Degeneration and Transition

Stage-5: Empiricist

It is easy to see how these Empiricist values degenerate, especially in an organization that has not fully consolidated the rationalist stage. Information is then collected mechanically rather than as usable and used knowledge.

Information use degenerates into Data accumulation.
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Mountains of data and lengthy analytic documents accumulate unread. The focus is on managing the information rather than using the information to manage. In service industries, hard information distorts or replaces quality-related information.

Increased certainty degenerates into Endless delay.
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Too much energy goes into measuring results rather than into producing them. Increased certainty becomes a monster that consumes resources and delays solutions while endless surveys, reviews, checks and pilots are completed.

Systematic investigation degenerates into Statistical trawling.
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In a parody of science, top managers may start trawling statistically through performance indicators. They uncover problems which on closer examination turn out to be artefacts or to have been known and viewed as intractable for years.

Wide dissemination degenerates into Paper deluge.
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Wide dissemination mindlessly leads to a flood of printouts and reports which drown managers

Lucid presentation degenerates into Irrelevance.
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Presentations, even if lucid in theory, may be obscure in practice because they are irrelevant, unfocused, or mechanically constructed using templates.

Individualized knowledge degenerates into Fragmentation.
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Unmanaged individualization of computer systems can disrupt data sharing, and make corporate analyses difficult or even impossible.

Dispassionate objectivity degenerates into Pedantic arrogance.
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Dispassionate objectivity with its demand for precision becomes divorced from organizational needs, social values and personal interests. It degenerates into pedantic arrogance and obstructs sensible action.

Which Mode Next?

Many organizations effectively consolidate and settle at this stage. Empiricism may be tweaked at the margins with creativity techniques, but the inherent limitations of the culture are not faced.

Empirical objectivity is not enough, because it looks back to the distant or immediate past. A capacity to look inward and forward is needed for:

● innovations and creative solutions
● addressing aspirations of committed staff
● earlier recognition of emerging problems
● better handling of habitual assumptions.

Pressures for cultural development become evident once facing the facts is habitual. The triggers for seeking a quantum increase in effectiveness are twofold:

● organizational ambitions to move into uncharted waters
● social desires for self-actualization in work.

These two triggers point in the same direction: the Imaginist Mode.

But It's All Rubbish!! Hard-boiled top executives may find imaginist conceptions difficult to stomach: they hire other people to be creative; they mock notions like personal growth or group energy. But there is nothing at all intangible or metaphysical about such things. Like it or not, they refer to an unavoidable part of life at work.

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Anyone who wants to create an organization that maximizes its staff's contributions and uses inquiry to the full, must embrace the Imaginist dimension.

► Go to Stage-6 now.

Originally posted: 17-Jun-2011