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A room with a loo
Alfredo Behrens
I would think one slave is one too many; rather than discussing the figures, let us reflect on the meaning of this indignity: what the existence of slaves in the XXIst century means for labour relations and business leadership. No less than
the vice-president of the federal legislature, was accused of holding
slaves in some of his farms. The lack of public outcry regarding the
slave factor suggests a cultural stance that probably permeates
attitudes towards waged labor and its relationship to business
leadership. These attitudes are not to be reduced to the responsibility of a beastly foreman, a psychopath corporate president or farm owner, nor reduced to a frustrated housewife when dealing with her live-in maid. Rather, the evidence should be taken as the reflection of an ideology that tolerates coercive forms of management. It is in the nature of ideological expressions that we may fail to notice them, despite our allegedly natural inclination to justice. If the above were the background cultural attitude to labor; short of slavery, what would the prevailing managerial paradigm be, for aligning employees with shareholders’ interest? I actually put this question to a Brazilian MBA class and, sure enough, being trained as most American MBAs are, they reckoned that the human resources management paradigm was the “carrot and stick approach.” They also agreed that the paradigm could be depicted as a donkey dutifully going about his work under the doubly aligning stimulus: to avoid being hit with a stick from behind while attracted to move forward by a carrot dangling over its eyes.
By putting too much emphasis on managing people like their forefathers would have managed a donkey; today’s executives in Brazil may be missing the learning to be drawn from Mr. Itamar. This gentleman handles 110 self-made men to deliver him, every month, 400 tons of paper later to be recycled. The paper providers have invested in their two-wheeled carts which they collect paper-rich garbage in downtown São Paulo with. Collectors sort the garbage from the paper and cash the latter with Mr. Itamar, who in turn sells the paper on credit to the Brazilian paper industry. This one relies on used paper for about 40% of its final product.
What is the reward for collecting paper? Receiving cash payment per weighed deliveries is. If Mr. Itamar were perceived as cheating at the weighing scale, collectors would respond by wetting the paper, and wet paper delays paper industry payments to Mr. Itamar. Trust between leaders and led is crucial to business. Is there an intrinsic motivation at work? There appears to be, for it would not be difficult for the collectors to wet the paper a little and get away with it. But it does not seem to happen, that would be cheating. Does Mr. Itamar take care of his lot? Indeed he does. It is a very competitive market and if he did not take care of his lot his free birds would flock away to nest elsewhere. Itamar’s crowd are notoriously difficult to reach because of the itinerant nature of their work. Yet Mr. Itamar has secured arrangements with the municipality to provide health care at the weighing point. The youngest off-spring are now in day care centers.
Operating in a class-ridden society, your corporation may have recruited many entrepreneurial people whose potential is not being fully developed because they are treated as donkeys. Seeing this requires refusing to give in to ideology. The next time you see a man pulling his cart laden with cardboard and other paper products, try not to see him like a donkey and you will see he has no carrot dangling over his eyes nor a stick behind telling him how fast to go. He may be intrinsically motivated. He actually is a successful entrepreneur; like Mr. Itamar, who is on his way to become a paper industry owner, like many of his predecessors did. How many corporate leaders would dare being benchmarked against Mr. Itamar?
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E-mailing for results
Alfredo
Behrens
Foreign Direct Investment in Brazil accelerated enormously during the last decade or so. There is a impact which has not yet made the headlines but which begs attention: the implications for cross-cultural communications. This is a heady subject from which here I wish to carve out only a slice: internal e-mail communication between subsidiaries, Brazilian on noe side and foreign ones on the other. This communication does not seem to be working properly. Some of the trouble can be traced back to using English as a language of communication between, say, Finns and Brazilians. That, per se, is bound to lead to trouble. If to this difficulty we add the more direct down-to-earth style of communication of most foreigners, frustration is likely to be instilled into the interaction. Can this be corrected? Some of it can, faster than you can teach English to the hoards of Brazilian mid-level managers. You could, for example, find out what are the most frequent questions these managers are asked from abroad and supply answers in templates that would require little fiddling about to be used as pret-a-porter answers. Why would this be a solution at all? Because it would seem to help cut out what abroad is perceived as rambling replies. Decision makers abroad expect direct answers to direct questions, something that Brazilian middle managers do not seem adroit at supplying in English. It is not only a question relating to a poor command of English.
Brazilian managers deal with issues subject to greater degree of uncertainty than foreign ones; and they imbibe their email replies with endless conditionalities which abroad are perceived as covering-up for ineptitude.
Hot Tip
Churn out templates for as much of your routine international communications as you can; and provide adequate coaching of mid-level management. This may make them sound more intelligible in e-mailed English.
For instance, if a foreign manager needs to know by when he can expect a container-load of Brazilian products, the Brazilian mid-level manager may attempt to factor into his reply all the caveats to which the delivery may be subject to. This may include independent strikes of the Revenue Service, the sanitary inspectors or the dockworkers; or all three of them. To these uncertainties the Brazilian clerk will want to add the difficulties thrown in by the eventual sick-leaves of critical agents, which may delay getting the papers in time to make it to the next ship’s departure. While all this may be true, Brazilian managers surely know better than the foreign ones how likely are all these fatalities to happen. But, still, the Brazilian mid-level managers frequently fails to commit to a delivery date. While that may be cultural, it nonetheless prevents the foreign manager from committing to a sale. Besides, conditionalities, natural or perceived, invite the use of the Subjunctive mode and subordinate clauses; culturally more acceptable in Portuguese than in business English, adding insult to injury in the communication. By now you may have realized that pro-active workers come at a price, the higher the more English they know. It should pay to churn out templates for as much of your routine international communications as you can, adequate coaching may take care of the rest.
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Serenity and Expressionism do not mix well; neither
does coercion and management. Expressionism This
refers to mostly German and Austrian art from the first decades of the
20th century when artists expressed, through charged potent coloring,
emotions only cursorily associated to figures. Kirchner epitomizes the
movement, which, after the 2nd World War, gave place to the
Abstract Expressionism - or New York School - in the USA. Though
Pollock is frequently depicted to be the American Kirchner of Abstract
Expressionism, I prefer to represent the movement by de Kooning. Richard
Diebenkorn may not be fully associated to the movement, particularly
because of his middle-aged figurative interlude, and his Ocean Series,
which offer an unparalleled serene beauty. Nonetheless, the beauty is
there and he belongs to the period, if more by chronology than by style or
geography. Disclosure, Diebenkorn is Californian. Karel
Appel, and his Cobra movement, can be safely said to lead the (Northern)
European counterpart to American Expressionism, despite the identifiable,
child-like, figures, not present in the selected illustration of Appel.
Perhaps I should have chosen Apple’s Farmer
with Donkey and Pail, both because it shows chjild-like figures and
because of the “Carrot and Stick” motivational allegory of the
article, but I would have had to rotate the fragment of the painting for
you to see the figure.
Incidentaly, if you visit Appel's donkey link also check their Art timeline at the bottom of the page. They offer an interesting way of representing art movements with samples of their representative authors with access to relevant information. You and also read and see more at www.guggenheim.org where by visiting The Collection you can associate artists to artistic movements, see their work, and choose what you like best.
And remember, Diebenkorn's work is beautiful, it happened in America and in the same period of Abstract Expressionism; but it cannot fairly be called part of the same artistic movement. Somehow it does not fit in. Similarly with coercion in management. People can frequently get away with it; but it looks odd in today's World; and because beeing deemend unfair it elicits all the negative responses, rendering coercion less effective than it once may have been. It simply does not fit in today's World.
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Dear
Alfredo, A
fact which is increasingly striking me: Business executives and leaders with
a technical or scientific education have a lot of difficulty reading
books outside their speciality, and reading is no pleasure for them. What
do you know about efforts to help them overcome this obstacle to their
intellectual expansion? Best
wishes Theodore
This letter of Theodore's gave place to a fruitful exchange which I will write-up for the next issue of NewsLeader. You may wish to contribute as well.
A trailer of the write-up would go more or less like this:
Responding to Theodore; Alfredo feels that the burden is on both sides of the communication equation, i.e. engineers tend to be hard of hearing and humanists make little effort in making themselves understood; though Theodore, in his many book forms, is an exception. Also, for a glimpse to his conversational skills, visit in NewsLeader's first issue the link to Theodore's phenomenal Tate Gallery talk.
Alfredo suggested opening libraries and film archives at corporations, which, sadly enough, understand all too well the benefits of subsidizing gyms; but not workers' libraries. Theodore added that those libraries and archives would still need a muse to decode and inspire and change attitudes. Furthermore, Theodore believes that short sabbaticals, i.e. three to four days, perhaps blended into MBAs or separate from them, would play the trick. Again, visit The Oxford Muse to understand Theodore's musing. | ||
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Provocative insights under 400 words long will receive our attention more
rapidly. Larger pieces may be abridged without consultation with
the author. Guest authors may wish to submit contributions in English,
Spanish, Portuguese, French or Italian. Please use Arial 12 font
and with each submission and include
a statement indicating the work submited is your own. Please also submit
your affiliations, email address and CV or Oxford
Muse-like self portrait. Authors will only be notified when their
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