I've left Corporate America for good...
I have to say that my life feels about 150% better now that I've left Corporate America...and for good...
I've never worked in a more dysfunctional organization as NCS Pearson...I've never worked somewhere where I was more tightly controlled...I've never seen an organization where so many people rationalized themselves around keeping they're jobs and their fears of losing them, no matter how much "playing the game" and "following the rules" meant distorting the fundamental purposes of the organization...in NCS's case, customer service...
What upset me most was that the stakes are high...I worked on Medicare issues, where people were trying to get often life and death critical medical care covered by insurance...private insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals all bickered about who was going to pay for services, and frequently let patients and loved ones out in the cold, being threatened by hospitals and doctors demanding payment...and the lesson, I suppose, this taught everyone at NCS -- along with bouts of unemployment -- was the same lesson that so many folks at Community Living Opportuntities and so many folks learn when upper management insists on getting their way even if it conflicts with the fundamental purposes of the organization: that they need to learn to shut up, cover their asses, and do everything it takes to get promoted...which means reinforce all the same BULLSHIT that plagues the organization, currently...lots of people get ahead in totalitarian regimes like China and Iraq this way, as much as in Corporate America...and, at least in America, we have the freedom to leave situations where this kind of abuse of authority takes place...but we are all responsible for saying something when it is taking place...
An alternative model for business development is learning organizations that create the freedom and space for creative solutions to new problems...that values the people developing those solutions as much and more than it does the solutions, themselves...where equitable responsiveness by people in all places in an organization is patient in it's development, focussed on doing good work and supporting people who do the work -- in their lives as much as in their work -- rather than narrowly on profits...organizations where people are taken seriously in their own right, rather than just what they can do for the organization...
Universities come closest to this kind of organization in my experience, which makes sense they tend, in my estimation -- not perfectly, but still -- to be the most honest and trustworthy institutions in our communities...though even they take for granted the qualities that make them so trustworthy...my grad school -- the Department of Special Education at the University of Kansas -- is an EXCELLENT example of that problem...but they'll get it turned around, I'm confident...teachers tend to be more honest with themselves when they're fucking up, in my experience...
NCS, on the other hand, reflected all of the WORST in corporate behavior...looking narrowly after the bottom line...promotions being based on comformity to those priorities whether they serve customers or not...everyone looking after how THEY can make more money, whether it serves anyone or not...
That wasn't always true...there are many very decent people who did good jobs...who cared about customers...but, generally, working uphill against a tide of dysfunctionally narrow self-interest...
The market will work this out, I'm confident...people don't put up with folks in power fucking with them for too long, I'm learning, as our President is, rightly, learning the hard way right now...I'd rather liberals, in particular, would have dealt with him in a way that wouldn't have led him to be so defensive about his mistakes...in ways that wouldn't have been so aggressive...but, in the end, he's the leader of the fucking free world, for God's sakes...I'd say that at a minimum we can expect him to take some responsibility...or as he might like to say it, to take "ownership":):):)...Although I'm concerned that ownership to our President means that he owns as much capital as possible, while others get to own responsibilities that he decides not to take...
Wouldn't it be nice to have a President say, "I'm sorry" for mistakes while they are going on, rather than to have to wait for historians to write about their fuck-ups long after they are out of office?...There were so many better ways for the President to go about handling Iraq...working with our democratic (and even our non-democratic partners)...supporting an internal revolution led by Iraqis, especially established Iraqi opposition groups...trying the novel approach of LIFTING THE SANCTIONS, initially, if only to help so many Iraqis who had been hurt by them...
The British Empire had more nascent republican principles in it than did the Baathist Regime...but can anyone imagine how the colonists would have felt if the French had invaded the colonies presumably to liberate them, without letting the colonists lead that kind of revolution?...
It would have been arrogant and likely would have involved similar kinds of backlash as the Iraqis are demonstrating now...and the fact that President Bush so stubbornly refuses to consider why the Iraqis resist his efforts and why they might want an apology for how much unnecessary turmoil he has put their country through to free them in a way that he gave them no say in is reason enough to find some kind -- any kind -- of alternative...
John Kerry and I have many disagreements...most importantly around vision, which John doesn' t seem to have nearly enough of...but someone needs to replace the arrogant leadership that situates itself in Washington right now...and his cheerleaders in Washington reveling in their belief that they can bully the world into submission...
It is always amazing to me that people in free and democratic countries so persistently take their more free and more democratic arrangements for granted...how -- when faced with serious challenges like terrorism -- they cower into governing arrangements that look MORE like those trying to terrorize them and those governments that democracies are so rightly critical of, rather than MORE like they're strongest selves..MORE FREE...MORE DEMOCRATIC...
But it is just this persistent nervous habit that democracies have, unfortunately, that when fear captures a culture or a society that they lose themselves in it and choose aggression over intelligence and understanding as a means of dealing with serious challenges...
It has been discouraging to see how FAR we are from the world Abraham Maslow painted in his final book, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature...how far we are from a world where we freely choose to support one another and our needs as people, for our own sakes, rather than for what we do or don't do...where people freely choose to do good, even when it is not rewarded or, more difficult, even when doing good is punished...how power so often distorts those relationships...how often we take for granted each other and our needs...
Me too...I'm definitely guilty...I do my best...and I fail often...only to to try to reflect and learn and do it all better:):):)...
I'm sure old Abraham failed a lot at it too...but having vision for how things can be better is a better alternative to reinforcing the same old mistakes...
And freedom and openness and equity and democracy are important not just for their own sakes...but so that we can continue to work in those areas where we always, persistently fall short of more ideal ways of relating with one another that we may imagine:):):)...
Alright, everyone:):):)...I hope everyone's doing well:):):)...I'll talk with everyone soon:):):)...
Love,
Ben
