Schopenhauer Beat Me To It
Why’s Dean got to ruin my illusions?
I used to work for a guy who wanted to change some things. From observation I developed the K. Theory Of Organizational Change, a well received and useful three step method:
- This idea is stupid. Go away.
- This idea is dangerous. Kill that man and any people around him.
- We’ve been saying that all along. Get with the program!
The secret is to survive getting from Stage Two to Stage Three.
So Dean Esmay says that this theory, my one decent idea ever, has already been thought up.
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
Rats.
9 Responses to “Schopenhauer Beat Me To It”
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March 22nd, 2005 at 10:08 am
he may have said it first, but i like your independantly arrived list better. especially stage two.
August 9th, 2005 at 11:21 pm
[...] ts like this if we want to get better/faster/more effective. I just have to remember my Schopenhauer…
Leave a Reply N [...]
May 14th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
[...] Shopenhauer, yeah. This is step two: Even an outsider can look at the CIA and understand the problems: that reorganization doesn’t automatically lead to transformation, that aging intelligence officers with master’s degrees in Soviet studies need to be eased out and that the dominant agency culture of whining, second-guessing and world-class leaking needs to be expunged. [...]
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
[...] Change Is Hard I mentioned Schopenhauer earlier this week, so I might as well do it again. Three steps to change: “this guy is stupid, ignore him”; “this guy is dangerous, kill him and all around him”; “we’ve been doing this new thing all along, get with the program”. [...]
April 17th, 2007 at 3:14 am
[...] issue, I think, is step two in the dangerous path of changing an organization: “This idea is dangerous. Kill that man and [...]
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:34 am
[...] actually being change agents. I got a chance to help be one of those change agents, and formed a theory of change that I found out later was nothing new. But I really enjoyed being part of something new and [...]
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:59 pm
You get full intellectual credit for coming up for what you did. Just fewer quotability cookies since S. published first ;-)
Speaking of back home geekiness, here’s the Gandhi version printed in BIG LETTERS in the foyer of Red Hat in Raleigh. “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 am
In related sorts of things. Somewhere in B-school I learned several variations of the technique of “ask for more than you really want, and then let them feel good by bargaining you down to what you were shooting for in the first place.” I was young, then, and very inexperienced in negotiations, so this was new to me. The examples I learned were complicated, but that served me well when I was helping the owner of a small bank negotiate with her staff. The method there reduced to, “threaten your staff with lots of pain, and they’ll be delighted when the actual pain is only moderate.” Later, I was talking about this with a former schoolteacher who said, “Oh, you mean like managing third grade!” Um. Yep. So much for sophistication.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:09 am
My dad used to say “Ask for ten, expect five and get two”.
Thanks for the kind thoughts. I could have saved some time, though!