This week I read the book The System and Revolution by V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai. In my head I made a link with a previous post I wrote about The Leadership Gap. What Shiva clearly outlines in his book is that there are two sets of goals and what I realized is that these two sets of goals match two types of leadership.
The first set of goals Shiva describes is Power, Control and Profit. These goals clearly match the Dominance Paradigm and specifically the Red Power culture. Current leadership is very much in the Spiral Dynamics Purple Clan like culture and the Red Power like culture.
The second set of goals that Shiva describes is Truth, Freedom and Health. In my mind that matches the Symbiotic Paradigm with a very Turquoise Holistic culture.
As shown in the image above you can see that these two sets of goals represent a huge cultural gap.
How to Bridge the Gap?
Bob Emiliani wrote extensively about Classical Management and Progressive Management. I think that there is a sequence in cultural development steps that Progressive management pursues to bridge the Goal Gap towards Truth, Freedom and Health.
I think the first step is to learn how to base actions on facts and how to create a rigor (Order) in the use of facts. The second phase is learning how to think scientifically. To see the cause and effect relations at work and learn from experiments. This builds an Orange Succes culture. The third fase is to use these skills at scale by extending collaboration and building a Green Community culture. The fourth phase then is to see how everything is connected and influences each other. The need for Systems Thinking will arise to build a true Yellow Synergy culture.
How to Keep the Gap
I think that Classical Management, in their pursuit to defend the goals of Power, Control and Profit, has a whole arsenal of tactics to prevent people to progress in the cultural development steps towards Truth, Freedom and Health.
To prevent Systems Thinking the focus needs to stay on Reductionism and Sub-Optimization. To prevent Collaboration at Scale, Politics is deployed and Greed and Vanity is triggered in individuals. To prevent Scientific Thinking, Censorship and Propaganda is deployed to dull the mind. Asset control will further limit peoples ability to do proper research and get closer to the Truth. To secure Power, Control and Profit, Systemic Control is deployed and Dependency is created.
The Struggle
I think there is a natural tendency for people to pursue Truth, Freedom and Health. To defend the Status Quo, to keep Power, Control and Profit, curve balls need to be thrown. There are dark forces at play to prevent us from knowing the Truth, being Free and being Healthy.
The Truth will set you Free
Question everything and keep looking for the Truth!