What explains ‘radical’ management rhetoric?
In this post, we saw that truly ‘radical’ change inside organizations is likely to lead to unpredictable - and often profit-disrupting - consequences. Businesspeople understand this problem, which leads to a natural question: why does radical rhetoric nearly universal in management circles, if actual radical change is widely understood to be a risky proposition?
To examine this question, you have to look at the context in which managers interact - namely, offices. Offices are interesting social spaces. Interaction in offices is mixed - some of it is private, as in a one-on-one conversation with a supervisor behind a closed door. Some of it is public, as in held in full view or hearing of others.
But some of it is hyperpublic* - held primarily for the benefit of others. A positive example - training programs; a negative example - peacocking colleagues in a meeting. One can see also hyperpublic interactions at press conferences or any legislature. (* sociologists of Tumblr, please tell me if there’s a better term for this!)
Organizations are rely quite a bit - seemingly increasingly, although I don’t have statistics - on hyperpublic interaction. Large meetings - indistinguishable from small, ad-hoc legislatures - dominate managerial calendars. E-mail can be considered hyperpublic as well, since many e-mail threads take place in large groups. There are lots of potential reasons for this - managers are quite risk-averse in general, and will ‘cover their asses’ by seeking wide consensus. Also, IT is helping rope far-flung colleagues into meetings, widening the pool of people that can participate in any given meeting.
But whatever the reason, hyperpublic situations give ambitious managers incentives to rhetorically shine, thereby raising their status. This inspires rhetorical escalation among contenders for leadership. Suddenly, ‘disruptive’, ‘revolutionary’, etc. are the only words that describe new ideas.
Economics and game theory have a succinct way of putting this phenomenon: the managerial rhetoric is “cheap talk” - strategic communication that is costless, unverifiable, and non-binding.
It’s not obvious to me that all cheap talk is bad. Individuals and groups need to be able to speak frankly. Even status-seeking cheap talk - while annoying - is not an open-and-shut case: narcissism is almost certainly a motivator of high-performing employees, and hyperpublic situations might provide a relatively safe outlet for this tendency, which is otherwise destructive to group cohesion.
So are we all doomed to obnoxious coworkers gumming up meetings and e-mail inboxes with their vanity comments, forever? I don’t think so. I think it’s possible to limit this behavior to reasonable levels, by being smarter about when to use hyperpublicity vs. other forms of interaction. It’s a powerful weapon, and a little bit goes a long way.
