[From Bill Powers (920621.1200)]
Kent McClelland (920621) and Rick Marken (920620 & prev) --
Cooperation and conflict are outcomes of a social interaction. If people's
goals are aligned, there will be cooperation or at least non-interference.
If they are not, there will be conflict and competition.
Competition arises in our society as a consequence of system concepts and
principles. One of these concepts has to do with position in a social
hierarchy. The idea of the superior person, with others being inferior,
sets the stage in some people for a desire to be, or be acknowledged as
being, at the top of this social hierarchy. As achievement of this goal
requires a relative ranking of people, it is impossible for everyone in the
society to achieve it. If even two people wish to be perceived as number 1,
a conflict must arise because by definition only one person can be number 1
(or number anything). The existence of number 1 creates number 2: number n
implies number n - 1. If one person wants to become a leader, followers
must be found, and others who also want to be leader must be fended off,
undermined, or otherwise prevented from succeeding. The striving for social
position is a pernicious ill in our society, which accounts for a great
many of its problems.
An anecdote. At the newspaper where I once worked (1979-1990), both the
head programmer and I became potential candidates (in the eyes of
management) for head of the department of technical services at a
pleasantly elevated salary. My "rival" and I had exactly the same attitude:
who wants to spend the day going to meetings, making out budgets, dealing
with public relations, and chastizing people for breaking the rules? So we
both turned it down. Management insisted. We persuaded them to try out an
old hand at the newspaper in our department, and after a few weeks he
resigned and went back to being a competent technician. The pressure
continued.
Finally, we got together, all the refuseniks, and consulted with the man
who headed up the parts department, doing the ordering and filing
everything (mostly erroneously). He had that lowly position because the
technical schools he had attended didn't teach him much that would justify
his title of technician, he had a lot of seniority, and he was willing to
do things the way we told him they needed to be done. We asked him how he
would like a promotion to head of the department. He thought that was a
wonderful idea -- surprising, but wonderful.
So we put up his name and helped him write his resume and job description,
and management informed us that he would now be the new director of
technical services at about $10k more than his former salary. Our man V.
moved into a big new office with three windows overlooking the Chicago
River, with a rug on the floor, and with 23 peons working cheerfully under
him, including the head programmer and me. We ripped out a wall to make the
office even bigger and put in a conference table with fancy visitor's
chairs. We got him his own desktop computer and taught him how to write
with a word-processor, and then for about a year taught him how to read and
write, period. We set up Lotus programs for him to do the budget with. We
called him boss, and always deferred to him and tried to make him look
good. Whenever any difficult decision arose, he would come to us, and we'd
confer about it and tell him what to say at the weekly management meeting.
If the department needed something, or the paper needed something in our
line, we'd write it up and submit it, through V., to management (as V.'s
idea). When management wanted something done, V. would relay it to us and
if we didn't think of reasons why doing it would be disastrous, we'd get on
it and do it.
Now the interesting thing was that as the years went by, V. got better and
better at his job. He wrote better. He read better. He showed courage and
principle. He made sensible decisions. In short, he became a very competent
manager -- and never once thought that he had control of anyone else in his
department. Management was happy with V. V. was happy with himself and us.
And we were happiest of all, because we could go on doing exactly what
interested us the most, exactly what we knew was best for the newspaper,
and didn't have to do a job we all would have hated.
I don't mean to imply that everything in this department was perfect. There
were all the usual problems and conflicts, including conflicts with
management outside the department. Many interpersonal problems existed and
continued -- the usual. But the one problem we didn't have within the
department was that of competition for social superiority. The problem
simply didn't exist. Nobody wanted to be number 1 except V, and he knew it
didn't mean a damned thing to the rest of us.
In fact there was almost no competition even professionally. It was decided
when the department started, under a long-gone department head, that there
would be no shame in asking help; only in failing to ask for it and
bluffing through and screwing up the newspaper. Ignorance was expected, and
mutual teaching and learning was expected. Even mistakes were expected and
everybody, even people awakened at three in the morning, converged on the
problem and helped to fix it. They didn't have to. Nothing was said if they
didn't. But they did. Trouble attracted people like flies. The job was to
keep the newspaper running 24 hours a day, so well that all those users out
there wouldn't even know we were there. Everyone signed onto this goal and
made it personal.
The average down time of our 17 PDP-11's and the rest of the system --
terminals, disk drives, printers, modems, typesetters, and other machinery
that did all the word processing and typesetting of the news and classified
ads in the newspaper and kept track of the press runs -- was about 10
minutes. And this with an ATEX system that corrupted the data on a disk at
least twice a day due to several unfixable bugs in the proprietary
operating system.
You'll notice that I haven't even mentioned upper management. My newspaper
got in deep financial trouble through two successive leveraged buyouts. It
got a labor lawyer in as publisher and became a union-buster (our
department voted down the idea of organizing). If the newspaper survives,
it will be in spite of upper management. Upper management ran the paper
strictly on the basis of social position and competition, same as most
other businesses. The real newspaper ran itself, while upper management
(and the owners) did their best to flush it down the toilet while they vied
with each other for personal advancement.
There was a time, at one CSG meeting, when an old-timer in the control
theory business came to a meeting for the first time and vented his spleen
at one William T. Powers for leading the group in the wrong direction. He
wanted to lead it. I said, "O.K., Bob, you've got it: go ahead." That was
the last or second-to-last meeting he attended. What he didn't realize was
that I don't lead the CSG. I don't want any power over anyone. In fact
people who understand control theory just don't lead worth a damn. There's
a lot of cooperation going on, but the competition level hovers around
zero. When I start telling people in this group what to do, they say "Yes,
Bill," and usually go right on doing as they please. That pisses me off,
but I'm proud of it, too. It shows that they understand the message.
Sometimes they have to remind me of it.
I've heard all the arguments in favor of competition. I don't believe them.
I don't think that people with contradictory goals accomplish anything but
building up their muscles and cancelling the effects of someone else's
muscles, leaving little effort available for real progress. I don't believe
there is a "top" in the social hierarchy -- I don't even believe there IS a
social hierarchy. And as long as I don't believe that, there is no social
hierarchy for me. This doesn't endear me to people who want such a
hierarchy to exist, but that's their problem. There's nothing I want from
anyone that would make it worth while to play that game. Not even the
privilege of living.
And I know for certain that when, in some microsociety, people manage to do
without this concept of Number One, everything magically works better:
shared goals are accomplished smoothly, easily, and with great pleasure.
People get smarter, because they aren't wasting their time and effort
trying to counteract what someone else is doing.
I haven't got this system concept worked out in any detail -- talking about
it too much tends to reduce it to procedures and slogans, anyway. But what
I do understand of it, I want to sell. It defines the kind of world that I
find worth living in. All I can do to create that world is to persuade
others who will persuade others that it's worth a try.
···
------------------------------------------------------------------
"Any new idea, Mahound,is asked two questions. The first is asked when it's
weak: WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU? Are you the kind that compromises, does
deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or
are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion
that would rather break than sway with the breeze? -- The kind that will
almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits;
but, the hundredth time, will change the world.
'What's the second question?' Gibreel asked aloud.
'Answer the first one first'."
Salman Rushdie, _Satanic Verses_, p. 335.
And thanks to Mary for finding it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Best,
Bill P.