Stories & Memes in turbulent times
Managing through turbulent times is a story about stories.
Management techniques are the tools used to control organisations but they are
deployed in response to and in anticipation of events described in stories.
Stories have a powerful social function. They manipulate
the mood and expectation of an audience. They can elevate the storyteller to
the position of leader. They can bind together a community to pursue a common
purpose and give coherent meaning to what otherwise might degenerate into
chaos. At root they aim to communicate a clear vision and to work both at the
rational and the emotional level in order to motivate listeners to take a given
course of action with conviction and determination.
Stories told in turbulent times provide a synthesis of the
turmoil which surrounds people. Initially, they may be dismissive of the
negatives as the descent into turbulence begins. But, eventually, they are
replaced by new stories that describe, and sometimes amplify, the threat to
well-being, explain the route to salvation and the return to the stability that
people crave.
Economic systems are driven by confidence and sentiment
and it has been argued that the stories of impending doom contribute
significantly to the turbulence that exposes the weakness of a potentially
unstable system.
Accusations are levelled at the media for broadcasting
speculation drawn from minimal facts. Journalists respond by claiming that they
do no more than report what is or ought to be in the public arena.
The real pattern of causation is difficult to ascertain
and, probably, the truth is that the media and sentiment feed on each other,
such that a rumour can be disseminated and amplified until it becomes regarded
as reality and attempts to deny or dispel the rumour are seen as evasion and
attempts at concealment, thereby reinforcing the story.
Often stories that touch an audience’s fears or hope are
more powerful than the less dramatic reality. People want to believe that the
turbulence will end and that normality will be restored sooner rather than
later. A story which draws this conclusion will be accepted more readily than
an alternative that envisions continued uncertainty and hardship without
prospect of an end in the foreseeable future. We all prefer hope to despair.
A senior manager within a company who shares a nightmare
scenario of impending collapse is unlikely to motivate employees to make
extraordinary coordinated efforts to avoid this disastrous vision. But an
individual who can find a narrative that also touches employees’ hopes and
describes a path along which they might be realised will motivate people to
accomplish objectives they believed were beyond their grasp.
Stories were the principal tool of the great orators of
history. They didn’t utilise rhetoric because they were ignorant of the
techniques we now call management science. They did so because it was
effective. From the time of Homer, and maybe earlier, they realised that
stories were the most powerful device for encouraging a group of disparate
potential followers to engage in coordinated objective centred action.
Stories were also the main way in which warnings and
learnings from history were remembered and passed between generations.
In later chapters on planning I advocate the use of a
technique known as scenario planning. Central to this technique is the
combination of subjective information with objective data to construct a story
of the possible future.
The information on which managers base their decisions is
incomplete and inaccurate so the deficiencies are made good by weaving the data
into a story which places the data into a context and interprets it in a form
that is easily remembered and communicated.
I believe that it is the quality of rhetoric and the
coherent content of their stories that is one of the prime features that
distinguish a leader from a manager.
But who are these individuals, the leaders, who are able
to win this battle against turbulence and exert such influence over other human
beings and what is it that they do?
Although we believe, almost subliminally, that we know
what leadership is and that we can recognise a leader when we meet, hear or see
one, this confidence is formed largely from stories about historical
characters. These heroic characters may be real but their stories were composed
by others, sometimes long after the event and are probably embellished by the
fictional exaggerations of the narrators. The stories developed not as
objective documents and statements of record but to impress, to teach and to
inspire, and it may be that what they describe is a gross distortion of the
actual events on which they are based. They describe not what leaders were but
what the narrators inferred that their readers would want to believe were the,
often superhuman, accomplishments and virtues of individuals who, in turbulent
times, emerged to achieve extraordinary things from which many benefited.
I deal with leadership more fully in chapter [8].
The stories are mythological. Intended to inspire by
leaving listeners with a sense of awe and a belief that seemingly impossible
tasks can be accomplished, albeit by extraordinary individuals.
These stories are the memes of leadership which have infected our
critical perception. For example, the exaggeration of dominant characteristics
leads us towards the belief that Hitler and Stalin were entirely evil in all
things and that Nelson Mandela is entirely good. Such singularity is improbable
because it is not human, but this is the most memorable characterisation and it
has been magnified by a convergent system that concentrates on strengthening
the popular preconceptions until the predominant attribute is exaggerated to
the point of caricature.
An important fraction of the uncertainty of turbulent
times results from the rapidity with which the prevailing stories are
discredited and new stories replace them. The next section discusses a controversial
mechanism by which, it is proposed, these stories are disseminated.
Memes
Memes are an idea introduced by Richard Dawkins in his
1976 book The Selfish Gene. They are defined as
units of cultural information that have certain similarities to genes. The Oxford English Dictionary extends this by defining a
meme as, ‘an
element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means,
especially imitation’. Stanovich
defines a meme as, ‘a brain control (or informational) state that can
potentially cause fundamentally new behaviours and/or thoughts when replicated
in another brain.’
The concept of memes is important to management through
turbulent times because success depends crucially on the modification of
attitudes, beliefs and modes of behaviour of others.
The key point is that memes replicate. They are passed
from brain to brain by word of mouth, through text, through pictures or by
imitation. A good example is gossip. A piece of information that the host is
seemingly compelled to transmit to as many other brains as she can. During its
dissemination the original meme may interact with other memes to form a new
meme that represents a distorted story that is more likely to be accepted by a
recipient, thereby enhancing replication. The process of replication is
analogous to viral infection of a population.
It has been hypothesised that mankind’s compulsion to
invent more rapid broadcast communication methods is an indirect function our
memetic complex’s impulsion to greater replication through non-interpersonal
means.
The question may not be how do people acquire beliefs but
how do beliefs acquire people?
It is possible that, through the preservative function of literature,
a meme that reaches a contemporaneous dead end, may enter a phase analogous to
suspended animation until it is read again, enters a new mind and a new thread
begins.
This explains how the experience and learning from the
previous time of economic turbulence can become ‘lost’ to the latest generation
of managers but, in theory, may be regained.
Mankind, like many other biological entities, possesses
genetically encoded instincts for subordination, followership and leadership
but, unlike other biological entities, mankind is able to moderate these
through the partially controllable effect of memes acting singularly or, more
often, in combination with other memes as a memeplex.
When instability is significant a new person with a new
and compelling narrative seems able to achieve more than an existing manager
who is seen to have presided over the deterioration and was the advocate of a
discredited narrative.
In turbulent times leaders are important. The times are
extraordinary and people believe that, as history teaches, at times of great
threat an individual emerges who can lead us to a better situation. Only rarely
is this person the incumbent manager. Mostly potential followers believe that
the leader will not be someone they know who is a member of the current
management elite.
A new person personifies ‘becoming’ rather than
‘reversing’.
In the political arena we can see this in the example of
Winston Churchill’s replacement of Neville Chamberlain in 1940, and when
Franklin D. Roosevelt replaced Herbert Hoover as US president in 1933.
We can see a new coach often motivating the players of a
losing sporting team to begin to win.
We can also see this with Carlos Ghosn when he succeeded
in rejuvenating the ailing Nissan in 1999/2000 and Mitt Romney’s rescue of the
Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002.
The point is that a new individual brings a new story
unencumbered by the legacy of previous narratives and, as such, is seen to
personify a new phase of ‘becoming’.
The ancien régime is at an end and with it the turbulence
may begin to abate.
But recruiting a new person to bring a new story is never
a first resort.
In each phase of the lifespan or when turbulent times are
predicted the manager must recognise the need for a new story. Adhering to the
existing story or attempting to re-introduce the narrative of an earlier phase
rarely motivates employees.
A new story is required and managers should devote time to
constructing this. The narrative should not be presented in the form of a Power
Point presentation, which is often used to suggest deep analysis and that
overly simplistic solutions have been avoided. You may use this medium in
dialogue with close colleagues and in formulating detailed plans, but the meme
that you want to introduce to the population in general must be simple and
memorable.
The key proposition must be refined and reduced to one short
paragraph and ideally compressed into a single diagram.
Employees must be able to:
1
Remember the essence of the story and be able to repeat
it accurately and understand how their day to day activity relates to it.
2
Identify what they must do that is different to the
pattern of work that has become habitual.
3
Appreciate how their action contributes to the
rectification of the problems being experienced.
Remember also that, with some modification, this story must
also be the narrative that you will communicate to other stakeholders.
The Robot’s
Rebellion; Keith Stanovich
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