HUMAN DISCOVERY
“We don't have to teach people how to discover or solve problems; we merely need to create and maintain the environments that support such discovery."
“Subordinates must have access to the resources for learning if they are to discover.”
“Hierarchies learn differently from individuals because unlike individuals, who possess all the resources and knowledge for their own learning, hierarchies endow the resources and tools for learning to the supervisors, whereas the knowledge and insights for learning are owned by the subordinates.”
“When the supervisors in a hierarchy are functioning in their democratic belief–behavior systems, they not only value the knowledge and expertise of subordinates as intellectual currency to solve organizational problems, but they also allocate the resources for learning in such a way as to drive organizational innovation and growth.”
EVERYONE’S VOICE MATTERS
“The instant a supervisor unconsciously believes they have nothing to learn from their subordinate is the moment the supervisor has closed themselves off to discovery.”
“A group tends to elevate a person to a position of power who maintains a democratic belief–behavior system that allows for enhanced problem solving and values each person’s intellectual currency as a resource for learning.”
“If we unconsciously believe that we may not have all the knowledge that is needed to solve a problem, a democratic unconscious belief, we will instinctually seek out knowledge from others, interpreting that information as necessary, helpful, and fascinating in enhancing our insights.”
“A hierarchy composed entirely of democratically minded supervisors defines social justice and true democracy.”
“As a subordinate, if my supervisor truly values my insights, knowledge, and experience, then I can tell my supervisor if they are ‘right’ or if they are missing something.”
DEMOCRACY REQUIRES TENACITY
“While it is generally easier to spot the unconscious bias in others, it is often very difficult to recognize and spot it within ourselves.”
“Organizations today generally cannot afford to replace all their autocratic supervisors for those who are already intuitively democratically driven. Thus, established organizations must train their supervisors to become more democratically minded more often.”
“To reform a culture of status quo, as supervisors, we must take responsibility not only for recognizing and resolving our own knowledge gaps but also for recognizing and resolving any deficiencies in our process that result in performance gaps for our subordinates.”
“Consistently finding and addressing our knowledge gaps is the only way to overcome our unconscious biases, refine our leadership skills, and become more successful problem-solvers for the hierarchies we serve.”
USE TOOLS TO DRIVE LEARNING
"It is not the tools themselves but rather how a supervisor uses those tools that determines if the supervisor is running a conformity process or a learning process."
“In medicine, for example, supervisors routinely and erroneously use outcome metrics (eg, a measure of disease management or cancer screening in a population) as a proxy for indolence, an end point, often penalizing subordinate physicians for not achieving metric goals rather than as a tool to guide a learning process to better understand the barriers that patients experience when accessing the medical system or managing their disease.”
“Supervisors in many organizations routinely and erroneously use feedback evaluations (a summary of an individual’s practice improvement efforts) as a proxy for how the subordinate makes the supervisor feel and for the fragment of learning that the supervisor witnessed or remembers, again, an end point, rather than as a tool to guide a learning process to improve individual skill development and knowledge acquisition.”
“The tool should not be used as an end point to judge the subordinate but rather as a guide for the supervisor to facilitate more learning when more learning is needed.”
“How a supervisor uses and interprets their 360 feedback from their subordinates, determines if they are willing to find and learn from their knowledge and performance gaps or not.”
FLAWS OF HIERARCHIES
“Autocracy, the fundamental flaw of hierarchies, is also what makes hierarchies vulnerable to additional dysfunction.”
“Once a hierarchy has created a significant level of disenfranchisement, it becomes susceptible to manipulative–exploitive belief–behavior systems.”
“Understanding the pathways and rules for organizational learning is imperative today because supervisors who are content to function in their autocratic belief-behavior system create substantial liability for their organizations in formidable ways."
“Autocratic supervisors, not valuing the knowledge and experience of their subordinates, behave like judges who listen to only one side of a case before issuing a ruling, making uninformed, unjust, and generally wrong decisions.”
“When supervisors toggle into their autocratic belief–behavior system, they unconsciously overlook the fact that the subordinates’ knowledge, insights, and experience are a resource for learning, the intellectual currency needed to solve organizational problems, and thus misallocate resources to drive conformity and status quo.”
“When an idea challenges autocratic supervisors’ unconscious knowledge gap, they feel vulnerable and threated by the new idea, attack and blame subordinates for making them feel bad, and engage in coercive interactions.”
BURNOUT
“All too often the hierarchies in which we work suppress the processes of discovery, leading to burnout and even despair."
“The path of least resistance for subordinates who are repeatedly oppressed is naturally to disengage or even completely extricate themselves from the hierarchy for self-preservation.”
“When subordinates suffer coercion and conformity from autocratic supervisors, the subordinates, justifiably, feel oppressed and replaceable, and show signs of depression and anxiety.”
“Once a hierarchy toggles into autocracy, it harbors a culture of suffocation and status quo for the subordinates, which negatively impacts subordinates’ survival and quality of life creating subordinate disenfranchisement.”
“Even though an autocratic supervisor’s intention is to protect the common good of the hierarchy, they behave in such a way as to protect the hierarchy at the expense of subordinate engagement in problem solving, suppressing subordinates’ intellect.”. Maybe you want to launch a business.”
BIAS IS HUMAN
“Good people like yourself and like me, have unconscious bias; having unconscious bias is a human condition. But those of us who learn to recognize and overcome our unconscious bias, become more impactful and powerful stewards of society.”
“When we unconsciously believe that we have all the knowledge that is needed to solve a problem, an autocratic unconscious belief, then others’ ideas or experiences are interpreted as unnecessary, worthless, and disruptive.”
“We all carry the burden of possibly miscalculating the rules for the patterns we observe, the burden of unconscious bias.”
DEFINING BIAS
“Making a decision or conclusion when a knowledge gap is present is the definition of bias, which I also call an autocratic belief-behavior system.”
“Generally, when we are in our autocratic mindset, we are not aware that we are making decisions or conclusions despite having gaps in knowledge or experience; generally, by definition, our bias is unconscious.”
HIERARCHIES INCUBATE BIAS
“The power differential in our structured hierarchies insulates and protects the unconscious bias of supervisors such that when a supervisor is in their autocratic mindset, they often misinterpret the clues and evidence of such as insurgency on the part of the subordinate.”
“When we demonstrate the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that we are functioning in our autocratic belief-behavior system, we then often misinterpret the clues and evidence of such as insurgency on the part of our subordinate rather than a direct consequence of the conformity process that our beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are demanding.”
PERPETUAL NATURE OF HIERARCHIAL DYSFUNCTION
“Autocracy breeds autocracy.”
“As a subordinate, it is painfully obvious when my supervisor is in their autocratic mindset, not valuing my insights, knowledge, and experience; in this case, it is safer and smarter to avoid highlighting a knowledge gap because I then avoid the autocratic feelings-thoughts-behaviors cascade.”
BELIEF-BEHAVIOR CONTINUA
“When a disengagement belief–behavior system (collaborative interactions with conformity process) is no longer used to survive supervisors’ autocratic culture, but rather is used to harness the power from the disenfranchised or hierarchy for individual survival/quality of life at the expense of the hierarchy, it becomes a manipulative belief–behavior system that describes, for example, cults and fascism.”
“When the behaviors for individual survival and quality of life are used at the expense of others’ survival and quality of life, those belief–behavior systems become pathological or antisocial.”
“Supervisors interact with subordinates by allowing subordinates to have differing levels of participation in problem solving (engagement-transparency) or by imposing differing levels of control (deprivation-domination), and each spectrum is guided by the acuity of a situation.”
PRIVILEGE
Academic degrees are more a function of privilege and less a function of intelligence or ability.