Is Teal still business or already a religion? PART 2
In the first part of the article I’ve pointed out how the concept of teal organizations copies selected elements of the hundreds years’ old tradition of human thought. Assumingly "redefining" the business organizations it reaches for scraps of urban communes from the early Middle Ages, the postulates of utopian socialism, the reflections of Mill, Marx and Rawls, to the hippie commune and the foundations of real socialism/communism. All these activities were created in the name of ideals and were somehow able to survive for some time, always to fail in the end. I’ve also allowed myself to challenge the first key issue underlying the teal concept - the division into colourful organizations according to their structure and management style in connection with the happiness and fulfilment of people. Today I will look into the second fundamental assumption of teal - a vision of a human being.
Issue 2 – a Perfect Human
Teal organizations are intended to work for the man, his fulfilment, harmony and happiness. All employees are involved, teams are self-organized, everyone makes autonomous decisions and everyone shares responsibility. This also applies to the joint decisions of wages and the process of consultation, instead of the "traditional" final decision by the boss. All the more so because there are no bosses and the teams are self-managed. I’ve even come across the phrase that says "Due to the freedom of action, the problem of responsibility solves itself out”. The continuous and full commitment of everyone (in work, decisions, taking responsibility, etc.) assumes that everyone wants it alike and they are able to harmoniously coordinate their work, decisions and responsibility with other people. On top of that, they always have in mind the higher good, that is, the long-term interest of the community, over their own interests or of their loved ones (which can often be contradictory). It practically means that everyone is able to control or even rid themselves of such motivators as strong personal ambitions and a tendency to compete, and they are always in control of their emotions. Not to mention the permanent elimination of such extreme drives as power and greed. All this has been mastered and puts down on the altar of the common good.
This, in turn, means that at the foundation of a teal organization are clear postulates of our human nature and behaviour. They can be named as follows:
- Man is fundamentally good, which means the observed flaws result not so much from the eternal human nature, but rather unfavourable conditions
- Man is pliable and prone to change
- There is no irremovable contradiction between the individual's well-being and the prosperity of society
- Man is rational and capable of becoming even more rational, which makes it possible to give up the absurdities of social life and finally establish a fully rational order.
Expressed in various ways these can be found in the world of teal supporters. You do not even have to think colours; the aforesaid theses are, after all, close to many of us who will support them without hesitation. There is only one but. I have gone for minor manipulation here. These four conditions are a copy of the assumptions of all... utopias, developed by Chad Walsh several decades ago. These four conditions have been postulated repeatedly since "always". Every era has a relapse to them. Each era also suffers a spectacular failure in this area; sometimes only intellectually, sometimes, unfortunately, extremely tragic and paid for with blood and misfortune.
Teal and the above mentioned postulates, by default, are based on the assumption that people's attitudes and behaviours are shaped only by the cultural area, acquired and fully open for continuous and conscious shaping. And since culture has defined and planted in our minds the demands for equality/freedom/brotherhood, etc., it means that we really are like this "deep down in our hearts". All you need to do is create conditions to show it fully. It sounds very promising and idealistic, but... it does not work like that at all. Let’s leave it to scientists to determine how much of our personality (as a consequence of attitudes and behaviours) depends on upbringing and the environment and how much on genes. It does not matter whether it's 50/50 or a little different; it is important to acknowledge that a very large part is simply in the genes. We are born and it’s done; a huge part of our personality is what it is. The ancient Greeks had no idea about genes, but they could observe it and say that the gods give something to certain people, and not to others. The effect is that people are extremely different. Truism, isn’t it? Yes, it is, but one that destroys the fundamental assumptions of teal. And if the fundaments are ruined, then the whole building has nothing to stand on. Does this truism only mean that people are different? No, it doesn’t. A further key consequence is that people will also remain different, regardless of the conditions you create for them and of the framework which you will force them into(!). There have been several attempts to unify and create a man for ideological reasons. Some of them were even washed away with a sea of blood, and yet they failed. Of course, I’m not comparing teal to oppressive systems; that would be pointless. Teal supporters have good intentions, but the underlying logical error is identical. The end of all communes has still been the same for centuries, because:
- Man is not fundamentally good (nor fundamentally bad). The very definition of where the boundary of good is, and where bad begins, is defined in a different way by everyone. As we haven’t solved this through several thousand years of reflection, let us give upon another come back to the idealistic and false assumption of "obvious" goodness. It is enough to remember what happened when, quite recently, the control elements such as state and law disappeared from the Balkan countries... Anyway, if men were fundamentally good, we would not need any law, religion or ethics
- Man is not very flexible, and a huge part of his personality is genetically conditioned and persistent (though not as a rock, of course); fitting this in the same and "good for everyone" idealistic system has always failed; just as the images of an ideal life in harmony with nature, whether in the countryside or in Tahiti, always turned to dust in the face of reality
- There are many contradictions between the goals and the happiness of individual (in the understanding of the individual, not of an external consultant) and the success of the group/company/society. A huge part of these contradictions is irremovable and requires constant readjustment and mutual adaptation, where "self-readjustment" mechanisms are not enough; this is particularly evident in the moments of crisis and shortage (regardless whether beautiful altruistic attitudes also manifest themselves then; besides, serious scientific considerations also point to the genetic conditions of altruism and that’s how we’re back to square one.)
- The whole history of humankind shows that there is no chance to finally establish a fully rational order, precisely based on human rationality. Why would it turn out to be true right now? There are no indications for this.
With all that in mind, it is impossible to avoid repeating the word that we all know - utopia. Even Prof.Blikle, rejecting one definition of utopia, provides another, from which, in fact, derives the concept of teal ("A vision of an ideal society governed by rational and just laws that differs from the critically assessed reality"). Utopias create visions of a good world for good people, everybody all the same. They have all failed because of this naive belief. Let us refer to the deliberations of a late Polish professor - Jerzy Szacki. He points out that utopias (and anti-utopias) are based on incorrect assumptions, simplification and idealization. At the same time, it is impossible to prove which way of achieving happiness is good. And for sure there isn’t one that’s the best for everyone. Those who thought so created ideologies to which they later wanted to match people. It ended with different mutations of the same statement: "The idea is beautiful in its assumptions, but people are not ready for it".
Does this mean that the idea of cascading power, responsibility and decision-making is meaningless? Of course, it is not. It’s just that this idea has been developing in practice for a long time (without any colour as a name) and in the very same practice the control mechanisms that allow its existence have been created and developed. Mechanisms that take into account the complexity, diversity and unpredictability of human nature and the importance of emotions. Mechanisms that also take into account unpredictability of business scenarios, inability to make decisions with 100% probability of correctness and the risk that goes with it. It is easy to imagine a situation where, in their best will, some employees want to develop the existing technology, some want to invest in a completely new thing, some think that it is high time to share profits instead of investing, and the others just have no opinion and do not care enough, because their work is not their whole life (and there are quite a lot of them, with every right to be so, which so many of us forget about and measure other people with our personal measure). And on top of that, there’s the owner, who is risking all his personal assets. Then what? Everyone has good intentions, good arguments, but they draw quite different conclusions based on the same data. And there is no way of knowing whose concept is the right one without putting it in practice. On paper, the world is extremely simple. But how to make someone who loves cucumbers switch to tomatoes? This real world requires these control mechanisms, i.e. determining who and how makes the final decision, especially under time pressure and with a limited amount of data.
What's more, there are a significant number of people who are simply motivated by ambition, by a desire to shape the environment according to their vision, competitiveness and the bonus system resulting from it. Are these people bad? Of course not, because these features do not necessarily mean that you are hurting others. Well, they do not fit teal. They ruin it; and what to do with them? Auto-da-fé? Self-penance at the assembly? Betterization? [Stanis?awLem, Return from the Stars,1961;over fifty years before teal!] How to fit people like Edison, Ford, Jobs, Welch, Bezos, Pilsudski, John Paul II and hundreds of similar strong and creative personalities into the teal world? Much can be said about them, but definitely not that they managed in the coaching style and followed the majority. And we raise their monuments without hesitation. It seems that people en masse want leaders (not all of them, of course), need them and follow them without taking away their right or the possibility of happiness and fulfilment. Leadership is one of the most commonly and eagerly discussed topics, also in the space of LinkedIn, which clearly points to the vitality of the issue. And teal postulates nothing less but its complete elimination. Betterization, nothing else, can’t do without it...
Of the reasons given in both articles, teal will finish the same way it always does. It will become a Pirate Code, a collection of certain suggestions, which are an umbrella and the idealization of practical solutions. It is a point of infinity, in which parallel lines intersect (in Euclidean geometry). Obviously, there are and will be places where it could work out for some time. I’ll keep my fingers crossed because in the background there are ideals of good and equally good intentions. But, there are places, and there is time. There are good circumstances for introducing such ideas; if not entirely, then at least partially (as it’s happened in my current organization). Such circumstances include, for example, a small size of the company (or the possibility of breaking it up into small independent teams), homogeneity of the structure (identical or similar nature of positions, preferably qualified specialists), a particular business sector (consulting, services, non-profit/NGO).