Back To The Efficiency and Effectiveness Of Management & Leadership For Sustainable Organizations

By Lionel Yang Created 6th April 2024 Updated 20th April 2024

The grandfather of modern management, Peter Drucker has spent his whole professional life wrestling between efficiency and effectiveness of businesses. Many other strategic thinking & management rebels such as Henry Mintzerg has echoed the similar stance. But all these business gurus still couldn't close the gap of business sustainability despite appealing to immateriality of non-thinking thought (Drucker) and "soul" (Mintzberg). The fundamental of reality is the vitalism towards purpose and this human consciousness is completed obliterated in change and persisted as industry gap. The problem could be using the wrong hemispherical cognition which created the degrading division for seeing new solution. The paradigm shift for sustainable organizations requires transformation of consciousness.

If a degrading hemispherical thought has been the cause of unable to vitalize forward in change, perhaps we should turn to scientific examination of it and Ian McGilchrist is probably the key thinker in this area of research. Ian McGilchrist scientific insight into the historical and neuropsychological of human’s brain-hemispherical existence has offered a rigorous synthesis for the interpretation of the effectiveness and efficacy of human elevation onto vitality of change.

The whole package of McGilchrist's thinking is, he has been deeply influenced by Henri Bergson's intuition and its metaphysics. McGilchrist(2009, 2021) also an opponent of materialistic scientism, of which Rupert Sheldrake(2012) would have a more complete scope of it leading to rejection of atheistic naturalism. Thus, the attempt to bring all relevant, relational and synchronistic and up-to-date literatures in grasping the intuition and wholeness of degrading hemispherical thought is necessary. In particularly, the influence of Bergson(1889, 1896, 1907, 1932, 1934) in scientists and thinkers who called for metaphysics in paradigm shift is monumental, especially in what leading to Alfred Whitehead God's metaphysics. However, the stubborn persistency of atheistic naturalism and its neoliberalism might be too great a pervasive force in last century's dominance of materialistic scientism. Rupert Sheldrake could be the pioneer scientist in revitalizing this ideal of science towards the last and this century. More scientists are following the consciousness of paradigm shift in science, which ought to be unified with philosophy and faith as how these trans-disciplinary scientists and thinkers see it.

Humans greatest delusion in efficiency is failing to grasp the stubborn divide in experiencing one’s living through intuition and without. However this is not an either/or situation, but rather the whole living of the formal and the mechanistic dominance of the later. In the absence of attention giving to whole living, senses take control of thought, feeling and thinking are induced to mere empirical instinct to grape the physical world. The mindless mode of thought is reductive, analytical, materialistic and atheistic. On the other hand, if attention of the mind is vitalized and synchronized through intuition, one would able to be in grasping, participation, reminiscence and correspondence through effectiveness for efficiency and vice versa.

All management and leadership theories, methods of methodologies up to today are missing one single most crucial gap in truly becoming coherently elevated in vitalizing through perpetuity of change, that is, the absence of metaphysics and its ontology for conscious-living businesses. The key thinker in closing the gap of human elevation is Henri Bergson, and to interpret where he had last left to ponder (Bergson, 1932), particularly his agnostic dilemma in what could have been the true metaphysics for intuition if he had been able to come to his own salvation in consciousness, purpose and God. Many other thinkers of similar stance in his century were also troubled by agnosticism. Thus the metaphysical approach to businesses would require an up-to-date trans-disciplinary ontology in transformation of consciousness (Yang, 2004a, Yang, 2004b, Yang, 2004c, Yang, 2004d).

Beyond the mechanistic view of businesses and organizations

As Businesses and organizations are viewed more like living organism rather than mechanistic machines, there’s an increasing turning to immateriality of performance indicators for sustainability, such as of creativity and consciousness. Nevertheless, such acts might be responded out of desperation and misery of materialistic delusions misguided by secular spirituality of woke culturalism (or fake pantheism). In addition, the consistency of “strategic immaterially” could not be felt in perseverance, fortitude and its flourishing because the materialistic delusion is still helplessly perceived as another empirical endeavor, using the kind of thinking that created the problem for new way out, the vicious cycle of merely putting old wine in new bottle.?

It is true that without an elevated understanding what matter is, there's no matter of understanding could be achieved.

Henri Bergson sees matter as “aggregation of images” that is vitalized by mind-energy through conservation of memory, in which potentiality is actualized by intuition & its free will across duration. Of course, Bergson metaphysics is against materialistic scientism at all levels, but it is precisely this paradigm shift that would elevate science in proper wholeness it deserves in unification with philosophy and faith, onto consciousness, purpose and the eventuality of God.

Matter has been defined by empirical endeavors all along, but according to Bergson, we know very well that the perception of our senses only have reality in the mind. Nevertheless the mind won’t exist without perception, and there's no mind without memory. Thus, the definition of matter must first be elevated to the state of immateriality, not of physicality. Then only we have a chance to see and talk about matter (and its energy), in such of its potentiality as well as its actuality and the correspondence in between.? And this, Bergson says, we would need intuition, to grasp memory and its duration in a manner of unleashing free will, participate in the flow (in synchronicity and synthesis) of reminiscence to allow vitality of creativity to correspond and emerge. To see matter like this instantaneously breaks free from all materialistic scientism ; it's linearity, reduction and predictability. Thus now, the new definition of matter is alive, ready to be interpreted through the metaphysical goodness all the way to the 'heaven' as how Bergson sees it in his emphasis on empathy. And in such, the divinity of the good, beauty and just is the indivisible intuition of memory from metaphysic to matter, in which vitality is more than just remembering but the mind-energy of metaphysic in correspondence with memory. The discussion of matter is a discussion of consciousness, purpose and God.

The Bergsonian/Elan Vital Approach To Hermeneutics Of Absolute Phenomenology (the observer/observed whole of being in the world with purpose)

start from intuition[1],

you, the observer, must will yourself in the world[2],

heart connects to the observed[3],

the mind flows beyond words to will its true beauty[4],

feel your breathe[5],

return the beauty to your heart to will for goodness[6],

and thus,

feel the synchronicity of your will[7],

see the synthesis of your purpose[8],

becoming Elan Vital!.

Footnotes (along with pages of "The Creative Mind" by Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics, 1934)

1. ""Intuition,"... Of all the terms which

designate a mode of knowing, it is still the most

appropriate" - pg.32

2. "..is not a question of getting outside of time (we are already there); on the contrary, one must get back into duration and recapture reality in the very mobility which is its essence. " - pg.33. Bergson’s vitalism is inseparable as a live force of intuition, to me, this is the “will” in its upmost freedom. Thus the observer must be alive, and to bring attention to the will.

3. Bergson suggests (the metaphysics of) intuition is beyond idealism. i would interpret that this "beyond" is a whole of the idealism in the world (of duration) where the correspondence vitalizing its metaphysic. Idealism is undeniably the immateriality of the observer, and the "mind of the idealist" is felt rather than of thinking. Feeling is closer to "heart" and its flow of breathing than to "mind".

4. "The intuition we refer to then bears above all upon

internal duration. It grasps a succession which is not

juxtaposition, a growth from within, the uninterrupted

prolongation of the past into a present which is already

blending into the future. It is the direct vision of the mind

by the mind,--nothing intervening, no refraction through

the prism, one of whose facets is space and another,

language. " - pg. 34. In Bergson's intuition, the metaphysics must aim for the higher good and divine mysticism.

5. Feeling real of the heart is to feel the breathe and vice versa.

6. The beginning of vision is to see the light of the will.

7. Unfolding the implicate order of memory and duration, of the world, in correspondence into the mind of the heart.

8. Interpret in semiotics of the good, beauty and just in the world.

Guided Conscious Canvas For Creativity

I've developed a guided conscious canvas for creativity few years ago which i've made some adjustment to reflect my most current view on consciousness and creativity. It worked in eternal spiral manner to elevate new ideas, perceptive participation, new meaning and purpose. You can use it alone, on other individuals or in co-creation within internal or external organization. The key to new way of thinking is shifting from the observed to the observer, that is, you are suppose to be the primary creator of data, not consuming it. The hardest part to be consistent with conscious canvas, in throughout my experience, is, it requires an individual who could be coherent with reverence of deity as shown in the dependencies in every step of conscious elevation, atheists would fail the consistency.

Generative Data Is Simply Not The Same As Human Memory - mechanistic thinking vs consciousness, the implication to effectiveness & efficiency of sustainable organizations

In this age of artificial intelligence, some believe that human lived experience could now be replaced, relied and trusted upon the intelligence of technological generative data (or large language model). Thus, the only thing left for humans to do is becoming the slaves to a new master, AI (artificial intelligence). Generative data becomes the new source of human morality.?

However, there are a small group of people think this technological slavery is an obvious dehumanizing degradation. The surrendering of human free will to AI would deplete vitality of life and infinite flourishing of creativity. AI would render humans less intelligible, as the unmatched natural capability of intuition would be obliterated and forgotten. The replacement of human infinite life force, its poetic consciousness as well as purpose, with finiteness of generative data as fundamental of human existence & understanding, is equivalent to surrendering to self-extinction voluntarily. Generative data is simply not the same as human memory.

According to Henri Bergson, human memories are more than just data, it is a change dimension of itself. Memory transcends through intuition and the simultaneous heterogeneity. The vital life force of creativity is flourished and vice versa. Human memories are in correspondence with the divine dimension and continuously draws the sense of good, beauty and just that ontological necessary to sustain consciousness and purpose of existence.

Perhaps there is no other person able to interpret Bergson intuition of memory and it’s simultaneous heterogeneity more than TS Eliot. In Dry Salvages of Four Quartets he says:?

“We had the experience but missed the meaning, And approach to the meaning restores the experience

In a different form, beyond any meaning”

Human memory presents itself not merely as data, but the poetic source of consciousness, purpose and free will interweaving mystically in the wave of change, synchronization and synthesis. Eliot congregates duration of time of human lived experience for presencing the future that’s meant to be creative, not for certainty. In Burnt Norton of Four Quartets he iterates:?

“What might have been and what has been

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden".

Effectiveness and efficiency of an organization is sustained through psychical presencing of human memories in reminiscence of reverence and repentance.

Bergson is Back To 21st Century - Could Intuition Be Judgmental ? What Intuition Really Is?

Epistemological endeavors on intuition is always intriguing and should always welcome with open heart. However, the nature of intuition itself is not about certainty, but novelty. Thus, to wanting to control the simultaneous heterogeneity of intuition by the way of "intuitive judgement" could be futile and against harnessing the multiplicity of intuition. Moreover, to wanting to assess and predict the environment for intuition would immediately begin with a wrong mechanical trajectory of intuitive dynamics. The opening line of this article(Kahneman & Klein, 2009) by Gary Klein on "intuitive judgement" already rendered all the subsequence effort for epistemology of intuition null and void :

"an intuitive judgment requires an assessment of the predictability of the environment in which the judgment is made and of the individual’s opportunity to learn the regularities of that environment".

However, i am more interested in the memory manifestation of "adversarial collaboration" where the article itself has seek to come to life. In his own confession(Klein, 2024), Gary Klein demonstrates what intuition really is beyond "intuitive judgement", that, it is psychical rather than mechanical.

In Bergsonian term, intuition is ontologically rooted in metaphysic of morality(Bergson, 1932). In adversarial collaboration with Kahneman, Gary had put his own judgement aside and appealed to higher intuition of "gratefulness" in arriving to understanding of phenomenon in the world with purpose. Gary remembers through his reminiscence and in correspondence with the repentant nature of psychical reality, like "I am inspired by...the brilliance of his research... his pivot on the basis of happiness...the spirit of our debates...fairness...curiosity...adaptability...humility". In my opinion, it is this pure reverence of intuition without any judgements that opens up the morality deemed absolute and prior to any perceptions and subsequent decision-makings of human lived experiences.

Building conscious organizations is not far fetch as real life profession like Gary Klein has demonstrated in his own free willingness of elan vital (life force) in elevated human endeavor in humanistic correspondence through "adversarial collaboration". In his book “The Power Of Intuition”(Klein, 2003), Gary has shown extensive organizational examples how intuition sustains creative heterogeneity needed for business pivotal survival. This human intelligibility beyond the reach of rational and analytical mechanisms. However, Gary does acknowledge that intuition itself is sustained through the flourishing of reverence of morality, particularly, the criticality in the increasing domineeringness of AI’s generative data versus human memory. Thus, the gap is to reroot intuition back to ontology and metaphysics of consciousness, purpose and God.

Key References

Bergson, H.(1889) Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness.

Bergson, H. (1896) Matter and Memory.

Bergson, H. (1907) Creative Evolution.

Bergson, H. (1932)The Two Sources of Morality and Religion.

Bergson, H. (1934) The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics.

Kahneman, D. & Klein, G. (2009) Conditions for Intuitive Expertise.A Failure to Disagree. September 2009, American Psychologist. https://emcrit.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Conditions-for-Intuitive-Expertise.pdf

Klein, G. (2003) The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work.

Klein, G. (2024) Conversations With Kahneman. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/seeing-what-others-dont/202404/conversations-with-kahneman?trk=feed-detail_main-feed-card_feed-article-content . Psychology Today.

McGilchrist, I. (2009) The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

McGilchrist, I. (2021) The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World.

Sheldrake, R. (2012) The Science Delusion.

Yang, CW. (2024a) Reroot Businesses Onto New Dawn Of Organizational Renaissance. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/reroot-businesses-onto-new-dawn-organizational-renaissance-yang-daggc/

Yang, CW. (2024b) Hierarchy Of Human Consciousness Onto Purpose. https://lnkd.in/gyYKjD2e .

Yang, CW. (2024c) Building God-like Organizations - The Questions About God. https://lnkd.in/gy-2Gq5y .

Yang, CW. (2024d) The Metaphysics of Rerooting Businesses Through Consciousness, Purpose and God. https://lnkd.in/g_4M3MaQ