Friday, 6 March 2009

The end of the Age of Alignment?

Yesterday on New Zealand National Radio, Jerry L. Jordan, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland from March 1992 to January 2003, described the current global financial and economic crisis as “The falling off of a cliff: a disconnect with what has happened before”.
(Audio: “Economic and financial crisis - how long will it last?”)

Does the crisis herald a major sea change; a transformation of the economic landscape; of the way things are; the end of the Age of Alignment: the reign of the language, logic and values of Management?

“Alignment”, epitome of Management: the objective, scientific, one dimensional power and simplicity of a vector; pure direction.

Management by alignment: all on track; aligned in thinking, acting, and speaking; suppressing and ejecting out-of-line views 'till they cease to exist; moving forward, driving, leveraging in a one-track, rigid pattern of thought and action; into a slow motion train wreck.

Maybe the new model is leadership, unity: shared purpose amidst diverse thinking, seeing and speaking; moving tentatively into strange awsome landscape, learning and discovering, in intimate relationship.

Are we off-track for change?

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