The autodidactic corporation
July 29, 2002
I probably have still to figure out what I mean when I talk about management as there could arise a paradox in my thinking - why, laissez-faire type that I am, do I think management is important? Does management have anything to do with regulation?
I was brought to this idea by a Dilbert strip where one of the characters says something like “your management is preventing me from working.” That is a great possibility.
In a similar way, a bad teacher can set a child back 4 years - although in this case we would probably put “teaching” in quotation marks. And I guess most people would make a distinction between management and “management”.
I have a vision for management, which is the same as my vision for education - it should be transparent. I don’t know what I mean exactly, and maybe principal parts should be imposed, but it seems that education should be integrated into a particular experience, as if someone were wearing virtual reality / augmented reality goggles that put on a display that said this is this thing, and here are its properties and here’s how it works, right up there superimposed on the object.
I’m not sure good education / management can be obtrsuive, outside of that mold. I’m not sure that it should identify itself.
This seems to feed into the concept of the “servant leader” - someone who works behind the scenes, emerging when some kind of shift is called for, perhaps.
Another possibility is that a really great teacher does nothing other than identifying and answering his pupils’ questions. That is really a way to integrate education and experience, because here the teacher is able to provide information that the pupil verifies rather than having to relearn (capacity to identify truth: Mill).
Also I like this method because I think it encourages a certain amount of autodidacticisim, which I think is key, and is the big skill that all “learning ” / “teaching” should probably be geared toward.
How would that apply to training great leaders? I would first have to become one myself or create a culture that encourages great leadership qualities, or rewards leaders and on a broader level leaves the qualities up for discovery. What I would probably need would be an autodidactic corporation. What does that mean?
And separately, is there an inherent arrogance in teaching management? Or only “teaching”/“management”?
The autodidactic / enantodidactic corporation. Is this already happening?