13. Red Tape
Leadership is often described as a quality. If you have it, you must be wise and intelligent and charismatic, able to mediate between arguing parties, to encourage suggestions when desired, to unify people into agreement or compromise, and, of course, to wield decision-making authority with confidence. This notion of leadership is actually fairly prevalent in our sick society, which seems anomalous, since leaders are usually defined as the possessors of hierarchical power over others, those who have proven themselves to be men and now exercise the resulting privileges -- so where do these other criteria come from? Obviously they are not required of any person wishing to ascend to positions of patriarchal authority, or we would see them evidenced by our leaders. And why would patriarchy tolerate, let alone teach these concepts, which encourage the observation that few of our leaders possess leadership?
Once again, I am going to borrow from the wisdom of Elizabeth Janeway:
"To understand [the value of legitimacy to the powerful]...we should also explore the positive rewards of legitimacy: the full and eager granting of consent, in contrast to its withdrawal... this meeting of minds in a springtime of belief is the highest reward that the highest can receive. The leader embodies in herself or himself the emotions of others, no compulsive force need be exerted, and the group seems to feel and to move as one, in an almost holy unity."
(from Powers of the Weak)
Any state of affairs so desirably pleasant to those in authority would cause them to leave sage advice and legends for other leaders, that they might also reach for such a goal (much as locker-room talk often advises men on how to painstakingly achieve full and eager consent from women).
The key observation about this state of rapport, and about leading via the exercise of the powers of leadership, is that leadership of this type could exist in the absence of power over others, without enforcement privileges,... without patriarchy. In a society of totally equal voluntarily cooperating individuals, the power to communicate comes into its own, unlimited by exterior sanctions against the power of equals to listen, agree, and cooperate. Instead of the chaos and incoherency invoked by the term "anarchy", the rulerless society will always seek viable and sensible order, part of which would involve respecting the wisdom of individuals who continually bring forth ideas which make sense; the intelligence of individuals who demonstratedly have a knack for grasping important concepts and perceiving situations with clarity; the personal charisma of individuals who time and again are able to empathize with both sides of an argument and bridge the communications gap; and so on.
The potential for abuse of this kind of power would last only as long as the leaders' reputation for leadership, which would not be very long once abuse began, not against the backdrop of other voices with their own wisdom to offer.
And it is this last, or rather its absence, which characterizes patriarchal establishments and solidifies the control our "leaders" over their subordinates, since the threat of some form of enforcement is not enough: no one but Big Brother gets a voice; no alternative shall be heard.
From where most of us stand, the result is a deaf world, an unlistening brick wall of a world whose insensitivity to reality, human or otherwise, is acknowledged with our rueful smiles and shrugs, and in our name for it: red tape.
* * *
Communication is like water. It can dissipate ideas slowly until they permeate the environment even when there is no registerable flow, or it can be swirled around in faster patterns that stir everything up and create solutions. But when the terrain is vertical, it only flows downhill.
As in one of those M. C. Escher landscapes where water flows in strange spaces where top and bottom won't stay put, it's impossible to point at any position in today's world and call it the source of the flow, the position to which all beneath must answer but which need not answer to any higher authority. We can, however, cut off a segment to study the dynamics of the communications flow, provided we don't forget that it extends beyond our scope of vision.
The director of the hierarchical institution confronts a phenomenal work-load of problems that each require a decision by setting policy, issuing a directive, saying yes or no to a request, thus choosing a path for the institutional vehicle to be driven on. Few of these problems are issues about which the director is particularly likely to have special insights and knowledge, and, although many are simple problems which require the director's attention only to rubber-stamp obvious solutions with official weight, others are going to be more complex and will require thought and observation, insight and analysis. The director, pressed for time, will make some decisions arbitrarily, just to have some official policy to regulate the situation; other matters will appear too important to risk deciding without further examination. The director's best resource is the populace of the institution, the people whose observations, if coalesced, should give a vivid overall picture of the situation. Here is where leadership abilities would be particularly useful, but directors seldom become directors as a result of leadership ability. Most likely, the director will hold upper-echelon administrative staff meetings at periodic intervals, during which problems will not merely be brought to the director's attention, but will be accompanied by opinion and discussion, from which the director will be able to gain an insight or two, or a sampler of ideas to choose from in formulating his or her own. If secure in ego and security, the director may solicit advice and opinion more openly as well. It is unusual, though, for the director to be personally accessible in this manner to any other than these most immediate subordinates, the theory being that to consult everyone involved would occupy too much of the director's time.
The administrators, with the director's new ideas and policies now enabling them to proceed, return to their departments and pass along the director's policy wherever it directly instructs their staff, while making their own decisions (often after being freed to do so by the director) and informing their staff of these as well. Each administrator will most likely hold departmental meetings that resemble the administrative meeting with the director, and will receive the complaints and concerns of their staff on a number of issues. In addition to the limitations the director has in dealing with problems -- lack of special insight -- these departmental administrators are also limited by the realm of their authority within the institution, and will not have the power to contend with all of the concerns of their staff. When so, if the staff members can persuade their administrator of the need to do so, this issue may be brought up at the next administrative meeting, but unless so fully convinced that it becomes the department administrator's concern as well, it will not be expressed to the director by those who actually hold that viewpoint. At any rate, nothing can be done until the next administrative meeting, so there is a time lag. Meanwhile, faced with the director's new policies and decisions, the staff members may be horrified and certain of their wrongness, totally bewildered by the reasoning involved, or relatively acquiescent, but in any case can only express their line of thought to each other and to the department head, who may or may not agree with them, may or may not be inclined to pass along their reactions (and, perhaps, their accompanying suggestions for an alternate), but certainly can not do anything right then and there, so until the next administrative meeting (by which time the director will probably have ceased to consider the issues now thought to be resolved) the staff of this department is stuck with them. Psychologically, this dampens the dissidents' inclination to try to convince their department's head, who will often encourage acquiescence by shrugging and pointing upstairs, although her or his fervent agreement will probably be necessary to provoke a policy reversal at this point.
Across the compound or hall, in a parallel department, another staff may be reacting the same way, but interdepartmental (non-vertical) meetings are uncommon, so no one is likely to find out unless the fervor is very high or the dissidence is nearly unanimous.
After the meeting, the departmental staff members return to their offices and their subordinates, where they will be calling a division meeting in due time, and the process will begin again. The directives and policies of the director at this point will resemble edicts carved in granite. Of course, this is getting closer and closer to the level at which the prime and incidental functioning of the institution is maintained and rendered, the place where the work that the workers are doing is the actual process rather than the management of personnel.
Day in and day out, these people predict problems, see them develop, know why they are developing as they see needs going unmet, and, if they haven't bought into the legend that problem-solving capacity is the same thing as solution-implementing authority, they may figure out the viable solution.
But unless very idealistic or new to the system, they will not bother beating their unconsulted heads against a brick wall.
* * *
When I was a child, the word "responsibility" was a nasty term I hated, because I was always being told it was my responsibility to do this and my responsibility to do that, which meant I had to do those things. I also had to be responsible, which meant doing them without being reminded of my responsibilities. Sometimes I acted frivolously, wrongly unserious, not paying attention to the possible consequences of my actions, and then I was irresponsible. But if my irresponsibility led to a disaster, I was responsible again, only this time that wasn't good.
Responsibility, I learned, had to do with blame, duty, and maturity, none of which did a damn thing towards making me feel like I was being treated like an adult. It was freedom I wanted, not responsibility!
Or so I thought. Of course, we all know that freedom is a package deal which includes responsibility, so, even though the child's wish for freedom instead of responsibility is understandable to the adult, we know that's impossible...or do we?
Actually, my suspicions about that term were fairly accurate: the adults who talked about responsibility weren't being consistent or relevant when they asked me to be responsible, and what I wanted for myself had nothing to do with what they called responsibility! I wanted freedom. Freedom means the authority to determine for myself what my duties are, and to act accordingly; maturity will hopefully lead me to act as I think I should, to fulfill my duties as I have set them, but whether I do or don't, and whether or not my concepts of my duty are wise ones, I will at any rate be responsible for whatever I freely do or don't do, because the outcome will affect me, I will have to account to the laws of reality for my use of my freedom and authority. I can't avoid being responsible; in a sense, there is no "irresponsibility", only the chance of mistake, poorly rendered responsibility, which, however forgivable or forgiven, still produces unintended and usually undesired results. But I can live with that. In fact, I have no choice.
Our illusions, though, hide the fact that a person is accountable to the genuine results of her or his actions, alone and inescapably so; and that any human notion of responsibility not aligned with real accountability is not aligned with reality. Even when giving full and respectful awareness to the likely reactions of narrow-minded people and judgmental intervention, the people who live as answerable only to the results of their actions (and gauge their actions according to their assessment of the probable results) are free (though social sanctioning may make their ennvironment articifially limited and restricted); they are in authority over their lives; and they are totally responsible at all times. But most of us are indoctrinated in the belief system which uses responsibility and authority in subject- object relationship with each other, and hands out "freedoms" in the form of permission, or license.
In the hierarchy, the director has authority to delegate responsibility and dispense freedom, or so the illusion claims: where one has no granted authority, one is not responsible; no one is free to act without permission. Yet those without permission to act other than as directed are duty-bound to obey orders from above, so they claim the authority necessary to do so.
Thus, at every level within a hierarchy, you run into people whose behavior touches your life, for which they will claim authority, but deny responsibility. The image often used to describe this nightmarish phenomenon is a beast with a thousand limbs, where the individuals are mere extensions of the beast, like arms or something, not complete persons at all. Actually, though, it's worse than that.
Most beasts simultaneously receive information as well as act through their limbs, which contain sensory as well as motor nerves. The beast called patriarchal hierarchy does not. It acts with authority, but responds not. It is irresponsible.
* * *
At each level within the hierarchy, there is a realm of delegated authority to make decisions, with the accompanying responsibility and freedom, and the individual at that level has as part of the job description the judicious exercise of that authority/responsibility/freedom. It is practically necessary, of course, to include a prediction of the boss's reaction to the use of that freedom (license) when living answerable for the results, and this element only too often frightens the individual within the hierarchy into an incredibly cautious approach that clogs up the system's responsiveness to needs even further.
Since the arena is that of human interaction, with all the flexibility therein, the limitations of power are not precise and sharp-edged, which is a horrible state of affairs for the quantitatively precise error-phobic patriarchal mind, which hates flexibility and calls it uncertainty. All those fuzzy edges!
The most fearful individuals refuse to make a decision, and claim they would have to refer the matter upstairs, which oftentimes drives the complainer or solicitor of help away and solves the official's problem. But quite a few people insist on the matter being taken through channels and, too fearful to use their authority to refuse to do so (or in some cases too sympathetic despite their timidity), these officials continually reappear at their supervisor's door with petty problems they themselves coud have solved until, exasperated, the supervising officer is overheard to remark that "that idiot couldn't find his ass without directions and won't wipe it without permission."
Such individuals do not remain in office for long in more than half the cases (in the other half, red tape prevents the boss from firing them), which would make them a less common occurence were it not for a tendency noted by a certain Laurence J. Peter for individuals in a hierarchy to rise to their own level of incompetency 2, so as quickly as they can be eliminated or transmoted to the sidelines, others appear.
Less fearful (and generally permanent), but still very cautious, is the individual who is very sensitive to orthodoxy and precedent, and never acts in a manner contrary to them when making a decision without overwhelmingly good reason. This official can also be persuaded to bring the matter to superiors, where he or she will summarize, declare the orthodox decision to be their decision, and, with a tired smile, indicate the troublemaker who insisted on seeing someone higher up. It's very safe, very irresponsible, and infuriatingly dehumanizing. Especially since these are the ones who seem to rise slowly but steadily higher and higher without any discernable loss of competency, as long as someone is upstairs.
The director types, who are still answerable but less directly supervised, tend to be those with fewer fears about using the powers they are authorized to wield, especially when there is relatively little likelihood of any dissidents being able to reach their superiors without their cooperation, which they have no compunctions about refusing. Generally, they are efficient enough to satisfy their supervisors-from-afar, having learned how to walk softly and do as they please during more supervised years. Most likely, they will be sufficiently responsive to any sign of clamoring from below to prevent dissidence from becoming very fervent or visibly widespread, spiking responsiveness with a touch of hard-nosed clout to silence any really annoying presence, but without having to do so blatantly, clumsily, or too often. These officials will march right up to the fuzzy edges of their defined power, and test the yield of human flexibility when the risk is not too great, and the assessment of risk is usually well grounded in genuine results within the unquestioned social context of "success" and "power" in the institutional hierarchy.
Identical in verve but with different operating values, the idealistic-realist-within-the-system type will also go out to the fuzzy edges, carefully balancing the possibility of change for the better against the risk of losing some of the power to make those changes for the better. Usually much kinder towards subservients but without full-blown feminist communications concepts for efficiently circumnavigating vertical hierarchies (which would increase institutional effectiveness), these officials will tolerate dissidence for humanitarian idealistic reasons, trying to listen and care but unsure of how to cope with the chaos until they are often drained and reduced to nervous frazzles. Amazingly, they are able for sometimes extended periods of time to operate an efficient department while at the same time personally circumnavigating the system by painstakingly going out on the floor and talking with nearly everyone, one on one, and hearing what they have to say.
Inevitably, however functionally efficient this person may be at running his or her realm, all that idealism begins to manifest itself in a disproportionately high degree of originality and unorthodox decisions, which tends to greatly reduce the tendency of a person to rise within a hierarchy, and greatly increases the tendency for the system to (as Peter woud put it) promote them sideways to a position where they may still receive commensurate pay and prestige, but will not have that kind of decision-making authority any more.
The go-for-broke idealists, most courageous and least cautious, ignore the fuzzy edges of authority and try to do what they think is right, seldom even managing to put much diplomatic social veneer on their disregard for orthodoxy, guidelines, and the expectations of their supervisors. When given a direct order which conflicts with their concepts of how things ought to be handled (or running headlong into an already-existing policy that interferes with new ideas), these officials will rely on the power of communication to change the opinions of supervisors, only too often forgetting about egos in a patriarchy and the tendencies of boss-types to expect obedience, if necessary blind obedience, not insistent demands for communication and mutual understanding.
With that kind of irreverence for patriarchal form, the rebel is the most likely to question the internal vertical norms and formulate some more efficient modes that go around the unwieldy patriarchal structures. For the sake of example, I am going to describe what would be my initial approaches to circumnavigating red tape and moving gradually away from patriarchal form: first, I would set an organization-wide "Purpose Discussion" meeting on (initially) a weekly basis; directors, line workers, secretaries, administrators, janitors, departmental staff, day-care babysitters, staff lawyers, and the part-time office worker from the local high school would all sit down to talk about the reasons the institution exists, what its goals are and/or should be, and general theories they might have about how to accomplish that. Many of these people would be unaccustomed to seriously evaluating the institution and would have little to say at first, but after awhile would develop a critical consciousness and begin providing input. As this began to happen, I would move towards "Format Discussion" meetings, which would add evaluations and suggestions for method, structure, and policy. As the picture of who does what and how the place really functions became clearer, I'd begin reorganizing the communications flow so that it follows the natural flow-structures of necessary personnel instead of the chain of hierarchical command. Authority would now be much less centralized, with decisions being made by those dealing with the actual situations, and it would be the community-wide sense of institutional purpose, priorities, ethics, and goals that would guide them in their decision-making. Now it would be the upper-echelon review of decentralized decisions that would lag behind, rather than the wait for things to proceed through channels, but I'd be free from having to rubber-stamp and eeny-meeny-miny-mo my way through extraneous stuff, and I'd have plenty of time to devote my energies to leadership-style personnel management. So would my directors and administrators.
The results of such reform may be awe-inspiring efficiency at attaining institutional goals as well as personal satisfaction increases for all involved, but such unorthodox highhandedness tends to terrify one's superiors (there's always a "superior" watching from somewhere) and threaten their usually mediocrity-bred, orthodoxy-worshipping souls. They may feel such strange changes represent a deterioration of the Holy Order of Things, or they may see the organizational rebel as a threat to their authority, and quite likely both of these things. In general, if you are in a position of being able to effect such reforms within your sphere of authority and you decide to do so, they won't love you for it.
These radicals suffer the same fate as their slower-moving liberal counterpart, if not worse, and often much sooner. To the surprise of the cautions, though, they do get a lot of good things accomplished, many of their creative innovations survive, and the people they come into contact with will never be the same.
* * *
We have phrases for people who only appear to have vast powers when actually their authority is quite limited; we call them figureheads, paper tigers, tin Gods. Many of the least powerful, looking upwards at the veneers and illusions, are confident only of the "fact" that they are personally oppressed by tyrants who are in positions of power to do anything they please, and that it is the personal corruption of these and of previous rulers which makes things as they are and keeps them that way; many "leftist" social critiques also speak strictly in terms of a dialectical power struggle between the oppressive autocrats at the top and the powerless oppressed at the bottom. But this is an oversimplification, and is, in the final analysis, not a factual one at all.
Having made a casual reference or two to Big Brother, I think I'll go ahead and use Orwell's bureaucratic nightmare to make my point. Remember O'Brien, the party official in 1984 who tortured Winston (a party member himself) at the end? He was totally obliged to do so, being eternally monitored for totally orthodox behavior by his supervisors, who were in turn totally monitored by still higher officials. At the top of Orwell's 1984 society sat a bureaucratic oligarchy, a plurality of people eternally monitoring each other in fear of making a blunder in front of one of the others, one of the possible blunders being the unforgivable failure to punish a blunder on the part of one of the others. The ultimate authority? The rules. The red tape.
There are differences, thank God, between Orwell's 1984 and our world. Since, as I mentioned, it is not necessary to legally regulate, monitor, and punish the unorthodox through police-state punishment tactics when the economic system is so effective at playing a complementary role (the lack of losing one's job is undesirable enough to modify most people's conduct without the need for the Ministry of Truth or the Thought Police of Orwell's 1984), we aren't aware of being unfree. In a sense, most people voluntarily think and operate according to the rules and premises of hierarchical structure; but for most of us, our "choice" is made unconsciously, automatically, with no awareness of an alternative: "you can't fight city hall".
Thus it is here, in the chapter on bureaucracy, rather than the chapter on punishment and enforcement of the rules that Orwell's book came to mind. We aren't aware of being devout worshippers of the Paper God of Red Tape, but neither were the double-thinking citizens of poor Winstons' world.
We are free, in the comparative absence of the complete Police State, to do almost anything once we pierce the veil of illusion and begin operating according to a complete assessment of the results of our actions, so perhaps I'm being paranoid when I see a relationship between our bureaucratic red tape and that of the totalitarian police state.
On the other hand, maybe our rule book just isn't as complete.
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