Mainfram Reality

During my research on various management styles and techniques, it became apparent to me that entire management structure is not based on what is right or wrong, but opinions.  I’ve written about this before.  But, one thing bothered me about this, who’s opinion, and if such opinion is wrong, why do masses of people follow those bad decisions.  Practically, I see this all through my career and life.  What became apparent to me is that it is all a question of authority.  As long as someone with authority is willing to take the responsibility for a bad decision or action, most people will follow and perpetuate in the bad decision.

Stanley Milgram, performed the famous Milgram Experiment at Stanford University during the 60s that has shown how authority can influence people to perform actions outside their moral comfort zone.  Same thing applies to business and life within our culture  in general.

Notice that I do not believe this is human nature, but a behaviour our culture instills in us.  Something in our culture teaches us to respond to authority the way we do, maybe because for generations we have had authority and no true freedom.

One of the main reasons I’ve started thinking about the issue of authority is because I’ve been reading about risk management.  Risk management is something I am not very familiar with, but is one of those subjects that should be ridden with common sense and logic.  Risk management however is not.  One of the simple, most popular ways to manage risk is to employ “Risk Transference”.  Risk must be managed, as long as we push the risk to someone else, someone of higher authority then us, then the risk as far as we are concerned has been mitigated.  This struck me as universally stupid as risk has not been mitigated but transfered to another point of authority, so what is the point.

I’ve watched a documentary on Enron and the famous collapse.  What happened at Enron is a text book case of doing what authority figure asks, Milgram’s theory in action.

So to bring this closer to home, I’ve read about Milgram’s experiment years ago and always thought I would tell the researcher to f*** off.  However, now I see I am no different.  If I raise issues during my job, I am quite happy to except someone of higher authority hearing me out and then instructing me to proceed with the wrong action.  Is it because I am getting paid? Is money the issue? I do not know, but I know I do not like it, I don’t like that I do not have the freedom to say no.  I wonder what and how I would eat if I just did what I thought was right?

Our culture truly is sick and primitive.  Every day I become more determined to help the Venus Project.  Practical way to help alludes me, however I do feel a solution is close, I just need to persevere.