The outrageous story of how management consultancies exploited our hard-wired aversion to uncertainty and our human drive for sense-making to extract billions - based on complete nonsense.
A great read. It strikes me that we all fall into the nonsense framework a lot of the time, in small ways as well as big. But the big consultancies have really taken it to extremes.
Fabulous article @ Paul Sweeney - thank you! These consultancies certainly knew enough about how our brain functions to capitalise on it beautifully - and they also know enough about being 'agile' in that they quickly pivot to new trends when they see $$$ signs. Sobering, because our neurological quirks aren't going anywhere so they'll simply find new ways to exploit them ...
Great plan! I'm working on a 'Neuroscience 101' training to explain the basics of brain function, so that our biases and all the other ways our brain 'tricks' us can become known - making us less susceptible to their chicanery too!
Responding to this compelling provocation by Paul S., and the incredibly successful and totally bullshit three-step "Nonsense Framework":
1️⃣ Trigger our aversion to uncertainty
2️⃣ Create the illusion of sense-making
3️⃣ Promise control over the future
I certainly hope we can adopt a better way. It seems to me this is part of the same battle for meaning and purpose and truth amidst spin and superficiality and fakery.
I believe we must.
So, (swallowing the irony that I believe reality doesn't tend to fall neatly into three step linear processes) what would an alternative three step process look like?
1️⃣ Create psychological safety and resilience to hold uncertainty together.
2️⃣ Pursue rapid iterative collective sense-making, seeking and embracing diversity, ambiguity, contradiction, structural tension and conflict.
3️⃣ Generate multiple visions of several radically different but equally plausible possible futures, and identify the actions needed now to be better ready to survive and thrive in each of them.
A great read. It strikes me that we all fall into the nonsense framework a lot of the time, in small ways as well as big. But the big consultancies have really taken it to extremes.
Thanks Johnnie, I appreciate the feedback.
Fabulous article @ Paul Sweeney - thank you! These consultancies certainly knew enough about how our brain functions to capitalise on it beautifully - and they also know enough about being 'agile' in that they quickly pivot to new trends when they see $$$ signs. Sobering, because our neurological quirks aren't going anywhere so they'll simply find new ways to exploit them ...
Thanks Delia! I totally agree. There needs to be a "defense against the dark arts" training course for executives. Maybe I'll give that some thought!
Great plan! I'm working on a 'Neuroscience 101' training to explain the basics of brain function, so that our biases and all the other ways our brain 'tricks' us can become known - making us less susceptible to their chicanery too!
Sounds cool! Please keep me updated
Is there a better way to lead?
Responding to this compelling provocation by Paul S., and the incredibly successful and totally bullshit three-step "Nonsense Framework":
1️⃣ Trigger our aversion to uncertainty
2️⃣ Create the illusion of sense-making
3️⃣ Promise control over the future
I certainly hope we can adopt a better way. It seems to me this is part of the same battle for meaning and purpose and truth amidst spin and superficiality and fakery.
I believe we must.
So, (swallowing the irony that I believe reality doesn't tend to fall neatly into three step linear processes) what would an alternative three step process look like?
1️⃣ Create psychological safety and resilience to hold uncertainty together.
2️⃣ Pursue rapid iterative collective sense-making, seeking and embracing diversity, ambiguity, contradiction, structural tension and conflict.
3️⃣ Generate multiple visions of several radically different but equally plausible possible futures, and identify the actions needed now to be better ready to survive and thrive in each of them.
➡ What do you think?
➡ What's missing?
#Leadership
This is an excellent piece. I will share it every time I hear consultant bullshit!! Stand by….
Thanks Ray, I appreciate the feedback!
You have clearly laid out many of my years in gov.
Here’s another piece that you might enjoy.
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/07/15/Enshittification-Everything/
Love that article Ray, thanks for the recommendation!