Staying in a corporate role that is preparing you for irrelevance by channeling you to master technology that is about to become redundant is a high but often unnoticed risk.
I think you've pointed to something that is making organisations more and more fragile. Organisations have become adept at replacing people with processes but that removes more of the Metis, the judgment, imagination and pattern recognition that gives the organisation flexibility. They are making themselves more rigid as the volatile world around them requires greater flexibility.
Part of my Metis was being able to overcome organisational disfunction to achieve objectives. This is not something that is often acknowledged and, even less often, rewarded but it is how organisations manage complexity. It's what many middle managers do but the level of complexity is increasing as organisations optimise for efficency, lock in process and simplify at the abstract level. They are getting overwhelmed and the complexity is spilling out elsewhere and, I believe, will lead to chaos and collapse.
These are great points. The frustration I have is finding ways to articulate them to organisations that recognise them, but wan’t “evidence”.
Perhaps it’s a little like magic- if you explain the trick, it’s no longer a trick. The trouble is we’re dealing with real organisations with real people, for whom, by the time they have the evidence, it’s too late.
You could give them the evidence and they still wouldn't act. They are imprisoned by their own mental models and the associated beliefs. They feel the dissonance of what they see and the gap with what it's supposed to look like but the pain is not enough for them to abandon their shibboleths. And they never ask the opposite - where is the evidence that what we believe is working?
A further thought, triggered by a comment from a friend this morning, on how Robert Pirsig’s work “on Quality” maps onto this.
Pirsig’s notion of Quality - that immediate, pre-intellectual recognition that something is right or wrong before we can explain why, maps directly onto mētis. He distinguished between “classical” understanding (specifications, procedures, the measurable) and “romantic” understanding (the felt, immediate experience), a divide that mirrors precisely what AI can and cannot do. AI masters the classical; it can process every specification of whisky-making, every documented procedure, but it cannot access Quality, that moment of knowing that this particular whisky has been rushed, that something essential has been sacrificed for speed. Pirsig’s mechanic who truly cares versus the spectator who merely follows procedures parallels the distinction between alchemist and processor. Both Quality and mētis emerge only through patient, caring engagement. It is what Pirsig called “peace of mind” through attention, what we might recognise as becoming the wood in which knowledge matures. His “gumption traps” , those moments when enthusiasm drains because we’re following procedures rather than engaging with Quality, describe what happens to people trapped inside invisible doctrine, perfectly prepared for a world that no longer exists because they’ve lost touch with what actually matters.
The McDonaldisation of a heritage product is, at heart, the sacrifice of Quality for classical specifications, the confusion of meeting requirements with creating something good.
A few points:
Staying in a corporate role that is preparing you for irrelevance by channeling you to master technology that is about to become redundant is a high but often unnoticed risk.
I think you've pointed to something that is making organisations more and more fragile. Organisations have become adept at replacing people with processes but that removes more of the Metis, the judgment, imagination and pattern recognition that gives the organisation flexibility. They are making themselves more rigid as the volatile world around them requires greater flexibility.
Part of my Metis was being able to overcome organisational disfunction to achieve objectives. This is not something that is often acknowledged and, even less often, rewarded but it is how organisations manage complexity. It's what many middle managers do but the level of complexity is increasing as organisations optimise for efficency, lock in process and simplify at the abstract level. They are getting overwhelmed and the complexity is spilling out elsewhere and, I believe, will lead to chaos and collapse.
These are great points. The frustration I have is finding ways to articulate them to organisations that recognise them, but wan’t “evidence”.
Perhaps it’s a little like magic- if you explain the trick, it’s no longer a trick. The trouble is we’re dealing with real organisations with real people, for whom, by the time they have the evidence, it’s too late.
I’m off to get my Tommy Cooper hat…
You could give them the evidence and they still wouldn't act. They are imprisoned by their own mental models and the associated beliefs. They feel the dissonance of what they see and the gap with what it's supposed to look like but the pain is not enough for them to abandon their shibboleths. And they never ask the opposite - where is the evidence that what we believe is working?
A further thought, triggered by a comment from a friend this morning, on how Robert Pirsig’s work “on Quality” maps onto this.
Pirsig’s notion of Quality - that immediate, pre-intellectual recognition that something is right or wrong before we can explain why, maps directly onto mētis. He distinguished between “classical” understanding (specifications, procedures, the measurable) and “romantic” understanding (the felt, immediate experience), a divide that mirrors precisely what AI can and cannot do. AI masters the classical; it can process every specification of whisky-making, every documented procedure, but it cannot access Quality, that moment of knowing that this particular whisky has been rushed, that something essential has been sacrificed for speed. Pirsig’s mechanic who truly cares versus the spectator who merely follows procedures parallels the distinction between alchemist and processor. Both Quality and mētis emerge only through patient, caring engagement. It is what Pirsig called “peace of mind” through attention, what we might recognise as becoming the wood in which knowledge matures. His “gumption traps” , those moments when enthusiasm drains because we’re following procedures rather than engaging with Quality, describe what happens to people trapped inside invisible doctrine, perfectly prepared for a world that no longer exists because they’ve lost touch with what actually matters.
The McDonaldisation of a heritage product is, at heart, the sacrifice of Quality for classical specifications, the confusion of meeting requirements with creating something good.
I have good friends :-)