Management is what we are getting wrong
I need frameworks to understand my world. I need neat boxes. I can deal with ambiguity and exception but I need frameworks to make sense of the tangle that is reality. This post is an exercise in public meditation (that I hope turns in to an exercise in public conversation — rumination even).
A Framework for Human Agency
In this framework I compare what exists — what is — with what humans do — how we interact with the world. The X axis is labeled “Is” and the Y axis is “Does”. I started by identifying the domains of human experience (Consciousness, Nature and Markets) and then associating those with our tools for understanding those domains.
Philosophy is to Consciousness as Science is to Nature as Politics is to Markets.
Philosophy focuses on the internal aspects of the human experience. Philosophy is concerned with the mechanism for human understanding while science is focused on the truth of the world and politics is about networks or connection and exchange.
The Y axis categorizes human activity. The first of these categories is Observation which is characterized by the activity of ‘study’ to generate the outcome of ‘understanding’. Similarly Agency is the activity of ‘manipulation’ generating the outcome of ‘value’ and Management is the activity of ‘managing’ to cause an outcome of ‘equity’. Each of these categories is also part of a cyclical or iterative process: 1) The understanding created by observation results in a hypothesis to be tested; 2) The value that is an outcome of Agency is a result of testing that hypothesis and 3) if the value makes sense for humanity — if that value supports equity — then it can be codified to be enforced and repeated until such a time as it no longer supports equity and we need a new hypothesis.
In associating the ‘Is’ with the ‘Does’ I found a confluence at each intersection, some of of these intersections had greater resonance than others. The shaded boxes descending from top left to bottom right represent the intersections with the greatest resonance. Meditaion is the act of studying consciousness for understanding. Engineering is the act of manipulating nature for value and governing is the act of managing markets for equity. I am a bit foggy on this resonance and could use some help understanding it.
It is my intuition that their is something special about the confluence of: 1) Philosophy and Understanding; 2) Science and Agency; and 3) Politics and Management.
Which brings me to the third row that is colored red: Management. This is where we are failing ourselves — this is where humanity is falling down.
- Education — Manage Consciousness for Equity
- Conservation — Manage Conservation for Equity
- Governing — Manage Markets for Equity
Equity
It is my intention to eventually write about each of these individually but first I would like to address the central position that I have given to equity. I think about humanity as a network. A network is both an entity and a collection of entities (nodes). What makes a network a whole is the character of the connections between its nodes. A network is valuable when it is emergent as a whole. A network is valuable when its whole is more valuable than the sum of it’s nodes and this value-add comes from the character of the connections between the nodes. It is these connections that enable a network to emerge as a uniquely valuable whole.
Equity is different than equality. Equity from the perspective of the node refers to opportunity or potential and equity from the perspective of the network refers to the quality or health of the network as a whole. If some nodes in a network are isolated or disadvantaged by virtue of bad connections to the other nodes then that network can be described as inequitable. This is obviously not a binary or is/isn’t condition as a network can have degrees of (in)equity. This is different than the idea of equality which is a description of the nodes in the network and their value relative to each other. Two nodes in a communications network can be described as equal if they are both able send and receive information at the same rate. A network where all nodes can send a receive information at exactly the same rate can be described as perfectly equitable.
A market is a network of people exchanging value. Poverty can be understood both in terms of equality (the comparable amounts of money held by each node) and it can be understood in terms of equity (the capacity of the network to facilitate economic opportunity and exchange to/from all nodes). Poverty alleviation is often understood as a charitable endeavor and it is of course a good thing to lift people out of the crushing realities of poverty. It is also true that poverty is a drag on an economy. Lasting or generational poverty is a result of an inequitable network and this inequity is bad for all of us because it adversely impacts the health of the network. This has been powerfully documented by Raj Chetty (Stanford), Nathaniel Hendren (Harvard) and others in the Equality of Opportunity Project.
Historically we have measured the value of a market or an economy with gross aggregate economic measures like Gross Domestic Product but this tells us very little about the health of the network either in terms of equity or equality. We have measures of (in)equality like the Gini Coefficient which are helpful to understand the comparative value of the nodes which, if there are wild variations in value, are potentially indicators of an (in)equitable network. What we don’t have are good measures of the equity of markets which I think of as the health of a market. In order to understand the health of a market as network we must understand the market’s ability to transfer or exchange value. A perfectly equitable market has the identical capacity to exchange value and each connection between nodes. One possible candidate for this type of measurement is the velocity of money.
A perfectly equitable network is the best or healthiest condition for a network so it is reasonable to declare that equity is the goal of management because management is the domain concerned the health of the human network and we are humans.
Management
Given this, we are shit at management understood as the act of managing consciousness, nature and markets for equity.
