Management of the Absurd - Hardcover

Farson, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684800802 ISBN 13: 9780684800806

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1996

Synopsis

Challenging managers to reexamine their assumptions about effective leadership, a study of organizations and human relations explores thirty paradoxical situations and the impact of effective leadership. 60,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Farson is a psychologist, former CEO, and educator. He was the cofounder and president of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, the founding dean of the school of environmental design at the California Institute of the Arts, president of Esalen Institute, and is currently president of the International Design Conference in Aspen. He has collaborated with lifelong associate and famed psychologist Carl Rogers on several research projects including the Academy Award-winning documentary film Journey into Self. He received his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Chicago, and was a Ford Foundation Fellow at Harvard Business School. He lives in La Jolla, California.

Reviews

Psychologist, management consultant, former CEO and college dean, and currently head of the International Design Conference in Aspen, Farson has put together a challenging, irritating, galvanizing manual designed to help managers cope with the paradoxes, organizational logjams and interpersonal dynamics of corporate, business and institutional life. In 33 short, conversational chapters, he delivers a series of Zen-like injunctions to jolt readers out of well-worn grooves of thought and action. Some of these prescriptions have a counterintuitive appeal ("Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for." "Once you find a management technique that works, give it up"). Others exude Confucian wisdom ("Every great strength is a great weakness"), and still others sound potentially dangerous if misapplied ("Praising people does not motivate them"). This pithy guide is an armchair workshop in participative management.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author, a psychologist, educator, and former CEO, reminds us that life is absurd, that human affairs usually are not rational, and that we can never fully master our relationships with others. Within this context, he presents a book of ideas, observations, and lessons learned, rather than a book of management techniques. He uses the terms leader and manager interchangeably, although he acknowledges that distinctions can be made. The value of this book is not in learning something new, although Farson's point of view can prompt a reevaluation of long-held assumptions. Also, a reader is not likely to agree with all of his conclusions. Rather, this book walks a busy leader through a wide range of everyday issues, which prompts serious reflection on a variety of topics, such as technology and its positive as well as negative impact; it offers insight into the art of listening and why it is so inordinately difficult; it describes leadership in the context of the leader "serving" the people who work for him or her; it considers various ramifications of change; it discusses why the author believes experience is not always the best teacher; and it offers his view of success and failure and why these are intimately connected. The topics that the author has selected challenge and test our basic beliefs and behaviors, and he skillfully draws us into an important and thoughtful examination of fundamentals of our complex and "absurd" business environment. Mary Whaley

Like Alice on the far side of the Looking Glass, the reader of psychologist and educator Farson's book is at first confused and disconcerted. With chapters like "Once You Find a Management Technique That Works, Give It Up" and "Organizations That Need Help Most Will Benefit from It the Least," it reverses logic, reason, and the basic building blocks of common sense. Yet Farson's topsy-turvy world of management tenets strangely rings true at times. Farson presents paradoxes to make us pause in our relative certainty and consider the complete opposite. The paradox of rising expectations, for example, demonstrates that the more things improve, the more people demand improvement. We think we want creativity, but, argues Farson, what we really want is controlled creativity. These are but a few of the truths Farson conjures from the flip side of the coin. For public library management collections.?Randy L. Abbott, Univ. of Evansville Libs., Ind. Hammond, Joshua & James Morrison.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The Opposite of a Profound Truth is Also True

Our great achievements in science, law, government, and in every intellectual pursuit are dependent upon our development as rational, logical thinkers.

But this kind of thinking has also limited us. Without quite knowing it, we have become creatures of linear, categorical logic. Things are good or bad, true or false, but not both. We have been taught that a thing cannot be what it is and also its opposite. Yet it sounds wise when confronted with a conflict to say, "Well, yes and no." Or, "It's both." We've all heard statements that concede the coexistence of opposites: Less is more. Living is dying. Hating is loving. Although it seems illogical, no two things are as closely related as opposites.

Going in Both Directions

What practical value can we get out of that notion? At a mundane level, take, for example, the development of frozen food processing. It led to a rash of predictions about the growth of a fast-food market -- predictions that certainly turned out to be correct. What was not predicted, however, was the popularity of gourmet cookbooks, with their emphasis on flesh ingredients, organically grown products, wholesome preparation, and a new respect for chefs. Frozen food processing made possible the development of fast food, but along with that development came its opposite.

We have seen the coexistence of opposites in management with the introduction of participative approaches designed to democratize the workplace. These approaches often do increase worker participation. But it is also true that hierarchy and authority remain very much in place, perhaps stronger than ever. That is because the executives who grant the work force some amount of authority never lose any of their own authority. Granting authority is not like handing out a piece of pie, wherein you lose what you give away. It is more like what happens when you give information to someone. Although he or she may now know more, you do not know any less.

Practical Deceptions

Another coexistence of opposites: To be healthy, an organization needs full and accurate communication among its members. But also, to be healthy, it needs distortion and deception. If those words sound overly harsh, think of commonly used terms like diplomacy and tact, which imply less than candid communication.

Just as the profession of medicine or the conduct of a romance requires mystique -- that is, encouraging beliefs about oneself that may not be completely accurate but make others feel positively -- so, too, do leadership and management. Some, for example, hold that one function of middle management is to massage or filter information, both upward and downward. Such "distortion" or "deception" is said to serve two practical purposes.

First, workers are led to believe that their leaders are confident, fair, and capable, reinforcing the necessary myths of leadership. Second, since the top leaders surely would be troubled by knowing everything that goes on in the organization, they are protected from hearing about the petty problems and minor failures of the work force.

In human affairs, some form of deception is the rule, not the exception. In most cases it should not be considered lying, because that term fails to take into account the complexity of human communication and the many ways people must maneuver to keep relationships on an even keel. Appreciating the coexistence of opposites helps us understand that honesty and deception can function together in some paradoxical way.

Contradictory Impulses

One executive I know is a classic example of a man who wants to succeed but at the same time seems to want to fail. Everything he does carries both messages. From the very moment he enthusiastically volunteers to head a project, he operates in such a way as to cripple it -- refusing to delegate, undermining the work of committees, failing to meet deadlines, and stalling on crucial decisions.

His behavior is not that unusual. Contradictory impulses to both succeed and fail can be found in every project, every work team, even every individual. Every management choice, job offer, or new applicant can appear both appealing and unappealing. Every deal is both good and bad. That is why leadership is essentially the management of dilemmas, why tolerance for ambiguity -- coping with contradictions -- is essential for leaders, and why appreciating the coexistence of opposites is crucial to the development of a different way of thinking.

Like One

There is yet another spin to this paradox that I have always found intriguing -- that opposites not only can coexist, but can even enhance one another. Take pleasure and pain, for example. Scratching an itch is both. Not pleasure, then pain, or pain, then pleasure, but both at once. Granted, scratching an itch too long can become very painful and no longer pleasurable, but there is a moment when they coexist, when they are one. Like truth and falsity, good and evil.

Copyright © 1996 by Richard Farson
Foreword copyright © 1996 by Michael Crichton

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684800802
• ISBN 13: 9780684800806
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176