Click here to go to section one of "Spring and Autumn Roles."
Click below for the other "Spring and Autumn Roles" posts.
1 2 3 4 to be continued
During the autumn months I will be posting new segments of The Emperor's Teacher (the big business book that will rock the world). Chapter three is (provisionally) called "Spring and Autumn Roles" and forms (along with three more chapters that will follow) the "middle" of my management book—part two of three. Click below for the other "Spring and Autumn Roles" posts.
1 2 3 4 to be continued
If you have read The Art of War, you have arrived at the doorstep. Still, no one ever managed anything in China having just read Sunzi (Sun-tzu), but don't despair. You are now ready for what comes next in leadership. Compiled nine-hundred years ago, it is the greatest management book ever written, and there are only two problems: (1) it is in "medieval" Chinese; (2) it is 10,000 pages long. No worries, though. That's what I am here for. I have been studying this stuff for thirty years, and I have been waiting for you. Welcome. 歡迎. Let's begin to study real Chinese management together.
After reading chapter one, "Breaking the Vessel," you will have some acquaintance with Sima Guang and the Comprehensive Mirror (資治通鑒). If you have completed chapter two, "Living and Learning," you know a good deal about various "learning strategies" in ancient China, and some of the ways that they were employed in later times. You are now ready to tackle the big themes at the heart of the greatest management text of all time. It is time to consider how managers managed in Chinese history, and how you might use these lessons to think more clearly about managing yourself, your family, and all under heaven.
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| [a] Plumage RF |
Don't worry too much about the order at this point (these are blog entries and not a book...yet). If you want to start here and loop back to part one (Chapter One: Breaking the Vessel and Chapter Two: Living and Learning) in due time, that is fine. This chapter should stand on its own as a way of thinking about the multiple roles that shape life and work at any time and in any place.
IV
Learned Lines
Learned Lines
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| [b] Of Philosophy RF |
One of my favorite examples of how roles and hierarchy cohere and persist comes from my own profession. Students, parents, grandparents, and friends often wonder at terms such as "instructor," "assistant professor," "associate professor," "professor" (or "full professor"), and, finally, endowed chairs that have titles such as the "George and Barbara Ingold Chair of Cognitive Sciences."[1] What does it all mean, and who—pray, tell—could possibly care?
I am always amused to hear most professors tell me how little it all matters, at least beyond the practicalities of salary and tenure (bottom lines, both, in their own ways). Nonetheless, professorial conduct betrays more than a little attentiveness to nuances of rank. Why anthropologists have not studied this a little more thoroughly, I have no idea. The strange tribe called "Professor" has secrets and rituals that most of society cannot fathom. It might be because most of the rest of society understands the meaning of one of my favorite jokes about academia. "Why are faculty meetings so contentious?" asks one wide-eyed outsider who chanced upon the monthly gathering of academics found in almost any university or college. "Oh, that," replies the interpreter. "It's because the stakes are so small."
If you doubt the power of hierarchical "role-holds" on faculty members, you might want to try a little experiment. Just call a long-serving, quite "senior" professor instructor. Conflicting synapses will fire behind what should be a calm, practiced exterior as the professor decides how best to respond to your (certainly unintentional) faux pas.
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| [c] Robed RF |
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| [d] Lined RF |
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| [e] Disrobed RF |
Anyone who has ever been to a college graduation ceremony knows about these ranks from at least one multicolored perspective. The peacock-style procession of faculty members is one of the more noticeable events on the program. For several minutes, even at the smallest of institutions, faculty members march in the varied colors of their doctoral institutions—a light crimson bordering on pink for Harvard, deep burgundy for Chicago, vibrant purple for Northwestern, and chalky blue for Columbia, not to mention the orange-and-black tiger likeness of Princeton's robes.
We might look at the spectacle as a vibrant ritual moment, and leave it at that—a charming little peek into an academic-cultural form that has been frozen in place, not unlike a luau reenactment at the Polynesian Cultural Center outside of Honolulu. Or Austin Powers. Make no mistake, though. Much more is going on, at least within the sheltered world of faculty life. The procession unfurls in a snaking line of hierarchical humanity. Full professors go first, and even they are ranked by seniority. Even the youngest full professor (usually a mathematician or economist who raced through graduate school in a few years) will have to wait until she is much older to walk in the front of the line and sit in the first row at commencement with all of the other silver (and thinning) hair.
This is where it gets interesting. Many professors will tell you that it doesn't matter; it is just silly custom. Some will make their protests against the system. At small colleges it is common enough to see academic processions in which full professors walk "back" in the line, communing with instructors and assistant professors—seemingly thumbing their noses at tradition. Just watch when you go to Suzy's graduation from Cozy College next spring. You'll see.
The thing about it is that such a "protest" isn't very difficult. The stakes are even smaller than they are at faculty meetings. Let's consider something subversive that—despite the "openness" and "laid back" nature of small college life—rarely happens (I have never seen it). Let's imagine an assistant professor, preferably one who is just about to "come up for tenure," as the jargon has it. It's the spring before the big decision, and during the summer she will prepare her file for a series of examiners and administrators from within and beyond the college. Let's say that she wants to make a statement that is bigger than Professor Senior, who is walking "back" with the instructors. She decides that "hierarchy doesn't matter," and chants this to herself as she walks to the front of the line. She does not quite take first place, leaving that for the professors who arrived in 1957 and 1959, respectively. But she's at the front, walking confidently alongside creaky, balding intellectuals.
Nope. Ain't gonna happen, as we (are said to) say back home. Nada.
Even the "flattest" counter-culture college is unlikely to have someone in that position (read: role) march with her, or his, seniors. Why not? What could be the consequences of such an action in the land of the free and the home of brave tradition-breakers? What's the big deal? For all of the talk of such things as being silly little traditions, I cannot get over the fact that the hierarchical line of professorial peacocks in full display has persisted for almost a millennium—from its medieval European roots into the twenty-first century. And, yes, even in "America."
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| [f] Vertical RF |
I have another idea in mind, and I call it "The New Hierarchy." Yes, I imagine a Time magazine cover story on the topic in a few months. The New Hierarchy provides a way to understand the inevitable mountains slopes of knowledge, power, and even status in the fluid and nuanced ways articulated by Confucius, Sima Guang (the author of The Comprehensive Mirror), and other thinkers through East Asian history. It is also something that the most successful Western businesses have understood, even if they have been more careful not to use the dreaded term "hierarchy."
A common interpretation in the West is that China, Japan, and Korea are rigidly hierarchical and unimaginative with regard to organizations. They don't seem to have "garage teams" like the one in our picture ("flat good; tall bad"). This all-too-easy perspective is flawed from core to peel. Sure, there are unimaginative organizations all over Asia—all over the world, in fact. That's no news flash. But when organizations worked well in East Asian history, they articulated an elaborate dance of hierarchy capable of integrating the thoughts and opinions of a wide range of people all of the way up and down various hierarchical ladders.
Music and ritual elements played a profound role in this (as they do in the West, if we would only think about it the way Plato did), and they can show us ways to break through the stifling problems of unimaginative equality or inequality. Boredom and lack of imagination are far greater threats to any kind of organization (from "flat" to "tall") than anything horizontal or vertical could ever be. In short, this book—The Emperor's Teacher—represents a call for attunement that Western readers must understand if they hope to succeed in a global marketplace, and at home.
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| [g] Dancing hierarchy RF |
NEXT
Getting the (Mirror) Ball Rolling
Sima Guang begins the Comprehensive Mirror—yup, "page one"—with a discussion of roles and hierarchy. This is an excellent place to begin our journey into the lessons that will shape your thinking about managing yourself, your family...and all under heaven.
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