I’ve been reflecting on a challenging lecture by Willaim Deresiewicz, given to the freshmen class (plebes) at West Point last October. He highlights the temptations to “climb the slippery pole of hierarchy” in today’s bureaucracies, becoming technocrats instead of leaders.
Using excerpts out of Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, he brings out how easy it is for brightest and best young people in organizations to get trapped in “company behavior”–defined as “rules and procedures and ranks and people in power and people scrambling for power.” Such bureaucratic characteristics, especially the love of routine, robs the organization (organism?) and its “leaders” of the ability to think well, to innovate, and to change. Movements die from the inset of bureaucracy….as Dr Bright and others once warned, “Movements become machines and finally turn into monuments.”
Deresiewicz uses the following description of the “Central Station Manager” in Conrad’s novel, to show what happens to young people caught up in “climbing the slippery pole of bureaucratic hierarchies:”
He was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold. . . . Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy—a smile—not a smile—I remember it, but I can’t explain. . . . He was a common trader, from his youth up employed in these parts—nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust—just uneasiness—nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . . faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. . . . He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him—why? . . . He originated nothing, he could keep the routine going—that’s all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one pause.
In the rest of his article, Deresiewicz challenges the plebes at West Point to become “leaders, not technocrats”. Using his arguments, I’ve adapted his suggestions for our purposes of building movements. I believe his warnings will help us define the kinds of leaders who are at the heart of launching and building change movements—kingdom movements.
1. Beware of the Temptation to “Just go along, to Originate Nothing, to Just Keep the Routine Going”
We have to be careful, after 60 years of existence as Campus Crusade (or better, the 2000 years of the Christian church), of just keeping the routine going. Deresiewicz warns that bureaucracies breed not excellence, but a spirit of going along.
That’s really the great mystery about bureaucracies. … excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all. Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they’re done. Just keeping the routine going.
We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going.
Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them.
Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them.
Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place.
What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of expertise.
What we don’t have are leaders.
What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers.
People who can think for themselves.
People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things.
People, in other words, with vision.
2. Become a Person of Vision, a Person who can think for himself
Deresiewicz warns that leaders must be careful of “marinating themselves in the conventional wisdom.” He suggest that we don’t take the time in solitude and in reflection enough to escape the “cacophony in which it is impossible to hear our own voice.” Or as Emerson warned, leaders must be careful of traveling so much “with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of other’s opinions.” Leadership means finding a new direction, not simply putting yourself at the front of the herd that’s heading toward the cliff.
3. Read Books with Greater Reflection and Concentration
According to Deresiewicz, leaders must be more selective in their reading and in the way they are reading. He argues against the superficial nature of our reading today (browsing the internet, micro-blogs, soundbites, etc), and opt for books, especially “old” books. C.S. Lewis gave the same warning…for every new book you read, read an old book. Books have certain advantages over the quick access and intake of today’s information age. Of course, it’s not the book per see. “Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet,” Deresiewicz argues.
First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself.
Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today. Even if they merely reflect the conventional wisdom of their own day, they say something different from what you hear all the time. But the great books, the ones you find on a syllabus, the ones people have continued to read, don’t reflect the conventional wisdom of their day. They say things that have the permanent power to disrupt our habits of thought. They were revolutionary in their own time, and they are still revolutionary today.
(If you want to be challenged further in this regard, read Sven Birkett’s article on Reading in a Digital Age)
Such reading doesn’t happen without solitude. Such solitude leads to introspection, to knowing oneself better. Such knowledge in turn leads the leader to a greater courage to speak up with needed, to challenge the direction of the organization, to avoid just going along. Reading well leads to “self- differentiation”, which Edwin Friedman argues is what leads to real leadership nerve.
[For someone who loves today’s technologies, I struggled with Deresiewicz’ point here. Yet, at the same time, I’ve loved the old books as well. In the middle of reading “Bleak House” by Dickens, I’ve finding it ponderous in places but I’ll never forget some characters: Mrs Jellyby, the “telescopic philanthropist”, whose Africa project keeps her from charity at home or Mrs Pardiggle’s “abrasive charity” toward the poor. I think I’ll use Mrs Pardiggle’s section to train our staff and students this summer in Haiti in what “Christ -like compassion should look like and not look like.”]
4. Have Meaningful Friendships in which we Can Think Out loud
In a counterintuitive point, Deresiewicz argues that leaders need meaningful friendships. While friendships appear the opposite of solitude, Deresiewicz suggests that deep friendships in which intimate conversation takes place over long, uninterrupted ways lead to an environment in which one escapes the dulling effects of bureaucracy. Emerson, himself, argued that “the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude.” Deresiewicz goes on to say:
Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask. Feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities.
This is what we call thinking out loud, discovering what you believe in the course of articulating it. But it takes just as much time and just as much patience as solitude in the strict sense.
How are you doing at building leaders who can think for themselves? Who are doing more than just going along? Who are men and women of vision? Who read well? Who pursue great causes in the company of meaningful friends?
[William Deresiewicz is an essayist and critic. His article “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education” appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.]
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