Management of the Absurd

by Richard Farson, Michael Crichton (Foreword by)

Overview

An original, contrarian philosophy that challenges today's leaders to look past the quick fix and deal thoughtfully with the real complexities of managing people.
In organizations, as in life, human behavior is often irrational — and problems do not easily lend themselves to the simplistic answers and gimmickry offered in the myriad business "self-help" books and management training programs available today. In Management of the Absurd, Richard Farson zeros in on the paradoxes of communication, the politics of management, and the dilemmas of change, exploring relationships within organizations and offering a unique perspective on the challenges managers face.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780684830445
Publisher:	Free Press
Publication date:	03/13/1997
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	293,897
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Dr. Richard Farson has led several organizations noted for innovative programs. Farson helped found the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in 1958 and remains its president. In this capacity he directs its International Leadership Forum, an Internet-based think tank that brings influential leaders together to consider critical policy issues. A University of Chicago Ph.D. in psychology, Farson has been a Naval officer, college dean, research director, organizational consultant, and a member of the Human Relations Faculty of the Harvard Business School. He is the author of several books, including the critically acclaimed Management of the Absurd, now published in 11 languages. He lives in La Jolla, California.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Opposite of a Profound Truth Is Also True

Our great achievements in science, law, government, and in every intellectual pursuit are dependent upon our development as rational, logical thinkers.

But this kind of thinking has also limited us. Without quite knowing it, we have become creatures of linear, categorical logic. Things are good or bad, true or false, but not both. We have been taught that a thing cannot be what it is and also its opposite. Yet it sounds wise when confronted with a conflict to say, "Well, yes and no." Or, "It's both." We've all heard statements that concede the coexistence of opposites: Less is more. Living is dying. Hating is loving. Although it seems illogical, no two things are as closely related as opposites.

Going in Both Directions

What practical value can we get out of that notion? At a mundane level, take, for example, the development of frozen food processing. It led to a rash of predictions about the growth of a fast-food market — predictions that certainly turned out to be correct. What was not predicted, however, was the popularity of gourmet cookbooks, with their emphasis on fresh ingredients, organically grown products, wholesome preparation, and a new respect for chefs. Frozen food processing made possible the development of fast food, but along with that development came its opposite.

We have seen the coexistence of opposites in management with the introduction of participative approaches designed to democratize the workplace. These approaches often do increase worker participation. But it is also true that hierarchy and authority remain very much in place, perhaps stronger than ever. That is because the executives who grant the work force some amount of authority never lose any of their own authority. Granting authority is not like handing out a piece of pie, wherein you lose what you give away. It is more like what happens when you give information to someone. Although he or she may now know more, you do not know any less.

Practical Deceptions

Another coexistence of opposites: To be healthy, an organization needs full and accurate communication among its members. But also, to be healthy, it needs distortion and deception. If those words sound overly harsh, think of commonly used terms like diplomacy and tact, which imply less than candid communication.

Just as the profession of medicine or the conduct of a romance requires mystique — that is, encouraging beliefs about oneself that may not be completely accurate but make others feel positively — so, too, do leadership and management. Some, for example, hold that one function of middle management is to massage or filter information, both upward and downward. Such "distortion" or "deception" is said to serve two practical purposes.

First, workers are led to believe that their leaders are confident, fair, and capable, reinforcing the necessary myths of leadership. Second, since the top leaders surely would be troubled by knowing everything that goes on in the organization, they are protected from hearing about the petty problems and minor failures of the work force.

In human affairs, some form of deception is the rule, not the exception. In most cases it should not be considered lying, because that term fails to take into account the complexity of human communication and the many ways people must maneuver to keep relationships on an even keel. Appreciating the coexistence of opposites helps us understand that honesty and deception can function together in some paradoxical way.

Contradictory Impulses

One executive I know is a classic example of a man who wants to succeed but at the same time seems to want to fail. Everything he does carries both messages. From the very moment he enthusiastically volunteers to head a project, he operates in such a way as to cripple it — refusing to delegate, undermining the work of committees, failing to meet deadlines, and stalling on crucial decisions.

His behavior is not that unusual. Contradictory impulses to both succeed and fail can be found in every project, every work team, even every individual. Every management choice, job offer, or new applicant can appear both appealing and unappealing. Every deal is both good and bad. That is why leadership is essentially the management of dilemmas, why tolerance for ambiguity — coping with contradictions — is essential for leaders, and why appreciating the coexistence of opposites is crucial to the development of a different way of thinking.

Like One

There is yet another spin to this paradox that I have always found intriguing — that opposites not only can coexist, but can even enhance one another. Take pleasure and pain, for example. Scratching an itch is both. Not pleasure, then pain, or pain, then pleasure, but both at once. Granted, scratching an itch too long can become very painful and no longer pleasurable, but there is a moment when they coexist, when they are one. Like truth and falsity, good and evil.

Copyright © 1996 by Richard Farson

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword by Michael Crichton

Introduction: Embracing Paradox and Absurdity

PART ONE

A Different Way of thinking

1. The Opposite of a Profound Truth Is Also True

2. Nothing Is as Invisible as the Obvious

PART TWO

The "Technology" of Human Relation

3. The More Important a Relationship, the Less Skill Matters

4. Once You Find a Management Technique That Works, Give It Up

5. Effective Managers Are Not in Control

6. Most Problems That People Have Are Not Problems

7. Technology Creates the Opposite of Its Intended Purpose

8. We Think We Invent Technology, but Technology Also Invents Us

PART THREE

The Paradoxes of Communication

9. The More We Communicate, the Less We Communicate

10. In Communication, Form Is More Important Than Content

11. Listening Is More Difficult Than Talking

12. Praising People Does Not Motivate Them

PART FOUR

The Politics of Management

13. Every Act Is a Political Act

14. The Best Resource for the Solution of Any Problem Is the Person or Group That Presents the Problem

PART FIVE

Organizational Predicaments

15. Organizations That Need Help Most Will Benefit from It Least

16. Individuals Are Almost Indestructible, but Organizations Are Very Fragile

17. The Better Things Are, the Worse They Feel

PART SIX

Dilemmas of Change

18. We Think We Want Creativity or Change, but We Really Don't

19. We Want for Ourselves Not What We Are Missing, but More of What We Already Have

20. Big Changes Are Easier to Make Than Small Ones

21. We Learn Not from Our Failures but from Our Successes — and the Failures of Others

22. Everything We Try Works, and Nothing Works

23. Planning Is an Ineffective Way to Bring About Change

24. Organizations Change Most by Surviving Calamities

25. People We Think Need Changing Are Pretty Good the Way They Are

PART SEVEN

The Aesthetics of Leadership

26. Every Great Strength Is a Great Weakness

27. Morale Is Unrelated to Productivity

28. There Are No Leaders, There Is Only Leadership

29. The More Experienced the Managers, the More They Trust Simple Intuition

30. Leaders Cannot Be Trained, but They Can Be Educated

31. In Management, to Be a Professional One Must Be an Amateur

PART EIGHT
Avoiding the Future

32. Lost Causes Are the Only Ones Worth Fighting For

33. My Advice Is Don't Take My Advice

Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

Fortune If you are willing to look at your life, your career, and your company from an entirely fresh angle, this book may provide more surprises and insights than you will find in any ten other management tomes that appear this year.

Tom Peters This may be the best book on leadership I've ever read.

Chicago Tribune Lively...compelling...perfectly suited for a world bursting with absurdity and paradox.

Robert Kuttner Economics columnist, Business Week A succinct and charming book on the nuances of leadership. Stands out from the usual homilies about how to be a manager — a work of humanity and wisdom.

The San Diego Union-Tribune Every once in a while, someone writes a management book that throws all current thought on the subject out the window. Such is the case with Management of the Absurd. Well-written and easy to absorb.

From the Publisher

Psychologist, management consultant, former CEO and college dean, and currently head of the International Design Conference in Aspen, Farson has put together a challenging, irritating, galvanizing manual designed to help managers cope with the paradoxes, organizational logjams and interpersonal dynamics of corporate, business and institutional life. In 33 short, conversational chapters, he delivers a series of Zen-like injunctions to jolt readers out of well-worn grooves of thought and action. Some of these prescriptions have a counterintuitive appeal ("Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for." "Once you find a management technique that works, give it up"). Others exude Confucian wisdom ("Every great strength is a great weakness"), and still others sound potentially dangerous if misapplied ("Praising people does not motivate them"). This pithy guide is an armchair workshop in participative management. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Like Alice on the far side of the Looking Glass, the reader of psychologist and educator Farson's book is at first confused and disconcerted. With chapters like "Once You Find a Management Technique That Works, Give It Up" and "Organizations That Need Help Most Will Benefit from It the Least," it reverses logic, reason, and the basic building blocks of common sense. Yet Farson's topsy-turvy world of management tenets strangely rings true at times. Farson presents paradoxes to make us pause in our relative certainty and consider the complete opposite. The paradox of rising expectations, for example, demonstrates that the more things improve, the more people demand improvement. We think we want creativity, but, argues Farson, what we really want is controlled creativity. These are but a few of the truths Farson conjures from the flip side of the coin. For public library management collections.-Randy L. Abbott, Univ. of Evansville Libs., Ind. Hammond, Joshua & James Morrison.

Library Journal