03-04-2021, 08:53 AM
In an earlier thread on this forum, Strannik plays the role of devil's advocate, in asking: "How to develop outside the will of dictatorship?" A shorter summary of the book's contents is in my reply here, trimmed further below for a shorter read.
Weinberg's book is from 1986, but seems to have withstood the test of time quite well. The general ideas are fairly timeless, and the kind of thing often ignored in practice in a variety of organizations, and in societies at large, even when the theory is known (and sometimes more extensively than covered by Weinberg), perhaps because when given a choice of linear vs. organic approach, and of preventing vs. trying to further understanding, many of those able to influence the direction go for selfish power struggles at the cost of everyone else, while trying to manage impressions and make others view them as benefactors. I think that's a basic pattern which in simpler forms go back as far as civilization itself.
Regarding more specific bits and pieces of psychological theory Weinberg uses which are not really central, like models of human judgment in communication and simple ideas for self-work to improve, lots of variations on ideas gain and lose prominence over years and decades. For example, the book Crucial Conversations, from 2012, by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler, presents a modern framework for understanding communication and problems with it that looks an awful lot like a simplified version of the more nuanced ideas from Virginia Satir which Weinberg covered very shortly, though new research is mentioned. Weinberg's ideas of using personal journaling to work through and change unconscious beliefs are also, roughly, mirrored in modern ideas like that of the "Pennebaker writing exercise".
Back in 2014, in the original short discussion which followed at the Cassiopaea forum, the idea of heterarchies was mentioned.
It seems like a good thing to include a pointer to, for further general consideration. It's like a basic building block in thinking about matters, much like hierarchy is. The two may or may not be combined in a description, since they are, roughly speaking, perpendicular to one another.
Weinberg's book is from 1986, but seems to have withstood the test of time quite well. The general ideas are fairly timeless, and the kind of thing often ignored in practice in a variety of organizations, and in societies at large, even when the theory is known (and sometimes more extensively than covered by Weinberg), perhaps because when given a choice of linear vs. organic approach, and of preventing vs. trying to further understanding, many of those able to influence the direction go for selfish power struggles at the cost of everyone else, while trying to manage impressions and make others view them as benefactors. I think that's a basic pattern which in simpler forms go back as far as civilization itself.
Regarding more specific bits and pieces of psychological theory Weinberg uses which are not really central, like models of human judgment in communication and simple ideas for self-work to improve, lots of variations on ideas gain and lose prominence over years and decades. For example, the book Crucial Conversations, from 2012, by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler, presents a modern framework for understanding communication and problems with it that looks an awful lot like a simplified version of the more nuanced ideas from Virginia Satir which Weinberg covered very shortly, though new research is mentioned. Weinberg's ideas of using personal journaling to work through and change unconscious beliefs are also, roughly, mirrored in modern ideas like that of the "Pennebaker writing exercise".
Back in 2014, in the original short discussion which followed at the Cassiopaea forum, the idea of heterarchies was mentioned.
"Navigator" on the Cassiopaea forum Wrote:What about heterarchies? When I first read it made sense moving away from a top-down STS pyramid as it considered the concept of network as the connectivity principle.
This principle was firstly applied to organic/biological aspects of nature, but it is also used under social contexts.
Extract from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterarchy
[...]
It seems like a good thing to include a pointer to, for further general consideration. It's like a basic building block in thinking about matters, much like hierarchy is. The two may or may not be combined in a description, since they are, roughly speaking, perpendicular to one another.
(06-12-2020, 10:53 AM)Asolsutsesvyl Wrote: The discussion of the nature of leadership and alternatives to hierarchical control brings to mind Gerald M. Weinberg's book Becoming A Technical Leader, which contrasts the usual linear threat/reward model with organic models of leadership. Organic models are less popular, but actually more suited for quantification for scientific purposes, whereas the conventional models rely upon subjective estimates of "effectiveness" of "influencing" in a variety of contexts. [...]
A path to seeing a larger range of related things and alternatives is to explore how things (including people) work together as systems. Feedback loops come in two kinds: positive (meaning: self-reinforcing) and negative (meaning: self-dampening). Systems thinkers model how each thing may depend on many other things, so that it is usually not the case that you can change one thing and have the rest remain the same. Conventional leadership models, by contrast, simplify away everything except assigned roles/labels, and pretend that each effect has a single clear cause.
In the absence of a centralized order, people will influence one another in complex ways, which can be modeled. In the presence of a centralized order, it remains the same, except that everything is also tangled up in the hierarchical order. Weinberg simplifies things for purposes of simple systems thinking, and divides individual and collective abilities and dynamics into three categories:
- Motivation.
- Organization.
- Ideas or innovation.
Influence is always going on, in these terms. Environments may have positive (amplifying) or negative (dampening) effects in these categories, and be shaped by people to change in those regards. It's easy to think of examples of people with strikingly uneven skills. Technical people are often the strongest in the third category, and usually have relative problems of personal disorganization and/or being poor at motivating others.
The conventional threat/reward leadership approach is based on simplifying away as much as possible, leaving mainly the assigned roles imposed by the authority, the use of threats and rewards to motivate, and a centrally imposed paradigm shaping ideas and innovation. To make it work, the authority must also have under its control those who get the needed organizational work done, to fill in that category.
Attempts to sabotage, or prevent the growth of movements, etc., threatening an existing or potential order can also be analyzed in those terms. Motivation is targeted through psychological warfare. Social forces of inhibition can be deliberately cultivated in order to stifle ideas and innovation which goes against the grain. Means to get things done in an organized way can be made much more accessible to those favored by an existing authority than those at odds with it.
Look at really small societies, or groups whose functioning is unrelated to the work of a centralized government, and you will see dynamics play out in which people play individual roles difficult to fit into tidy labels, but where leadership is continually going on, in ways which may look very different from those usually brought to mind by the word "leader". The usual ideas of "the leader" and how such things are supposed to look can become wildly misleading in technical work contexts, Weinberg shows through examples.
At an extreme, organic leadership can make for an exploring, choosing, and discovering, without fixed goals beforehand, where people feel as if they serve the same basis of life, with spiritual overtones. The opposite is a view of the world as containing a limited number of ideas, and the deliberate fueling of ruthless competition and limiting of necessary resources in order to prevent new systems from growing to the point where the status quo is threatened.