Managing Leadership^®

When I was a young, guileless student finishing my college degree in my mid-thirties, one of my favorite professors gave a lecture about seminal years in the course of history. He said modern times seemed to have seen one of these per century. The most recent was 1968, when students took to the streets to fight for “people” power. Previous to this were the French Revolutions of 1848 and 1789.

I had attained a dim awareness of national and world events as a high school student in 1968, and observed at close hand the after-shocks of the “revolution” that jarred the social landscape for the next several years. I don’t recall anything particularly intellectual about the whole thing, nor especially philosophically rigorous or, even, honest.

As a result, I was somewhat skeptical of my professor’s claims for the pivotal influence that year supposedly cast over the course of 20th century history. The French Revolutions seemed more plausible in such a role, inasmuch as they were unquestionably genuine struggles to cast off the Ancien Regime and establish republics for, as their leaders saw it, the good of the people.

The thing is that they all – albeit with varying degrees of ferocity and influence – painted themselves as forces of progressive good against the legions of conservative evil; the people and the future against entrenched power and the past. Polar and irreconcilable opposites.

And we generally accept that depiction. But is it true? Are they at opposite ends of the spectrum of societal organization – centralized power of the elites versus decentralized power of the people? Or, were they merely contesting to replace one elite with another to rule the people?

Sure, the aristocrats clearly viewed the people, basically, as little more than property or, at least, a servant class. But the progressives viewed them – still do – as, essentially, clay, to be molded, willingly or not, into their view of a glorious future.

Perhaps these two forces weren’t – aren’t – really polar opposites competing for the soul of the political center, but niche competitors, vying at the same end of the spectrum for the same centralized control over us all.

Are there such forces at work in today’s management writing, largely written, after all, by the generation of ’68? Are there despots among them – whether in the guise of steward or sculptor – vying for mastery over we mere clay?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of revolutionary shifts in power, accompanied by unclear – even potentially troublesome – promises, please see this WSJ piece by Dennis K. Berman about the year of the activist shareholder revolution.

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