Management of the absurd: technology of human relations…

• Increasingly we treat human relationships as requiring skill and technique. The more important a relationship, the less skill matters.
• Any technique loses it’s power when it becomes evident that it is a technique.
• Effective leaders and managers do not regard control as the main concern. Instead they approach situations sometimes as learners, sometimes as teachers, sometimes as both. they turn confusion into understanding. They see a bigger picture. They trust the wisdom of the group. Their strength is not in control alone, but in other qualities – passion, sensitivity, tenacity, patience, courage, firmness, enthusiasm, wonder.
• Knowing how people grow, does not mean we know how to grow them.
• Problems can be solved; predicaments can only be coped with. Most of the affairs of life, particularly the most intimate and important ones, such as marriage, child-rearing, are complicated, inescapable dilemmas – predicaments where no options look very good or better than any other.
• Predicaments require interpretive thinking. The best executives discover purely analytical thinking is inadequate.
• We become so enamored with process we lose sight of the product.
• We think we invent technology, but technology also invents us.
• We think the best communication takes place when people can see and touch each other, but that is not necessarily so. Obviously, there are occasions where physical proximity is necessary. But face-to-face communication often introduces more noise in the system and imposes more limitations on personal expression.

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