The Age of Unreason

Highlights

• An American friend, visiting Britain and Europe for the first time wondered, ‘Why is it that over here whenever I ask the reason for anything, any institution or ceremony or set of rules, they always give me an historical answer – because . . ., whereas in my country we always want a functional answer – in order to . . .’ Europeans, I suggested, look backwards to the best of their history and change as little as they can; Americans look forward and want to change as much as they may.

  Location 87

• George Bernard Shaw once observed that all progress depends on the unreasonable man. His argument was that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world while the unreasonable persists in trying to adapt the world to himself, therefore for any change of consequence we must look to the unreasonable man, or, I must add, to the unreasonable woman.

  Location 99

• Words are the bugles of social change. When our language changes, behaviour will not be far behind.

  Location 232

• Upside-down thinking suggests that it might be desirable to reward some experts for not using their skills. At present dentists are paid per treatment. There is an inevitable temptation to diagnose the need for treatment. If rewards were related to the number of healthy mouths in the practise not the bad ones, we might need fewer dentists and have better teeth. Similarly, upside-down thinking observes that a national health service is run and rewarded as a national sickness service and wonders why it cannot be reversed.

  NoteThis is the Chinese family doctor model, you pAy them a recurring fee to keep you healthy

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• Upside-down thinking notes that before too long there will be more people working outside organizations than inside them and that, even now, organizations only employ, directly, about one-quarter of the people connected in some way with the product or service which they deliver.

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• It has grown because it is cheaper. Organizations have realized that while it may be convenient to have everyone around all the time, with their time at your command because you have bought all their time, it is a luxurious way of marshalling the necessary resources. It is cheaper to keep them outside the organization, employed by themselves or by specialist contractors, and to buy their services when you need them.

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• We will need to change the way we talk about them, words like ‘retirement’ will become as redundant as ‘servant’ today. Words are so often the heralds of social change, the outward signs of a discontinuity at work triggering some upside-down thinking.

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• Affluence is a matter of mood and self-confidence as much as of economics, for dependency has its own imperatives. If you need to buy all these services you have to find something to do to pay for them, hence some competitive striving. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy which works as long as everyone believes the prophecy of continued affluence.

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• Mankind, I am sure, is born to learn. One has only to look at little children to see that wheel turning furiously. Why, we must wonder, does it slow down for most of us as we grow older? If we knew more about that we would know more about our reluctance to change and the consequent need for crisis and calamity to budge us into action.

  Location 687

• I have a friend who turns every conversation into a lecture, on anything. He has read a lot and forgotten nothing and is eager to share it with anyone who will listen. At last I have learnt how to enjoy his company, to come with a question to which I wanted an answer and which he could always provide.

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• I am suggesting, on the basis of good evidence, that those who learn best and most, and change most comfortably, are those who (a) take responsibility for themselves and for their future; (b) have a clear view of what they want that future to be; (c) want to make sure that they get it; and (d) believe that they can.

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• I asked an American the secret of his firm’s obviously successful development policy. He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Forgiveness,’ he said. ‘We give them big jobs and big responsibilities. Inevitably they make mistakes, we can’t check them all the time and don’t want to. They learn, we forgive, they don’t make the mistake again.’ He was unusual. Too many organizations use their appraisal schemes and their confidential files to record our errors and our small disasters. They use them to chastise us with, hoping to inspire us, or to frighten us to do better. It might work once but in future we will make sure that we do not venture far enough from the beaten track to make any mistake. Yet no experiment, no test of new ideas, means no learning and no change. As in organizations, so it can be in families.

  Location 881

• We will need to change the way we talk about them, words like ‘retirement’ will become as redundant as ‘servant’ today. Words are so often the heralds of social change, the outward signs of a discontinuity at work triggering some upside-down thinking.

  Location 507

• Affluence is a matter of mood and self-confidence as much as of economics, for dependency has its own imperatives. If you need to buy all these services you have to find something to do to pay for them, hence some competitive striving. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy which works as long as everyone believes the prophecy of continued affluence.

  Location 631

• Mankind, I am sure, is born to learn. One has only to look at little children to see that wheel turning furiously. Why, we must wonder, does it slow down for most of us as we grow older? If we knew more about that we would know more about our reluctance to change and the consequent need for crisis and calamity to budge us into action.

  Location 687

• I have a friend who turns every conversation into a lecture, on anything. He has read a lot and forgotten nothing and is eager to share it with anyone who will listen. At last I have learnt how to enjoy his company, to come with a question to which I wanted an answer and which he could always provide.

  Location 715

• I am suggesting, on the basis of good evidence, that those who learn best and most, and change most comfortably, are those who (a) take responsibility for themselves and for their future; (b) have a clear view of what they want that future to be; (c) want to make sure that they get it; and (d) believe that they can.

  Location 747

• I asked an American the secret of his firm’s obviously successful development policy. He looked me straight in the eye. ‘Forgiveness,’ he said. ‘We give them big jobs and big responsibilities. Inevitably they make mistakes, we can’t check them all the time and don’t want to. They learn, we forgive, they don’t make the mistake again.’ He was unusual. Too many organizations use their appraisal schemes and their confidential files to record our errors and our small disasters. They use them to chastise us with, hoping to inspire us, or to frighten us to do better. It might work once but in future we will make sure that we do not venture far enough from the beaten track to make any mistake. Yet no experiment, no test of new ideas, means no learning and no change. As in organizations, so it can be in families.

  Location 881