop our thinking to accept the paradoxes at the heart of most reality, then that is a sign of our maturity rather than our madness. Such is the promise, and the hope. To fulfil the promise, we would need to take two steps.
Introduction
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Firstly, we would actually need to be able to experience upside-down thinking, to access the parts of ourselves that are comfortable with paradox and ambiguity, to break through the barricades of intellectual convention. We would also have to let go of our fear that breaking through those barriers leads us into profitless, unhealthy or even dangerous areas of experience. Secondly, supposing that we had discovered something useful by carrying out that first step, we would need to have the courage to share our new insights with others. We'd need even more courage if those insights hardly carried the power of objective, scientific truth — pace Jesus Christ — or if they turned objective, scientific truth upside down — pace Galileo. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked against us. Modern business is based on the opposite of these two steps. Organisations survive on conventional thinking and are deeply suspicious of the bizarre or unorthodox. Incrementalism is the enemy of innovation, as Nicholas Negroponte reminded us; creative thinking is something you do on a course and logic is always much easier to explain to the CEO than the little voice inside your head that spoke to you in the night. Furthermore, organisations depend on people not being brave enough to challenge the status quo. They rely for their survival, their continuance, on people who are happy, literally, to continue what came before. (We derive the word `continue' from Latin words that mean `to hold together', whereas Handy's `discontinuous thinking' would threaten to break things apart). This is especially true in time of rapid change: stress makes us want to reproduce the ideas and ways of doing things that we are already used to, and to conform to the behaviours that are exhibited by the majority. Challenging the norms is an even greater stressor. As one manager expressed it to me, in a vivid image that is still seared in my mind's eye: `I'd rather cut my legs off at the knee than risk sticking my head above the parapet'. All this gives us two insights into the barriers that exist to new ways of thinking and doing in organisations and points to where changes have to take place.
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Firstly, we need to agree that organisations are intellectual products. Organisations are complex webs of beliefs and knowledge: they are the result of how people agree to think. Secondly, we need to agree that they are also social creations — they are webs of convention and rules and behaviour that are the result of how people agree to relate to each other. Change is required at both an intellectual and social level. In order to grow accomplished in a new world of upside-down, paradoxical and crazy thinking, in order to make sense of the nonsensical, in order to find a way of living and working that is creative, satisfying and purposeful, we need a role model who can show us how to make these changes for ourselves. We need someone who already has lots of experience of thinking and acting in that crazy way — and, just as crucially, someone who is not afraid to speak up about it. The Fool is that role model.
At the heart of Fooling What drives a Fool? Fools have an awareness of two fundamental truths:
1 Change is constant; but perspective is not So the Fool looks at life: from all points on the compass from above and below from the head and from the heart.
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In particular, he looks at life from the perspectives that aren't the most frequently or commonly used. If you're thinking too much, he'll talk about feelings. If you're measuring the assets of your company, he'll ask about the state of its soul. The Fool stands against the commonly accepted point of view, because he knows that insight and learning can come from the most surprising and unexpected sources. Thus, truth two:
2 Learning is life-long; and all experience is valid The Fool's scope is broad: mentally: he can move easily from the flights of fancy to the rigours of logic emotionally: he is comfortable expressing feelings from hatred to compassion physically: he can move from ridiculous part fall to a noble act of self-sacrifice psychologically, he is content to work on the light and the dark sides of our psyches. All of this means that Fools are uncomfortable to have around, but they don't really care about our uneasiness (creating tension is part of their job). After all, the Fool's paradoxical attitude is: respect all, respect nothing. Yet even these first stabs at understanding the Fool do not get around our potential discomfort with the very name. From experience, I know the word `Fool' can cause problems of comprehension.
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Call from Richard and Judy, daytime TV magazine programme Joanne: David: Joanne: David: Joanne: David: Joanne: David: Joanne: David: Joanne: David: Joanne: David: Joanne: [long pause] David: Joanne:
Hello. We've seen a piece on you in one of the Sunday papers. Oh yes? Yes. We think it's a brilliant idea. Jester! Ha! Great!!! Mmm. It's `Fool' actually. So we thought we should have you on. Do a piece on you jestering for companies together with something on drinks. Eh? Well, it's not set yet. But we thought we could have you on in your costume talking with Richard and Judy about ... Sorry? Costume? Yes, your jestering costume. But I don't have one. What, you mean you don't dress up? You mean in a jester's outfit? No. Not at all? No. Not at all. Oh. Hello? Erm, well. Er. Well, I tell you what, we'll have a talk about it and if we like the idea, we'll get right back to you. OK?
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Call from Business News, satellite TV programme Georgina: David: Georgina: David: Georgina: David: Georgina: David: Georgina: David:
Georgina: David: Georgina:
I don't get it. You're a jester, right? Fool. And you go into meetings? Well, yes. It depends on the work. You see the Fool does more than the `jesting' that I think you might have in mind ... But you cheer people up? Possibly. Not always. Oh. (pause) Do you employ lots of jesters? Fool. I'm a Fool. Fool, yes. The distinction is important. It's a bit like if I were to call you a backjournalist. You could be called that, but it doesn't really sum up the full range of your qualities. Well, we really want you to come on the show and tell us what you do. Our producer's very interested in having you on ... Is he? ... in full garb ...
Perhaps we are all going to get our fifteen minutes of fame, as long as we dress correctly. At about the time I was having these conversations with the media, I heard Gore Vidal speaking on the radio. He used the phrase `obsession with the familiar' to explain how the media worked. It seemed strange at first, since the word news (derived, it is thought,
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from the phrase `new happenings') would suggest that the media was interested in newsness, in novelty and innovation. Then I realised what Vidal meant: that the media translate everything that is different into that which is familiar. Theirs is not to expand ideas, but to make them fit, both into their columns and into a form that will be easily understood by an unavoidably nameless, faceless audience. News translates the extraordinary into the ordinary for the standard. This cannot happen with The Fool, since the Fool rebels against the ordinary and the regular. We need to get past our desire to compartmentalise the Fool into the trite image of the codpieced jester who tells jokes. Few of us, I would guess, want to be a codpieced jester, although I would hope that many of us would like to incorporate Foolishness into our lives and work, at least after reading this book. To get to that point, we need to understand the Fool.
PART ONE Understand Beneath the Jester's costume
Wisdom is the principle thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding Proverbs
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FOOL: THE MOVIE a screenplay [Scene 1. England 1498. Interior. The Great Hall at Businesborough Castle. It is a bleak time. A time of fear and wonder. A transitional time. People gather in hushed awe and talk of the end of things. Of things being changed and never the same. Camera pans slowly from behind the King's throne, over his shoulder. Camera stops. KING's view of the entire court — knights, bishops, ladies, etc. Camera moves again; pans round to close-up of KING'S face. He is deep in thought — brow furrowed, stroking his beard. We hear his thoughts ...] King:
[voice-over] Who? Who can I trust? To whom can I turn? The Captain of my Army?
[Quick close-up of LEBASTARD; heavy brows, scarred] King:
Lebastard, what do you think about ...?
[LEBASTARD grins, showing blackened teeth, and spits out a gob of beef gristle] King:
Er, no, on second thoughts, never mind. [voice-over] How about my Barons?
[Quick close-up of GORDO THE FAT and GRIZZLE THE SNIP; GORDO is hugely smiling, his doublet smeared with chicken fat, while GRIZZLE is wringing his thin hands. They both wink.] King:
[voice-over] I don't think so. Well, Lord above, what about my Bishops?
[Quick close-up of LEECHLIEU and MAGGOTERY; splendidly robed and beady-eyed] King:
[voice-over] No, no, no, no! Who, who, who?!
[Camera settles on the Court Jester, SPRINKLY. He looks up, startled] King:
Hah! Of course! Fool! Approach the throne!
[SPRINKLY pulls himself up to his full three-foot-five and strides up the steps of the great throne, the little bells on his triple-crested coxcomb hat jingling madly.] ...
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Another interview Interviewer: Fool:
Interviewer: Fool:
Interviewer: Fool:
So that's how it came to you then? Yes — it's how it began, though not how it has ended. I thought it was time for something a little more provocative. Once upon a time, I'd have started this book with something like: In a continuously changing business world, nothing is secure. The strategies, techniques and behaviours that have brought us to today will not take us to tomorrow. In fact I used to give speeches that said exactly that. Then, one day, I was waiting to give a speech at a conference and I'd got my big line ready: In a continuously changing business world, nothing is secure. The strategies, techniques and behaviours that have brought us to today will not take us to tomorrow. When this other speaker put up a slide with lots of extracts from newspapers, magazines, trade press and so on and he said The point, I think, is absolutely clear ... And do you know what the point was? What? In a continuously changing business world, nothing is secure. The strategies, techniques and behaviours that have brought us to today will not take us to tomorrow. And that was the point! I wasn't alone! We — this other speaker and I — weren't alone! The world was full of people telling other people that the world is changing radically and that we'd better be ready to change the way we do things. So why weren't they listening? Because what we consistently underestimate is the capacity people have for finding security in an unstable world, for maintaining the status quo amidst chaos. So things were changing, but nothing was changing.
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Interviewer: Fool:
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4
And things were changing. I remember when I used to have to go to a bank, days in advance of a European trip, and order traveller's cheques in about seven different currencies, go back a few days later and collect them — and pay for the privilege. Now I just need this bit of plastic. No not that bit of plastic, that's my lucky aardvark, this bit of plastic. Er — you are going to edit this aren't you? I expect so. Where were you? Well people would say: `Ah yes, things are changing ...' And we'd say: `So if things are changing so dramatically, you can't carry on doing what you've always done, can you?' And they would say: `No, no, must change, must change!' And then nothing happened. Why not? Because our organisations seem set up to thwart change. If we are to survive, we are going to have to develop two core competencies: seeing things as they really are and coming up with innovative solutions. It's easy — we've just got to be honest and liberated at the same time. The problem is that we think we have these competencies already; we all know organisations that pay lip service to honesty and trust in their corporate values statement, or that advertise the creativity and expertise of their people in their brochures. But what we really have in organisations is `seeing things as they really are as far as I'm concerned' and `liberation up to a point, but no further thank you'. And the result is a lot of innovative solutions which are, really, not very different from what went before. So what is going to break us out of this self-delusion? Well, let's go back to our film. The King has a problem: who is he going to ask? He can't ask his Captains and Barons and his Bishops — their advice is always going to be tainted by what's in it for them. The only person who is truly free of the constraints of politics and promotion and favour is the jester; the Fool. He has nothing to gain from telling a lie, or twisting the
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Interviewer:
Fool: Interviewer: Fool:
Interviewer: Fool: Interviewer: Fool: [click] [click] Interviewer: Fool:
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facts to fit the argument. He has nothing to gain by offering solutions that seem to help the whole court but actually only help the army, or the church, or somebody's private estate. What the King will get from the Fool is the truth and nothing but the truth. And if the King is not happy with the truth, the Fool doesn't retreat like the flatterers, sycophants and enemies around him. He is always there, bouncing around with his bells and pig's bladder, always seeking, challenging, always provoking and yet, by contrast, always the one thing constant around the King. The Fool's jests and his advice constantly goad the King by offering a different perspective on things, saying, in effect, `What if it were different? What if you did more? What if, what if?' and asking awkward questions like `Why?' and `Why not?' So What, you're saying is, in summary, if things are going to change in business, we need a few more Fools around to snap us out of our complacency, our smugness, our er, er, our corporate ennui ...! Quite. Good word. Thanks, I thought so. So what's next, then? Well, I thought I might incorporate some of this stuff into a book. Actually, if I could have copy of this tape, that'd save me having to write a whole section ... I'll see what I can do. Thanks, I'd appreciate it. Okay, that's fine — I think we can wrap it up there until after lunch. Fancy a pint? Now there's a ...
... and he said, `You idiot! It means "wrong hole"'! Hah! Yes. Wrong hole.
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Interviewer: Fool:
Interviewer: Fool:
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[laughter] Ah, hah. Oh, I do like that one. Ha! Yes. Well, anyway, let's get going again. Where, where did the original idea come from? From King Lear — from the central relationship between the Fool and King Lear in Shakespeare's play. When the play begins Lear is having what you might describe as management difficulties of his own: his attempt to find a worthy successor to his throne. But Lear's process through disillusionment to final clarity of vision, and in particular the role his Fool plays in that process, that's the real matter of the thing. So how does the Fool help? Well, in the play, Lear makes a single wrong decision — he fails to see which of his daughters is good. But that single decision butterflies into catastrophic civil war. Chaos is thriving and the new world neccessitates reengineered people, and a reengineered leader. And it's the Fool who provokes this reengineering. Without the Fool, Lear would never understand the mistake he made and therefore never be able to find his way out of it. But Lear is not a good listener, so the Fool has remorseless energy — always restless, always seeking to challenge, always seeking to stimulate. And yet, by contrast, he is the one thing constant amongst the King's troubles. It's a delicately balanced role: he is constantly goading the King by offering a different perspective on things. The paradox of the Fool is that he brings both relief and pain. And you're saying that today's Kings need some of that paradox? Yes, they do need constancy in a changing world and as peoples' favours wax and wane. But they also need the pain — they need a kick up the backside too when they show signs of becoming dangerously over-confident. So, Fool as change agent? That's right. And how does it work? Well, the Fool operates by four principles. Principle I is: the Fool is an outsider. He's on the King's payroll, but the Fool is not part of the King's court. He stands outside the social and political network in which the courtiers
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operate — so he's got nothing to lose by breaking the rules and nothing to gain by playing the games other people play. He can't get promoted then? Well, you've never heard of a senior Fool have you? Not in this context, no. This being outside is crucial to the Fool's power. If we get sucked in we'll end up being a change agent made in the King's own image. It's nice and safe and not much happens. Fools who are just like their Kings are not going to provoke change — they'd just be too comfortable for the King. There was an article recently proving that people who suck up to their boss will do better; and that certainly explains the promoting of yes men — but it's only part of this issue. The Times in London discussed a survey which showed that IT companies undergoing cuts had a tendency to get rid of the talented mavericks first. This is particularly true where the job of drawing up the list of the unlucky is left to the management. They keep around them their cronies. This is a truth from psychology as much as business: we tend to mix with people who are like us. At ICL it was only after the first 5000 cuts that Robb Wilmot fired the old guard and it took ten years to bring about the culture change he had envisioned. It is only from outside that we get a clear perspective. It is only from outside that we can contemplate radicalism removed from the pressure to conform. We must be proud to be outside. That's principle 1, then. The second principle is that the Fool sees things as they really are. The trouble is that we're faced with a huge cultural problem: organisations just don't encourage truth, they encourage visions and illusions. How do you mean? In psychology this is called perceptual adaptation: the ability to see distortion as normality and not know it. The experiments of George Stratton in this field at the turn of the century illustrate the point. For the cause of science, he walked around with a set of lenses on which turned his image of
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the world upside down and back to front. At first he was reaching up for things that were down and turning left when he wanted to go right. But after eight days he had adjusted and everything seemed normal — until he took the glasses off and fell over: Organisations are like that: they make us see the distortions as normal. Seeing things as they really are is not usually very highly regarded in organisations and far too often it is seen as laziness or unwillingness to make an effort. But some problems just don't have easy solutions. The Fool, outside, without the lenses on, looks at the world around him and sees the truth. Sometimes he just provides a `blinding glimpse of the obvious.' The obvious can be blinding — it can make people fall over. It is the Fool’s role to provide this perspective. The Fool sees that the emperor has no clothes and he is not afraid to say so — which brings us to: The third principle? Which is that the Fool is honest. Seeing things as they really are without telling it like it is leads to profound frustration and cynicism. This is another cultural malaise in organisations. Our organisations are littered with individuals who can appreciate what their world is like but are either too scared or too political to blow the whistle and who know that they wouldn’t be believed anyway. That is what the Fool must be for. And if we don't tell him, no one will. It takes nerves to tell a King the truth but it also takes skill. And that's the fourth and last principle: the Fool is a master of communication. He has to be. For the Fool in the Lear's court, acceptance and influence depended on his communication skills — if he could make 'em laugh, he could say what he liked. And it's true also of bringing change to the status quo. This isn't just about being a left-brained academic analyst. Nobody will be grateful to you if you prove that they have to change — you have to persuade them to want to change and that's a communication issue. It requires all the skills of listening, understanding and building rapport. It uses tools like passion and energy and even laughter — tools that we keep being told don't belong in the professional kit bag. But they do. Jostling in there with analysis and planning are all the elements of our personality. Where is it written that
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it'd be a good idea to leave most of our personality at home and just bring in the dull bits for work? It isn't organisations that change, it's people. Organisations change in units of one and people don’t change by telepathy — they only change if you can communicate with them. I think each of those principles alone are very good ones. But put them together in one person and it doesn't sound too safe to me. That's the strength of the idea of the Corporate Fool: even thinking about doing it makes us feel uncomfortable. But that’s what we need. And given that it makes us question and contemplate, it is, ultimately, a Foolish idea. But ...
Old Fool A short history of Fooling All societies need their Fools — and the society of business is no exception. Fools have always been with us, satirising our absurdity and saying the obvious and the obviously unsayable. Professional Fools are recorded from the fifth dynasty of Egypt until well into the eighteenth Century, and are found in societies as diverse as the Aztecs of Mexico to the Alps of Austria, from the Heoyka of the Dakota Native Americans to the household imbeciles of Rome. One wonders who the first Fool was. In Neanderthal caves did one figure rise up, heft a shank bone onto his head and dance daftly, pretending to be a buffalo or an auroch or a bull? Did he ape the lumbering movement of the largest of the hunters, the leader of the tribe? Did the others laugh? And did they embrace him, or make him sleep by the entrance where it's cold, as they did not trust him or think him right in the head? And if that was their first reaction, at what point did they see beyond the gags and silly walks to the Fool's true power? The Fool has always been a social outcast. The early medieval Fools were physical and mental oddities — specimens of pity and horror, who amused with their ugliness or their simplicity: Forest Gumps of the ancient age. And by laughing at the — their `otherness' and exclusion — we could feel better about our sameness and inclusion. We were bound together, for all our diversity, by not being like him. In this sense, Fools, Jesus-like in their self-sacrifice, are our saviours. There is more depth, strangeness and complexity to this relationship than the `clown' pigeonhole we would prefer to put them in. Contemporary descriptions of the early Fool characters are loving and compassionate portraits. For even as a mental defective or physical curio, the Fool had a valuable function. He cheered us up — and united us in aversion. He represented something like what the stage writer Berthold Brecht called an alienation device. When, on stage, an actor comes out of character and announces a new scene or comments on the action, or when any activity is used to disrupt the so-called fourth-wall between the audience and the stage, any magical illusion is broken and the audience are reminded that they are in a
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theatre, watching a play. They are alienated from the false world of the play and are forced to interact with the artifice of the game — they must recognise that there is a real world in which they have a responsibility to act. Similarly, the natural Fool served to remind us of the artificiality of the games we are playing, and to compare his own inopportune weakness with our latitude and potential. But this was all diversion. It was not until the Fool became wise, that a really powerful model for influencing an organised society became viable. The office of the licensed Fool was one of considerable dignity. Some were permanently attached to a court — John Heywood with Henry VIII, Kunz von der Rosen with Maximilian I of Austria. Others wandered about, like Italy's legendary Fool Bertoldo; and India's Muladeva. Rahere apparently became such a court favourite after the Norman Conquest that he had the power, at his religious conversion, to found the priory of St Bartholomew in Smithfield. The apotheosis of the Fool in the Western tradition — drawing together the strands of the Harlequin, the pied piper minstrel and Loki the prankster — came in the first years of the seventeenth century. When Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night, As You Like It and, ultimately, King Lear he signalled a shift from an earthy stage fool, born of the tradition of deformed inadequates, towards a sweeter, wiser Fool, who was, of course, no fool. This is a Fool that we can use constructively. This is a Fool who can add value. Lear: Fool:
Does thou call me Fool, boy? That thou wast born with. All thy other titles thou hast given away ...
So the Fool as we know him and as we offer him into business, has two parents. On the one side is the natural Fool of fortune: the mental and physical invalid who amuses by his presence and his unconscious wit. On the other is the paid entertainer, the jester, the deliberate manipulator of emotion and respect. From these parents, our Fool inherits several traits. From the natural, he gains his benign disregard for rank or tradition and the will to speak as he finds. From the jester, he gets his instinct to perform and his satirical insight into convention and habit. Both parents present our Fool as a challenge to the status quo. And importantly, both parents bequeath him his place outside the
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power structures, free from the constraints of promotion or favour, where reward is sometimes intangible and sometimes absent. Whether natural or jester, or both, the Fool is not like us. Who better to make us different than we are?
The Tarot Fool: a Journey By Richard Ashcroft
In order to understand The Fool card, it is useful to know a little about Tarot itself and how it works. Tarot decks date back as far as 1392, although its roots are far older and have associations with the most ancient forms of divination and mysticism. The reality of drawing cards and their interpretation is, however, far from mystic. It's really simple, straightforward and without any hocus pocus or dry ice. When you draw the cards basically what you are doing is finding some way to project your subconscious, your intuition, so that it can be seen clearly. This does not have to be done with The Tarot Deck, Runes, Colour
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cards, I Ching, etc.; it can be done with anything and everything. We are constantly surrounded by signs from the universe which reflect back to us our deepest thoughts and feelings. The Tarot is simply a way of consolidating those intuitions and provides very effective symbols for various different aspects of human existence. It makes the subconscious conscious and therefore brings it into awareness. To put this another way. Imagine for a moment that all the knowledge you need is stored in the computer of your brain. Everything you ever need to know! Now imagine that you have a problem you would like to resolve in your life, and you need to find the answer somewhere in the bowels of your zillion gigabyte hard disk. The tarot cards would act as a tool, a search engine if you like to bring that information to the screen allowing you to see it and therefore make informed choices. This analogy is a little simplistic because the Tarot gives indications and suggestions more than direct solutions. It will not solve problems. It will however give you some very good advice, clarify a lot of the grey areas, and invite the seeker to look at things from a completely new perspective. There are many different types of Tarot Decks, each with different symbols and designs. The structure of the decks tends to be similar though. A deck normally consists of 78 cards, which break down into The Major Arcana, The Court Cards and The Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana provides direct answers to questions and at the same time gives valuable teachings of both a spiritual and material nature (for the two are one). Each card has a numerical value which allows the seeker to calculate their soul, personality and growth cards. The Fool is the first card in the deck. His number is zero and cannot therefore be calculated in the above categories. The reason for this is that The Fool is common to all. He is the beginning of the journey and represents creative potential — that place we all start our life journey. The best way to read the cards is through intuition. This is not a gift reserved for the few. All have access to it and use it constantly. As a result it is quite possible for a card to mean something to one person and something slightly or even radically different to someone else.
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`Y'know son, I remember when I was your age.' The boy stared up at him. He saw images of his dad in miniature when everything in the world was black and white. He understood what his father said, but he couldn't help feeling that there was a touch of sadness there. He felt it in the hand that caressed his hair and in his father's eyes, sometimes looking, sometimes watching, as if from a great distance. `What do you want to be when you grow up?' `Tarzan', said the boy. His father smiled as he watched the boy half skip and half run to the back of the garden. The trees were dense there and the moss grew thick. He knew his son loved playing there. He imagined all the adventures he would live. The trees all had names at that age. As he felt the suns rays gently warm his face, he sat down and leaned his back against the oak that had always been a friend to him and breathed. He felt his tensions start to evaporate in the afternoon sun. His mind drifted. He wondered when he had last felt like this. A picture arose in his mind. One of childhood. In his mind's eye he looked around the garden he knew as a child. The grass was so green. He had never seen such colour. Was there something special about the soil where he grew up? or had he just seen things as they Truly were? The air smelt of summer and his body felt alive. He drifted again in his dream. This time he saw the face of his Grandfather. It was good to see him again so clearly. He missed the little chats they had. He remembered being asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. He didn't remember the answer, it didn't seem important. It was probably something to do with football or Space 1999.
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All he remembered were the feelings he associated with his future. He saw them now through the eyes of the child he was. He saw in an instant a life ahead of him full of quests, deeds of daring, adventure and discovery. `Hair breadth scapes I th'imminent deadly breach'. Journeys of colour, tastes smells and senses. Of luck and love, of struggle and redemption. A lifetime where he could be all things. Every moment full of the whispered promise of the next. The fullness of a life held in the regard of a child. A child that knew nothing of the fears, disappointments, and expense. He saw how he had compromised his dreams along the way. How his head had overruled his heart telling him that what he really wanted was security. That as long as he was secure, the adventures would come later.
When? He woke up with a start.
I began to think about children and how they think and act. I started asking myself questions about why it is that children can learn so much before they even go to school. How their minds are like sponges and can pick up foreign languages with total ease and no apparent effort and how they can ask questions so innocently that cut straight through to the heart of the matter. I started thinking about trying to learn languages at school and how hard that seemed to be. I started noticing how children focus completely on what they are doing and how they seem totally to be in the moment, without any thought of past or future and how in adulthood that can seem so hard. A relationship started forming in my mind between the `creative potential' of The Fool card and the `creative potential' of children. The two are in fact the same. Children in many ways epitomise creative potential for the simple reason that they are at the beginning of their journey and have all their possibilities before them. Wouldn't that be amazing then if we could harness the capabilities we had when we were tiny. It must be possible for we have the same bits and pieces as adults as we had when we were children. It is only the way we regard our potential, our attitude towards it, that has changed.
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Real dreams are the ones we tell our children about, the ones we want them to believe in. We tell them because secretly in our heart of hearts we want to believe in them too. We delight as much in the telling of the stories as they do in the receiving. What's this got to do with The Fool in Tarot? Take a moment first of all, to think about how you felt in those moments when you were a child snuggled up in bed listening to a story being told. Now see how clearly you saw things then. See how vivid were the colours. Remember how hours seemed so slow. They seemed to take ages to go round. School holidays were a lifetime. Think about what you see now. Do you see time flashing by? Do weeks go by and you find yourself asking where the time has gone? How about when you bump into someone you haven't seen for ten years? Do you notice then that there seems to be a different time scale in operation there? The adult's view is retrospective: it therefore only appears to be shorter. Humans are only beginning to understand that time is what you make it. That if you are able to truly be `in the moment', time is longer, fuller and more satisfying. For the next thirty minutes I listened in trance to what the voice told me. I heard many wonders and I am still reeling from the information revealed about human beings, their full potential and of the growth and evolution of humankind. What would the effect be if the energy of The Fool were made manifest in the corporate world? Imagine a world where fear does not rule. Where one can take risks with eyes set on a common goal beneficial to all. Imagine a place where creativity and expression are championed; where all people are acknowledged and recognised for the greatness they hold inside. This would be a world where all should sing in harmony
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The Corporate Fool with the voice of the heart. There would be no politics or power struggles for each person would be appreciated for their unique potency. Systems would not exist because they would be recognised as restriction not freedom. A world where creative potential becomes creative expression is a world where you acknowledge that you are Free. You were born Free, you are always Free (all ways). You always have free will, and YOU CHOOSE to live your freedom, or make excuses for not doing so. The Fool is the beginning of the journey. It represents the original potential of the human being. It is the unconscious purity. When the child achieves a state of consciousness, a balancing act starts between the conscious and the unconscious minds. The two aspects cannot work in spite of each other, they are like Siamese twins — they must work in harmony or there is chaos. Chaos is the way most people run their lives, purely because they do not acknowledge that they have a choice. Most of adult life is spent trying to achieve that balance and let the purity of childhood, joy and love return driven by an awakened and educated consciouness. This original potential when in partnership with a well-motivated conscious mind is then in a position to re-unite itself with its creator; thereby closing the circle. It is for this reason that, if you draw The Fool card in Tarot, it can indicate the beginning of a new stage in life, a time of transformation, great creativity, fearlessness and fortune (the two are the same). This is what The Fool is all about. The potential to create. It is the force within us all which when channelled is capable of anything. It is the power that allows us to take fantastic risks with a smile on our face and to feel that we are surfing on life. It is that wellspring, that fountain of love and warmth within. It is the ability to listen to a piece of music and become completely lost in it. It is a fearlessness born of enthusiasm for life. It is the secret ingredient which is all difference between living and existing. It is the ability to play with all aspects of life. It is irrepressible and intoxicating. It has neither ego nor malice, it merely is.
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The Fool has an innate love of all things and a love of the self. She never questions whether or not something is possible, she simply forges ahead with her gaze fixed on her goals. It is in this feeling that all is possible. This is the difference between what we perceive as success and failure. This is the attitude that allows for a quantum leap in ones life path or learning and in the transformation of negative situations to positive. If the Fool were a tightrope Walker he would never look down but remain focused on his destination. Fear therefore has no power over him. His faith in existence and in the power of good in the universe is unshakeable and needs no proof. This card reminds us that each and every one of us has unique gifts. These gifts we have always had and always will have. It tells us that our dreams are there for the asking if only we dare to take a leap and give these gifts our full creative expression. If you draw this card it will gently and playfully tell you that you are ready for a new beginning, a rebirth, the first day of the rest of your life. That you should make that leap of faith (like Indiana Jones in the third film `a leap of faith from the lion's mouth') in spite of the fear. It is only then that we realise that fear does not mean truth. If you could start all over again and live in the world of your dreams, how would your life be different? ...
About the contributor Richard Ashcroft is a genius. He plays 15 musical instruments and speaks 12 different languages including ancient Aramaic. He speaks to Angels and extra-terrestrials on a regular basis and has come up with the theory that it's much nicer than not to try and get on with people. He works as a consultant in business, an actor in the Arts, a writer in his living room, a clothes designer in his head. He can be reached at
[email protected]
Jung Fool The dark side of organisations `People simply cannot bear the spiritual aridity and meaningless that comes from living on a surface — even a successful one — for too long.' Jean Houston, Myths for the Future
`Disorder belongs to the totality of life, and the spirit of that disorder is the trickster. His function ... or rather the function of his mythology, of the tales told about him, is to add disorder to order and so make a whole, to render possible, within the fixed bounds of what is permitted, an experience of what is not permitted.' Karl Kerenyi
In Jungian terms, the Fool is a collective fantasy, a vital element of the Universal Psyche. We all create him and all share in him. But we each see him differently. Part sly and sophisticated wit, part earthy beast, a shape-shifter, a reverser of the normal order of things, a character whose pranks lead to his own punishment, an alchemist who makes the seemingly meaningless into the meaningful, the Fool is an enduring mythical figure with an abundance of manifestations. He's there in the carnival Lords of Misrule of Mediaeval holy days, the depiction of the devil in early drama as the dupe (not the scourge) of God, the Pulcinella of Commmedia del'Arte, the Hermes and Mercurious of the ancient worlds, the trickster figures of Native American mythology; he's there in the characters of folklore such as Tom Thumb and Stupid Hans and Hanswurst; he's there in the Fool card of the Tarot and the both valuable and valueless Joker of card games. Perhaps he's even there in the malicious poltergeists of parapsychology. He's certainly there today in technology, in the modern foolish experience of having your computer crash on you just before you save your most vital work. A myth is an embodiment of truth, and the truth is that human beings are not perfect and the world does not always work as we would expect it to. So the Fool is an enduring myth.
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All mythical figures spring from our inner psychic struggles, and one in particular: what kind of a thing is a Man? A God? A Hero? A Magician? A Warrior? A Lover? A Quintessence of Dust? A Fool? Is Man divine or just silly? Or is he, worst of all, a little shit? In the timeless, worldwide myths of the Fool, we read of man's struggle with himself and a world into which he has been thrust, screaming and questioning. Of course, this struggle has not ended, so the Fool myth is reinvented and reborn in every age and every culture. We are, apparently, as attracted to the Fool as we are repulsed by him, otherwise there would be no explanation for the figure's universality, richness and endurance. Fools do not die. Why? Is it because of their innocence and harmlessness, that they are spared being put to death? Is it their naiveté that saves them? Or are they continually resurected because we know that they are not naive and, rather, that they have much to tell us about our existence? The myriad stories that celebrate the myth of the Fool seem to share certain functions: releasing pent up indignation through laughter, making those who wield power seem more human celebrating taboos and repressions, making them less fearful through understanding what they are and are not connecting us to the parts of our universe which our rationality would ignore: the underworld, for example, or the potency of animals and plants. Above all, like all myths, the stories teach us about ourselves. In the Fool myth, we're working something out: we are trying to find out who we are. The rough elements of the Fool tell us something about our dark half, our Shadow, which our Ego would prefer us to ignore.
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Our Shadow is all the parts of ourselves that we would prefer not to confess to and which we attempt to hide from both ourselves and others. Most of us will acknowledge our shadow when someone points out the evidence of our imperfections and weaknesses, but some steadfastly refuse to admit it. I know of a board of directors who, in the midst of a buy-out, were being torn apart by their own stress, fear, envy and anger; but who laughed out of court the suggestion that business is a place of emotion and that psychological counselling might help them in this their most critical time together as a team. One of the problems of acknowledging the Shadow side of organisational life is that it involves becoming aware of personal inadequacy and limitation; concepts which business is hardly comfortable with.
I used to run Stress Management Workshops for a major insurance market and was always surprised by how many signed up but how few actually turned up. When I asked the participants who did arrive if they could explain this occurrence, the consensus seemed to be either that those who most need help are also those who will always fail to find the time to attend (which is funny but true) or that the culture was such that owing up to stress was an acknowledgement of your weakness and would be more likely to put you in the firing line at the next round of redundancies (which was probably equally true, but much less funny). These stories would seem to support my observation that somehow in business we are expected to be supermen and women, that organisations, though made up of human beings, are somehow free of human failings. Organisations, apparently, just don't have a Shadow side. Jung was right about people, of course, but not about business people. The Fool says differently. He knows that accepting our weaknesses does not leave us vulnerable to attack; it leaves us open to growth. He knows that the way to the light is not to ignore the darkness, but to face it. The Fool might liberate us from our fantasy of perfectibility.
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There's a second element of the Shadow that the Fool would call us to wake up to. Our Shadow is all the possibilities in life that we have rejected because of the choices we have made. My Shadow is everything I am not — the thoughts and ideas I choose not to have, the behaviours I choose not to exhibit, the experiences I choose not to have. Me and my Ego have created a life for me based, by accident and design, on my selfconcepts and my expectations of what is right and proper and what will bring me happiness, success and the approval of others. The trouble is, my Ego is interested in maintaining things as they are, convincing me that the choices we have made for me are absolutely correct. The journey of personal growth (whether through psychotherapy or otherwise) is a process of broadening our self-awareness and becoming more conscious of the choices we have made and the implications they have for our lives. Personal growth is about is about waking up to perspectives other than those of the Ego. In other words, there is truth hidden in our Shadow — the truth of the experiences we are omitting from our lives and the value they might offer us. If we don't try them, we'll never really know them (our Ego will just continue to tell us they're not right for us). And this is why the Fool needs to be born again as a part of the business world. The civilisation, the formalisation, the bureaucracy of business (its Ego?) has, appalled by our only too human gross and magical otherness (its Id?), suppressed all that into the unconscious, into the Shadow. Yet, as Jung reminds us, nothing can be dealt with in the Shadow, nor will what lies there ever go away. All it does is wait for a time to show itself. Maybe the time is now. The business world has long struggled to dismiss the rough, the individualistic, the sensual, the magical, the chaotic. In business, we dress the same, we talk the same, we all turn up at the same time every day. We behave ourselves. We strive for `excellence' and `quality'. If it cannot be pinned down and measured, it is worthless. Everything has its place. Customers out front, workers in the back. Process in, process out. We all know what `professional' means. Be professional and you'll rise, surely, to become a director, since that is the order of things. Join the Institute of Directors in London and you'll see your heroes on the wall, painted generals every one, symbols of another organisation that against its power from the sublimation of the individual to the needs of order. Business dismisses its Shadow, as if the only valid experience is scientific, rational and socially conventional.
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But the concerns of modern organisations are issues of the Shadow side, the things that it has chosen not to believe in until relatively recently. There are the issues of how to release creativity, of how to manage diversity, of how to embrace paradox, of the sharing of power that is not simply equitable but effective, of how to learn. Most companies, even the most enlightened or progressive, nibble away at these things when time permits; most see them as non-core elements that they'll deal with as best they can during `business as usual'. The Fool seeks to bring them out of the periphery and into the core of organisation and work. There is much else in the Shadow of organisational life — all the stuff that is part of a vibrant and real human life but is somehow not deemed relevant when we're at work. Some thinkers are asking us to consider these things now. So, for example, having struggled so long with teamworking, we're now contemplating community as the force that binds groups together1 — since community acknowledges the pull of the heart in a way that teamworking never did. There are books on our business shelves about narcissism and spirit and soul and humour in business. The Fool pushes us further down this road, to look at other human realities that our organisations try to ignore. How long before we have books about fear in business? Or love? The Mythical Fool glories in all the piss and shit and genitalia and trickery and laughter and lawlessness as a direct challenge to an Ego that would convince us that a human being is not and animal. The Corporate Fool would glory in all the freedom and creativity and truth and potential that lies in the Corporate Shadow, as a direct challenge to an organisational Ego that would persuade us that it is possible to separate and compartmentalise our lives. He gives us a chance to recognise and taste elements of ourselves that our conditioning has taught us to exclude or ignore. He therefore pushes us towards wholeness, unity and authenticity. The enduring power of the Fool is that he represents our essential duality, the tension between opposites. Male and female, good and evil, nothing and everything, not just opposites but equals. Facing up to our Shadow is a sign of strength, not weakness. It allows us to transcend our limitations.
Our chance to be Thunder Dreamers The Lakota Indians also called their Fools — the Heyoka — by another name: the Thunder Dreamers. They held the Heyoka in high honour and respect, believing them to be the
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bearers of enormous power — capable of shape-shifting, invisibility and transmutation into other forms of energy. They believed that, if need be, the Heyoka could move mountains. Why? Because in their actions they are capable of turning the worlds upside down — depriving us of all that we think certain and inviolable. If the Heyoka can turn the world on its head, how easily they could move mountains. The Heyoka-Fool makes boundaries explicit by crossing them; demonstrates the meaning of order through showing us disorder. Most important of all, the Heyoka-Fool reminds us that in the flux of the world, nothing is infallible. A Heyoka-Fool teaches the limits and conventions of social behaviour and social inhibitions. Pissing on the fire does not denigrate our attempts to be spiritual. It reminds us that this world is what we make it and that all our conventions — even the most ancient, traditional and `holy', are man-made. They are the result of choices we have made in our heads and said in our words and can just as easily unmake in our actions. In fact, the Heyoka-Fools' actions urge us to be more spiritual — in a grounded, everyday sense, the spirituality we need to be capable of after the ceremony has ended. The Heyoka-Fool challenges us to be spiritual and human, human and spiritual everyday. The Heyoka-Fools, pissing on the fire, dismantle our world in order to remind us how much power we each have to create it.
The Fool would have no loyalty to our companies. No loyalty, even, to ourselves. The Fool's only loyalty is to our potential to be better than we are. And if he has to do and say some strange things to wake us up to that potential, he will.
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We are not independent beings. Our lives depend on how we act and interact with others. The organisations we create, therefore, and the roles we make for ourselves, are reflections of how much or how little we know and value ourselves. They may also demonstrate some of the limitations within which we live. Having understood the power of the Fool to break through simplistic ways of thinking about ourselves and the world, we now imagine a place for him where we spend so much of our time: in the modern organisation.
We are where our consciousness is. When we dream that is where we are. If you imagine the sun you feel as you do in the sun. The same is true of the rain. Imagination is travel.Go to the places you most want to see. Richard Ashcroft
Note 1
See Community Building: Renewing Spirit and Learning in Business, edited by Kazimierz Gozdz.
PART TWO Imagine Fragments from a manifesto for change
The way to rise is to obey and please. Ben Johnson The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see its arse. Proverb The company is an economic vehicle invented by society. It has no rights to survive. But value systems and philosophies survive. People take it with them. Edgar H. Schein
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The Fool and the end of history? Francis Fukuyama wrote a best-selling book called The End of History and the Last Man. His thesis was that with the development of liberal democracy as we know it, all the major questions about social organisation and political structures were effectively answered, and we could consider this the end of the story. This didn't mean that nothing is going to happen anymore, just that, in the Hegelian sense of the onward march of Making to solution, Mankind has largely got there. Whether you agree with his thesis or not, the key point is that he felt able to do it — he could realistically declare a fitness in the way we do things politically that was worth celebrating. No one could currently write a similar book about The End of Business History. In business organisation we are still in a Dark Ages (an age, by the way, in which Fools are used to thriving), nowhere near answering the central questions: like `why do we work?', `for whom do companies exist?' and `how should we arrange our companies and our lives to maximise our effectiveness and our satisfaction?' We are nowhere near because, if we are honest, most of our companies, from great corporations to little corner concerns, are pretty grim. On the whole, we have designed ourselves into illiberal institutions more like regimented high schools than homes for creative adults. Robert Fulghum (who, among more interesting things, used to work for IBM) wrote a sweet, wise book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. These are the things I learnt share everything; play fair; don't hit people; put things back where you found them; clean up your own mess; don't take things that aren't yours; live a balanced life; learn some and think some and draw some and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some; take a nap every afternoon; when you go out into the world, watch for traffic; hold hands and stick together... Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Well, our companies seem to suggest that that learning stopped at high school: Do what you're told, wear what we tell you, earn what you're given and be grateful, keep quiet at the back, follow the curriculum, never go into the labs alone, don't answer back, remember teacher knows best, class starts at 9:00 prompt, and if you're going to be late or absent, we require a note from your doctor (or your mum).
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And yet, and yet, the cry rings out: `You're all empowered. You're all part of the brave new world of liberation management and learning organisations...' This is a dichotomy that probably helps explain the recent growth in personal and spiritual healing texts for business people, because the truth is that, with a few notable exceptions, we aren't very liberated and we don't have companies that are very good at learning. The very fact that every odd counter-example is still worth several columns in the business press suggests just how normal it is to be bleak. If we want people in business to behave like adults (and we do, don't we?) then we might have to stop treating them like children. So says the Fool. Most organisations are without the learning and growth mechanisms that they will need to get the best out of their people because they are based on a series of dodgy premises. We have accepted the wrong premises about people (that they can't changed and that they are fundamentally naughty and untrustworthy and so need constant monitoring and careful control); interaction (it's objective and so largely independent of human performance); the future (it'll be the same as the past, only faster); what business is for (doing things to other people: serving them, beating them, exploiting them, shafting them); information (it's just the same as things); the role of work in life (one is quite different from the other and they should be kept distinct); change itself (an avoidable fear); and what business could be (only what it is now plus a few tweaks).
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The easy way to test these bald assertions is for us to ask, honestly, 1
`Is the way my business run really as good as it could be?'
and 2
`Am I personally really a fulfilled as I can be in it?'
We don't think many people, at any level in our companies, will be able to say `yes' to either. Part of that status quo that the restless Fool reacts against is our apparent ability to survive in an increasingly chaotic and stressful business environment whilst continuing not to be able to answer `yes' to either of the questions above. Things are getting faster, bigger, more ubiquitous; things are getting more, but things may not be getting better. Most people can tolerate this frustration, but Fools cannot. This manifesto is, in part, an attempt to point us towards some alternative premises. It is founded on the belief that for many of the customs by which we order our working lives, there just is a better way.
Apparatchicks and feudalists It won't be easy to change things for two main reasons. First of all, because some people think that we have got there — that there is no need to change: they are freely able to make money or exploit markets and so on and they think that therefore everything's fine; and secondly, because some think it can't be changed — this is how it has to be. These two positions represent the greatest possible inertia in the shift to change. But they are not insurmountable obstacles. In fact, both of these propositions are unlikely to survive the turbulence ahead — for all their apparent power now. Nonetheless, since they are the strongest barriers to a better way, it is worth briefly investigating each perception.
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The first group are the beneficiaries. Like the apparatchicks or the nomenklatura in the old Soviet system, they are the winners in the system's failings and are shielded from its worst effects. They have their corporate jets, the equivalents of their dachas by the Black Sea, and though they know that the majority of their people are unhappy and disempowered, they either don't care or develop powerful counter-rationalisations. Like the citizens of the Brave New World, they think of themselves as the Alphas who deserve their success and of the rest as the range from Betas to Epsilon Minus semimorons who also deserve their stations. But their Panglossian self-justification is about to receive a salutary jolt. Theirs is not `the best of all possible worlds'. The new realities tell us that a system which rewards conformity and ideology over humanity will lead to inflexibility and distortion, which will, eventually, mean collapse. Just ask the Soviets. We know this, and on the way up in an organisation we may even say it. But having reached the dizzy peaks, we feel: `I've had years of taking it — now I get to dish it out — and anyway, I didn't get where I am today by bucking the system. I got to my position of power using the old behaviours. I'm not going to give it up easily — after all I have most to lose. Besides, if I can stick it out for a few more years, then those young whelps beneath me can inherit the problem.' Except, of course, the young whelps are already being programmed in the old behaviours ... Part of our task will be to persuade the privileged that it makes good commercial sense for them, too, to work for a more human and liberated regime. That the new economic realities of the information age will reward divergence and imagination over conformance and tradition. The second group — those who believe that this is just the way it has to be — are the subjects of the system. Like the feudalists of old, they can conceive of no other regime. After all, does the King not draw his authority from Divine Right? Does he not rule over the Barons who in turn rule over the people — and to each of us is there not a place and a season? Does the whole social structure not cascade down from the almighty, warts and all? And who are we to challenge His Will? We are mere bystanders as the Barons fight the King and depose him and rule by divine right themselves ...
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With this mentality it isn't just the beneficiaries who maintain it. If it were, it wouldn't have lasted. Faith and resignation are open particularly to those at the bottom — they like to know how things should be. They believe it when they are told that sweat and toil is man's proper lot. And they even enjoy seeing powerful others. This is a human failing known as self-alienation: the preparedness to impute to others our responsibility over ourselves. It accounts for most incidence of gullibility and for many instances of fervour. `Someone else', we cry, `is powerful, and we are not, so we will believe in them and do nothing ourselves — for we are weak — and that shall be the condition of our life'. That's no way to run a railroad. Actually, come to think of it, it's probably a very good way to run a railroad — but then many railroads were built with slave labour in the first place ...
What we're not saying So the Fool has two enemies in his sights: the apparatchicks and the feudalists. And the Fool is not scared of using the term `enemy': if they are not for him, they must be agin him. But having identified the target, a lot of readers may have jumped to conclusions about what's coming up — they'll have guessed what we're going to say. To pre-empt some of the more predictable responses, this is probably a good point to explain what the Fool is not saying. The Fool is not saying that we should encourage anarchy in our companies — that we should relinquish all command and control structures always. The Fool is not saying that we should run our companies like some sort of latter-day commune in which we all get free love and just desserts: an equal slice of the cake.
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The Fool is not saying that we should give away free money, or pay more for less, or be nice to people just for the hell of it (though that wouldn't be a bad idea). The Fool is not saying that flippancy is a better management mode than seriousness, or that some businesses aren't deadly serious some of the time. The Fool is saying that, whether we like it or not (and we recognise that a lot of people won't), things are changing and we're not, in general, ready — despite considerable lip service to `modern' business ideas. We are being bombarded by instructions that we must be creative and innovative to survive — from Peter Drucker to Tom Peters to President Clinton — but we have failed to recognise the extent of the change necessary to achieve this — and the `paradigm' shift that this will represent in the structuring of our business — and personal — lives. For some and for forthcoming generations, the patterns of behaviour that are more likely to generate innovation will come by instinct. But for many of us in business already, programmed into patterns that are frankly quite unhelpful in that cause, we will actually have to get used to doing some things very differently. And for the record, if necessary, the Fool is saying that we might want to think about holding business meetings in the hot tub. We've done it, it's fun and it works. (Note for Apparatchicks: you could have a deluxe Decision-Enhancing Hot Tub for Directors only; a larger, less-opulent one for management and a cold one in the car park for part-time and hourly paid workers.) What else does the Fool say, in challenging the accepted wisdom? First, a story; then we'll answer the question.
The Corporate Fool
Heart of darkness Do you ever wonder about the cynics? The certain opponents. The Old Lags. The clubby, confident, critics of change. I'd been wondering what it looks like from their point of view. Wondering how it feels to be so sure in times of shift. Suppose I had a machine that — Joe 90 like — allowed me to inhabit the mind of another? And not just see with their perspective, but actually investigate their cerebrum. What might I see on my journey more sad than strange? I'd picked out my target quite carefully. The right age, the right rumpled suit, the right school tie, the right financial services profile and the right persistent mentality. And then I went in. And fell over. First thing! Partly from the giddy feeling of being in someone else's head, of course, but mainly because of all the junk in there. The obstacles, the rusty clutter, the detritus of old thoughts and older prejudices. It was a wrecker's yard of clapped-out machinery forced to work too long, of instruments of maintenance rather than renewal. It was polluted, dank and musty — nobody ever opens the windows. There was no fresh air. I'd chosen well. I followed the only path through this wasteland the path always travelled by. And came to parts more comfortable: an old leather sofa, a fireplace, sepia photos of a world gone by. And there he sat: blind, in the comfy armchair, in the wood panelled room giving out onto a junk yard in a swamp, in the smog. With an old dog. Which had fleas. Who smelled. Bad. And peed on my foot. `Who's there?' said the blind man, alerted by the sound of the stream bubbling off my leg. `A Fool' I relied, trying to sound nonchalant, which isn't easy when you're trespassing in wet trousers. `What do you want?' `I want to know how you think.'
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Part Two: Imagine `I don't think, I protect.' `Protect what?' `My end of the seesaw.' `How?' I hadn't seen a seesaw: no games of any kind. `I hold down my end, to keep it in balance. That's my job. To defend my end. To keep it tipped against them.' `Against whom?' We were alone: me, the blind man and the diuretic dog. `All of them. Anyone. Against the other end of the plank.' `And you live by this?' `This and my Creed.' `Your creed?' `Trust No One. Share Nothing. Keep Apart.' `Keep what apart?' `Things. Life and Work. Compartments. Divisions. Particulate and distinct.' `And how is it?' `Hard. Thankless. Ill-rewarded. And lonely. I used to belong. I used to be a part. Now I am apart. It is my burden.' `But why continue?' `I must. To stop them getting me.' `Who?' `All of them. After me. All after me. All trying to fell me down. Break the old things. I like the old things. I think I'm a little afraid. Do you have any blankets? It's cold here. Or a shoe?' `Nothing really — just this old motley.' `What type? Is it colourful?'
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`Oh yes — a coat of many colours, a thing of threads and patches.' `Oh no, that won't do at all. We can't have colours. Far too disruptive. I need a nice dull blanket. A grey or dun brown would be good. Haven't you anything like that?' `No, just the motley.' `Are you colourful then? Are you bright and fresh?' `I suppose ...' `Oh.' He pulled his rags closer about him, and reached out to the dog. `I think you'd better go, please. Go. Don't hurt me. Don't take anything. Leave it as it is.' `I ...' `Kill, Spot, kill!' The dog cocked his leg and peed on my other leg. `I'd better go.' `You'd better had. And don't come back till it's the same. Out there.' `That may be difficult.' `That's my affliction. My fight goes on. I have allies. We hold down the end of the seesaw. We keep the status as quo as we can. We persevere. We survive. We are.' And he sniffed and settled back in his chair. Where I left him. Looking backwards, his blind eyes misting, his thin body cold without doubt. First published in Management Consultancy, 1996
What we are saying: new definitions will create new behaviours We can't blame the Apparatchicks and Feudalists, much as we disagree with them. After all, their behaviour is absolutely congruent with certain core beliefs that circulate in this world.
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And at the core of those core beliefs, certainly when it comes to the world of business, is the word `professional'. When we run the How to Make Work Fun! seminars, participants spend six hours creating opportunities and possibilities for nurturing a culture that encourages fun at work, and then the final hour worrying about having to do it. Two mantras of denial come up at this stage: `I don't want to look a fool'
and `We can't do that: it wouldn't be professional'.
The first thing to note about both these statements is that they both articulate strongly a need to be recognised, accepted and approved. If we don't get that recognition, acceptance and approval, a thing just isn't worth doing. Even if that thing reflects our principles or our hunger for a better way, apparently, we shouldn't do it if it damages our reputation. It's ironic, because the Fool, on the other hand, has no need to be approved of by anyone. He does want to look a Fool, because he knows that's better than being a nice hypocrite. He does what he does because it needs doing, not because he wants you to think well of him. There's a Zen Buddhist saying: `If you understand, things are just as they are. If you do not understand, things are just as they are.'
To which the Fool would add `If you like me, things are just as they are. If you do not like me, things are just as they are.'
What else might our participants in the fun workshops mean by their declarations?
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Fool? The dictionary, as usual, is pretty unhelpful when it comes to definitions of the word Fool. We might find:
or
Participants on the How to Make Work Fun! seminars should be afraid of looking like a dessert. So should we all. (It's the worse thing that could happen. That's why they let the CEO go at Smithick and Chunderpaul's you know. Came over all trifly.) As for the other definition, this whole book provides a new way of looking at Fooling which we hope would make a person proud, not ashamed, to be a Fool. We hope it shows that the Fool, in fact, has access to wisdom and prudence in abundance. Which leaves us with that other excuse: I can't do these things because I'm professional. In other words, my professionalism limits me ...
Professional? Business people at all levels use the word `professional' as if it's clear what it means. It isn't; like all words, `professional' is open to interpretation and based on context. Business people say it proudly — by which we infer that `professionalism' is something to aspire to. So it's perhaps clear that `professional', in a business and non-prostitute sense,
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means `good'. And that's great. We all want to be good. But good — why? Good, because of what? What lies behind `good'? More often than not, we believe people mean:
This is the diet of successful business practices on which we've all been reared. But the world is no longer like this. It is not uniform, predictable or safe. It's certainly not reliable. The rules have changed, so we need a new definition. Let's keep professional meaning `good' but let's also let it mean much more.
The new type of business person that we propose here is both a Fool and a Professional. We no longer have to make a binary choice.
Changing organisations from the `Foolside' We all know what things look like at our companies from the inside. We all know what our clients look like from the outside. But what do things look like from the Foolside? Some of the Fool's roles as we describe them over the next few pages may look familiar — perhaps you feel that some of these functions are already being performed either officially
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or unofficially in your own organisations. But being granted a role is not the same as having the freedom to perform it. Being an insider behaving like an outsider is not the same as being a Foolsider. There are already organisations who know the potential of information and the need to seek out and maximise corporate knowledge; they have their Mappers. Dow Chemical have a Director in charge of Intellectual Asset Management; Buckman Laboratories have a Vice President for Knowledge Transfer; Amoco even have a VP of Progress. And many organisations may well have their fair share of Satirists — albeit in an unofficial capacity, where their comments may be seen (and may be meant) as whingeing, moaning or complaining. But these people are not Fools. They don't deliver Fool value. What is the point of gathering knowledge if you are not allowed to tell the truth? What is the point of deflating corporate pomposity if nobody will listen or your criticism is labelled as self-interested grouching? What is the point of promoting creative solutions to problem-solving if you also manage people or departments who are seen to represent old ways of doing things most of the time? Spreading the Fool's responsibilities amongst people who also have other responsibilities and loyalties is no Fooling at all. Little, or nothing, will change. How is the Fool different? The answer focuses on the Fool's unique status in an organisation. The Fool is neither in nor out of the organisation. Nobody else enjoys that position. Nobody else is Foolside. Those who are inside organisations are not in the best position to change things, partly because their role is mainly to serve change rather than to bring it about and partly because the very position of being inside is fraught with emotional, perceptual and political difficulties. In an organisation, even if we see the truth — and many employees often report that they can see a blinding glimpse of the obvious that is apparently hidden to their employers — we may not feel able to tell the truth as well. If survival is our key motivator, the truth may have to wait. It is this combination of seeing the truth but not being able to report it that only adds to the draining frustrations of organisational life.
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The outside, on the other hand, is a different place and we see things differently there. From the outside, things are clearer. This we instinctively know in our daily lives if we ever have to observe the failed relationships of our friends, or the parenting techniques of our neighbours. We know how we would do it differently. This is not because we know how to do these complex and difficult things better, but because being outside, being not part of the problem, allows us to know. From the outside, one tends to see how the whole picture fits together, one tends to see both the wood and the trees. From the outside, also, individual motivations, emotional inhibitions and mental rigidities can be identified. Old, bad habits or disabling patterns of behaviour present themselves for what they are. From the inside, on the other hand, where we are compressed into our crises, our range of options appear so much narrower and, under pressure to do something, we tend to revert to those things we are used to, whether or not they are best for us. Bringing change to organisations is problematical Change from inside out
Change from outside in
Change from the Foolside
may be playing to one's own agenda may be seen to be playing to one's own agenda may be restricted by the instince for survival or approval may be limited by perceptual adaptation may be seen as intrusion — not invented here may be restricted by the instinct for fee maintenance may be limited by adherence to methodology or past projects one of us, yet different able to see all sides unrestricted access loyalty only to own principles and potential of change
Who is on the outside of organisations? Consultants hold that key position and share the outsider's benefits with the Fool. Consultants may not be cleverer, wiser, better qualified or better able. They are just outside. They've got a distance from the problem. They are
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peering over our garden fence, tutting at us as we curse our children, lecturing us on a better way. And that's instructive. The trouble with consultants, though, is that they are paid by those on the inside, and their fee may depend on not scaring the organisational horses so much that they want to return your invoices unpaid. Fools care only that the horses are scared enough to change. Let's illustrate the difference. As rebel-consultants, we always enjoy telling the story of the vote held during a Becoming a Better Consultant seminar presented by one of the leading consultant associations — the governing body which probably represents any consultant you employ. And since we enjoy telling it so much, would you mind if we told it again? Picture the scene. One hundred and fifty consultants, addressing their continuing professional education, gathered in a hall in central London. It's late in the afternoon and it's Q&A time. Someone asks the tutor: `What do you do when you get a consultancy job from the MD — "get rid of all the crap", "sort out the wheat from the chaff", that sort of thing — and then the MD appoints one of his favourites as project director for this who turns out to be one of the crap ones?'
`What do you do?' Somebody said, quietly: `Obviously you go to the MD and tell him!' And everybody else went berserk! You can't do that! What about the fee? You've got to protect your job!
and the guy next to me said: `And why don't you take a gun in too so he can shoot you?'
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Goodness knows why he does it, but instead of giving us a moment's pause to look into our souls and reflect on the ethics of our profession, the tutor decides to calm this storm by asking for a show of hands. Faced with the possibility of intimate reflection on their values and behaviours, the consultants go for the hard data instead. And the result? 85%, give or take, voted to save the fee and fudge the truth. Makes you think what you're getting for your money, eh?1 There just are not enough consultants like the 15% who would tell the truth and damn the consequences to build a critical mass for positive change. There's a lot wrong, at a very basic level, with our organisations, and we need a better way. What if we could combine the clarity brought by assuming an outside perspective with the freedom from the constraints of political survival? On the King's payroll but not part of the King's court, the Fool has nothing to lose by breaking the rules and nothing to gain by playing the games other people play. The Fool stands free and alone and is not part of anybody else's group or agenda. He is able to concentrate on each of his several responsibilities, governed and restrained only by his single objective: to accelerate and facilitate change through learning. It's time for the view from Foolside.
So, if our organisations employed a Corporate Fool, what would he do all day? The Corporate Fool is a manifesto for a new business professional: an indispensable amalgam of roles which stimulates effective change and resolution in this foolish world. They are a set of essential arts in the business environment — essential but often ignored. The Fool is like the puzzle piece that fits in the strange, empty space in the heart of the company. With the Fool the picture is clear. These, then, are the nine roles of the Fool. The roles must be played.
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And if the Fool does not play them, who will?
The nine roles of the Corporate Fool 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
alienator, representative of otherness confidante of the King contrarian, challenger of the norms midwife, generator of creativity and problem-solving jester, entertainer and `umorist' mapper of knowledge mediator of meaning satirist, deflator; pricker of pomposity truthseeker, teller of the truth mythologist, maker and breaker of myths2
Notes 1 2
This anecdote comes to you without any objective confirmation but you just know it's true, don't you? Bonus role.
Alienator
`God I thank thee, that I am not as other men are.' Luke, 18:11
`The rabbi whose congregation does not want to drive him out of town is not a rabbi.' Hasidic saying
This role the Fool plays merely by virtue of his presence: he is, by definition, a representative of otherness. We need our `others' to help define who we are even if we have to find that identity by comparing ourselves to one who is not part of our group. Powerful teams have a strong sense of their own identity which is often based as much on what they are not as what they are. And the business world's collective drive towards competition suggests that our success is defined as much by others being beaten as it is by ourselves conquering. In times of low morale, however, people can express this need in ways that are not helpful to the purposes of the organisation. This explains people
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bitching about the customer, or the competition, or other departments, or certain members of staff who have not fully embraced the culture. If I tell you about how awful Mr Smith is, it means that you and I are not as bad as Mr Smith and that's going to make you and me feel better for the while. But the cost is that we have driven a wedge — conscious or subconscious — between us and him, which we may not be able to remove as easily as we put it there. The urge to be together and similar, and to differentiate from those who are not, is at the root of much of the drive for diversity programmes in our organisations. But if it is necessary to achieve togetherness, it is going to be a tough fight without something that offers `apartness'. This is the province of the Alienator-Fool.
Glimpses of Fooling In the IT department of a large oil company, two teams drew their strength almost entirely from attacking each other. The Hot Desk was responsible for screening and prioritising calls from troubled users and dealing with simple problems of the `are you sure you've plugged it in?' variety (you know: the ones where the real problem is somewhere between the keyboard and the chair...). The Support Team was there to take the calls in the order of the Hot Desk's priority and solve all problems within agreed time-frames. Prior to the Fool, the situation was characterised by blame and spite. The Hot Desk accused Support of not being customer-focused enough, working too slowly and to a shoddy quality; Support accused the Hot Desk of poor screening and evading responsibility for even the `simple' problems. This balance of opposites was almost a tradition in the department and tolerated even though it had a detrimental effect on the service provided to the user. The situation reached crisis point, however, when an organisational restructure meant that the two teams were to be thrown together to work in a single room. Those old enmities, a dark form of entertainment for each team when kept at a physical distance, almost killed the new, combined `Support Group' before it started. Part of the teambuilding work the Fool went in to do with this Group was facilitated by the Fool making explicit the Alienator role in his behaviour. By provoking, inciting and goading, the Fool was able to create the first traces of team unity in the Group by rousing them to take a common stance against him.
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With an Alienator-Fool, we have no need to gang up on other important stakeholders, whether they are outside or inside the organisation. We have an outsider within, an everpresent reminder of who we are not. The Alienator-Fool is member of no group and outside all of them and thus enables us to be better at getting closer to our customers, or integrating our firms. The Alienator also embodies all the great `outsider' energy that you would expect to see generated by mavericks and revolutionaries, those who do not, will not, walk in line because they have a passion for things being other than they are. The Fool is the Vice President in charge of Being Other.
Reflections: the Alienator Draw up a list of the disaffected in your company — the pissed-offs, the about-toleaves, the never-really made-its, the stuck ones. Involve them in your decisionmaking. Seek their advice. Where does the maverick or revolutionary energy lie in your team? How can you give it licence to show itself? How does your company treat people who don't seem to fit in? How does it measure `fit'? If it knows who is `out', how does it demonstrate in-ness?
Confidante
`Trust me. I'm a Doctor.' Anon
The Court Fool sits at the feet of the King. And stands at his shoulder. The Corporate Fool, too, sits with his executive King. The King has the Fool's ear — he can confide in him and he can trust him, often with private thoughts that couldn't be expressed to anyone else. This is the `armchair consultant' — the sounding board that doesn't judge, won't laugh and won't use what is said against him. Just as the Fool needs the King for support and protection, so the King needs the Fool for comfort and advice. It is lonely at the top. If only CEOs had a vent for their private thoughts — however dark, poorly motivated or politically incorrect they are — then they may not have to worry spouses with them at night. And, maybe, if he could express these thoughts, he could move more quickly to saying what he really means or making the decisions that he really needs.
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Unconventional thoughts need unconventional forms. In a Foolish organisation, meetings are the mirror image of The Good Business Meeting. In a Foolish meeting, agendas may be thrown out of the window, or turned upside down, beginning with Any Other Business first, or with agenda items picked at random, lottery fashion, so that last month's important topics, the ones that no-one wants to touch, don't always have to slide remorselessly down the agenda into obscurity. Foolish meetings are characterised by many changes of direction, of tone, of scope — to a business-trained (heaven forbid!) outsider they would look messy and inconclusive. Nevertheless, these foolish turns and tricks introduce the element of chaos and uncertainty into our ordered proceedings, providing a proving ground for creativity and spontaneity. Foolish meetings of the one-on-one, Confidante variety, are compact versions of the above. In other words, they are more like conversations, the currency of human intercourse, than meetings. Recently, I held a Fool's Clinic at a major marketing conference. `Participants', none of whom I knew, booked half an hour with me and could talk about anything they wanted in that time. Some came seeking an outsider's advice on a particular issue —, e.g. how best to communicate a certain strategy to the board; others looked upon themselves as the Fools of their organisation and wanted to compare notes; still others were looking to take the leap into self-employment, and wanted someone, even a stranger, to let them know that it was OK to jump. What was true about every one of those clinics was that they implied a lack in our business communication: that we do not have the room for conversation in our companies. We do our best to categorise and channel information, and we spend much time either presenting or being presented to, and solving problems, but conversations are not meetings. Conversations need no agenda, or even an outcome. Conversations are about give and take and about exploration. They allow us to express ourselves, to attend as others express themselves, and therefore to grow through discovery. Conversations may end with `Agreed!' but they don't have to. The point is the process — about what happens on the journey rather than channelling everything towards the destination. In his role as Confidante, the Fool meets the needs of the King in the present moment. The focus is primarily `now' rather than `what next?'. If a thought comes to him, the foolish meeting is a safe place to express it. If he has a new theory, he may test it. If he harbours dark thoughts and frustrations about one of his courtiers, here is the place to
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let it out and deal with it without worrying common decency or HR procedures. The Fool recognises that human beings, even those enlightened ones who rise to power in our organisations, are a river of unstable emotions. From moment to moment, despite our principles and best efforts of will, we are filled with worry, anger, frustration, courage, love and doubt. Some of these emotions can be traced easily back to causes, others can't. Some emotions just are. The Fool accepts their reality.
Glimpses of Fooling A Fool knew his MD was having problems with one of his fellow directors. They discussed the person and his behaviour and the more the MD talked about the situation, the more he showed signs of tension and confusion over the issue. The Fool made a light remark to try to change the tone of the meeting — and this prompted a sudden remark about the director from the MD of such gynaecological directness that it shocked even the Fool.
Where else in organisational life is the King going to be able to talk so freely about a problem that has become so frustrating? There is a valuable catharsis in being able to relieve that frustration but there is also a signalling that the challenge is profound, a cry for help, beyond the realms of ordinary business vocabulary. Who else is going to hear those words but not condemn? Who else is going to be able to take the King from that outburst of resentment to a state where the problem can be tackled lucidly? Unburdening is a powerful psychological need that we are so rarely allowed to fulfil, for fear that it will be seen as mentally sloppy or that it will make us vulnerable. To the Fool it is an inviolable trust, as important to the King as confession is to the spirit of a Catholic. Most business transactions channel the activities of the participants. They do this by ordering subject matter, sequence and time: this is `acceptable' business protocol. And beyond that, they restrict the participants in terms of vocabulary, mental processes and emotional range: this is `acceptable' business behaviour. Our organisations are bound by the need to be fair, correct, decent, by the book, as if in some way life, or we, were those things too. These constraints are sometimes at odds with thoughts that come fast, unchecked and uncensored. Some problems need different ways of expression and thinking if they are to be fully explored and they cannot be bounded by convention.
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Glimpses of Fooling A Fool is a movable feast. One Senior Manager in a US engineering company actually insisted on the introduction of his own personal Fool as a condition of employment — requiring that a colleague who had performed the function of soundingboard, provoker and confidante for him in a previous company be hired to join him in his new position.
There are at least two other facets to the Confidante-Fool. A Confidante would be an excellent way for the King to have direct access to the rumour mill. Through the Confidante-Fool the King can tap into the mill's latest grindings to find out what the organisation is feeling, or alternatively feeding its wheels with a new rumour to see how the organisation reacts. In the same way, the Confidante is the direct access to the King for the courtiers. If they need to warn the King quickly and privately, they have their channel. The Fool is the Vice President in charge of Being the King's Pal.
Reflections: the Confidante Who tells the boss that he or she is doing a good job? It's lonely at the top. It's partly because there is a top and bottom that this position can be a bit frosty. Nobody on their way up the mountain wants to open their heart to you because you might think badly of them and it could damage their chances of progressing. We also have this notion that we shouldn't bring problems into the workplace. It is considered unseemly to show emotions openly and honestly. Especially men. Men consider themselves like Atlas; less of a man unless they can hold the world on their shoulders. As most managing directors are men, this means that there is even less chance that they will be able to talk to others in a way that will help them ease their burden. If you had to spend all day carrying a huge pack on your shoulders you would need to find places and times when you could put the pack down or ask someone else to hold it for you.
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Keeping things in is a bit like a disease. Dis-ease. All energy must find expression. If there is emotional energy, especially negative energy which is suppressed it will find an outlet in illness or difficult attitudes. Unloading, having someone to listen to, is a relief, and more. If you trust someone it is you that are feeling Trust. It is therefore easier for others to trust you. You know then what the word means, you have experience of it. Trust begets trust. If the MD can trust someone, others in the office will start to trust him or her more. This is health.
RA
Contrarian
`If opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil's advocate can conjure up.' John Stuart Mill, On Liberty `Some think, perhaps, that it is peace which I have come to cast upon the world. They do not know that it is dissension which I have come to cast upon the world.' Jesus of Nazareth `The believer is happy, the doubter wise.' Greek Proverb
The Fool-Contarian offers the discipline of challenge and stretch, which posits that if ideas can't prevail in a fair fight, they can't be very robust. Only by knowing that an idea has been tested against all possible counter-ideas can we properly know that it is right. The great philosopher Mill again: `Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other
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terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.'
The Fool uses two methods to advance thinking through opposites: the Socratic and the dialectic. Plato tells us that Socrates taught by constantly asking leading questions. In a Socratic dialogue, each thought or proposition is questioned and has to be supported. In this way we are able to explore the realms of what we do not know we know. Socrates is reputed to have proved the power of this mode of discussion by drawing an uneducated slave boy to explain Pythagoras' theorem — much to the boy's own astonishment as he had no idea he knew any geometry at all. With the Fool we always have a chance to learn by Socratic dialogue, which is to say, like Socrates, he sits there and asks `why?' or `so what?' or `and then?' or `what follows?' to all your ideas. Why? To help your thinking become more rigorous. What follows? Deeper understanding and more powerful insights. The other method used by the Fool is the dialectic: or the advancement of ideas through their opposites. This was another ancient Greek principle of learning brought to completion by the nineteenth-century German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (one of those famous icons who don't have first names: like W.C. Fields or P.J. O'Rourke) — the man who had perhaps the greatest influence on modern thought if only for his impact on Marx. He saw the movement of human logical thought, and with it of human history itself, as a continual process of the establishing and negating of competing ideas. Every thesis or position, goes the dialectic principle, has an opposite: an antithesis. When any thesis is proposed, its antithesis, contained within it, must appear to counter it. And from the conflict between these two ideas will emerge a new position, a synthesis of the two. This will, in turn, become a thesis, subject to its own challenge and development in the dialectic movement. Any good tactician knows that the key to success is to appreciate the opposition: Montgomery had a picture of Rommel on his wall throughout the North African campaign. The difference here is that the dialectic suggests that a idea generates it's own opposite by necessity, and that the move to resolution and from resolution to new opposition, and so on, is inevitable, until a form of final synthesis or apotheosis is reached.
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Glimpses of Fooling When we think of `being contrary', we tend to think of a harsh tone of voice. This need not always be the case. A systems development firm in the US employs a `Process Manager' whose specific remit is to test performance of every aspect of their delivery process and identify areas where improvements can be generated, as well as ensuring compliance with best practice. Of course there's nothing startling about that – it's a logical (if rare) role in methodologically driven organisations. What was striking was her approach – a combination of gentle questions and irony – surprising observations which apparently had little to do with the topic but which forced the group to consider its work in a different light.
In business, no less than other fields of human endeavour, you can see the dialectic at work. When an apparently unsatisfactory compromise suddenly leads to fresh and unexpected opportunities, with unpredicted benefits, that's the dialectic at work. A few years ago, Sun Microsystems put resources into developing a language to use in household objects. Much to their surprise, they found that, although the white goods market wasn't ready for them, the newly emerging Web just might be. Out of that divergence Java was produced. This is the Fool's place: the aggressive attack on conventional wisdom and prevailing notions through their mirror-images. The Fool allows us through the looking-glass into a world of other possibilities. And he does this not just out of a mischievous love of contrariness but as a way to help today's businesses understand the real excitement and fruitfulness of an attempt to become more creative in a constantly shifting world. Native American people embodied this form of oppositional logic in a fool character called the Heyoka. The Heyoka would attend all tribal meetings dressed and behaving oppositely to the rest of the elders. If they sat, he stood. If they asked for silence, he spoke. He was a right royal pain in the arse, to be frank. His value in terms of the dialogue, however, was as a representative of all other possible points of view that might be neglected. Every idea was challenged, every decision questioned, every suggestion reconceived as alternatives. In other words, the Heyoehkah was a living symbol of every man's potential for making the wrong decision.
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In practice, our Contrarian-Fool is a resource to all decision-makers in the firm: he forces them to go through the discipline of justification. Whenever anyone has to go into a negotiation, a proposal, a meeting, with a position, the Fool has given them the chance to rehearse their attempt under fire. He is a sense of possibility: nothing is obvious around the Fool, for the opposite is always available. Every action has an alternative and the manager is never again able to say `I had no choice'. Though he can now say, with a degree of honesty this sentence may have lacked in the past, `we looked at all the alternatives and this is the strongest of them...' The Fool is the Vice President in charge of Being Contrary.
A note on learning in organisations These days the Learning Organisation is the In-Thing. Many corporations have recognised that their future success will depend on the extent to which they are able to leverage their knowledge and assets to generate new products and new processes. In short, innovation seems to pay. So we've decided that we all want to get on that LO bandwagon. What do we do? Generally there seem to be two approaches: train everybody in it (whatever `it' is) and build it into the reward system. On the face of it, these seem sensible approaches. Many an LE consultant will make a pretty penny offering exactly that advice for some time to come. After all, what could be wrong with it? Train the staff in a new approach and then pay them for following it. But when faced with any received wisdom, howsoever recent or seemingly sensible, the job of the Fool is to question, to probe, to challenge. Here is the Fool's response to the LO knee-jerk. It comes in the form of a story and a snippet of research, as much of his insight does. Peter Senge, the MIT professor and leading management thinker, quotes a Ford engineer reflecting on her experience coming to grips with his systems-thinking approach: `It reminds me of when I first studied calculus. At first I was totally lost. Calculus was a totally new way of thinking for me. But then I started to "get it". Within a year I had mastered the basics. Within five years it was a core part of my professional capabilities.' She then added, `If calculus were invented today, none of
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our corporations could learn it. We'd send everyone off to the three-day course. We'd then give them three months to try it out and see if "it worked". After it had failed, we'd conclude that it was of little value and move on to something else.' So much for building the new Learning Organisation through training. And a Harvard business School Professor, Dr Theresa Amabile, has recently published her research into innovation. When she investigated how her study population – young children – developed innovative or creative ideas, she discovered that any form of control at all, including incentives, tended to reduce creative outcomes. Even offering rewards for creativity tends to restrict it. In other words, creativity seems to be a function of autonomy, of letting people alone. So much for building the new Learning Organisation through rewards. Having fulfilled his role as agent of dissolution, the Fool must offer the chance for resolution too. How does the Fool advance the creativity agenda? What can he offer to the learning enterprise? The Fool's part is in two of his nine roles. He is the Midwife of ideas and he is the Mapper of knowledge spread already through the firm. The organisation where the roles of the Fool are played out will be the organisation best placed to learn.
Reflections: the Contrarian The Contrarian could also be called `The Challenger'. We are all surrounded by yes people. Watch yourself in interchanges with people. How often do you find yourself nodding in agreement with someone, or just going along with things when you don't really agree with what is being said. How often do we ask ourselves `do I really believe this or it is much easier just to nod and let them get on with it'. Watch others as they listen to others talking at them and see if they are giving stock answers and obliging expressions. It happens all the time. RA
Midwife
`What is now proved was once only imagined.' Blake `If at first an idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.' Albert Einstein
Innovation has three ingredients: novelty, value and purpose. And they play on a stream of inputs, on a flow of information; the billions of bits of data that stream through and around our enterprises every day. How do we make sense of it all?
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All that information pouring into the organisation from different sources, for different reasons, from different points of view, some with an abundance of meaning, some with no meaning at all, or at least not now, not this time. What do we have to do with this information? We have to make it valuable for our present and for our future. We have to filter, to understand, to solve, to decide and develop — and we have to carry out those mental processes quicker and smarter than our competitors. In other words we will have to learn how to nurture ways of making sense of information and adding value to it — ways that our organisations (indeed, our whole Western tradition) have ignored. When change is measured and continuous, we can use our left brain — logical, rational, linear thinking will be fine for processing information. We can leave our right brain to be nurtured doing the gardening or the washing up or in a bit of painting; in times of incremental change the right brain is for recreation. But when change is constant, enormous, punctuated, unpredictable, crazy, we need to find ways of thinking that mimic and reflect that craziness. We need to use both our left and our right brain to solve the problems and create the solutions that will decide the survival and success of our business. The information age has brought with it the age of bewilderment, where things themselves are no longer as important as the possible connections between things — and making, creating and imagining new connections is the realm of creativity. Holistic, creative thinking is becoming a source of competitive edge. But organisations tend not to be good homes for creativity for three main reasons: 1 2 3
we don't know how to do it we don't like the idea of what doing it entails our corporate cultures are designed to suppress or punish the behaviours that signal creativity is occurring.
And the Fool, poor fool, is charged with helping to fix this.
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The Fool is in charge of promoting creativity and banishing old ways of doing things if those ways are failing to produce results. He is the creativity evangelist, satisfying the needs of our most left-brain colleagues by `proving' how necessary and unavoidable creativity is and stimulating our right brains by being so passionate about its practice. The Fool knows that creativity happens in many ways. He knows that while the central assumption of business creativity is `togetherness' — brainstorming sessions and focus groups — most research about creativity suggests that privacy is a central component. Einstein didn't come up with relativity in a group brainstorm, Mozart didn't think of the Magic Flute at a new product development seminar ... So the Fool is there to protect the thinker from the seductive, distracting pressures of co-operation. Sometimes, it is the Fool who has to say, on behalf of the thinker, `thank you, please close the door behind you', because the thinker often can't say it himself — however much he wants to (especially not to his boss). The Fool, on the other hand, outside the merry-go-round of promotion, is free to be unconventionally protective. But the Fool also knows that much that is good does come from co-operation — he has an instinct for when combination is the way. And then, the Fool is in charge of keeping a store of cutting-edge creative-thinking and problem-solving solutions: mental exercises, physical games or software packages. And he knows how to make best use of them for individuals and groups — he facilitates their use. You can call him up any time you're stuck and he brings his bag of tricks along with him. Or he might turn up uninvited to figure out whether he could help make whatever you were doing even better. And he is the teacher of these techniques so you and your team grow more independent and confident. The Fool is an expert in understanding and overcoming resistance to creativity. He guides and leads, explains and cajoles, and pushes where necessary. He counsels those who are terrified at the freedom from accepted norms that true creativity requires. He reassures people as they discover some of the uncomfortable things that have to happen before creativity comes — for example, relaxation and silence
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or music, or energetic physical movement, or mental dexterity beyond the bounds of reason, or long periods of time when nothing seems to be working. And because the Fool is such a good communicator, he makes the weirdest of techniques seem sensible. And when the ideas come, when they are born as fragile eggs, the Fool nurtures them and protects them until they are strong enough for public gaze, since he knows that fear and ridicule attend the early years of the most powerful breakthroughs. He is the midwife, then, to these suckling ideas. And above all he ensures that people give themselves the time and permission to think holistically — to think with their whole potential, because pressure of time is the biggest excuse we cite for reverting to what we know and are comfortable with, and guilt is our strongest emotion when we don't.
Glimpses of Fooling `I remember a guy at my old company', says the former IT Director of a major UK electronics retailer. `He'd come along to every board meeting with ten ideas. Six of those ideas, on average, would get us nowhere – they were awful and the board happily shot them down. Two of the remaining four, if we implemented them, would probably kill the company – they were that dangerous. It was the two remaining ideas that were usually very, very hot. The thing was, he probably wouldn't have got to the two hot, money-making, process-improving ideas unless we'd given him the space and the leeway to give us six crap ideas and two deadly ones. And as for him, he had such an ability to think like a maverick that he couldn't tell the difference between the crap ideas and the great ones. But it wasn't his job to choose.'
The Fool is also responsible for helping to build a culture that encourages and rewards those behaviours that are necessary for creativity — risk-taking, a low tolerance threshold for in-the-box thinking and, above all, the capacity for making very public mistakes. The Fool is the Vice President in charge of Creative Problem Solving.
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Reflections: the Midwife A midwife does not actually deliver the baby. A midwife creates the environment in which the baby can most easily be born. The mother has to do the actual work. A gardener plants the seeds, but it is the seeds that must grow, pushing its shoots past the rocks and earth to surface and grow towards the light. Creativity exists when there is an absence of fear. It has been said that there are two stages to fear. The first is the feeling of stepping into the unknown. This feeling could just as easily be excitement as fear; the same physical symptoms apply. Fear comes from stepping into the unknown, moving willingly into chaos, for creativity is not order. This level of fear is not really fear at all but the beginnings of the creative process. Stepping out in space to see what's there. The second phase is where we start punishing ourselves with feelings and mental messages of unworthiness, discontent, anger, resentment, etc. This stage is unhelpful and blocks positive creativity. It is a downward spiral as thoughts breed. To be creative it is important to build on the first stage so as not to fall into the second. There is no need to go into the second stage. Creativity is freedom. RA
Mapper
`There is somebody wiser than any of us, and that is everybody.' Napoleon
Often the problem isn't that nobody knows. It's that nobody knows who knows. Where in the organisation is the knowledge? Who holds what understanding? How can we learn if we don't know what we already know? The Fool is in a perfect place to find out. As the sniffer-about in all the corners of the company, he is developing a conceptual map of who knows what and where they are. He is then in the best place to draw together the necessary connections when we need them. So the Mapper-Fool puts the best people in touch with each other at the best time for the project and the organisation. This is a role he carries out when people ask him to, but also when he suspects they'd prefer him not to. Hoarding of information was always a power play in traditional organisations. In the information age, hoarding is probably a treasonable crime. The Mapper-Fool roots it out, and bladders it when he finds it. Aah! What a relief!
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In these ways, he makes the most of knowledge as a corporate resource. It was not very long ago that we thought knowledge was the same as experience. There are those with 20 years of experience who, really, only have one year's experience repeated 20 times. Not only are they not necessarily experienced, but they're probably out of date, too. The Fool knows that the Latin root of both experience and experiment is the verb experi, to try. Real experience is compound experience — growing exponentially, building connections, generating knowledge through a series of experiments. The Fool encourages the courage and self-examination required on such a quest. But what do we do with knowledge? One way of approaching the idea is to draw a distinction between defensive and offensive knowledge — the former is used to protect and track what the company already knows — in all its nuances. And the other is used to investigate at the margins of what it might know, what its competitors know, what its customers know, what the greater world knows, and what all of them believe, too. Nobody knew that the PC was going to be big; that didn't stop some companies getting ready for it and some (Lotus, IBM) not. The belief today that something might become knowledge tomorrow is a definition of competitive edge (and of risk). The Fool's province is what we are calling defensive knowledge. He is charged with keeping his eyes and ears open, and with facilitating the spread of shared defensive knowledge. The Fool knows that a database is not a knowledge base, But he can help to make it one. His is not a formal role — he does not code with the IS department or develop a functional spec. He doesn't build the knowledge-base, he just is it: a walking info-web. Of course, if the systems department want to create a computerised analogue to this function, he's happy to help. The Mapper-Fool has a good face for names; he remembers them. He gets into people's heads, because they're in his. No avoiding his gaze in the corridor: he'll check you, ask you how it's going, but in a specific way. You know he knows about what you're doing. Next time around you could ask him for help with your CV, since he's got it filed in his memory, waiting to connect it to the most appropriate opening for you. In this way, he moves in and out of the Corporate Collective Consciousness (and its Unconsciousness). Who said that the challenge is to work out what you don't know? Maybe the Fool knows.
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There is another side to this Corporate Mapping. A map shows us what's there and how the parts can and should relate to each other. The map itself, however, is a potent symbol of relationship, of the fact that all the things we can see on it are Connected. The Mapper-Fool is a salutary jolt to our tendency to compartmentalise and separate. Every organisation has its departments: it is the way we divide up work to be efficient. The trouble is that division can give birth to separation which can lead to comparison and thence competition. It also can lead to a separation of responsibility — I'm responsible for my bit, but not your bits. The outcome of that, however, goes much deeper than a problem of teamworking. M. Scott Peck, in his book The Road Less Travelled and Beyond, makes a powerful case for the dangers of fragmentation (pointing out along the way that the original meaning of `Satan' was adversary — Satan's work being to set things apart and against each other). `When any institution becomes large and compartmentalised,' he says, `the conscience of that institution can become so fragmented and diluted as to be virtually non-existent, and the organisation has the potential to become inherently evil.'
He tells a story from his days working in Washington, wandering the corridors of the Pentagon talking to people about the Vietnam War. He found that every department was absolutely clear on its own responsibility — for ordnance, for example, or for executing policy. It appeared, in the end, that the entire Pentagon had absolutely nothing to do with the Vietnam War. The Mapper-Fool makes the most of knowledge as a corporate resource by integrating it and thereby giving it integrity. The Fool is the Vice President in charge of Knowing Who Knows.
Jester
`A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.' Ecclesiastes `Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.' Oscar Wilde
The only animal on God's Earth that has the ability to laugh is the human being. It's a gift. But we leave our gifts at the reception desks of work. Your company needs a Jester. The Satirist-Fool tells us how funny, risible or absurd our company is so we can be freed from that absurdity and change it. The Jester-Fool encourages us to laugh because he knows it is good for our health and for the performance of our work.
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Humour derives from a Latin word `umor' which means `fluid'. Humour is an expression of our ability to be flexible and free from rigidity (indeed inflexibility and relentless rigidity can in themselves be highly humorous — just think of John Cleese as Basil in Fawlty Towers). At the same time, laughter give us access to another human asset, the emotions. Laughter takes us out of the logical, clinical world of thought and into the warm, watery place of feeling. Jesters bring balance.
Glimpses of Fooling One of the big Wall Street banks employs a Fool. It doesn't know it, because it calls him a `facilitator', but Fooling is what he does and he knows it (because they don't know that's what he is, we can't say who he is – we Fools do have to stick together after all). `When I lead a group I tell them that my role is to provoke them – to question and push', he says. `How else are they going to come up with something that's different from what they'd have come up with anyway? That's how I add value – I make them come up with surprising things. Things they'd never have thought of unprovoked. I use lots of jokes and stories and games. I have to keep it framed – business-like-but it's pretty silly really. And it works. Yes, it's a kind of Fooling. I just wouldn't use that word. Yet.'
Unfortunately, one of the by-products of humour is laughter and laughter is usually associated with jokes, especially in the business world. And if you've got time to be telling or listening to jokes, then you can't be working hard enough. But we laugh for other reasons than because we have heard a joke. For example, we laugh out of pure joy (seeing an old friend); out of pure delight (seeing an act of dexterity); at accomplishment (the last piece in a jigsaw); at the unexpected (in fear); when relieved (after a car crash) or at tragedy, misery or violence (e.g. Laurel & Hardy). And we laugh for other reasons that tell us something about our relationship with our environment, for example at a triumph over a hated other or at someone's come-uppance. Laughter in itself cannot be a bad thing — but the absence of laughter indicates an absence of these many and varied causes for laughter, and that is bad. Laughter in the
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workplace — howsoever provoked — is probably a sign of a healthy office biology, a by-product of people experiencing, and connecting emotionally, with a wide range of challenges. The Jester is there to make sure that we can laugh for all these reasons and also because he knows that humour is a core competence in a world of furious change. He knows that humour stimulates energy — it changes the physiological state of both the individual and the group — it makes their blood flow at a different rate, it pumps different chemicals around their bodies, it wakes people up, it helps them feel alive; keeps the interest — since most humour works by juxtaposing two or more elements, a humorous person is likely to be keeping you on your toes through the promise of surprise or the unusual; it keeps people alert; allows creativity — by surprising us it releases us from tight, anxious physical and mental blocks and so sets up the best conditions for thinking outside the box; encourages emotional fluidity — change involves challenging comfortable behaviours or mindsets. Strong emotions, and with them a powerful resistance to change, are likely to be aroused and anything lighter that can balance them or even soften them is going to be crucial in getting people ready for change; changes perspective — both affectionate and hostile humour deflates the balloons of pomposity and prejudice; can be a vehicle for criticism — affectionate teasing allows the subject to distance themselves from the behaviour in question and attain the necessary space to work on the problem `objectively'; mocks severity and inappropriateness — it puts the Fall before Pride;
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encourages solidarity — human beings are social beings — we hate and fear being cast out from the group. As such, the Jester is a Christ figure — he sacrifices himself to be mocked, so making us feel more together (if only because for this moment we are united against the Jester); and finally, humour; cultivates cohesion — the best humour laughs at `all of us', emphasising how universal and common are our faults, e.g.: `isn't mankind odd?' or in the corporate world, `isn't this company a strange old thing, why do we all keep doing that?'1 And humour increases the Fool's power. Just as in the days of the `allow'd fool,' who was licensed by the King to make the court laugh at any cost, the Jester will find that because he can make us laugh, he can say anything he likes. As part of his role as the Corporate Fool, the Jester will be: The keeper of humour resources — he will literally be the fund of great stories and jokes that we all wished we had available; he will gather and collect humorous items and post them on-line in an electronic data source called, perhaps `Laughweb'. If you need a great line for the opening of your presentation, the Jester's the person's you see. The arbiter of what's funny — So much good humour is lost through risk aversion. So much that might be inspiring or affecting is hidden because people are afraid of how others might judge them. If you are unsure whether the joke you plan to tell at the product launch is funny or not, whether the strange slide you've slotted into your presentation is going to get the laugh, the Jester is the man who'll decide. If he says yes, you have the Fool's dispensation. No-one will then be allowed to blame you if it all goes terribly wrong, but they will be able to thrash the Fool. The cheerer of those in low spirits — when down and depressed, he can cheer you up.
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The energiser of the dull event — dire meetings, tedious lunches, grey presentations, the Jester brings relief and release in the form of a change in tone and perspective. The Jester knows that work and fun are not alternative choices. Indeed he would like you to explain how attractive, innovative and vital products, answering the needs of choicehungry consumers in fast-changing and colourful marketplaces, can continue to be produced — or even represented — by lifeless companies and bland organisations. The Fool is the Vice President in charge of Making People Laugh.
Reflections: the Jester All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. There is a saying in Tibet: `If something is within our control, there is no need to worry about it; if something is not in our control, there is no point in worrying about it'. RA
Note 1
John Cleese inspired this list in the book Life and How to Handle It.
Mediator
`"When I use a word" said Humpty Dumpty in a rather scornful tone, "it means just exactly what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."' Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking Glass
In Japan you bow on greeting. In England you shake hands. In Europe you kiss. In Alaska you rub noses. When the Samoans welcomed Winston Churchill after the war they wanted to offer him his famous V-for-victory sign. Unfortunately, holding up one's palm to someone in Samoa is the height of rudeness so they turned their hands round. The Prime Minister was greeted by thousands of locals joyfully giving him two fingers...completely unaware of the offence this gesture causes in England. In English the sound `bog' describes a dank and nasty piece of land. In Russia, it means God.
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As we have evolved over thousands of years we have developed a way of connecting to each other. Just as we have organised our way of doing business (including the business of war), so we have organised structures to govern our communication: we have codes of language and grammar and all sorts of cultural protocols. The key to understanding communication is to recognise that none of the actions that we have adopted to greet each other actually means `hello' in any objective sense. It is quite possible to imagine a world just like our own in which shaking hands means `goodbye' or `no' or even `your mother is a fat warthog'. The point is that the signs and signals that make up our communication have an entirely arbitrary relationship with the things to which we are actually referring. `Dog' and `God' mean, respectively, `four-legged creature' and `supreme being' only because we have agreed that they will. The basic principle of communication, then, is an inherent subjectivity. That becomes even more pronounced when one extends beyond the relatively fixed area of language and enters the looser territory of paralinguistics (volume, pitch and tone of voice, etc.) and non-verbal communication (facial expression and gesture, etc.) — in other words, when one moves from the area of content to that of form. Here the paradoxes of the interpersonal world gather in force. The Fool knows this. He is a master of communication: it is his medium. He doesn't deliver value through process or projects or operations. He delivers it through communication. Just imagine the following scenes... The manager smiles, shrugs and says `this has been a difficult year for us, we're all going to have to pull together now ...'. She thinks that she means `I'm on your side, we can cope'. Her audience thinks she means `You're all on notice, firings are coming, don't dare break ranks ...'. What is the true meaning? There's no such thing — just the shifting bunches, prejudices and interpretations that make up the deep, dark pool of human interaction. But what meaning will carry the day? As far as the audience is concerned, the speaker means what they think she means. If they think the manager means that they're on their way, it'll be CVs in the photocopier before the afternoon is out,
The Corporate Fool
whatever she intended to mean. The communication paradox of our story? `The more you think you're in control, the less in control you're likely to be.' ... The customer says to the software developers, `We do things this way here, my process does this — can your software do it?' The technician replies, `No, it doesn't do that.' He means that the process is not as the customer describes. He sounds as though he means `our application doesn't have that functionality.' Is the customer impressed? Will he go to another supplier? The confusion is discovered — if we're lucky. The customer explains, `But I do do it this way — I should know, I've been doing it like this for 15 years.' He is wrong, of course. He doesn't do it like that — he just thinks he does, it just seems that he does. The software analyst is right, the order of the process is different from what the customer thinks it is. The software guy comes across as arrogant and antagonistic. Is the customer grateful? Does he go to another software house? The paradox: `If the truth doesn't sound like the truth it will not always set you free.' ... A CEO of a small manufacturing company is a man of principle and decides to be honest about the impact of the recession — about falling revenue, the forthcoming changes and why they were necessary. He calls a company-wide meeting and tells his people the truth, that no redundancies are planned and that `everyone will be treated as fairly as possible.' To his dismay, this meeting starts a wildfire of rumours about plant closures and layoffs. Productivity falls. Morale plummets. After
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months of investigations and a year of hindsight, it is realised that never before had there been a company-wide meeting on any issue. His audience inferred that things must have got really bad to merit such a thing and that there was probably more to it than was presented. Which introduces the manager to another of the great corporate communication paradoxes: `the more you tell, the more they think you're hiding'.
As Richard Nixon said, `I know you believe you understood what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realise what you heard is not what I meant to say...'. It is the Fool who must mediate these confusions, and who must teach the art and instinct of mediation to the business. The Mediator-Fool keeps a table of discrepancies between what was meant and what was understood — and why. He records the problems and confusions that have occurred and allows the firm to learn from its own past.
Glimpses of Fooling The Mediator-Fool steps in when negotiations become fraught and desperate. Or when they reach crisis. The Fool was called in by the CEO of a software house when a client relationship had hit the verge of litigation. The Fool went, unthreatening as he was, to the client and listened to their perspectives — across the project. He returned to the CEO and explained, in ways that the clients themselves could not, what the perspectives were, and how they might be remedied. He explicitly told the CEO what to do. He instructed him to crawl to the client (literally if possible: the Fool is nothing if not conscious of dramatic symbolism) and apologise. That's what was really needed. The client felt — bought the meaning — that the CEO's supplier firm were arrogant and selfish and didn't care about their implementation. The CEO himself knew they cared passionately but were terrified of the idea of apology because it made his firm seem less than competent: which would worry the client, and this was not a weight he wanted to give them. The Fool's advice was, in this crisis, followed. Litigation was avoided. The relationship did improve. The software was implemented.
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In any communication transaction there are two meanings — the meaning of the performer of the communication and the meaning of the audience for it. Someone needs to be charged with the job of making sure that all the participants in complex communications know what the others mean — and that must be someone with an objective perspective who will not gain either way from their interpretations. Napoleon knew this. Napoleon discovered a `Fool' who had a remarkably advanced ability to spot ambiguity in communications. If there was any double meaning lurking in the message, he had the knack of tripping over it and taking the `wrong' interpretation. He must have been a walking Carry On film. This gift meant that the man was branded a Fool by the many, but the genius of the Corsican was that he recognised the great value in this. It is said that before Napoleon would issue an important communiqué in battle, he would ask his Fool what it meant. If the Fool made any other than the intended interpretation, Bonaparte would rewrite the order until it was crystal clear. The Fool is the Vice President in charge of Mediating Meaning.
Satirist
`Satire is a sort of glass, wherein the beholders do generally see everyone else's face but their own ...' Jonathan Swift
Our organisations are funny. They are funny ha ha and they are funny peculiar and somebody needs to say so: somebody who won't be risking his job — somebody whose job it actually is. The Corporate Fool lives in this world of clarity and sharp wit. He looks around the workplace and sees all the inflated balloons of ego and indulgence and self-importance that fly around our heads and he deflates them. He clears the air and relieves the tension. He makes what is ridiculous seem so.
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A Glimpse of Folly Did you hear about the global consultancy company — one which communicated with everyone by e-mail because staff were highly distributed in different time zones and countries — as you do? Well the e-mail servers went down. As they do. What does everyone do in that situation? They go to voice mail. People stop checking their e-mail — and they suffer because e-mail is their business. How did this company announce that e-mail was back? They sent round an e-mail to the whole firm! Some people didn't find that the servers were back up for a week! Why does the Satirist point up the silliness and stupidity of organisations — rather than excuse it or cover it up? Not just because pomposity is vulgar and silly in any selfrespecting workplace, but because pomposity is an outward show of utter certainty — and in a time of tremendous instability we cannot afford to be that sure about anything. The Fool-Satirist is the professional heckler. He represents the voice of the people. He says what we're all thinking. When the CEO says that `It's been a very difficult year' it is the Fool who voices the thought `for some more than others, would you say?' and forces the CEO to answer. As a satirist, the Fool demands accountability from senior staff. They must know that their solutions will be subject to scrutiny, and must be ridiculousness-free, or they will have to answer for them. A shame there was no Fool around when they launched the Edsel or went for New Coke. Somebody needs to say these things because we, in the company, won't. We've all sat in interminable presentations by grim speakers on dull subjects frustrated because there's nothing we can do. That's just the way it is.
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Glimpses of Fooling A Fool once gave a performance at an international software conference. During it he outlined the idea of the communication panic button. When, he said, communication (a meeting, a presentation, a sales pitch) gets so bad that you start to sweat. When you just can't take it anymore, press the panic button. It's big, red, noisy and entirely in your imagination. But press it visibly, make the noise with energy. Draw attention to the unacceptable, for that's the only way it will change. He had a good reception, this Fool, and sat back in the audience as the conference continued. A couple of speakers later came a performance of masterful awfulness. A weak, repetitive, derivative drone; not unfamiliar to regular conference-goers. But this time, the Fool had struck. All over the auditorium people turned to each other, to the Fool himself, and made the gesture of the panic button. They pressed down, they made their noises. And they felt better. They felt empowered. Something that had not been possible suddenly became so. And the tyranny of mediocrity had been assaulted.
The Fool is the conduit for this constructive dissatisfaction, because he draws attention to the absurd, the pompous and the over-valued. The Satirist-Fool is the owner of Corporate Complaints. He collects what the customers think is absurd about the company, and tells the King. And he collects what the company members themselves think is absurd about the company, and tells the King. How else will the King know? We recommend an online forum, built into the organisation's database infrastructure, called Groanweb — the repository of malaise and whingeing. These feelings shouldn't be suppressed, or they'll fester. They should be released, and gathered: they represent the harvest of the actions or omissions of some body in the company, and it might be an idea if somebody told them. With his instinct for the truth, he'll filter out the general messages from the extreme complaints. Besides, it'll save a fortune in consultant and HR fees if you've always got your own hot and cold running culture audit.
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The Satirist-Fool is the diarist of the Company. He issues a newsletter of Foolery and comment; a sort of daily or weekly sketch. Politicians aren't made any less powerful because there are parliamentary sketch writers. They are made more accountable. If they are concerned that a journalist will scorn their half-backed idea in a national newspaper the next day, it may encourage them to work harder to develop it. And if that makes it less comical, so much the better. The Satirist-Fool is the Official Spokesman for the Opposition. He has a formal place responding to major corporate speeches to present a sort of `official reply' as they do with the Budget speech in the UK and the State of the Union in the US. If the CEO launching his new strategy knows he'll be satirised, he may take more care to speak from the heart rather than from the Book of Euphemism and Platitude. The Satirist-Fool is a Parodist. He will often write memos which burlesque the potential absurdities he sees cross his desk. The latest opaque changes to the expenses claim system, the new idea from Administration on which colour paper to use for which type of communication, the instructions from the IT department on why only certain people will be allowed access to the World Wide Web at certain times — all these will be the object of the Fool's parody. And why? Not just for the entertainment, but to point out to all (especially the originators) the dangerous effects of hasty and shallow thinking. When that greatest of satirists, Jonathan Swift, in the poor Ireland of the 18th century, satirised the oafish mores of the English government, he did not plan a revolution or uprising; he remained a cathedral Dean. But he did make the Irish feel better. He bound them together against a common cause and became their unofficial spokesperson. He raised their morale. `You'll notice that the term "morale" is never used except in reference to soldiers or people in analogous positions, such as employees of large corporations or prison inmates ... Nobody ever talks about the morale of participants in a passionate love affair, nor does the word come up in discussions of wild drinking sprees, marathon
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poker games or visits to whorehouses in Bangkok. "Morale" apparently means "how well people are doing when they're not doing well at all".' P.J. O'Rourke, Give War a Chance
And better than that, he changed their world. In 1723, a man called William Wood had been given a patent to supply copper coins to Ireland, on a scale that would have seriously damaged the Irish economy, but to the benefit of certain financially powerful persons in England. Swift's response to this madness were the Drapier's Letters, which were so effective in rallying opposition amongst the people to the plan, that the Prime Minister Walpole was finally compelled to revoke Wood's patent. Several years later, when Walpole ordered Swift's arrest, he was told that an army of ten thousand men would be required to arrest his adversary. Satire is a powerful tool and the satirist a valued ally. Satire has been conveying information to institutions for thousands of years longer than there have been customer feedback forms or brand analysis. Open up. The Fool is the Vice President in charge of Pricking Pomposity.
Reflections: the Satirist The Satirist could be called `The Exaggerator'. Sounds like a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger..., `Just when you thought it was safe to be unconscious The Exaggerator returns, this time he'll show you what you're made of'. A couple of years ago I was sitting outside a restaurant in the south of France. On the pavement was a clown, a street performer, dressed in black. All he would do was wait until someone passed and follow them half a pace behind mimicking everything they did. He did not even distort their actions very much, he was able to copy their gait and movement with an uncanny and unnerving ability. It was hysterical. Everyone in the restaurant loved him. Without the clown we would never have noticed just how funny and individual people are. All of us. RA
Truthseeker
`It's so much easier to tell the truth — that way you don't have to remember what you said.' Fool's Mum
The Fool will seek the truth. And when he finds it he will speak it. When all around is deceitful and ingratiating, his is the still, small voice that still demands to be heard. The Fool knows that not being truthful always leads to complications — either for the deceiver or the deceived. The truth is a complicated area, but only because our attempts to disguise or suppress it make it so. The truth has its own simplicity and it endures. As we all now know, the pre-Fall IBM became far more interested in impressing other IBMers than in attracting customers. Former IBMers recall the cult of the presentation, where `giving good slide' became the way to get promoted and pass on the problems to the next guy. Executives always presented charts showing the demand line rising — the culture was such that nobody wanted to be the one to bring the bad news. All charts went through six or seven layers of management before they were presented to the board,
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and at each level, the figures were massaged to make sure they were in accordance with what the next level up wanted to see. Fantasies like these may taste great but they're not very nourishing. It's a bit like living on chocolate. It may be wonderful for a bit, but then you get sick and then you die. Only in the smug glow of hindsight can we see that such behaviour appears like the work of madmen and lunatics — what were they up to? — until we realise, of course, that at the time, in IBM, that crazy behaviour was the way to get on, the way to express the culture of the company. That was not mad, that was `normal'. Perhaps a Fool would have helped them see their foolishness before reality did. Many years have passed now, and IBM has been reborn, so perhaps it is time to stop telling the Tale of What Happened Before the Fall. But perhaps not. Some tales live forever, because they teach us about ourselves. The IBM story teaches us not about IBM, but about our own organisations. How mad is your company being today in its proud rationality? The Truthseeker-Fool attempts to show us how easily we blind ourselves to the consequences of our actions, and how urgently we need to attend to people and things and our own motives, rather than concepts and ideas. As in the realm of organisation, so in the interpersonal. Somehow, telling the truth just never seems the easy option. We are worried by the very idea of the truth. We suppose truth-telling to be a traumatic, revelatory drama creating tension in the teller and in the hearer. We have visions of `showdowns' and `revelations' and fingers pointed. And, like all of us when we walk past a police officer, we suddenly feel incredibly guilty. And so worried are we by telling the truth that we make up justifications for not doing so: we call truth-tellers self-righteous, we call them title-tattlers or complainers. These justifications are products of rigid mindsets, which usually has us imagine a reality where only black and white exists: if I tell the truth, either X will happen or Y will happen. Our tendencies, of course, are towards imagining painful, dark outcomes — if I tell the truth, there will be anger, hurt, shock; `I bet they'll sack me, or they'll make it difficult for me to survive here'. When these imaginings are so vivid and threatening, we err on the side of caution — with either silence or a pale, insipid version of the real truth.
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But reality is rarely black and white, and truth-telling (when you take the leap) you will in fact find to be truthseeking, a search for a better, shared understanding that is beyond `I am right and you are wrong'. Other synergistic and truthful possibilities exist in the broad grey spectrum between black and white, but these possibilities are not open to us until we have made our move out of our current state of fear. All we gain by not telling the truth is the satisfaction of our deeply embedded impulse to be liked, to be respected, to be admired, all qualities which bring short-term pleasure (and, it should be noted, are as transitory as the snow). The trouble is, the more time we spend trying to please others, the more likely we are, in the end, to lose our selves. The Fool does not need to be liked; he knows the truth is more rare and precious to us all than ever his being liked would be. If the Emperor has no clothes, someone had better tell him. And that'd better be someone who's not concerned either by the Emperor's temper or by his or her own embarrassment. The frustration of seeing the truth but not being able to express it — even when invited to by `open' leaders — is a major demotivator in organisations. What we all need to do is wake up to the fact that no one can ever make it safe enough to tell the truth; it is always our own choice, and as such, an expression of our own power. This awakening will be slow, and for a while our organisations are going to be populated by a majority of people who are too scared to tell the truth. They need a voice to do it for them — and a rolemodel that will eventually prove for them that truth-telling brings positive results. If truth-telling makes us so uncomfortable and yet we know how much pain and cost not doing it brings to our organisational life, it's a natural job to delegate to the Fool. Because in an age when communication is a central nostrum and information a key resource, we also need to cut the crap. `Come on', you challenge, `Surely we can't tell the truth to our competitors; surely we cannot tell the truth to our people about the forthcoming merger!' To which the Fool replies, `This is a pointless argument, because you never will, no matter what I say. All I can promise to do is track the consequences of your evasion and silence, so that we all can learn from the experience. Your sensible silence may turn out to be lunacy after all, and someone has to be able to say "I told you so" before it happens.' The Fool is the Vice President in charge of Telling the Truth.
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Reflections: the Truthseeker By the year 2000, one million computers a year will be thrown away in the UK alone. Use paper instead. At the present rate of population growth and deforestation, by 2040 there will not be enough trees left on the planet to supply oxygen for its inhabitants. Use a computer instead. The Truth is hard. It may not even appear to set you free. But without it, you are building on sand. RA
The Tao of the Fool By Alan Leigh The way of the Fool that can be described Is not the whole of the way. The role of the Fool that can be named Is not the whole of the role. Fooling is from the springing up of the world; And yields up many offspring. To know Fooling yourself, you must lose your ambitions, To see Fooling accomplish, you must find your ambitions. These are the same They cleave as they are conceived. Conceived the same they are called paradoxes Paradox upon paradox The portal of the Fool.
Contrarian All the world sees what is beautiful and it is beautiful. And to the Fool it is ugly. All the world sees what is good and it is good. And to the Fool it is bad. Something comes from nothing. Difficult is easy. Long is the length of short. High leans to low. Sound is the sound of silence. After is before before. So the Fool does the act that is not action and speaks the words that are silent. And because he claims no credit credit is his due.
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Mediator The way of the Fool is empty of meaning And yet it cannot be exhausted. The way of the Fool is the oldest paradox. Find the soft edge of the sharp blade; Unravel the knots; Diffuse the glare; Go in new directions along the old path. Find what is only visible when you are not looking, Find what is there although it is not there.
Confidante The best of leaders is a gentle mist across his people. Better than he whom they love. Better yet than he whom they hate. Better even yet than he whom they devide. When his goals are achieved and his work is done They say, `we accomplished it ourselves'. The right thing is like water. Water benefits the creatures of the world without conflict, And finds its own level even where it is unwanted, So it is like with Fooling. In a property location is vital. In a mind quality is vital. In a friend love is vital. In communication honesty is vital. In governance control is vital. In business talent is vital. In doing timing is vital. The company is a pure trust. It must be protected. Whoever seizes for it will not catch it.
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The Corporate Fool In some things leading is required, in some, following is. In some things firm breath is required, And in some, gentle breath is. In some things firmness is required, and in some, weakness is. In some things destruction is required, and in some, creation. The wise leader avoids egotism, bias, and presumption.
Midwife Thirty spokes with a hub. Drawn together with a vision, And the cart will move. As a shape of something and nothing; Clay with the potter's hand. Drawn together with a vision, And there is a container: As a shape of something and nothing; Walls with holes. Drawn together with a vision, And there is a room. As a shape of something and nothing; What is achieved is something. But it is achieved because of the nothing.
Jester Promotion and demotion shock the same. What can the Fool mean by this? Promote and the junior is shocked. Demote and the senior is shocked too. High status is, like one's person, a source of pain. What can the Fool mean by this?
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Part Two: Imagine The reason I have pain is that I have a person. When I no more have a person, I no more have any pain. He who values his person more than power over the company, He who loves his person more than promotion, Give him the company.
Mapper If it is not seen, it is thought imperceptible, If it is not heard, it is thought indistinct, If it is not touched, it is thought untouchable. These things are not understood, And they are ambiguous, Therefore they are confused. Things only vaguely grasped Slip back into the shadows. You will not find resolution By looking on the face of things. Attend to what was and why And this will explain what is. To understand the evolving system Is how the Fool spins the way.
Satirist Where the way of the Fool is not followed, Everything is love and peace. Where there is information, There is great understanding. Where the organisation is incoherent There are tranquil staff. Where the company is in trouble, There are dependable executives.
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The Corporate Fool
Alienator I alone have the sense of a Fool I alone am quite clear. They together are abscure. I alone am dormant. They together are active. I alone am confused. Peaceful like the sea; Like a tempest that never pauses. The group all have a task. I alone am simple and impertinent. I alone am different from them together And value being sustained by the way.
Truthseeker Understand anything and you will follow the way of the Fool. The way of the Fool is straight, Yet people prefer the crooked path. The management are corrupt. The plants are crumbling. The assets are stripped. Yet the leaders are dressed in silks, With rich toys at their disposal, Stuffed with food and wine, Grossly overpaid. There is word for this: It is larceny.
So says the Fool.
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The Users' Manual Instructions to the King on taking on a Corporate Fool
Congratulations on your decision to engage a Corporate Fool We are sure that you'll have many exciting years of trouble-free fooling ahead of you. Or maybe not. But, in order to get the best out of your investment, we do urge you to read this Fool User's Manual. It will explain the concepts behind the Fool, some of the precautions you should take to ensure smooth performance, and it will outline the many benefits which you will see from proper use of your Fool. Taking on a Fool is a serious matter. Yes, he should be expected to make you laugh, to add levity to otherwise turgid corporate days, but he is not merely an entertainer. He is a facilitator, a master of meaning and insight, a provoker of change and a shoulder to rest on. Use him wisely and he will enhance your performance, your culture and, yes, your bottom line. Fools are value — adders. They don't make stuff, they don't sell stuff. They just add value — they help others make stuff and sell stuff better. They do this by inhabiting a place usually unavailable to corporate executives — a place outside the business conventions. A place from which it is obvious how silly or stale some of the things we do are, and from which it is clear how much better off we'd be if we didn't do them. You know how it is in your organisation. You're never sure who you can trust. How far you can go. What people really think. There you sit, in your office, filled with good intentions. Surrounded by the ring-binders from all those seminars exhorting you to `Plan or Die!' and `be a Positive Manager!' and use `SPIN!' and `LEM!' and `PAVE!' techniques, all gathering a fine layer of dust while you get on with actually running the
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business, or keeping the operation moving, or solving crises, or whatever it is that you actually do. But meanwhile, there are still all those people with their attitudes and misunderstandings and agendas, and wouldn't it be nice if there was someone you could turn to...
So what is a King? Anybody who needs challenging or stimulating can be a King. It is not necessary to be a King that you sit at the apex of the pyramid. It is sufficient that you are in a position where your King-ness is getting in the way. Where what you are — supervisor, manager, CEO — is a barrier to dialogue and honesty. A King is anyone who can't afford not to know the truth and whose subordinates can't risk telling it to him. So a King is someone who needs to know when he's naked. But he's also someone who can give the Fool a place to be. So a King must have enough discretionary influence to hire the Fool in the first place. It won't do the Fool or the King any good if they're always having to justify the Fool's very existence and fighting for budget and resources. You get enough of that in the rest of the business. You don't need any more. But, if you can find the resources, and you have the stuff of Kingness about you, then you can't afford not to have the Fool about — even if it's strange or awkward, or a bit painful. Especially if it's a bit painful ... And remember, a King need not just be one person — a group or a team can be a King and can therefore need a Fool.
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The HR perspective: hiring, firing, bad to know... [Speaker's notes for presentation to board of Chemico 26 September 1998]
FIRST CATCH YOUR FOOL Where to find a Corporate Fool? Inside your own organisation There are likely to be ranks of dissatisfied staff, itching for the Fool's licence. Test them — let them propose Fool projects (I know it sounds foolish but why don't we ... and see how you feel and how imaginative/insightful they are). By their projects shall ye know them ... Independent consultancies The niche consultancy is the natural home of the Fool — it is a place of self-motivated self-starters. Large consultancies Again — many talk the talk, but can they, will they walk the walk? Some search agencies In your most successful competitors Fools are transferable. Indeed it is preferable for the Corporate Fool to shift firm every two or three years to avoid enculturation and integration and to prevent the client company from developing immunity. In networks Fools stand out — people notice them. Talk to people. Ask about Fools.
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Not in corporate life at all At health and consciousness seminars, at spiritualist meetings, creativity expos, in a vineyard in Bordeaux ... this is not a realm where corporate pedigree counts for much. As long as the candidate has read the manual and understands his responsibilities. At foolweb.com Fool central online — where you'll tap into the living community of the cap and bells ... * * *
INTERVIEWS
Fool Check the aire n question
alise you‘ve And when you re ing but still lk ta e done all th done all the feel like they‘ve good sign – a ‘s at th helping, to help Fools help you yourself …
Do you like him?
But minly – let him Fool you: talk about your problems, fears and needs. If hes a natural Fool, he‘ll understand, he may even help.
Ask about weaknesses – Fools are honest. Ask about strengths – Fools are honest.
Remember the Fool is a ma communication – an ster of d nication is a subjecti commu ve semiotic thing – so if he ‘seem s‘ he‘s helping … This is to help, no depth of knowledge – t about we interviewing for rocket 're not – this is about breadth scientists of insight and competition.
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Interviewing a Fool Key questions Can s/he • cope? • thrive? • help?
Interviewing a Fool Key questions Is he • independent? • self-motivated? • interested in non-monetary rewards? • from a diverse, odd background? • in possession of an envialbe CV (‘I wish I’d been able to have done what you’ve done …’)?
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Interviewing a Fool Key questions Would he • fail to get a regular job with the company? • be an awkward fit with the prevailing culture? • be a different colour, ethnicity, gender from the dominant norm?
But, beware, is he • a pseudo-fool (whinges or chaslatan)
– Stress that the appraisal is action-orientated – measuring results, and assesses trustingness and trustworthiness – the extent to which the Fool learns and shares.
ve nt must ha The applica the King … h dinner wit this is not a ly te a im lt u can be choice that nly preo – d delegate screened.
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Elements of the contract short tenure (two years) flat fee + bonus direct, sole reporting line to the top premises budget ex post facto (Jesuit) requisitioning non-disclosure The Fool Arbitration System
Appraisals
carried out buy the King only
• • • • • • • •
Metrics • new ideas • problems solved • sense that things are working • laughter • busted jigs • opposition
the t … state Map it ou each side. issues on signals and e Identify th gns si
• Socratics • map • sharing – giving stuff away • learning • licence/liberties
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Managing a Fool 1 The relationship One — one — only one person manages the Fool and that's the King. Others may — indeed, will — try. Disaffected barons and assorted victims of the truth may well want to manage the Fool personally. Perhaps with a broom handle. They need to know that the Fool will be managed — but it's not their job. It's an awkward thing to tread the line between having licence and taking liberties — and the Fool and King together have the responsibility to ensure that this is controlled. Personal — this isn't just another employee. This is someone that you can feel comfortable with — who doesn't threaten you. The Fool isn't after your job — not if he's a real Fool and not a pseudo-fool — he's trying to support you. One of his key principles is humility — he won't try to take credit for things: even if they were his idea. That's not his job. But that's why job security is so essential: he can't parade his achievements around to show how valuable he is. Based on trust and honesty — if he can dish it he must take it, too. This means that you can attack the Fool — you can tell him what he's doing wrong and what he needs to change. Indeed you must, he's trying to learn like everyone else.
2 Praise and discipline The Fool is used to criticism — as long as it constructive and wellmotivated, he doesn't have a problem. When it is necessary, try to do it off-line, in private. Public telling off won't help anyone — and will build resentment against the Fool. And after all, the Fool isn't guaranteed to be popular — he doesn't court popularity, but, being human, of course he doesn't shun it either. Some Fools, by entertaining, are everyone's favourite companions. But they need not be. And if they are provocative and ruffle feathers, they need some shielding. If they need to come down a peg or two, they need to know it — and they'll respond — but in private, where it can't be used against them.
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3 Spotting pseudo-Fools When they see it rolling, the envious will try to join the Fool bandwagon. There will be two types of pseudo-fools: the charlatans; and the whingers. The Charlatans will see the Fool as an opportunity to have the ear of the king. They will try to lay their agenda before the King in the guise of advice. They will be seeking advancement not fulfilment. And leverage rather than change. The key to identifying them is to build the Fool's role around the achievement of results — measurable, but often subjective, impact on others and the business. The Fool knows he has to deliver in his personality as well has his acts. If, however, a charlatan-fool cannot be identified — cannot be distinguished from a true Fool, perhaps that does not matter. As long as the Fooling is done, the hole is filled and the jig is ended. There is another Fool who will not achieve anything but will engender frustration — who will devalue the role. This is the whingeing-fool. The whingers will just use the Fool's role as an opportunity to complain. They like complaining, it makes them feel useful. And this role would play to those instincts. The key to identifying them is to be clear that the Fool is constructively dissatisfied. He's not complaining for the sake of it, or out of inadequacy or as a means of projection. He's complaining, if that's what he's up to, out of a need to improve things. So test his ideas — check that he's offering solutions, not just pointing out problems. There will be bad Fools, and Fools who steal the Fool's clothes to run amok, and slow, weak Fools and downright dangerous Fools. But that does not make the role wrong or irrelevant — rather it suggests how important it is for us to find the right one.
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A Fool's Handbook Advice on becoming a Corporate Fool
Congratulations! So you want to be a Fool? The Fool is a new, unique and extraordinarily privileged role. It is a sign of an organisation's openness to new ideas, to challenge and risk and to its commitment to liberation that it should ever consider making space for a Fool at all. Use your privilege well and you'll bring real emotional, creative and financial benefits to the company you Fool for. And in your search to root out the truth and tell it, in your quest for innovation and refreshment, free from the constraints of politics, you'll also find Fooling a deep source of satisfaction for yourself. The following pages describe the qualities you'll need to succeed, the types of duties and benefits that will be expected of you and how you can manage your career into and out of the organisation you Fool for.
What does it take to be a Fool? Being a fool is a vocation rather than a job. Certainly it takes more than the cap and bells and the King's license. By his actions shall you know him, rather than his habits ... The fact that you are open and inquisitive enough to have picked up this book suggests that you may be part of the way towards having what it takes already — that sense of daring, or risk-taking, of practising the unusual. But we must probe your motives further: why do you want to be a Fool? If it is because you want revenge on all those people who treated you badly before, that's not a good reason: you'll just be a thug in a stolen costume. If you want to be heard, that's nearer the mark, but I have to ask why you weren't heard before in your previous role? The ability to communicate with and influence the court is, as you know, a key Fooling principle, so your career to date should show strong evidence of an ability to make yourself heard and understood.
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Beyond that, job background is largely irrelevant. A range of experience rather than seniority or authority will match the need for the Fool's span to be `wide and not necessarily deep'. You'll need to display real understanding of the problems people and organisations face in adapting to change. You'll then need to be passionately committed to the idea that Fooling can break those people and organisations free. After that, who you are will drive how well you do. Here are some other skills and qualities required by a Fool, listed in no particular order. You know yourself — your habits, your tendencies (particularly in stressful situations), the way you think, your hot buttons, your moods, so that you know that your reactions are not coming from a part of you that you know you shouldn't trust. You like yourself — it's a lonely job — partly because you can be effective only when you are tripping people up, and although, like a shape-shifter, you can fit in anywhere, you can never be aligned with any group or even any current belief system or attitude. You hate impossibilities — you have little patience with `don't, can't, shouldn't, mustn't' and put more trust in people's immediate impulses, responses, instantaneous actions and reactions; you have even less patience with individuals who don't seem to have these spontaneous impulses. You love possibilities — your right brain works overtime. You can listen — really — which is a service you provide and not an absence of your talking — good listening is a fervent desire to understand, and will probably involve you listening beyond the words to tone and visual cues and helping the other person to clarify what they mean. You take responsibility — you are responsible for your actions and emotions, for your responses to events. You act in accordance with your principles rather than in the hope of gaining others' approval; you don't mind being disliked or resented, since you know this is a sign that others have been challenged.
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You know how to be happy — because you don't rely on anything other than yourself for your happiness or for your despair. You hold no regard for authority and status for its own sake — you can imagine looking into the eye of your current boss and saying `what a load of absolute rubbish!' and such a thought does not make you sweat. (On the other hand, however, you have a high regard for authority and status used wisely and well, i.e. for the good of the company and not the individual.) You have a high tolerance of ambiguity — not used just to breaking the rules, you also know how to work when there are no rules, or where the rules which governed yesterday have utterly changed today. You have a sense of humour — which is selfless and not a need for recognition — humour is a tool to make people see things differently or to lighten their state. Which reminds me of W.H. Auden on Falstaff: `And this happiness without apparent cause, this untiring devotion to making others laugh becomes a comic image for a love which is absolutely self-giving.'
You are passionate — a satirist cares about his subject so much that he hates the abuses heaped upon it. Satire requires this emotional depth and range but it also is directed by a passion for change and not to exercise revenge or power. If you prick someone's pomposity, you are doing so because their arrogance is dangerous and not because their vulgarity upsets you or because you'd like to see them fall. You draw satisfaction from seeing others succeed — you have to be able to let others discover the answer for themselves. After all, they are the ones who are doing the work, you're just the Fool.
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You can tolerate extreme reactions — you are prepared for the impact of your work on others, whether it be fear, anger, sadness or laughter. Remember your role is to provide a quickening of the organisational energy and that's better than the natural deadening towards which all subsides ... You have a good memory for names — because you need to know everybody. And finally: You value freedom over fees — so that every day you draw your power from the fact that you don't need to survive here. You are utterly committed to change, to learning, to the King and above all to the spirit of Fooling, and would not sacrifice any of these to keep your job. As such, you are the reverse of much of the reality associated with why people work. At first glance, many of these qualities don't look that astonishing — they're the sort of thing any self-respecting HR professional might list as qualities required in most of the executives they hire. The big difference for the Fool is that you actually have to live them. Your value will be calculated on how well you display them, you'll be appraised on them — passion shown, extreme reactions raised, number of people pissed off, etc., etc. Queen Elizabeth once rebuked a Fool called Clod for not criticising her harshly enough. And you have to be very clear about what you are letting yourself in for. We remember seeing a documentary on TV about some people who were convinced that they were born into the wrong sex. They'd taken the drugs, they were wearing the clothes, now they were being interviewed to make sure they were absolutely, definitely, completely positive that they wanted to go through with the whole thing. I think the same should happen for fools — because there's no going back. Supposing you don't like it and you decide you want a normal job next time? Can you imagine your interview at that company? `I used to be a Fool but I'll be a good boy from now on. Honest.' I don't think so. But that's why it's a vocation and not a job.
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What does a Fool do all day? A Day in the Life of a Corporate Fool Bradley, Scott and Naylor Bristol 2 April 1997 6:30am: Discuss with son (Billy, aged 5) my plans for today's CreativityStorm meeting. I tell him I'm a little concerned about the impact of the new physical stuff, not just on our people but on the two client representatives who'll be there, one of whom has never met me before. Billy says I shouldn't worry. I tell him how far I'm planning to push them and he says `further; Daddy, further!' 6:55am: Driving in, I notice a large slogan painted on the window of `Graham's Glass and Mirror Shop.' It says: `every pane a pleasure.' I make a note to write this up on each of the three whiteboards positioned on every floor: The whiteboards do two main jobs. Firstly they allow people to write up jokes, slogans, cartoons, wise sayings — for stimulation and revitalisation. Secondly, they are there for people to doodle, represent and discuss ideas — an aid for meetings held standing up and on the fly. It encourages people to be brief, to say what they mean, make decisions and then move on. And holding more meetings in the open space encourages openness and dissolves rumour. I brought the whiteboard idea with me from my previous posting and it's my job to keep them fresh and in use. 7:30 am: Take up position in the lobby, plug in and charge up my Organiser: Connect to the Happyweb — the corporate database of good news, ideas, customer satisfaction and feedback. Take note of three people I need to celebrate with today and book space in today's diary. 7:38 am: Mike from Traffic wanders in and tells me he's got the solution to the Simpson problem. He's been using the problem solving technique I introduced his team to last week. The answer; basically, is white. I tell him I can't believe he could come up with anything other than black and give him five reasons to support my argument. He appears crestfallen but I push him to fight
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back — within fourteen minutes he is back to white, but this time, hopefully, more sure than ever: He goes off grinning. The answer was always white but if I can give him that confidence, he'll be able to sell his idea quicker and with more urgency. Meeting with Becky Scott, CEO, about Mark's communications audit report she gave me to comment on. I walk in and she says `Before we go any further; I need to talk to you.' This means its serious, certainly more serious than a communications audit report. She tells me her concerns about one of the Partners — a founder member with Becky back in the eighties — and what she suspects is a potential nervous breakdown in the offing. Tony in HR is usually involved when there's a health problem in the organisation, but Becky feels she needs an unofficial, emotional splurge before she has to go `all organisational' about it. Our conversation ranges from the physiological symptoms of stress, the ageing process, the nature of love and work and Betty Crocker's Blueberry muffins and the strain of balancing concern for the individual with revenue performance. About 20 minutes later Betty thanks me — although I can't remember much of value that I said — and we move on to another area of business: the communications audit report. Drop in on Support who are faced with 12% redundancies over the next six months. I try for the right balance between Agony Aunt and Cheery Uncle. We decide to look at the possibility of outplacement consultancy. I make a mental note to talk with one of the senior people there — I sense trouble brewing and that I ought to nip the problem before it grows. Meeting with Graham and the team, rehearsing a new sales pitch for the October launch. They run through it for me and then turn for my reaction. I wait a full minute before telling them that it's crap. But then, it really is. We work through lunch to find new ways forward. Interrupted by call from one of our major clients with feedback for me on a meeting she's just had with one of our account managers about supply difficulties. I tell her the best thing to do is address her complaints to the account manager himself, but agree to mediate a meeting between the interested parties next Monday.
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Get a call from Anna — she needs a sounding board for some problems she's having with her team. CreativityStorm meeting begins. We have a £3m project on the brink of collapse unless we can break through this creative malaise. As I'm in charge of allowing creative breakthroughs to happen, this is serious bottom lin e stuff. I introduce my role, agree the ground rules for the event, put some music on, and begin the work. In all, we'll use five distinct problem solving techniques, including visualisation and 3D modelling but, like the majority of people I seem to be working with now, this lot are quite open to both left and right brain thinking. That's not the problem — my main role is not to push. The challenge remains dealing with their worries, fears and em barrassments. Even now, even in this relatively creative company, peopl e are still scared by silence, by mistakes, by appearing stupid or wrong, by periods of frustration. That's how I can help them the most. I tell them t o work through their conditioning to `do it quick, do it now' and to trust themselves. Later we do theatrical representations of our various, tentativ e solutions. Improve is notoriously difficult, but all of a sudden, the guy from the client company launches into this comic monologue. It's blindingly funny. We fall about. People seem to be enjoying themselves, which I know is a sign we are near to something good. The group begins to draw things together on the PC. I'm no longer the leader, which is great. CreativityStorm meeting over; I call in at the gym and share a treadmil l session with Jane and Stephen. They are complaining about the fact that they can't grasp the process stuff around the Zenith account. I put them i n touch with Jackie in the Stratford office who does know. Home in time to tell Billy how it went but he's moved on to something else by now. ...
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Glimpses of Fooling A leading capital markets firm has recognised the need for a destabilising, Foolish, force in their technical organisation. And they recognise that a Fool does not have to be an individual. The organisation is moving into more competitive markets and faces sterner demands on its technology — faster development cycles, Year 2000 compliance, integration of Client-Server methodologies into predominantly mainframe environments. These challenges were compounded by the geographical split in the company, with most of the `back office' functions performed in a data processing centre in Phoenix, while the trading and management businesses were based in Chicago. The resulting division matched a cultural separation in the IS group — with the Chicago staff aligned closely with their business colleagues and sharing many of their frustrations with Phoenix, while the Phoenix shop considered the Chicago development community to be disloyal and divisive. Neither would accept the primacy of the other, and neither would accept the authority of the managers from what they saw as the opposition. It became clear to the COO that this was an unsustainable situation. And yet he knew that any attempts to intervene directly in the culture of either group — or to bring those groups together — would be met with suspicion and hostility. The COO created a special Firm-wide Projects Team with a Fool's mandate: to advise him on opportunities and approaches that were not being brought up by either of the existing groups — and with a Fool's licence: to challenge the performance of both Phoenix and Chicago. Neither Chicago nor Phoenix offered more than grudging acceptance of the new FPT. Both resented its interference and both were concerned by its mandate to generate new ideas: that was, after all, traditionally their remit, despite the fact that they hadn't exercised it much recently. With the direct patronage of the COO, and with his permission to be creative, however, both groups understood the importance of co-operating with the FPT. Soon the FPT took on the role of a sort of advisory board for cross-business technology.
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Now it operates in an exciting role — it has no formal delivery responsibility: that still resides with the groups in Phoenix and Chicago. But it has a key part in sharing across that gap: it has become the translation table between the tensions and jealousies of the two development entities — not because it is there, but because it is known to be protected, unbiased — truly indifferent — and on the lookout for folly to bladder. People in Phoenix and Chicago alike talk about having to be careful about what they do with and for the other group as they know the FPT will scorn them if they are less than open.
Becoming a Fool — what to expect and what not to expect Looking for a Good King You may now be sure that you want to be a Fool, but you'll scan the recruitment ads in vain for a vacancy listing Fool. How do you create the role you want? You have two options: create the role at your current company or seek a role at another. From within, begin to keep a record of costs to your company which you believe could have been saved had there been a Fool on board. Here are some examples: lies told contracts lost or damaged by meaning confusion or poor communication cost of contractor/consultants when the knowledge and talent was already within the company opportunities missed when someone (anyone) in the organisation failed to speak up or share their knowledge or opinion. In seeking another company, you'll have to look for examples of their progressive or innovative approach to people issues. Interview people who already work there or who
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have worked there, and test the idea on them. Try to build a list similar to the one above. Then create a proposal that will knock them dead with the scope and power of its features, benefits and sheer unavoidability. Impossible? Maybe. But you will learn two things; how strong your courage is and how strong your influencing skills are, both crucial qualities of Fooling.
Managing relationships Explaining your role You should agree with your King that he will pave the way for you — that he will be explaining your role and the reason you have been brought in to the organisation. But he may not do it well enough, or people in the organisation might `forget' what he said. You should be prepared to do your own marketing. Things to tell individuals and groups new to Fooling: what Fools do in general — the nine roles and why they bring benefits what your objective is for this particular meeting how you are likely to behave how this might make them feel that it's OK to have those reactions how you'd like them to behave agree responsibilities — that you are there to help them do the work, not do it for them that you'll keep up your end of the deal even if they let go of their own.
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Things to tell individuals and groups who would never be able to tolerate the the word `Fool': that you are a Facilitator Of Organisational Learning.
Living with the pain But you cannot expect to do what you have to do without stirring up resentment. If you are not stirring up resentment, you're probably not doing any good. Even as the King smarted at the truth his Fool told him, he made sure the Fool would smart too. Just because your colleagues say they are open to the truth doesn't mean to say that they will take it without reacting badly. You can expect some pain in your role as a Fool. Here's how to live with the lash. 1
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Keep explaining the model so that the King and his people recognise that you are giving them service within the scope of Foolery. And don't be afraid to explain why they feel the shock they do. Help them to see that their anger is only one stage in their processing of the information you've given them. Be humble. The Fool is not the King. The King must experience the change himself and he will find it difficult. People in his organisation will notice the change. One of the Fool's roles in the company is to provide a safety valve for the emotions of the corporate members. In Lear, without the Fool the King would look absurd. The Fool draws the laughs, so that the King remains `credible'. For the Corporate Fool this boils down to the two unpalatable facts that if they don't like what we say, we get bruised, and if they do like our ideas, we don't get any credit for them. We have to be prepared to let other people take the credit — sometimes even like an `invisible ventriloquist' feeding the lines but not being seen; making the King look good. But that's OK. We're there to make them do it, not necessarily to do it for them, and certainly not to be seen to do it — this is not an ego trip. Remember that this behaviour, painful as it is to you, is nevertheless the behaviour of a good king. Think how unbearable it could be with a bad king.
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Glimpses of Fooling One of the attributes of the Fool is to deflect criticism of the King. When the IT Director of a US-based global consumer products company saw the technology revolution of the Internet he recognised that it presented a significant challenge to his organisation. He knew that the traditions and culture of the company were not likely to accept the forthcoming change easily. In particular, there would be a reluctance to accept the implicit assumption that, in order to prepare for the opportunities of Internet marketing and electronic commerce, there would have to be changes in the operating assumptions and behaviours of the highly autonomous business units. The business units, operating as, in effect, independent fiefdoms, had a dramatic track record of success — the sort of unbroken achievement that makes business school case studies and breeds a powerful sense of complacency and narrowmindedness. The risk associated with any attempt to change this group head on was too great for the IT Director to be comfortable. And yet the ideas which he needed the businesses to start to contemplate were radical and different. The IT Director hired a person to play the role, in effect, of `Internet fool' — to evangelise the concept while protecting himself. The Fool concentrated on advancing the ideas, understanding the objections, drawing out opposition and holding it up to scrutiny while the IT Director protected him, mentored him, learned from him and used him to challenge the status quo — to show no fear, to ask awkward questions, to challenge everything that was believed, and to point out folly. The Fool got the whippings. The King saved face.
Danger signals — a Fool's end? Having said that, if you are taking too many unreasonable thrashings, you either need to improve your Fooling or accept that this particular court may be beyond redemption. When is it time to get out? 1 When your Good King seems like a Bad King more often than not. The world is too competitive to tie ourselves to the Bad Kings — the Kings who
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will not change, who will not listen or who like wearing the lenses of perceptual adaptation. If your King wants the world to be upside down and back to front, get out. Remember, your power comes from your freedom. Don't be afraid to exercise it. When people get too used to you. After freedom, your novelty is really your value. If you are losing your power to provoke, shock, stimulate or please, you will not be able to deliver the rejuvenation and innovation organisations need. Move on.
Home: The Foolish Building By Philip Ross
Introduction The way things have always been is the manifesto for change, for change's sake. The foolish building changes for the sake of change — it destabilises to create the unexpected, just as a theatre changes scenery within the confines of the proscenium. A foolish building allows the emerging mass of knowledge workers to benefit from folly by playing out the roles of the fool through the use of space, design and juxtaposition of the unexpected. Architecture, like a jester telling a good joke, brings together the unanticipated in the punch line to create a new sense of realisation. The foolish building stimulates and energises the office worker. It relieves him or her from the drudgery of office life. The office need not be the white-collar factory it is today. It could and indeed should evolve into a more dynamic environment, a foolish environment that catalyses the people who work within it.
Where is the office today? The office today is a contradiction. Tracing its origins back to the industrial revolution where time and motion and Taylorism were the mantras for efficiency in the workplace, the office was a place for watching people at work in white collar process-driven tasks. Seducing its occupiers into a false sense of security, its paternalistic factory origins in the 1890s are still the basis for today's workplace. Yet the workers that occupy today's offices have changed. The white-collar factory betrays the 1990's knowledge worker by failing to provide a conducive environment in which to work when not involved in repetitive, process-driven tasks or solitary activity. Interaction, team-based space, spontaneity and uncertainty rarely exist in the workplace. As a place in which to put people to work together and encourage them to be productive, today's office fails on too many counts. Rigid space planning efficiency, in the name of scientific time and motion, gives
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the optimum use of space by keeping `circulation' and communal space to a minimum. It is as if human beings were designed to sit at desks or in offices and moving from A to B was an activity to be frowned upon and minimised. Travelling the corporate building is an exercise in solitary, isolated journeys, following straight lines of least resistance. Today's office is designed to keep people apart, not bring them together. People sit together not because they need to but because of departmental convenience based on organisational structure and ease of planning, rather than customer requirements and the market. You travel the building to go straight to a meeting room, to the cafeteria or to leave the building. Moving from floor to floor is in the confines of a lift. Stairwells, coffee points and office machinery, the very place where people might meet are fragmented and usually hidden away in inaccessible corners. Research shows that the office keeps people apart. In the same area of an office, the average worker has a 10% chance of bumping into a colleague. Across a floor, that likelihood reduces to 2%, but between floors an average worker has only a 0.4% chance of interaction with his/her colleagues.1 Offices separate; they engender anonymity and isolation. Organisations, in the face of accelerating product life-cycles and intense global competition and in their desire to continuously improve and reinvent themselves, are striving for innovation and creativity through the interaction of people. But the box-like environments in which they place these people contradicts this, imposing predictability, sequentiality, comfort, security and longevity — all attributes of yesterday's order.
Another order But life need not be this way. As human beings, we do not necessarily choose the line of least resistance, the most efficient way to get from A to B. When urgency is not the priority we often choose the `scenic route' — one which provides a more fulfilling journey with the expectation of chance discovery and enjoyment. This option does not exist in today's man-made spaces. Our new towns, like our workplaces, have been designed for efficiency following the Roman principle of the straight road. But when cities are understood, their origins describe journeys and routes that follow natural contours, essentially random walks that appear organic, sometimes chaotic. These mediaeval plans for towns and cities, with their winding roads and unpredictable journeys, trace their origins back to ancient times when people first came together to trade — an environment that grew out of the needs of the people that used it.
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They are a far cry from the modern-day motorway, with its adherence to the efficiency of the straight line. And straight lines are the basis for the modern workplace. When offices first emerged in the 1890s they were, on the whole, small and personal. But by 1920, with the growth of a white-collar work force, systems and efficiency were the overriding principles for a workplace driven by process efficiency. Despite the relentless march of technology, the 1990's office largely matches those same concerns. It remains Fool-less, both in its design and inspiration. So how can the building become Foolish? Apart from introducing a `Foolish' human or jester into this sterile environment, the environment itself can become Foolish. Introducing folly into the built environment, thereby allowing it to act as a catalyst for those within the office to become Foolish, is the objective of the Foolish Building.
The Foolish Building The future white-collar workplace will become more and more dependent on knowledge work as opposed to process-driven activities. For most organisations these knowledge workers will be both their most valuable asset most expensive overhead. What is the optimum environment that the company can provide for these people, allowing them to fulfil their true potential? Any job has repetitive, process-driven elements. Essentially left-brain activity, these tasks are well suited to today's Fool-less environment. But to create value and to realise the potential of human capital, right brain activities need to be encouraged or catalysed as well. Leading corporations need their people to innovate, create, generate new ideas and think laterally. However, they seem unable to create the right environments that allow such activity to happen. The Foolish office plays a role in encouraging the sharing and dissemination of knowledge — an organisation's intellectual capital. Office designers have a duty to create space that enhances return on that capital, by creating random interactions between people as they move around a building and by encouraging access to information and shared resources through distributed `fountains' or intranets. The future Foolish workplace encourages information and knowledge sharing.
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How do we build this productive space? First, we must take away what we are used to. The Foolish Building offers areas that are the antithesis of the sensible, rational and predictable office. Corridors with the best views, lay-bys to pull into for a quick conversation, stand-up peer-to-peer meeting pods, staircases punched through the middle of office floors, centralised coffee shops and information centres are all elements being used effectively by corporations around the globe to stimulate interaction. Manifesto for a Foolish office Changing floor levels Changing ceiling levels Walls that curve Unexpected views/vistas Unpredictable street plan Vibrant colour White and pink noise Shapes and curves Adjustable furniture These environments contrast absolutely with the safety and the predictability of the traditional desk. Nowhere to hide, none of the trophies of corporate life, the Fool's environment bares the corporate worker, offering no protection, no comfort blanket. It encourages him or her to ask for help, to share information, to develop ideas in the company of others. It encourages interaction and team work. This environment, of course, has its risks. There's the risk of alienation, of disenfranchising the individual from all that is safe and corporate. But in doing so the Foolish office affords the chance for unusual activity, for unnatural responses, for unpredictable behaviour — and this unpredictability is the essence of innovation, experimentation and learning.
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Now we must put in what we are not used to. The built environment can influence not just movement, but moods, attitudes, thought process and many other physiological factors. The Foolish Building can stimulate and cheer our psyches. Through shape, colour, contours, materials, lighting, noise and so on, moods and environments can be created that stimulate new responses in people in their place of work. For example, Babcock and Brown, the engineering firm, has created an office that has varying floor and ceiling levels in contrast to the uniformity of most offices today. These help change the pace and tempo of the journey within the workplace. Nickelodeon, the children's cable television channel, has created an environment that allows its people to empathise with its customers — in this case children. Their workplace was described by New Yorker Magazine as a `hybrid newsroom, playroom'. Places to meet and freedom to choose a work environment are essential ingredients in the Foolish office. You'll will see people meeting in lobbies, R&R rooms and gazebos that are designed for and accepting of such use. In this way, meetings become visible and open, not hidden away and secretive. Hot- or short-desking empowers people to work where, when and how they want. All this, of course, implies changing management style and culture, away from the supervisory past of watching people at work to an independent future of freedom, objectives and results. Communication and mobility are key ingredients in the Foolish building, and these can now be enabled by new technology. Knowledge workers tied to desks, where a phone represents a fixed place and not a person, are discouraged to be away from their extension number in case they miss that phone call. In fact research shows that over 70% of calls in business do not get through to the desired person. With the introduction of new cordless telephone systems for offices, in the foolish office the extension number becomes the individual, giving flexibility and freedom to the worker to be effective anywhere in the environment. The building itself has to encourage, catalyse and enable folly and right-brain activity and it must be designed to offer alternative left-brain environments as well. This creates a role for the building as midwife, providing a central link between left-brain and rightbrain activity. Offices are traditionally left-brain environments. The foolish building
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augments this by offering right-brain environments that stimulate creativity, as well as providing the link between these two cerebral extremes. The brain is a good analogy for the Foolish office, providing certainty in some areas, uncertainty in others. The built environment stimulates both lobes into action, encouraging rational thought and spontaneous creativity. It succeeds in releasing energies that lie dormant in the majority of office workers. The brain or cerebrum is a model for a future office for knowledge work, where the workplace itself encourages `cerebration' both through folly and through order. But the Foolish building can also facilitate other roles of the Fool. As Fools we need to think and challenge the status quo. A contrarian environment must challenge and encourage outspoken opinions, allowing a `speaker's corner' for people to air their views without being chastised. This is being realised, for example by British Airways (BA), where just such an environment is being created within the new headquarters building. Located along a central street which encourages people to meet, BA has developed places for people to interact and communicate, share information and discuss as well as find privacy to contemplate and think. Their central street epitomises a Foolish environment. Through the new technologies of networked computers or cordless personal digital assistants (PDAs), the role of the building as mediator and mapper are achieved. As `intelligent agents' the digital Fool performs the role of Negroponte's post-modern butler.2 The digital Fool uses information technology to deliver and disseminate information as demanded. But the Fool does not just respond to requests or pulls for information; the Fool `pushes' information to people who they feel will benefit for the knowledge. The Fool becomes the center of knowledge, the village gossip, spreading the word — both the spoken and the unspoken. No building should be Foolish all the time. Rather it should provide areas and environments that encourage folly or Foolishness alongside areas which are designed for more structured, systematised and ordered work. When it comes to serious contemplation, the corporation should bear the words of Abraham Lincoln: `You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.'3 The Foolish Building needs to provide variety and choice: places for people to work and not just a work place.
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New vocabulary for a Foolish office From Floor plan Space planning efficiency Systems furniture Corridor Coffee/tea point Cellular office Open plan environment Dead space
To Street plan Space planning originality Furniture collection Path Meeting place with refreshments Private space Team spaces Productive workspace
The Foolish Building is a blueprint for a future workplace. Rather than introduce a person who is the Fool or jester, the Foolish Building stimulates us all to be Foolish at certain times during the working day. It creates the conditions for folly, and provides an environment in which we can all be constructively Foolish. At the same time it caters for other work patterns, so that the building itself becomes a more interesting and unusual place for working with others. Being Foolish at work will no longer hinder success. It will become the essence of success for business tomorrow.
About the contributor Philip Ross is a specialist in work and the workplace. He has pioneered research into workplace futures and is a founding director of Technology @ Work, a company that specialists in technology futures and new ways of working. Email:
[email protected]
Notes 1 2 3
Source: BT, Workstyle 2000, 1997. Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, 1995. Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, Speech given at Clinton, 8 September 1858.
Advice from an Old Fool An interview with Paul Birch ... the man who was Corporate Jester at British Airways plc
Paul was catapulted to fame and fortune as BA's Corporate Jester after coverage in the Financial Times. Was his appointment an indication of a looser, more innovate culture at that most traditional of airlines — or was something else going on? Now a Recovering Jester living in Wales, Paul looks back over his experiences. ... Interviewer: Paul: Interviewer: Paul:
So, Paul, how did it all start? mmmmmfffffllllriisssppkkpmmmmnmmnmnnncacccacccacc Paul, I'm sorry, could you speak into the microphone? mmmfmf oh, I'm sorry. I see. Well, I'd already decided to leave the company and was offered a series of projects, particularly to do with mergers and acquisitions. In all these projects lasted a few years. But when they were coming to an end I had a number of conversations with my boss in which he kept asking: `what's it going to take to keep you here, Paul?'
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So eventually I said: `The sort of job that would keep me here doesn't exist and you wouldn't want it if it did.' I showed him an article I'd found by D. Verne Morland which posited the idea of Lear's Fool as a change agent for organisations. He laughed and said `If you can write a job description for this and get it accepted by the boss, you can do it.' So I wrote one and he took it to Sir Colin Marshall who loved the idea. Out of courtesy he also took it to Bob Ayling who grunted and we took that as a `yes'. The next step was to get business cards printed and to get my name and new title printed in the phone book. I remember the supervisor in charge of the directory demanding that I wrote an official letter to her to prove I was not having her on (`It's my job that's on the line here' she said). That was the start of a long period of explaining to people what I was and what I did as The Corporate Jester: What was their response? At first it was mostly `No, really?' and `But British Airways wouldn't do that sort of thing!' Then the FT piece brought a huge change of perception both internally and externally. Internally, people began to take the role seriously and there was a sense of respect and excitement about it all. And I'd be contacted from outside the company by all sorts of disgruntled customers and suppliers, who hadn't received satisfaction through the normal channels and were trying me as a last resort. Were there any other reactions? The recruitment section of the company told me that they'd had a number of applicants say to them `any company that would employ a Jester has got to be great to work for!' Which was a great PR fillip for BA. When did it all start to come to an end? When Bob Ayling took over at the top. He appointed a new strategy director who called me up and said `You've been taking the piss for the last year
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and its got to stop.' When I told him that that had been exactly my job, he didn't seem too pleased. I'd also had a chat with Bob Ayling shortly before this about the press coverage of the job. I'd said, `You realise you can't sack me, because sacking me would show that you couldn't take it any more.' And he said `Hmm, I never thought of that ...' It was not long after that that I was told I was going. What have you learnt from your time as The Corporate Jester? Firstly, that people don't like direct challenge. You've got to find a way to deflate their ego gradually. I found a great way of demonstrating the point in a book once with balloons and adapted it in a seminar for some MScs in management development. I had three balloons. The first I burst with a pin — that's what it's like to burst someone's ego. I then stuck a piece of sellotape over the second balloon and put the pin through and said that this is what traditional feedback is like — you give the ego some protection so that it's not completely fucked but you still find that it's damaged afterwards. The last one I untied and let down slowly. I had the balloon laugh along with me (you can make a great laughing noise if you work at it) and said that this was what being a jester or fool was all about. Laughing at absurdities with the person/people who can change them — not laughing at the people. Public humiliation bursts balloons. Traditional feedback lets them down quietly but damages them. Fooling lets them down and leaves them whole. The second lesson from my experience at BA was something to do with the half-life of Fools, which I'd put at between six to nine months. That's not long. I know. Although I was officially in the role for around 18 months, I spent three months explaining the role, nine months having success in it, and then a further six months of people dismissing my challenges with something along the lines of `well, you would say that wouldn't you'. It was like an organisational defence mechanism. The organisation is opened up to challenge and provocation — but eventually it begins to adapt and cope. It's
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like the sand in the oyster that creates a pearl — it is irritated by the grains at first but is eventually left smooth. What else did you learn? The third thing I learnt was that people expect miracles after the event. They dismiss results you have as small beer, not seeing that many small results lead to major change. It's a bit like putting people through a session of creative problem solving. After the event they think they would have got to their findings anyway. People have got to be told about all the miracles they perform. And finally, I learnt that people will always focus on the humour element that's inherent in the concept of the Jester, no matter how many times you explain that the main role of the Jester is to challenge. The humour is just a tool. And then there's the inevitable `Do you dress in costume?' question. But let's not go into that, it's all too horrible. Any advice for prospective fools and jesters? What qualities do you think are needed? Courage, certainly; a love of creativity and the ability to communicate your message to people who probably don't want to hear it. Beyond that, I'd say it's a great job for anyone who isn't going anywhere in the organisation — someone with enough credibility to be taken seriously but with nothing to lose by speaking out. If you don't want a career it's a great job. I think I had more fun as The Jester than in any job I've had. I've always said that you can do anything you want in life — and this was a job without boundaries. I was on the edge. I have strong personal limits. Maybe you have to know those of others. Eh? Perhaps rather than saying no boundaries I should say that I imposed my own boundaries. I have always said that the most important rules to be aware of are the ones that you have internalised. You can usually break those without any external sanctions. But there are a set of internal rules that are essential to the Fool; it's a role that I believe has to be supported by
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a very strong set of personal values. There is something incredibly powerful about realising that you are not constrained by the rules that you used to think were sacrosanct. Someone who didn't have a set of personal values that they followed and who didn't protect the personal values of others could be very dangerous in this role. Then again maybe I'm just justifying my own belief system. An amoral Fool, now, there's a notion ... Paul Birch, thank you. Now, can we do a shot of you in your costume? Ouch. Bastard! ...
About the contributor Paul Birch is now working as a creativity consultant and since leaving BA has worked with a wide range of both large and small companies in the UK and other parts of Europe. He and his wife are working to turn their farm into an educational tourist attraction based on puzzles and mazes. They are also trying to find out as much as they can of the history of the deserted mediaeval village that they happen to have in their back garden. Email:
[email protected]
Job Titles to Die For ... Maybe the world is more ready for the Fool than we imagine. Look at the following list: perhaps The Corporate Fool isn't all that wild an idea after all.1 Troublemaker, US Department of Labor Chief Imagination Officer, Gateway 2000 Minister of Progress, Aspen Tree Software VR Evangelist, Silicon Graphics Inc Director of Bringing in the Cool People, Netscape Director Mind & Mood, Foote, Cone and Belding Senior Creatologist, Polaroid Chief Growth Officer, Thomas Group Director of Intelligence, TBWA Chiat/Day Content Guy, AirMedia Inc Journey Manager, Barclays Bank Director of Fun, Sprint Paranet These are all real jobs being practised today by real people in real organisations. What do we learn from this list?
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Perhaps that companies are spotting holes in the way they are constructed. These holes are opened up by the changing world, of course — not so long ago, for example, there'd have been no call for a person in charge of caring for intellectual capital, since it was only a few blinks of time ago that we recognised that there was such a thing. These job titles certainly indicate a shift in priorities: if content is important, then you need a Content Guy. If creativity is important, you need to know who holds the buck — and it's probably the Senior Creatologist. If you claim that people are your greatest asset, then someone has to take responsibility for their enjoyment, as well as their remuneration. It makes sense, unless you're so stuck in tradition that only the past, where only the classical functions and labels exist, is sensible. The other thing we learn is that some companies are happy to bring a considered lightness of touch to their cultures. They think about words and what they suggest. Language is a fundamental indicator of attitude. The title `Director of Bringing in the Cool People' is a joke only on one level — the juxtaposition of the staid phrase `Director.' with the modern `Cool People'. Beyond that, the title stops being a joke and becomes an indicator of corporate culture — of assumptions, beliefs, values and priorities. It sends a sure and vibrant signal to the organisation. In this company, `Cool People' are needed — and you'll know what Cool People are, because you'll be surrounded by similar ones every day. (Perhaps at Netscape it's a positive stroke to be termed a `cool person' rather than `a member of personnel' — whoever would imagine that job titles might motivate people other than those who wear them?). Moreover, the title recognises that `bringing in' is critical. Cool people might end up elsewhere — so someone needs to be in charge both of attracting them and making them feel part of the community. The job title `Human Resources Director' is as full of meaning as `Director of Bringing in the Cool People'; it's just that they're not the same meanings ... Finally, from the point of view of an individual considering creating a Fool's role for themselves, maybe this list teaches us the old truth — `if you don't ask, you don't get', or, more positively:
You get what you ask for.
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Interview with Barak Rosenbloom, Troublemaker Barak Rosembloom currently makes trouble at the United States Government's Department of Labor. Here, he tells us how and why.
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What did you do before you became a Troublemaker? Were there indications of troublemaking in your earlier incarnations, i.e. do you think your current role is linked to your nature or character? Being a Troublemaker was probably always part of my character. I have always looked at the world in a systemic way, which I think was unusual when growing up; in school, people always seemed to think that I saw things differently. My upbringing also contributed to becoming a troublemaker. Everyone in my family is very value-laden, and very outspoken about injustices. My father, especially, was never one to take `authority figures' at face value. He was always willing to challenge. Two of his favourite stories involved standing up to military superiors (during his stint in WWII), policemen looking for a standard payoff (while a small business owner). He also told stories of my grandfather, an honourable man who was esteemed by the Mafioso in the North End of Boston, where he had his shop. My mother
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and three older sisters also have very strong streaks and are quick to speak their minds. My earliest recollection as a very outspoken, activist Troublemaker was my junior year in high school. It would take a while for me to piece it all together again, but basically, some students were going to be able to play intramural squash for phys ed and others were not, for no good reason that any of us could see. I put a huge amount of energy into talking with fellow students, with the teachers who coached the squash teams, and the phys ed director, who clearly wanted me to go away and, on several occasions, told me that nothing would be changing. I thought that this was an arbitrary, unfair decision, and eventually succeeded in having the schedule and policy changed. I based my arguments on my values of fairness and my frustration with a coach who would not accept a solution agreed to by all of the students involved. I have always looked at new ways of working, and have always become a leader in changing the way in which my coworkers think about their jobs. As a teacher, I went up against the very forceful director of the school on several occasions, and got him to agree to things everyone assured me were absolutely beyond the realm of the possible. Again, I focused on values and building consensus among the affected parties. What was the process involved in becoming a Troublemaker? Did you create the idea, proposal, etc., yourself, or did a colleague/leader create the space for you to fill? I just became who I was, and eventually started calling myself Troublemaker. It would take at least a year or two to change a job description in the US government, and `Troublemaker' would never make it into the official lexicon. I was hired by a former professor; who had been appointed Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training in President Clinton's first term. Doug Ross is well known as a champion of bringing the latest thinking in organisations into the public sector, and he hired me knowing that I would `make up my own job'. In fact, he just had me plopped down, gave me my support, and had me find the important projects for myself. I quickly made my way to the agency's first team, and took the lead in helping make
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the team truly innovative, risk-taking and self-managed. I went up time and again with the team leader, and could be pretty relentless. In retrospect, I was overly harsh at times, but we both learned and grew a great deal. As I moved from team to team while in our national office in DC, I continued to challenge assumptions and find people who were excited about taking risks and being entrepreneurs within the bureaucracy. I moved to the Seattle office almost three years ago, and, as I grew to know people, continued questioning and challenging assumptions. About a year after I arrived, I started saying (tentatively) that my title was `Troublemaker'. Many of us were thinking of more descriptive titles than those on our personnel forms, and troublemaker seemed to fit. Over time, I began to use it on my business cards and correspondence, and there I was. Do you have a job spec/contract? How are you appraised? What are your success criteria? As I said, the government does not have official troublemakers. My performance appraisal (formally, at least) does not acknowledge this role, either. I do get a great deal of feedback from colleagues and customers about my effectiveness. My personal success criteria include: – Am I having fun and working with passion and commitment, and am I encouraging others to do the same? – Are people perceiving the world in new ways? Are they acknowledging and honouring different perspectives? – Is there change? This usually happens over time, and I have to look back at what I envisioned (or what a team envisioned) six months, a year, two years earlier. If I can see that the current state of the world has been coloured by my role as troublemaker, I'm happy. On several occasions I've left teams because I could see that they were going nowhere and were unwilling to take the risks required to succeed. What conditions or culture exist in your organisation which demand the help of a Troublemaker? Do you think these conditions exist in most organisations?
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We are a bureaucracy and hierarchy — they always need troublemakers to force issues and new ways of seeing to the forefront. They often need people to take the world far less seriously, to bring energy and play into the workplace. My cubicle, and now several of those around mine, has been pretty much dismantled; there are toys spread about, and all sorts of fun things hanging from the ceiling. The workforce and the economy are changing rapidly, and people here, for the most part, recognise the need for us to change to meet the new demands. This makes the environment much more hospitable to a troublemaker, although there can certainly be resentment and anger at times. One of the problems I had in DC was that there was a small band of merry men (and women) who were out in the forefront, but there was also a large contingent of powerful forces for the status quo. I called them the forces of darkness, doom and despair, but not to their faces! I did not like DC as a place to live, and I got tired of waging constant battle. Also, I had the sense that the real forces of change were in the field offices, which directly interact with the state and local service providers. I went to Seattle, found an extremely open and risk-loving office, and stayed. I have always had leadership support. As you are well aware, the king must tolerate the insolence of the fool. It would be very difficult for me to be a Troublemaker in DC, as Doug Ross has been gone for 2 1/2 years, and the current power structure is extremely command and control, and would have my head. I would have quit long ago had I not transferred when I did. I think any organisation with a little bit of flexibility and interest in change and learning could handle a troublemaker. However, troublemakers definitely would need to be cautious about how they work in any environment. Some can handle only a little bit of trouble at first, otherwise it can be counterproductive. Also, if you don't have a king or queen willing to tolerate you, don't bother: You could easily lose your head. Do you get scared or worried about your role? I sometimes ask myself if I'm living my life or someone else's. It is important to make fear your friend and ally — it is trying to tell you something. Sometimes, it is telling you that you are in over your head, and you need to get back to safer ground for now. Other times the fear isn't about the situation, it's about failure. That's when you need to understand, acknowledge and
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calm the fear. If you can do that, then you can proceed with greater focus and energy. I recommend three books for people who feel like they should be doing something differently but cannot, because of fear The Heart Arouse Poetry and the Preservation of the Corporate Soul in America by David Whyte. Synchronicity by Joe Jaworski Thinking Body, Dancing Mind — I can't remember the authors, but it teaches very simple and specific Zen-based methods for dealing with athletic performance and business. I used it last night to begin to handle some fears I've experienced lately. How do people react to your interventions? Has that changed over time? It depends on the person. Some see them as exciting and liberating, others are annoyed at first but later appreciate the energy, new perspectives and challenges. A few never come along — they are generally so stuck in their ways, or so invested in control, that they do not want my challenge. There are also some who are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They very much want to be innovative risk-takers but are unable, for bureaucratic or personal reasons, to do so. They appreciate where I'm coming from, but can't break away from the other forces. What question do you think I should ask you next, and could you please answer it? Q. The Shakespearean Fool is melancholy, burdened with the knowledge of the world. Is this necessary for a modern corporate fool? A. Not at all. The modern fool needs to see the world as a playground, as a realm of unlimited opportunities. Play is central to building strong, vibrant organisations and communities, and to living positive, healthy lives. For more on this concept, read A Simpler Way by Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers. ...
Email:
[email protected]
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And now, your turn Remember,
you get what you ask for,
so what job title would you create for yourself?
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Note 1
With thanks to the inspirational Fast Company magazine (www.fastcompany.com) for most of these.
Re-envisaging the Organisation as Foolish A reflection on the nine roles — and a tenth When these nine roles are being played, the organisation itself stops being so damned sensible (and all the problems that has brought us) and becomes Foolish — balanced, open, honest, open to learning from its Shadow side (because now it acknowledges it has one). Not only is it fluid with the sharing of information and meaning, it is also flexible in its perspectives, since the Fool's creativity and humour constantly provide another point of view. An organisation such as this sounds too good to be true, in which case it is the stuff of Myth, not in the modern sense of an untruth, but in the older sense of a story that encapsulates truth and principle. So let's create the Myth. And guess who's the Vice-President in Charge of Myth? One final role completes our Foolish picture; one final step takes us out of the mud and into our new world. The Mythologist-Fool would be the compiler and teller of the Corporate Myth — the story that tells how well the company is doing against the standards it has set itself. This myth therefore becomes another reality check for the company, but also, in the best story-telling traditions, becomes a source of edification and inspiration. Like all myths, it is an expression of truth, the company's truth. Someone needs to tell us a story that lies somewhere between the extremes of the company cynic bitching at the water cooler and the MD's `It's been another great year' speech at the Christmas party. Someone needs to tell us a story that tells of exploration, learning and growth other than in numerical measures. The Corporate Myth is a living thing, a tale without end. At the same time, the Mythologist-Fool collects the falsehoods (deliberate or innocent) that circulate in the rumour mill, or in our tired, frustrated heads, and provides his balanced, outsider-inside response. He is the author of the Alternative History of the
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Company — the repository for what people really think and feel is happening — not just because it's funny and it bonds the staff, but because management can learn an enormous amount when they find out what the real mythology of their business is. Every company has its legend of the so and so who was sacked for such and such or the account that went belly up because of this and that or the thing that the MD once said to a client at an office party. Like the urban myths they so resemble, these stories are either arrant nonsense or reflections of current fears and preoccupations. For that reason, they need cataloguing and exorcising in the telling. The Mythologist-Fool's the one who knows why such-and-such was really fired five years ago. He is also the breaker of the other myths that circulate in the corporate world and which bind us to the past. One of these is The Myth of The Incompetent IS Department (they never, ever get anything right you know, and they smell); another, The Myth of the Worthless Marketing Department (they do nothing but lunch you know). A myth is a story that we tell to each other and hold in our hearts and minds to make sense of reality: myth gives us certainty in a changing world. Unfortunately for IS, for example, the story told is not great (IS does not deliver), but is enduring, easily shared and actually quite fun for the tellers to tell. Wander around the user communities of our companies across the world and you'll find that pretty much the same things are said about IS everywhere — which leads us to suspect that at some level, people are talking about a Mythic IS Department as much as their own. When challenges are universally known and shared (what is life's quest? what is power? why is the network down?), myth is created. Doubly unfortunate, myths such as these may absolve the tellers and hearers of the responsibility of changing themselves. (Just so, if I believed the myth that great fathers are born and not made, I would have no need ever to make myself a better father.)
The Foolish organisation The power of the Corporate Fool idea is that it offers a solution to many organisational ills in human form; it is our hopes and fears made manifest.
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Imagine a Fool in every meeting, Truthseeking for us, Mapping knowledge for us, helping us laugh, speaking out and speaking up. Somebody else as our coach and mentor and guru and guide and teacher, forcing us to look at our shortcomings and outgrow them. The challenge is: are we brave enough to make the choice and employ someone to save us? And at this point we have to stop, give ourselves a crack on the side of the head with our pig's bladder, and wake up. How many organisations will really find a home for a Fool? Be honest. Not many. So does that mean the Fool's benefits, the potential, are lost to us? No. From one point of view, and only one, the ten roles of the Corporate Fool read like job descriptions, a mandate for HR to create the job and find the person to fill it. But it is possible to read the roles from other perspectives. From another point of view, the ten roles can be seen as ten new priorities for organisations. In the roles of Alienator, Satirist and Mythologist we find the urgent need for an objectification of what we do, a detached yet heartfelt observance of our actions and a mindfulness towards their possible outcomes. In the Confidante and Truthseeker, we find a way of expressing the prompts of conscience or instinct in a safe space. In the Midwife, we free ourselves from the constraints of habit and conditioning, to match the call of opportunity, of a world changing so fast, with the limitless range of our imaginations. In the Contrarian, we find a way to pay close attention to the ideas that will ultimately create our reality (and those of others) and shape them with rigour and care.
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In the Mediator, we hope to make our ideas understood, but find a way to understand their impact on others first, before we speak. In the role of the Mapper, we seek to connect with others, to transcend our isolation and loneliness, to open our ideas up to feedback, not in the fear of losing them, but so that they might be developed in a synergistic outcome. And in the Jester, we find a way towards balance and openness, of remaining both disciplined and flexible, of maintaining a serious attention on work without having to don the distorting mask of forced solemnity. And from yet another point of view, we see clearly that these ten roles, these ten priorities, are not just organisational imperatives, but personal ones too. No Fool is going to save us. But maybe we can save ourselves.
Foolish questions a project manager might ask A Fool, if asked, and especially when not asked, would offer the following perspectives on the start-up of any project. Some of these questions are simple, straightforward, obvious; a few would be asked during the formation of any decent project plan. All of them remind us of those difficult areas of project management and team formation that always crop up, largely because nobody considered them in any depth whatsoever at the outset. Or because they can't be plotted on a Gantt chart.
Alienator What are we doing to maintain the unity of this group? Is that enough? In a world of project overkill and initiative exhaustion, how are we defining its difference from others?
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Confidante What do we have external to the project who can be our guide, teacher and inspiration?
Contrarian Do we know what this project isn't? What's wrong/bad/insufficient/assumed in this project? What's the worst possible outcome for this project?
Jester In what ways will this project be fun? Have we discussed that so we all know what we're hoping for? How can we make celebration and joy part of the fabric of this project, rather than a reward at the end? What might cause us stress? What are we going to do with the stress?
Mapper Are we sure we are clear about roles and responsibilities here? What are we doing about the overlaps? What areas of expertise might combine to give inspiration when and if the project flags? How much coaching should be in this project? Who are the experts outside the project who can inspire us?
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Mediator What needs clarifying about this project? What will our `audiences' get confused about, deliberately or otherwise?
Midwife What space have we created for doing things — anything — differently? In what ways does this project represent innovation rather than replication?
Mythologist Should we compose a living diary of this project, so that we can record what we have learnt (in achievement, change management and interpersonal terms) and thus be in a position to pass it on?
Satirist Who will tell the alternative history of this project? What are we doing that is silly, portentous, affected? How will we remind ourselves that we are mortal, just at the time when we thought we were succeeding (and pre-empt others doing it for us)?
Truthseeker Do we have a bond of trust between us that will accommodate deviation and challenge from within? How will we know when we're disappearing up our own arse? Who will be our armchair consultant who will tell us when our breath is bad?
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We will never find a place for the Fool in our organisations and lives unless we can each become more Foolish. We bring the Fool nearer by taking the first step towards him.
We are all fools. But there are fools and Fools. All the aspects of the Fool are simply aspects of ourselves. The Fool is original potential and is therefore in all of us. A fool blindly follows habits because they are habits. A Fool sees the habits of himself and others and chooses what he wants to be. He can therefore help people or hurt people according to his choice. And that includes himself. What goes around comes around. So who is the fool and who is the Fool? Richard Ashcroft
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PART THREE Become A Personal quest for Foolishness
`The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' George Bernard Shaw
`Show up in all ways. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Tell the truth without judgment or blame. Do not be attached to outcomes, but be open to outcomes.' Angeles Arrien, The Four-Fold Way
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Questions for a Foolish way Now we can bring back the ten roles and play the Fool by and for ourselves.
Alienator What's my mission, vision, dream? How good am I at defining myself in the marketplace? How comfortable am I with my uniqueness? Does it bring me joy? Do I prefer to consider myself a product of others?
Confidante Who's my friend?
Contrarian How rigorous am I in all areas of my life? How good am I at letting go of what's not working?
Jester Can I find myself funny? Do I work with the energies or confront them head on?
Mapper Do I know what I know? What energy do I waste in what I don't know? Who or what are my advisors, teachers, mentors?
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Am I always ready to find more?
Mediator What confuses others about me? What is ambiguous about me?
Midwife Do I play enough? Do I dream enough? Do I step away from conformity enough?
Mythologist What's the story, morning glory?
Satirist When do I tend towards self-importance? How can I signal that?
Truthseeker What would I say to myself about myself if I trusted myself enough? Am I truly seeking truth? Or do I try to justify truths I've already decided are `real'? Do I stand awe-struck before the mysteries of life ... ... and am I bold enough to explore them?
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Foolish work, Foolish wisdom There is something in the myth of the Fool which speaks to people. This is no more true than in its present incarnation as The Corporate Fool, which has come at a time when there is much questioning of the purpose and role of Corporations in society (Fools have always been traditional questioners too). People who talk to me about the myth see the Fool as someone or something free of the constraints and tensions they themselves experience. Some are attracted to the Fool's lightness of touch, or her ability to laugh at paradox, or his capacity for speaking out against `the system' and telling the truth. Almost all would like to bring that sort of power into the arena of their work. Ours is an age in which the place of work itself, and the impact it has upon our lives, has been raised to a new consciousness. We live in a changing world, of burgeoning and technological expansion and of material wealth, yet the prevailing mood is hardly one of gratitude or excitement. Barely a week goes by without the publication of another survey on workplace stress — not so long ago we had the first documented case of stress through information overload. Our stresses become more sophisticated to match the tensions and paradoxes of our lives. The latest report I found declared that `weekend stress' (apparently the anxiety caused by being overloaded by the priorities of our personal lives in that section of our lives deemed, ironically, to be `free' time) to be an increasingly frequent problem. Against the backdrop of this `feel bad factor', we also see the coming to pass of Charles Handy's projections about portfolio living, with more and more people, either through choice or through no choice at all, joining the ranks of the self-employed. In America, 25 million people are now `free agents' of some description. The self-help market follows this trend, urging us to take care of Me PIc and The Brand that is You. The unifying problem in all this would appear to be `freedom' — what it is, how much we have or can create, how we use it. Many people in organisations, and not just large ones, feel not free, constrained in some way, either by the limited scope of the tasks that they perform, their disconnection from the original purpose (and rewards) of their leaders, or by the demands of cultural and political expediency. For them, perhaps, the Fool embodies some sort of heroic possibility. For them, the Fool personifies the desire to strike back at a perceived imbalance of power, or frustration at the inequities of power as it is yielded;
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or the desire to speak up, to be heard, to be listened to; or our need to laugh in the face of adversity. If we really could employ a Corporate Fool to do these things for us, he would not just be our hero; he would be our Saviour. For many, the mortgage and other dependencies provide the ultimate reminder of their lack of freedom. The Fool, who has no mortgage and calls no man his master, does what he wants, says what he wants, behaves how he sees fit. The rest of us, apparently, can only dream of such liberty. And in a purely secular society driven primarily by economics, salary and the life that gives us, money is accorded a status as being more real than anything else. The drive for cash shapes how we conduct ourselves. Income heads the Hierarchy of Priorities, with our dreams, values, principles and the behaviour we choose to exhibit coming after; life is what you make of all the rest, once you've made sure you've paid the bills. Perhaps the trend towards self-employment suggests that people are seeking to make some adjustments to their own Hierarchy of Priorities, to raise to a greater prominence their dreams and values, and thereby granting themselves the freedom to release some different behaviours in their lives. Certainly it would seem to be a reaction against the perceived powerlessness that organisational life confers on us, or against the drudgery that is born from doing the same job in the same place every day. Above all, it would seem to be a strong sign of an urge to take back some control, to express one's personal power, to master one's own destiny. But we do not always find what we think we are looking for. A British TV programme recently followed a number of people who had taken the decision to create a life outside the organisation. These downshifters were all realistic (living a life that follows your dreams does not have to equate to naiveté or woolliness) and had clearly applied a good deal of `professional' discipline to their visions of a better way. So they had taken great pains over the business plan, for example, and had made changes to their material lives, knowing that, in general, it would be some time (or never) before they could earn enough to reproduce the quantity or quality of belongings that they had owned whilst in their more secure jobs. For some, there had been rude awakenings (the answer to the programme producer's prayers, no doubt). Selfemployment, they found, can mean that you work more hours, not less, and that you have less control of time, not more; it is even harder to draw the line that denotes when `work' has
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stopped and `life' has started. Others found that their dream was as rooted in as much banality and drudgery as any corporate job, howsoever dull. (I remember the goat's cheese maker, whose vision of providing excellent product to specialist and happy customers was being hampered by udder disease and broken machinery in the cold, damp dead of night.) Still others learnt an even more profound truth: that the anxiety — and fear and stress and anger — that they'd longed to escape was not in their former organisation or job, but in them. As a result, it would follow them in all their work until they addressed it. Neither a change in location nor income could alter that. The Fool would say that the stresses and pains of our lives at work, in or out of the organisation, are not in fact problems caused by The Boss or The Job, or even Our Bloody Teammates. They are certainly not caused by processes or systems. Our frustrations with work are born at a much more profound level — at the level of our relationship with work itself, the purpose we grant it and our expectations of what it can gives us in turn.
So, what do you do, then? The traditional opening gambit in polite conversation with a stranger is to ask what they do for a living. Our jobs provide a shortcut to understanding; they pigeon hole us. But when we come to review the quality of our lives, these boxes do not give us sufficient scope. `What has been my life's work' is closer to what we would like to know about ourselves, or `Who am I?' Just as no-one on their deathbed ever wished they'd spent more time at the office, so no gravestones attest to the brilliance of the deceased at project management, or wearing the right clothes. We would like our work to be an expression of our nature and character rather than a box we end up in. At the same time, the type of jobs we give ourselves may not be most appropriate to the types of beings we are. Buddhists talk about `right work,' creating with the head, heart and hand. If our hand work is struggling with the photocopier and our head work is repetitive and pressurised decision-making, we would need a lot of heart work to overcome these shortcomings. Yet heart work is perhaps the least utilised in most organisations. What ways forward can there be? Work is applied effort, my physics teacher used to say. Like everything in life, it is an exchange, a flow — you put something into work, and you get something out. Work, clearly, is an investment of our time and energy. The opposite of work (as William Bennet points out) is not leisure, or play, or fun, since all of these things can be valuable uses of
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our time because they are opportunities to invest and thereby grow parts of our self. Idleness (or deliberately not-doing) is the opposite of work. Not-doing work is a waste of limited time, a rejection of both the sacredness and transitoriness of life, a negation of our self as not worth investing in anything. Enforced idleness, the absence of work, perhaps ought to be seen as a curse and not a luxury, though governments have struggled with the distinction. Ironically this talk of work as investment implies that it is the result of a choice we have made, just as we might choose to place our money into one pension scheme but not another. From one perspective, we have no choice but to work — poor naked beasts, with limited survival instincts and impoverished natural subsistence tools, we have to earn to buy food, clothing and shelter. Yet choice, along with freedom, is usually the first thing many people claim they have lost when they go to work and the first thing they dream of recovering if they win the lottery. From another perspective, however, our work is all about choice — what we put in and take out of it, and how we do it. The outputs of our investments in work are financial profit and personal growth (although many find out that the value of their investment can go up as well as down). Additionally, other important things, such as pride, satisfaction, achievement and joy, can express themselves in work, but they tend to be contingent on the energy we put in. All work, seen in this light, is an expression of our talent and character (and therefore, at some level, is an expression of self). It offers us a chance to combine with others (and therefore, at some level, is an expression of love). It is an opportunity to develop responsibility and to experience commitment (and therefore it is an expression of maturity). All these things are true or work whether we want to do what we do for a living or not. If we say we hate our work and yet cannot find for ourselves other work that releases these things as richly and fully as we deserve, then we do not hate our work, we hate ourselves. Reducing work to something we are forced to do puts us in a prison, when perhaps there is the potential, with effort and patience, to make it into something better. It is a matter of choice how we do what we have chosen to do, cheerfully or grudgingly. There are no menial jobs, just menial attitudes. Our attitudes are down to us, they do not come already attached to the nature of the tasks we perform. At the same time, we could justly claim that attitudes are infectious, which may point the finger at those of our
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colleagues who are happy to enumerate with detail and energy the faults of their organisation as easily as they take its money every month. Once again, however, it is our responsibility to shield ourselves as far as we can from the disabling effects of such behaviour. We have the freedom to choose what we focus on. More significantly, those of us who are looking to empower ourselves through work might also do well to examine our personal history and uncover where our current encodings about work were programmed. If we have grown up to resent the place of work in our lives, due to the example of our family and upbringing, we are unlikely to find any meaningful satisfaction in it, whatever we do and however `successful' in it we become. It is our responsibility to acknowledge and then transcend our own disempowering beliefs and rules. How, then, can we make work a place of self-empowerment and growth rather than just a place for career-progression and reward? How can we let go of the fear that limits us? How we can be free and get the money in? How can we create work that expresses our best hopes for ourselves?
Answers a Fool would give Dissatisfaction with work tends to be focused on external factors — on the nature of the tasks we perform, on behaviour of colleagues, on the way we are treated by those whose job it is to lead us. If we could alter these things, the implication goes, we'd be happier and more fulfilled. A Fool would turn this thinking on its head. Instead of looking for change from the outside in, he would seek change from the inside out. He would change the focus of work from a place you go to something you do always, something you carry with you. The work is you. The Fool gains his freedom to ask questions of others because he has sought answers for himself. The confidence — to tell the truth when no-one else will, to deflate the balloons of pomposity, to laugh at the paradoxes of life when others would get stiff with tension
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— comes, not from a blatant disregard for personal well-being or even from having a `thick' skin. It comes from having a powerful acceptance of certain truths. The Fool expresses them thus. This is the Fool's Creed. In life we seek to grow and develop, to raise our consciousness of who we are and why we are doing whatever we do. The purpose of life, in paradoxical other words, is to seek purpose. We are always free to do this. Any job, whether in a corporation or in an open field, is the means to that purpose-seeking, not the end. Growth, and therefore purpose, is a choice. Circumstance may appear to limit or block us in many ways, but nothing can eliminate our capacity to express our free will to choose one way over another. Choice is both a gift and a responsibility. Choice is a creative act. The choice we make, to do one thing or another, to behave in one way or another, to think or feel what we choose to think and feel, creates the reality we experience. However, our choices are not made in a vacuum. Our thoughts, actions and moods affect the lives and choices of others. And theirs ours. Life therefore is a process of caring both for the growth of ourselves and for the growth of others. There is a balance to be struck between the discipline we must bring to our own growth and the fluid submission we must accept in acknowledging that of others. We all get up our own backsides, every so often. Even the most modest and selfeffacing of us gets over-inflated. It's good to have someone there to show us when. Even though the Important Things can lead us up our own backsides, it doesn't make them any less Important. A shallow life of laughter is an avoidance and not a life. Striking the balance, making the right choices, growing, keeping out of our own backsides — all of these things are complex and difficult. They lead us, inescapably, into confusion, paradox, doubt, fear, problems, mistakes and pain. All these things are part of the process of growth and can be faced with grace, equanimity and humour, if we choose to. Growth promises us strength and guarantees us vulnerability. Finding our purpose is a step towards the light, but the only path is through the darkness.
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Our organisations have structures and systems that mimic some of these truths. Their missions, structures and rewards seem to offer purpose and their appraisals appear to track growth. But our frustrations with these same elements lie in the fact that they can only ever be approximations of a growth we ought to be choosing to make for ourselves. Perhaps the Fool gains his freedom to turn the corporate world on its head from having made his own difficult and painful choices about his own life, rather than relying on an organisation to make them for him. The Fool has no political power, but he does have personal or spiritual power. This he derives from: 1 2 3 4 5
authenticity — being up front, transparent restlessness/constructive dissatisfaction — offering constant renewal of self and others non-attachment to outcomes — fluidity, laughter and wonder at the way things happen (the process teaches rather than the result) multiple perspectives — taking delight at seeing the different points of view any event has freedom from constraints/rules — a non-dependence on them and their indicators: can't, shouldn't, ought not, better not, not appropriate, not professional.
Political power, a transitory and historically troubled thing, is conferred on you by others. It's part of a bargain — you agree to be something in exchange for a dispensation to be it, in exactly the way a politician is voted into office. Spiritual power is something you grant yourself. Its process is growth, via exploration and experimentation. It begins with a question.
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Freedom is only a question away So, what are you doing with your living? Is it too late for you? Is it too early? How soon could you start? Which excuse do you use the most — your children or the mortgage? How did you learn what work was? Did you learn in the beginning that work was connected to reward? How did that reward affect you? Did you learn that work was connected to separation and absence and that the justification for that absence was togetherness later? What else did you learn about work? Did you ever unlearn anything about work or are things panning out as you expected? Would you be willing to be less efficient in your life? How far are you addicted to the constraints you complain about? What stops you laughing at your anger? What stops you stepping outside an argument you've had with your partner a hundred times before and pointing out the obvious? Would the film of your life come in seriously under budget? What was it like the last time you told the truth to someone who didn't want to hear it (as opposed to sharing the truth about someone with someone else who was only too happy to hear it)? Or are you not able to answer that question?
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The Corporate Fool List here all the people who need to buck their socks up before you, even though this is not a question. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Are these questions in the right order? What work would excite you? What work would make your heart glad? What work would challenge you (as opposed to `stretch your skills')? What do you see when your eyes are closed? How do you strike the balance between the Urgent and the Important in your life? How much time do you spend in the Urgent box? What do you do to cope with the feeling of being out of the Important box? Does your work centre in someone else's Important box? Or not? If you are unconvinced by a model of life that suggests `we create our own reality', what alternative models have you ever articulated and lived by? What don't you want? What do you want? What will you have to change in order to bring what you want into your life? What question are we missing here? How often do you say `but what should I actually do now?' What's next for you?
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Lessons for enhancing personal creativity ♦
Let go of your attachment to outcomes. Have an idea of what you'd like to achieve, but don't worship your vision as an idol, otherwise you'll miss stimulating diversions along the way which will probably lead you to something better. Besides, if you know what you want, you don't need creativity, you need willower.
♦
At the same time, however, be sure you know your starting point. What, precisely, is the problem and why are you trying to solve it? Be prepared to step into the void to solve your problem, but at least be sure of a firm footing as you set off.
♦
Let go of your attachment to self-concepts. Creativity requires stepping out of the comfort zone. If you don't feel a little challenged/embarrassed/silly, you're not trying hard enough. Jump higher.
♦
Give time and space to your creativity. That breakthrough solution won't always come in those few moments you have between checking emails and attending that next meeting.
♦
Stimulate yourself with diverse information. Read five of the best magazines that best relate to your field of expertise and twice as many that don't. Look to the worlds of children, arts, technology, fish, each full of possibilities. Go for a walk. Look about you. Soak up stimulation, because your brain is thirsty for making connections between things that your logic alone would dismiss as irrelevant.
♦
Become comfortable with not-results. You've given over a whole afternoon of your time, gathered six stimulating colleagues at great expense to join you in a room with bean bags and white boards and sticky back plastic, you've played and visualised — and nothing much happens. Bummer, eh? And you thought Picasso churned out his paintings like daily Stock Market Reports? `Fail again, fail better', as Samuel Beckett wrote, knowing that getting the `wrong' words
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out gives you another chance to create the right one. Patience and persistence are as important to creativity as another word beginning with P that would fit nicely but which escapes me at the moment. ♦
Lighten up.
♦
Accept that creativity has equal measures of soaring brilliance and Damascan Visions, repetition and humdrum drudgery. For the writer, the blank pages are part of the creative process, as are the long tracts of text that have to be written after the initial idea has been birthed.
♦
Learn to nurture the creativity and defend the ideas of those around you. In this way, you'll be doing your bit to create a culture of innovation that will in turn support you when you need it.
♦
Play the It's a bit like ... game (see Appendix 2).
♦
Learn to trust your intuition. Listen to the voices in your head. Do the Tarot. Or be still for a change.
♦
Lighten up.
♦
Lighten up.
The way of the Fool Becoming the Fool is a way, not an event or an end. There is no `end'. That is the point. The Fool is about original potential. There is no potential journey in a destination. The destination is actual and therefore static, inorganic. Yet all this is nothing without actions. Potential remains potential until actioned. You can have all the great ideas in the world but unless you do something about them they remain taking up space on the hard disk — to all intents and purposes, dead. So to be blunt about it, you, dear reader, can absorb everything in this book
Part Three: Become and others. You can agree with it all, have lots of moments when you think `Aha! That's what it's all about' and feel really terrific, and that's great. If it doesn't move on from there to be inhabited, word made flesh so to speak, we will never experience The Magician who is the succeeding character in the Tarot deck of life. The Magician is a master of transformation — the first stage in making things happen. Since action progresses from the thought, speak, action sequence (i.e. we first think something, then say something about it, then do something about it) we have made a start with this book. It is only that, a start. It could be a great start, or it could be a false start — that is up to you. It is the same with me. I make so many starts, most of which are false. I am only now starting to realise that a false start kids no-one but myself. False starts lead to half-lives. I don't want to live by halves. To aim for the gold medal and get the silver is one thing, but to start off aiming for the consolation prize ... The point of the Fool's journey is not to go anywhere. We are already the Fool, all of us. The only thing left to know is where we wish to go. Keep our mind, our eyes, our hearts fixed on that and surely that is where we will end up. The rest is flack designed to throw us off course. Be determined and you will succeed. There are no short cuts. No easy solutions. No quick ways. All is in the process of becoming. It takes time and we must move step by step. If you want to look healthy, you can dress up or get a fake tan. That is not the same thing as being healthy. This takes time, effort and awareness — of which habits serve and which destroy good health. Everyone wants the miracle diet. Discover your own diet. The diet that serves you. Diet of all things. Then and only then will you be free. RA
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APPENDIX ONE Change: A Guide A cut-out and keep handbook for unbelievers and change agents1
`Men like the opinions to which they have become accustomed from youth; this prevents them from finding the truth, for they cling to the opinions of habit.' Moses Maimonides `The management of change is too important to be left to management alone.' Harry Donaldson
We face a world of ever-increasing, never-ending change. For many of us, change means pain. But change is not going to go away. The wise know they can't stop change — but they can stop being hurt by it. Our only choice is to take the choice of the wise: not to try to control change (because we can't) but to control how we respond to it. Managing our personal response to change, stopping the pain, is one of the key competence we will need in our lives and in our careers. This appendix suggests how we can all become better at responding to change, because, whether we make change a friend or an enemy, change is always with us.
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Change is the unknown. Change is giving old things away — giving up the past, for example. Change is taking up new things — the future, for example. Change is giving away what makes us comfortable and taking up what makes us uncomfortable. Change is like a death. A gateway. A threshold. A transformation. A mystery. An end of something, maybe, but always the birth of something else. Change is death and birth. Change is an inevitability.
But, often, the way we all respond to change does not reflect these truths.
Just listen to what we say ... `Just hold on — things will get back to normal' This — in a sense — is true. Things may well get back to normal, but it may not be the normal we were used to. If the change is a proactive one — one the organisation is instigating — it is doing so in an attempt to improve things: to make a product better for the customer or a process more efficient for the organisation. It is doing it for the benefit of all concerned. It will be investing a lot of time, energy and money into designing and implementing this change. It certainly isn't doing it for want of something better to do. If the change is `successful' — that is, the change brings about what the company hoped for — things won't be going back to normal, if only because the normal we were comfortable with will have been shown to be outmoded, or costly, or of poorer quality or efficiency. If the change is `unsuccessful' — that is, the change doesn't happen as imagined — things still won't go back to normal. Companies don't go backwards. They learn even from their failures and mistakes, so even out of a failed change initiative, it will have learnt some things — and made some changes — that will prevent things ever going back to what they were.
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If the change is a reactive one — one the organisation has been forced into by the current or future business environment — it is doing so to try and ensure its survival. If the organisation doesn't work fast to make the changes, its competitors will. And the results of that scenario will create a new and very uncomfortable `normal' for us all — second best, inferior, failing.
`They tell us one thing and then do another. They're always changing their minds. And they only tell us what they want to tell us' Managing an organisation is profoundly difficult and especially so in times of turbulent change. Change is about the unknown — and just because you are a company director doesn't mean that you are suddenly granted the gift (somehow withheld from the rest of us) of being able to know the unknown. Leaders may have a plan — but that does not mean that they have all the answers. They may have a strategy, based on anticipating certain market trends, but that does not mean that it's going to be 100% accurate. Circumstances are changing even as the report is coming out of the printer. As a result the plan or strategy that you hear about may, of necessity, have gaps — chunks of the unknown that we won't be able to fill in until we get further on in our journey. Management knows that the best way to motivate a work force is to give it the best information available, thus enabling it to perform its work to the full. If you are not getting all the information you need, take responsibility: ask for more information, and spell out the cost — to you, your team, your process — of not getting it. Management would only deliberately withhold information for two reasons: 1 2
Because they don't trust you. In which case, if you know yourself to be trustworthy, get out. Because they don't, in fact, have the information at all. Help them find it.
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It is the job of the leadership to set the direction and strategy as far as they can. It is our job to make that strategy real, even if that means working in an environment that can seem confusing, ambiguous or unsure.
`These changes are causing more problems than they're worth' Take a jigsaw puzzle and pour out all the pieces on to the table top. Turn all the pieces the right way up and have a good look at the picture on the lid. You're ready to start. Ahead of you lies the challenge of putting all the pieces into the right permutation to recreate that picture on the lid. But, if you keep trying, you will eventually have all the pieces in the right order. You'll have done it. Remember, however, that you will not be able to complete the puzzle without making lots of mistakes, false moves, fumbling and poor choices. Those errors are part of the ultimate success. You could only ever reduce your chances of making mistakes by reducing the number of pieces in your jigsaw puzzle, increasing their size and choosing a nice, simple picture to complete. Organisations are not for entertainment and relaxation in our leisure but they are difficult, complex puzzles. The nature of managing change is such that you are bound to experience mistakes, difficulties, even disaster. You will often wish the organisation were a puzzle, so that when it got too tough, we could just put it away and do something else. But this is serious and this is difficult. We all need to move together in the right direction, constructively and creatively, offering our feedback, support and effort. We may never get to where we thought we were going when we set off, because every step forward towards our destination throws up new challenges and new goals. Most of all, we need to fight against the problems we encounter rather than fighting against each other. And we all need to remember that the frequency and depth of the problems we face is a powerful reflection of the business environment that made them necessary. If we worked in an organisation that didn't face serious and painful problems (if that were possible), then it would not be a good thing. Rather it would be a sure sign that the organisation wasn't learning or changing, and was stuck doing the same things over and over again.
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`It's their fault — the leadership have brought these changes on' The leadership may well have brought these changes on, but that's their job. From their position at the top of the organisation, they are paid to see the whole picture — the eyes of the eagle. They are paid to see things as they are — to make sure that the organisation is using all its available resources in the most effective way to meet the needs of the current business realities. And they are there to see things as they might be — to spot patterns, trends, frameworks so that they can adapt to the rapidly changing needs of customers and markets. From your position it may be difficult to see what they see. You may only see part of the whole picture or you may have access to information that has changed since they communicated with you last. And as a result, the decisions of the leaders may seem curious, even wrong-headed. But they need your support. If you are genuinely confused, ask for clarity. If you really think that they are wrong, challenge them. In both cases, the leadership need your feedback to make their work more effective. If you are acting with integrity, your actions — asking to have something explained again, or a decision or strategy justified — will be a positive contribution to improving things. At other times, the best thing to do is drop your doubts, trust your management and put all your efforts into working hard to push through the changes. This is the unavoidable paradox of being part of a team. Sometimes you are there to help the team coaches design the strategy and tactics. Sometimes you are there just to do what they say. The negative — and damaging — option will be to blame `them' for everything that happens without attempting to help in any way. It disempowers the individual who does this — it makes them a helpless victim of everything `they' do or don't do. And it poisons the environment that we all work in — it is exhausting and depressing to work in an environment of blame and unfocused criticism.
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`They' don't care about my job' `They' are there to run a business to the best of their abilities. If they don't, they can lose their job — just like you can. They too have mortgages and families to maintain — and lose. Running a business is a complex undertaking and the people who do it are performing a balancing act. It's a constant struggle to balance the short term and the long term, costs and profit, efficiency and effectiveness, care for people and concern for the bottom line. Sometimes they are called upon to balance the needs of the many against the needs of the few — and only those who have had to face such a dilemma will know how painful it is. And the final decision, however it falls, is not going to be popular with everyone. `They' are also human; they make mistakes, and some of the mistakes (because they have more in their span of control) can have devastating consequences. If you live in fear of making such a mistake, it makes you care more, not less, about your actions and decisions. `They' know that the best thing for the business is to be using you to your full potential. Only you can provide that. Do everything to increase your performance and work to your potential. As a result, you'll find you have to have less time and energy to worry about what `they' might be doing or thinking. On the other hand, if you genuinely believe you are working in a business where management treats you with insensitivity or disdain, you are right to be angry. You deserve to be treated in the way you would treat others. Look elsewhere for a better place to be.
`It was better before — why can't we do things like we used to?' The grass is always greener on the other side. Those salad days. Our hey-days. They were Halcyon times. The good old days.
Our language is full of clichés which describe the human need to see the past as a place of security and comfort. But another cliché may indicate what's really going on. Hindsight has 20-20 vision.
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Unfortunately, this cliché is only partly true. Hindsight sees things clearly, but selectively. When we look back, we filter what we see to suit our current reality. If we wanted to change we'd look back and remember all those bad things that would justify our changing. The opposite is true when we fear change. When we are faced with a scary future, we try to find ways of justifying not stepping into it. And one of the ways of doing that is by gathering evidence of a better past. We tend to remember the good things — the things that give us pleasure — and ignore the things that brought us pain. In reality, the past probably had as many challenges and difficulties, and as much fear and upset, as face us now. If the past contained ways of doing things that seem better (and by that do we really mean easier or simpler or less confusing or more familiar?) than what we are doing now, maybe those ways were only suitable for the reality of the past. Things move on and develop. If your job appears more difficult to do now, maybe it's because the reality we all face now is more complex — and demands complex solutions. On the other hand, if you believe your job could be designed in a different way — don't keep your thoughts to yourself. Think them through. Be specific. Plan your proposal. And share your ideas with someone who can help you implement your ideas. Statements like these are heard at companies all over the world. They indicate people struggling to come to terms with rapid and dramatic change. Some of these statements are said with bravado. Others are said with more than a pinch of gallows humour. But all of these statements mask strong emotions — confusion, doubt, resentment, fear. All of these reactions — and the emotions they mask — are understandable. Change can be frightening. But what is often more difficult to accept is that we have chosen to feel these things — out of all the range of possible things we could feel. And we have chosen to make these responses — out of all the possible responses we could make. If the responses outlined over the last few pages are left unchallenged, left to become the common currency of the organisation, then they will produce a groundswell of pessimism, or apathy, or doubt, or cynicism, against which it will be almost impossible to move. The organisation will become sluggish, and any changes it does attempt to make will be even more protracted and irritating than necessary. It will not be good for the
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organisation as a whole — but nor will it be good for the individuals who live and work there. An organisation lives and dies, fails and succeeds, as much from the attitudes and behaviours of its people as it does from the numbers printed in the credit and debit columns of its accounts. But an organisation cannot make us choose better attitudes, better responses. It can't give us these things. All of the statements imply that someone or something else should do something different. That's why statements like these are so easy to say. They don't involve us changing. Not one of them talks about what we could do to change things. Rather than wait to see if the organisation (or `they') can do something to make us feel better, what could we do to make ourselves feel better? The only option is that each of us become more conscious of our responses and take time to consider more constructive alternatives. It is our responsibility to choose — and, like all things that involve responsibility, we take it on though we know it to be hard. The following pages offer some suggestions of attitudes and behaviours that will make those constructive alternatives more possible and practical.
Nine things to remember when things change (again) Forget comfort The pyramid of organisational hierarchy is gone — now, surviving at work's like a jungle. You come in on day one and instead of saying `here's the rule book' they say: `Here's your machete, here's your pith helmet, off you go, good luck!'
You're more on your own now than you ever were. How do you react? In Watership Down, the author Richard Adams coins the word `Tharn' for the feeling that rabbits get when they're crossing the road and they get caught in the headlights of a car. `Tharn' describes that terrible feeling of being frozen stiff in panic!
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Rabbits have `Tharn', but we can't afford to have it, even though the world throws up many opportunities every day for being scared rigid. Most of all it's scary because things are changing so rapidly. What seems certain one day seems ridiculous the next. What seem the best course of action one week seems hopelessly misguided the next. And some things can appear right and wrong, good and bad, certain and confused at the same time. Ambiguity prevails. Ambiguity-tolerance means a willingness to live within a structure where things aren't always the same. It means an ability to thrive in a work environment where you might find yourself reporting to one person one day and another person the next, or even more than one person at the same time. It means working within a structure that encourages you to move into quickly put-together cross-functional teams — and maybe just as quickly leave them. It means tolerating a role that might be only vaguely defined. These are the sorts of demands that are being placed on us in this changing world. How do you know if you have ambiguity-tolerance? Perhaps the ultimate test is deciding which of the following two phrases describes you best: 1 `If tomorrow isn't different from today I'll be frustrated.' 2 `If tomorrow is different from today I'll be terrified.' But ambiguity-tolerance doesn't just mean being comfortable in the dark. It means being brave enough to assign your own priorities, based on your knowledge of the team, department or company's overall strategy. It means seeking information if you haven't got it — asking for help if your feel your team leader or manager or a colleague could offer more guidance. And it means having the guts to get on with the job in hand, whilst remaining flexible enough to alter course quickly if need be.
Create value Try not to think of what you do in terms of your job and the qualifications you need to keep it. Think of what value you add to customers, wherever they may be, inside or outside the organisation. And concentrate on increasing that value.
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When the world of work was more stable, you kept your job if you did your job, that is, if you were responsible and hard working. Only if you did something really naughty did you put that job in jeopardy. But now things are a lot less secure — the marketplace is a lot more competitive. Doing a good job will not make you safe. Putting in lots of hours — or years — will not make you safe. The employment offices are full of talented, hardworking, unemployed people. The only measure of survival and success at work is in the value you add to customers. What service do you give to these customers and how do you treat them? In what ways do you contribute more than you cost? If everybody in the organisation is treating their internal customers with the minimum standard of service or care — only really putting in extra effort when a `real' customer is involved — it's going to be very difficult to provide high quality for the external customers. You'll have heard of the old team working adage `the whole is greater than the sum of the parts'. It works in a negative way too. One individual's mediocre service added to another's added to another's eventually builds a huge amount of apathy and poor quality — beyond what each individual ever intended. So thinking of your work in terms of adding more value to customers will add to the organisation's overall quality and increase its chance of remaining competitive. And if you are seen to have helped that, it will have made you more valuable to the organisation. And to add value, make yourself more valuable. Discuss value with your manager or team leader. Take the appraisals seriously (or insist that they are taken that way in future, if your manager doesn't seem to care). What skills or knowledge can you develop that are needed in the organisation? Or perhaps you can add value by being the one who builds and maintains a strong relationship with another department in the process chain, or repairs an old rift. Add value to your customers and you'll add security to your career.
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Be part of the solution ... and not part of the problem The world is full of people who want to offer their advice. And advice — feedback or criticism, call it what you will — is crucial for human survival and growth. If we didn't get feedback, we'd never improve. The problem is that some people complain and think that complaining constitutes good, constructive, critical advice. They don't really want to go the extra mile and force their advice through so that it improves things. They just want to make themselves feel better by letting everyone know how aggrieved they feel. You may have seen people like this in action. You may notice that they are very good at giving their `advice' often and loudly; you may also notice that they never actually give their advice to anyone with enough power or influence to do anything with it. In reality, we all have power and influence in the organisation, although not all of us can have the same status. We all have the power and influence to do these things: 1 We can think and reflect on the bigger picture. What is creating the problem that makes us want to complain? Who's fault is it? Is it really `their' fault? Or is the fault outside the organisation — in the form of rapid business change, increased competition or the changing needs of customers? 2 We can formulate our arguments and develop our proposals if we think we have an insight or an idea that will help. And then we can seek out someone who might be able to implement our ideas. No organisation is going to turn down well-intentioned, well thought-through ideas. On the contrary, most organisations are crying out for any help that will keep them competitive. And we all have the power and influence to challenge those who complain unconstructively. Those people may do it in a humorous way that entertains and edifies us at first. But in the end it is not a nourishing diet and it will begin to pall very soon. Constant griping and moaning damages the organisation — it produces a cold and resentful environment (and that in turn will effect you). And it damages the individual — because if they dislike the situation so much, they can hardly be motivating themselves to do high-quality work every day. Besides, if we challenge them, we might be able to help. Their gripes may mask fear or confusion — both of which they may thank a colleague for dispersing.
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It's a tough world and problems will crop up regularly. But how you react to it will determine your chances of satisfaction and success. If you are part of a problem, take responsibility and do whatever you can to solve it. Gain a reputation for owning challenges and resolving them.
Master your own destiny You could `lie back and think of England' or you could get on top of it all. One way you might just get shafted. The other way, you might join in and have some fun ... Mastering your own destiny is the difference between changing and being changed, between active and passive, being at cause and living at effect. It is possible to live a life where you are the victim of everything that happens to you. In such a life, your happiness would depend on whether someone else was happy — your spouse, maybe, or a family member. Or it would depend on what sort of mood you woke up in that morning. Your job satisfaction would depend on how well your boss treated you. Or how hard your colleagues seemed to be trying. Or how many widgets the company sold today. It would be a life where you were buffeted around by external circumstances. There would never be constancy. You wouldn't be at the centre of your life. It is also possible to live a life where you take responsibility for what happens to you. So your happiness would depend on what you focused on or how you interpreted something. Your job satisfaction would be determined by how hard you pushed yourself, problems you took on and solved and results you achieved. Your mood, not an accident of physiology, framing and endorphins, but a result of how you choose to use those tools. It wouldn't stop bad things happening to you, because bad things always happen — but how you respond to such things is entirely within your control. Living and working with that self-responsibility is hard — that's why it's so rare in our lives. It is so much easier to blame others for the things that happen or don't happen or for how we feel.
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Taking self-responsibility means holding yourself accountable for your work. It means thinking about the job's bigger picture — and pushing yourself to do whatever is necessary to achieve results, even if it means working outside your job description, or with other departments — or even working with people you usually try to avoid. Taking self-responsibility means stopping focusing on competition with others, because, ultimately, you can only ever compete with yourself. Focusing on how well others are doing in relation to you may give you a temporary measure for your efforts, but if you come to rely on it, you will give your power away. Your success can only come if they fail. What happens if they win? Self-competition means constantly improving what you do, because that means continuous victory. Taking self-responsibility means stopping expecting others to provide things for you — loyalty, integrity, security — and it means striving to be a source of those things yourself, in yourself. We can all spot the faults of others. Taking self-responsibility means knowing your own faults and trying to eradicate them. Taking self-responsibility is difficult, often painful — but it puts us back in control of our lives. And as such it can be a true source of satisfaction and happiness. And in this age of empowerment, we need people who can empower themselves.
Balance Respect what you know and love and then respect everything. If that sounds difficult, explore, experiment. Find out what else to respect. We all had a world view, characterised by the certainties of the hierarchy and a job for life. That world view is no longer tenable. Change it. Balance it with a different one. Learn to love walking in another person's moccasins, immersing yourself in someone else's point of view. Start it as an exercise — think: `What would it feel like if I thought that?' `Why would I feel that way?' `What might happen to me?'
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Balance is also about easily switching from the eyes of the eagle to the eyes of the mouse, being as happy with the detail as with the Big Picture. Think egocentrically and orgocentrically — see things both ways. It's also about being able to work at something with passion and fire, whilst at the same time maintaining distance and objectivity. In a changing world, even our point of view is shifting.
Belong Buy-in to whatever you're doing whilst you're doing it. Why bother coasting? Blind loyalty to a corporation may be in decline, but loyalty to colleagues, team mates, customers, to the project and to your own principles still matters. Loyalty does not have to be built up over years — it's a decision you can make in an instant. Am I going to commit myself or not? Support, like trust, is a two-way street. You can't get it unless you do it. That's why even mavericks work hard at building networks of supporters, influencers and co-workers, because they know that they can never work in a vacuum. All their maverick-like insights and ideas have to be implemented by someone.
Learn and grow Change is an opportunity for growing both yourself and others. And learning from yourself and others too. Since we are programmed to learn from the moment of conception, it would be a shame to lose that instinct now that we have developed in adulthood not just our instinct but other powerful forces such as reason, love, imagination and tact. New people are constantly coming into your world; learn from them, rather than closing yourself off from them.
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Stretch yourself, since the more you know the more you can participate. Learning is a process of moving outside the comfort zone, so, by definition, a learner must feel uneasy more often than secure. Become comfortable with that discomfort. Seek feedback. Your faults are indicators of your potential to be better than you are, not marks of your weakness. When the world is moving so fast, it doesn't take long for that skill you've just mastered, or that course you've just completed, to begin to look a little outdated. The key is to keep learning. The danger is to think: `I know that; I'm safe'. Update the old and continuously refresh yourself with new skills. Read around your subject — attend courses or seminars. Know what is going on in other companies and other countries in your area of responsibility (and in related ones). Keep interested and you will appear interesting — and that will be good for your career. Think of your job as a place to learn rather than a place you turn up at every day. Be aware of what you are learning and how it might be applied in other companies. Shorter term contracts are becoming the norm. So is a career based on completing projects for many different employers. So imagine updating your CV this evening and filling in your current tasks and responsibilities. Forget about trying to redesign or rewrite your resumé so that it makes you sound better. Think about what you can actually start doing better now that will make that role appear more attractive to a future employer. What valuable competencies have you increased while you've been doing this job? Think marketability. Think employability. Think value. But don't think of this as purely a benefit related to your work — or think of learning as the boring accumulation of facts that happened in school. The need to learn is hard-wired into us from our time in the womb. It is what helps us to survive and then thrive. The impulse to experience something and then understand it is a core human trait and a precious gift. Continuing your learning throughout your life will be a source of continued satisfaction — and continued growth. Life becomes an open-ended journey of discovery rather than a closed journey towards retirement.
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Being open to learning, then, doesn't just mean having a thirst for new skills and knowledge. It means being open to what life teaches you. If you believe that everything teaches you something, you'll be more likely to take self-responsibility and change your life proactively — and less likely to picture yourself as a victim of chance or the deeds of others.
Share Your brain is wonderful, but the more brains the better. Hoarding information is pointless — it's a bit like hoarding oxygen. The best thing to do with oxygen is to get together with someone who makes breathing apparatus, then you'll really be able to explore the universe. And sharing information is a communication issue. Communication is at the heart of all you do. And, in a way, it's all you ever do — everything you do is carried by communication. The world is buzzing with billions of pieces of information being communicated — sent and received — every second. It's a communication marketplace of which two things can be said with confidence: 1 the communication marketplace is massively overpopulated; and 2 every one of us is in it, whether we like it or not. That's why today's business environment demands that we strive constantly to improve our communication. Because if our audience — our boss, our team mate, our customer — doesn't buy our message, they'll surely buy somebody else's. Communication is the skill that adds value to everything else you are trying to do. The ability to generate ideas and solutions is a precious gift, but is nothing if it is not matched by an ability to persuade others that you are right, or at least temporarily worth their investment of time and energy. Unless you can sell your ideas to those who have to carry them out, you'll guarantee yourself a working life of frustration.
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The ability to paint a verbal picture of the results you expect will give much needed clarity and direction to those whom you manage. And the ability to give feedback to people as they work — to let them know in a careful, detailed and empathetic way how they are doing and how they could improve, will be a major source of motivation for them. Communication is about what you say but, more often than not, it's about how you say it. That means using flexibility, creativity and patience to find many different ways of saying the same thing — until your audience understands. So often, for example, people in organisations complain that `they' don't listen. `We give them ideas, but they won't listen to us, you know!' Maybe this can be reframed, so that the `we' can still maintain some sense of possibility and influence: `we give them ideas, but we haven't yet found a way of communicating our ideas that makes them understand, or dispels all their doubts.' Only when we have tried every way of communicating can we be sure that `they' really won't listen. Your ability to communicate is also your ability to build relationships — and in this age of team working, we need people who can manage the complexities of working in groups. Build strong ties with others and you'll find you are generating value beyond your individual efforts.
Trust What if ... the world's not out to shaft you? Which of these do you most subscribe to: paranoia, the abnormal tendency to suspect and mistrust others or pronoia, the unaccountable feeling that everything is conspiring to help you.
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The thing to remember about the word `trust' is that it is both a noun and a verb. This reminds us that trust is something you get because of something you do. No-one gives love to someone who doesn't show it, and trust is no different. If you want to be trusted, trust others; if you want to know trust, be trustworthy. Here are some other ways to build trust: Know who you are — Watts Wacker describes a Brand as a Promise and applies that understanding to individuals. You are a brand — you are a promise of value added, or accomplishment achieved, or security embodied, of love given. The point is that you can't keep a promise if who you are — the promise-maker — keeps shifting. Consistency is the bedrock of trust. Explain who you are and what you do — in which case people around you will know by what standards, measures or principles to judge you (and judge you they will, whether you communicate with them or not). Demonstrate clearly what it is you share with others around you — a vision, a view of life, a set of objectives, a sense of humour. People trust people who are like them. Balance virtual with skin meetings — you can maintain trust at a distance, by keeping people informed, by asking for information — but people ultimately trust people that they can see. Don't be a stranger. Balance work and play, seriousness and laughter, fortitude and tears, etc. — since people to respond to authenticity and are suspicious of appearances and surfaces. Keep your promises — both to yourself and others. Breaking a promise causes a rift in the psychic bond between your intentions (represented in thoughts and words) and your actions. This bond is never permanent and fixed but is very easily weakened. Fulfilling even a small part of a big commitment you have made is better than not fulfilling any of it.
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Be honest — immediately, always and about everything, big and small — since this is another expression of consistency. In a recent survey of 40,000 Americans, 93% admitted to lying `regularly and habitually in the workplace'. For the 93%, your honesty will be an inspiration and example. For the 7%, well, people like people who are like them ... Give — freely. Achieve — as often as you can, to the best standards you are able.
Epilogue Change is natural — that is, it is part of being alive. This handbook suggests that we can find a way of living and working that accepts change as necessary and inevitable, a way that welcomes the new for the rich possibilities it opens us to, whilst honouring the past for all that is valuable there. Not all of us can be the leaders — at the top of the organisation taking in the whole picture. But we can all be like leaders, looking with the eyes of the eagle to take in the whole field, to seek out more information, to answer more questions, or to look at the problem from a different point of view. And then we can return to the immediate challenge — using the eyes of the mouse to help us through the field — with a new sense of purpose and understanding. Being able to use both the eyes of the eagle and the eyes of the mouse demands that we be flexible. And flexibility is the constant challenge — because stress and fear and confusion tend to make us rigid. Flexibility, too, is entirely natural, but we often forget it. Have a look out of the window — any window — and you will see that all the straight lines are man made. Being naturally human, being happy and healthy in change, means that we have to let go of our impulse to make a straight line out of our life — a life where everything would happen smoothly and fairly and when we wanted it to.
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Remain flexible and you can take back responsibility for what you think, feel and do. Remain flexible and you will avoid the rigid responses that make change fearful and painful. Remain flexible, and you will open up for yourself a multiplicity of attitudes, beliefs, possibilities and actions.
`Change: A Guide' is available online at www.foolweb.com for you to download and distribute.
Note 1
Which doesn't feature the word Fool at all and so might be useful for Fool-resistant organisations.
APPENDIX TWO It's a Bit Like ... It's a bit like ... is a particularly fun, easy and effective creative problem solving technique `invented' by Richard Ashcroft. It's used to help provide multiple perspectives on the issue concerned. In our case, we used it to generate ideas for photographs we could commission that would illustrate each of The Corporate Fool's nine roles. (The photographs never happened, but that's another problem). You could use it to find different ways of illustrating a point you have to make, or you could see if, by expressing your problem in a many different ways, you open up unexpected yet possible solutions. So what is your problem a bit like? Let your imagination soar ... In the meantime, we reproduce the result of our It's a bit like; maybe it will help you gain new insights into the nine roles and/or into how our minds work. ... Brainstorm for images that encapsulate the nine roles of the Fool ... in no particular order.
1. Alienator It's a bit like that guy at school that everybody hated — because he was outside, everyone else was inside & felt like they belonged. It's a bit like a Johnny Foreigner making us proud to Be English, thank the lord! It's a bit like being Jewish! It's a bit like that Monty Python song which says `and pray that there's intelligent life
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somewhere out in space because there's bugger all down here on earth!' It's a bit like the schoolboy glamour of being stuck in the corner. It's a bit like having a supersub on the bench. It's a bit like the play `Not Quite Jerusalem' where people have to go to kibbutz to get a perspective on their lives in England. It's a bit like not having something for a while which makes us appreciate it all the more. It's a bit like seeing your life through a microscope. It's a bit like being watcher and participator at the same time. It's a bit like seeing your present situation in a film or a book!!!! It's a bit like a distorting mirror. It's a bit like the boy prince on his island. It's a bit like George Stratton's spectacles that made you see everything upside down. It's a bit like yellow stars and pink triangles — badges of otherness and shame which became symbols of revolt. It's a bit like being absent and present at the same time. It's bit like being wound up. It's a bit like the use of humour to combine and not separate. It's a bit like being dizzy. It's a bit like parables, fairy tales or teaching tales. It's a bit like Milton Erickson. It's like no compromise. It's a bit like practical jokes.
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2 Midwife It's bit like the idea of having someone to give birth to creative ideas — deal with all the messy process of it ... It's a bit like someone who helps me leap over my problems when I'm stuck. It's a bit like having the right tool for the right job. It's not at all like cracking nuts with a bulldozer. It's a bit like having a secretary, accountant, tax specialist or agent — it allows us to let someone else get on with the things that distract us from what we really want to be doing. It's a bit like a vet (arm halfway up a cow's arse) — would make an awesome picture! It's a bit like Vaseline when your finger's stuck in the mouth of a bottle. It's a bit like scuba gear to let you see old things (the sea) in new ways (underneath). It's a bit like drugs. It's a bit like a sports coach. It's a bit like ahah! It's like having an idea in the bath — eureka! It's like a big birthing pool with a pregnant woman in it. It's getting your sleeves rolled up for the job at hand. It's messy and simple at the same time. It's a bit like being a facilitator. It's a bit like providing refuge for creative thinkers — the environment that aids creativity. It's a bit like a spell checker for a dyslexic. It's a bit like paint for an artist.
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3 Mapper It's a bit like a spider sitting on top of the corporate web understanding all the information that passes across the threads and knowing who knows what where. It's a bit like a living database of CVs. It's a bit like the Internet — unlimited source of knowledge. It's a bit like leaving school and discovering that the only knowledge you really need is how to go about finding out what you want to know. It's a bit like listening to peoples thoughts (Wim Wenders `wings of desire'). It's a bit like a windmill. It's a bit like a radar. It's a bit like a code breaker. It's a bit like an X-ray machine. It's a bit like a librarian. It's a bit like Alta Vista or Yahoo. It's a bit like a giant ear. It's a bit like a brain. It's a bit like solving jigsaw puzzles. It's a having the box lid on the puzzle. It's a bit like the instructions. It's a bit like a web. It's a bit like having a huge research department. It's a bit like the film `Phenomenon'. It's a bit like the ultimate encyclopaedia. It's a bit like that fantastic computer in The Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy that comes up with the number 42.
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4 Mediator It's a bit like a translation table — explaining to each group what the other group means. The arbitrator of meaning. It's a bit like a referee in an American Football game — explaining to everyone why the foul was given. It's like seeing the woods not just the trees. It's a bit like the Babel fish in The Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. It's a bit like holding the hands of two kids who are fighting about which action man is the best and explaining that if they played together they would have really good action men. It's a bit like being a translator but putting other peoples words to music. It's a bit like a peace envoy. It's a bit like Camp David or the Oslo peace accords. It's not a bit like the tower of Babel. It's a bit like star trek where all the aliens are American. It's a bit like the language of advertising which is international. It's a bit like road signs. It's a bit like international sign language. It's a bit like (school) uniform. It's a bit like subtitles. It's a bit like a dictionary. It's a bit like a balancing act. It's a bit like a juggler. It's a bit like providing a seesaw so that everyone can play. It's a bit like spinning plates. It's a bit like providing a fulcrum.
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5 Satirist It's a bit like a mirror in which everyone sees someone else's reflection instead of their own (!);o) It's a bit like a trap that you wander into quite happily before you realise it's too late. It's a bit like playing it's a bit like ... It's a bit like learning to allow our differences to make us laugh. It's a bit like emphasising our unique points. It's a bit like capturing the essence. It's a bit like `Spitting Image'. It's a bit like taking the piss. It's a bit like Monty Python. It's a bit like political cartoons. It's a bit like pointing the finger. It's a bit like pricking a balloon. It's a bit like letting the air out of tyres — or windbags! It's a bit like the Hindenberg on laughing gas. It's a bit like finding a hole in your parachute. It's a bit like a sharp pen. It's a bit like Swift and Pope hobbling down the road. It's a bit like love and hate. It's a bit like barbed wire. (I wrote `barbed fire' at first, which is a nice image.) It's a bit like a blushing with shame. It's a bit like Harry Enfield. It's a bit like taking one element and blowing it out of all proportion.
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It's a bit like the basis for comedy. It's a bit like that Alanis Morrisette song `Isn't It Ironic'.
6 Jester It's a bit like a clown who makes us laugh so that we forget ourselves (and don't cry). It's a bit like the Joy Gang at Ben & Jerry's — he's got the power to change your state. It's a bit like Tommy Cooper: ~) It's a bit like Pagliacci and Pierrot. It's a bit like a roomful of people laughing. It's a bit like the sound of laughter in the rain. It's a bit like a smile through a window on a cold day. It's a bit like a good joke in your e-mail inbox. It's a bit like pulling faces. It's a bit like Punch and Judy. It's a bit like all puppet shows. It's a bit like the play within the play in Hamlet (omlet).
7 Confidante It's a bit like the King having a shoulder to cry on. It's a bit like having a private diary. It's a bit like having a guardian angel. It's a bit like a good wise friend or aunt. It's a bit like having a friend. It's a bit like a therapist or analyst.
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It's a bit like a dog (man's best, etc.). It's a bit like sneaking round the bike sheds for a fag and a good old natter. It's a bit like sharing a secret. It's a bit like sharing a diary. It's a bit like hearing confession. It's a bit like listening and keeping quiet. It's a bit like taking someone's burden.
8 Contrarian It's a bit like a kid who cussedly says the opposite of whatever you say to provoke you. It's a bit like `The Argument Sketch' in Monty Python (no it's not). It's a bit like the flipside of the coin. It reminds me of what my acting teacher used to say: `drama is conflict'. If we all agreed with each other where would be the fun and drama in that? It's a bit like saying opposites attract. There's always intrigue. It's a bit like a magnet. It's a bit like a stop-go sign (both lit up at the same time). It's a bit like a red flag and a green flag. It's a bit like black and white. It's a bit like the tortoise and the hare. It's a bit like any oxymorons. It's a bit like nodding while saying no. It's a bit like running up a down escalator. It's a bit like your adolescent child (Ollie in 2009).
Appendix Two
187
It's a bit like Sod's Law. It's a bit like positive and negative. It's a bit like testing it out till it breaks. It's a bit like last-minute checks before take-off. It's a bit like a negative image. It's a bit like a reflection. It's a bit like — no it isn't, yes it is, no it isn't, yes it is, etc. It's a bit like sitting on the fence till you get piles. It's a bit like politicians. It's a bit like the flipside of the coin. It's a bit like the Zen story: within every problem is its equal and opposite solution.
9 Truthseeker It's a bit like a corporate social conscience — the kid who says guilessly that the emperor has no clothes on. It's a bit like being at a party when someone makes a comment which everyone else is thinking but no-one else has the guts to say. It's a bit like broadcasting subtext not real text. It's a bit like what goes on in the news behind the soundbites. It's a bit like `All The President's Men'. It's a bit like `Phenomenon'. It's a bit like a man on a mission. It makes me think of people through history who would sacrifice everything for the sake of the truth and then finding out that in fact they hadn't sacrificed anything; they only gained.
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It's a bit like the Oliver Sacks story about deaf people lip-reading a very sincere Reagan speech and saying `he's lying'. It's a bit like a researcher. It's a bit like a minesweeper. It's a bit like a treasure hunter with a metal detector. It's a bit like a judge. It's not a bit like Johnny Cochran or OJ. It's a bit like a sieve. It's a bit like a compass. It's a bit like a really irritating itch. It's a bit like a lump in your breast. It's a bit like finding out grown-ups don't know everything. It's a bit like a risk. It's a bit like what you babble on about after being given a truth drug. It's a bit like a lie detector test. It's a bit like a release. It's a bit like a relief. It's a bit like a fart in a lift. It's a bit like a TRUE OR FALSE game show. It's a bit like the other option to dare. It's a bit like that story which says that if life is a river, we either ride it with truth or we try and paddle upstream. Either way we'll get to the same place, you just need to decide how much time you want to spend fighting. It's a bit like the kids in `Waterworld' or `Jerry Maguire'. It's a bit like following your heart (there's an image there).
Appendix Two
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It's a bit like the Pied Piper: (Why did they call him `Pied' — are his eating habits significant or was he a mathematician?) It's a bit like coming up for air. It's a bit like a ray of sunshine. It's a bit like seeing the woods for the trees, and then the landscape. It's a bit like Paulo Coehlo's book The Alchemist.
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APPENDIX THREE FoolWeb `... Another painful burden that comes with increased consciousness and competence is the loneliness of transcending traditional culture.' M. Scott Peck
The Fool needs a locus — a place where there are other fools, and where his cap and bells and melon are a badge of belonging. It's hard to be outside all the time. The King needs somewhere where he can find a good Fool, where Fool quality control is in force. The FoolWeb is this place. Come join us. www.foolweb.com You will find: discussion groups around Fool-like topics on-line seminars news and notices a repository of folly, intended and otherwise information on The Fool School, providers of development in the art of bringing Fooling and Change Agency to work and to life more questions and some answers.
The Corporate Fool
Sculpture by Alan Leigh — http://www.interport.net/~alan/sculpture.htm
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Index alienation 10-11 alienator: 45-7, 90, 137, 138; brainstorming 179-80; foolish way questions 144; project management questions 144 apparatchicks 30-32 Birch, Paul, interview with 121-5 Brecht, Berthold 10 change: and ambiguity-tolerance 167; and balance 171-2; and belonging 172; and concern for people 164; as constant xviii-xix; cynicism concerning 34-6; defined 160; and flexibility 176-7; and the foolish building 114; from the Foolside 39-43; from inside out 40; from outside in 40; guide to 159; inertia to 30-32; and leadership 163; and learning/growing 172-4; and mastering one's own destiny 170-71; as natural 176; and the past 164-6; problems caused by 162; and security
3-4; and sharing 174-5; solutions and problems 169-70; successful/unsuccessful 160-61; and trust 175-6; and the unknown 161-2; and value creation 167-8; wrong premises concerning 29 communication: basic principle of 73; example of 73-5; and the foolish building 118; fool's role in 49-52; meaning of 75-6; sharing 174-5; understanding of 73 community 24 confidante: 87-8, 137; brainstorming 185-6; and communication 49; facets of 51-2; foolish way questions 144; project management questions 139; role of 4850 consultants 41-3 contrarian: 86, 137; brainstorming 186-7; and discipline of challenge and stretch 53-7; foolish way questions 144;
The Corporate Fool project management questions 139; and use of Socratic/dialectic thinking 54-5 creativity: 13-19; enhancement of personal 155-6; nurturing of 62; and the organisation 59; overcoming resistance to 60, 62; promotion of 60 customers 167-8 Ego 21, 23-4 feudalists 30-32 fool: advice for 124; and apparatchicks/feudalists 30-32; becoming 109-10; as challenger of the norms 53-7, 86, 137, 144, 186-7; as change agent 6, 32-7, 39-44; as confidante 48-52, 87-8, 137, 144, 1856; as creative 13-19; creed 151; a day in the life of 105-7; defined 38; as deflator and pricker of pomposity 7781, 89, 140, 145, 184-5; employment 91-2; appraisals 97; elements of contract 97; finding 93-4; interviewing
194
95-6; and the end of history 28-30; as enduring myth 20-26; as entertainer and `umorist' 67-71, 88-9, 138, 144, 185; examples of 108-9, 112; experience of 121-5; and the familiar xxi-xxii; film view of 2; as generator of creativity and problem-solving 5863, 88, 137, 145, 181; history of 10-12; as honest 8-9; how to become 156-7; interview with 3-9; job titles 126-7, 133; locus for 191; as maker and breaker of myths 135-6, 140, 145; managing; leading 100; one-to-one relationship 98; personal 98; praise and discipline 98; spotting pseudo-fools 99; trust and honesty 98; as mapper of knowledge 64-6, 89, 138, 144-5, 182; as mediator of meaning 72-6, 87, 138, 145, 183; as natural 11; office of 11; as outsider 6-7; as paid 11; parentage of 11-12; as perceiver of truth 7-8; perspective of xviii-xix; power of 1367, 152;
Index project management questions 138-40; qualities 101-2; relationships; danger signals 112-13; explaining the role 110-11; living with the pain 111; as representative of otherness 45-7, 90, 137, 144, 179-80; roles of 44; scope of xix; skills and competencies 102-4; as social outcast 10-11; Tao of 86-90; as teller of truths 82-5, 90, 140, 145, 1879; as value-adders 91; as vocation 101, 104; and work 150-51 foolish building: 114; communication and mobility in 118; environment of 11718; manifesto of 117; role of 116, 11819; vocabulary for 120 freedom: 146-7; questions concerning 153-4 Fukuyama, Francis 28 Fulghum, Robert 28 Handy, Charles 146 Heyoka fool 24-6, 55 Hierarchy of Priorities 147 IBM 82-3 information 59, 116 innovation 57, 58
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jester: 138; brainstorming 185; experience of 121-5; foolish way questions 144; and importance of humor 69-70; and laughter 67-71; project management questions 139; role of 70-71 Jungian fool 20-24 King: confidante of 48-52, 87-8, 137, 144, 185-6; defined 92; looking for 109-10 knowledge: defensive/offensive 65; and the foolish building 116; mapper of 64-6 laughter 67-71 learning, life-long xix, 172-4 learning organisation 56-7 mapper: 40, 64-6, 89, 138; brainstorming 182; foolish way questions 144-5; project management questions 139 mediator: 72-6, 87, 138; brainstorming 183; foolish way questions 145; project management questions 140 midwife: 58-63, 88, 137; brainstorming 181; foolish way questions 145; project management questions 140
The Corporate Fool mythologist: 20-26, 135-6; foolish way questions 145; project management questions 140 offices: described 114-15; efficiency of 115-16 oppositional logic 53-7 organisations: and corporate complaints 79; and creativity 59; and departmental fragmentation 66; diarist of 80; environment 115, 118; foolish 136-8; and laughter 67-71; and mythology 135-6; and satire 79-81 otherness 45-7 paradoxes xiv-xviii power: and influence 169-70; political and spiritual 152; and work 150 problem-solving 59-62, 169-70 professionalism: 23, 37; defined 38-9 project manager, questions to the fool 13840 pseudo-fools: charlatans 99; whingers 99 responsibility, for self 170-71
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Rosenbloom, Barak, interview with 128-32 Ross, Philip 120 satirist: 40; brainstorming 184-5; as diarist of company 80; foolish way questions 145; as morale-raiser 80-81; as official spokesman for the opposition 80; as owner of corporate complaints 79; as parodist 80; as professional heckler 78; project management questions 140 self, Jungian 20-24 self-employment 146-8 self-empowerment 150 self-responsibility 170-71 shadow 21-4 Shakespeare, William 6, 11 stress 22, 146-8 Swift, Jonathan 80-81 Tao, of the fool 86-90 Tarot fool: and creative potential 16-19; and reading of Tarot cards 13-14 thinking, oppositional 53-7 troublemaker, experience of 128-32 trust: building 176-7;
Index and change 175-6 truth: 4-5; frustrations concerning 40-43, 84; necessity for 82-4; perception of 78; and work 150-51 truthseeker: 82-5, 137; brainstorming 187-9; foolish way questions 145; project management questions 140
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work: choices concerning 149-50; and freedom 146-8, 150-54; idleness as the opposite of 148-9; as investment 149; ourselves defined by 148; paradoxes concerning xv; redefined by the fool 150-52; and self-empowerment 150; and stress 146-8
