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Management of the Absurd

As a management consultant with more than twenty years of experience, I am faced with the unsettling reality that in my field everything works and nothing works. What I mean by that is virtually any technique or approach to change managerial behavior and improve organizational performance will work--in the short run. And every one of these techniques or approaches over time will fade and disappear, leaving no trace of its ever having been tried.

The managerial response to this paradox, based on conventional wisdom, is to try some other technique on the assumption that it is better or more correct than the previous approach. Over the years, the management bromides have included management by objectives, quality circles, total quality management, re-engineering, and now the learning organization and systems thinking. But all these implemented as techniques produce the same results: short term gains followed by long term disillusionment and dissolution.

What is going on here? Could conventional management wisdom be wrong? Richard Farson thinks so, and I think he’s right. Farson’s unconventional approach to leadership operates from a different set of assumptions than the traditional rational model. In his view, human behavior and its organizational manifestation are replete with complexities and paradoxes. Because of this, approaches that simplify behavior and offer a series of prescriptive steps to success are doomed to ultimate failure because they do not comprehend the absurdity of the situation.

Some Definitions

A paradox is a seeming absurdity. The natural human inclination when confronted with a paradox is to seek to resolve it. Farson’s approach is to embrace the absurdity and to seek to understand the truth contained therein. By embracing paradox, one sees the organization and its members for what they are: complex,

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