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by Keith Ray.
Original Post: Changing Artistry
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Taoism is about being in harmony with nature. As the Wikipedia page says, "Do not try to force things, for nature is overpowering. In particular one must act in accordance with how things are, not how one wants things to be."
Now, people excited about XP or other things often ask "How can we get [force] them to change?" The answer lies more in finding ways to get "them" to want to change, rather than trying to force them to change. If they don't want to change, they're not going to make the effort. If they perceive the need to change, then maybe they'll want to change. The problem is that sometimes, some people never see the need to change.
Kleiner's most recent book seems to be a reaction to repeatedly seeing change efforts fail because the "core" members of a company don't really want the change to happen. The book is Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success. Quoting the Publisher's Weekly review:
The old saw "the customer comes first" is a flat-out lie, argues Kleiner, a contributing editor at strategy+business magazine and the author of several business books, in this fresh look at the structure and politics of business. He contends that "a depressing number of business corporations have evolved into organizations with one primary purpose: To extract wealth from all constitutions (not just the shareholders, but the employees, customers, and neighbors as well) and give it essentially to the children and grandchildren of some of its senior executives." Such corporate selfishness works because the key decisions in are being made by the "Core Group"-executives or employees whose needs and desires determine company behavior. Others within an organization immediately sense who is in the Core Group and adjust their behavior accordingly; "Day after day, in all the small decisions we made, all the employees contributed to keeping these individuals more or less at the center of the Core Group."
Maybe this behavior - core group getting what it wants, the non-core group helping them get it - is a basic primate behavior that we've been saddled with from our primate ancestors.
Perhaps the weirdest thing I've seen that could be attributed to our primate ancestry was a comment someone made to me during the recall-election for California governor. He said "I like [some candidate who was third- or fourth-place in the polls] but I'll vote for Schwarzenegger because he's going to win." Excuse me? If he's going to win, you don't need to vote for him. If you and everyone who thinks like you actually voted for your favorite candidate, Schwarzenegger might actually be defeated.
I think wanting to vote for the winner (or otherwise helping the core group) is like an ape wanting to show support for the most likely replacement of the alpha male. Primates that didn't show support for the most likely alpha male were more likely to be killed or ostracized when the new alpha male took power (assuming they 'bet' right) -- we're descendants of those who "went along with the winners" and were thus more likely to reproduce. Today, our elections have secret ballots, so no one would ever know you didn't support a "winner", but we're still primates.
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