“Slow impersonal giant”.

That brings a low, sombre feeling to my thoughts. I wish you well to make a difference in your organisation. And I mean that sincerely. I have an empathy.

Ka kite

Some of that may have been youth, although I am still fairly young, and some may be perception -as you point out.

To my point, you are referring to cultural phenomena affecting the world at large. My post was reflective of my experiences within Corporate America. These behemoths of industry are controlled and turn like cruise liners, not speed boats. Surely their wake is much larger, and thus their impact is far reaching – but passion is not a hallmark of Corporate America.

Indeed, there is a proportional relationship in studies I reviewed in college as well as real world experiences whereby the larger the organization the more processes were installed – under the auspice of helping to steer the ship with consistency.

What is interesting is to observe that in this highly-process oriented environment – the mavericks and entrepreneurs are driven off often in disgust and the undesirable/non-producing lots are often executed as well. Thus remains those who are willing to tow a line – the corporate line – and work within a system built around maintaining conformity, uniformity and consistency.

Afterall, the analysts on Wall Street pay for this. When a company underperforms or overperforms expectations it is often met with slumping stock prices. It is these companies that say what they are going to do and trend that line who excel in Corporate America.

So, these are my observations. I no longer carry a cynical attitude – I am simply a realist who chooses to work in a company where I know everyone’s names and faces – where I can use my talents to make a difference – as you say you do – 1 person at a time.

Thank you for the very well thought out response. As an aside, Greg and I do share 1 thing in common with our industry: IKON. They are a legend in our industry as a company that came from a collection of very passionate individuals and started something brilliant that become a slow, impersonal giant it is today that purposefully churns its culture.

Some of that may have been youth, although I am still fairly young, and some may be perception -as you point out.

To my point, you are referring to cultural phenomena affecting the world at large. My post was reflective of my experiences within Corporate America. These behemoths of industry are controlled and turn like cruise liners, not speed boats. Surely their wake is much larger, and thus their impact is far reaching – but passion is not a hallmark of Corporate America.

Indeed, there is a proportional relationship in studies I reviewed in college as well as real world experiences whereby the larger the organization the more processes were installed – under the auspice of helping to steer the ship with consistency.

What is interesting is to observe that in this highly-process oriented environment – the mavericks and entrepreneurs are driven off often in disgust and the undesirable/non-producing lots are often executed as well. Thus remains those who are willing to tow a line – the corporate line – and work within a system built around maintaining conformity, uniformity and consistency.

Afterall, the analysts on Wall Street pay for this. When a company underperforms or overperforms expectations it is often met with slumping stock prices. It is these companies that say what they are going to do and trend that line who excel in Corporate America.

So, these are my observations. I no longer carry a cynical attitude – I am simply a realist who chooses to work in a company where I know everyone’s names and faces – where I can use my talents to make a difference – as you say you do – 1 person at a time.

Thank you for the very well thought out response. As an aside, Greg and I do share 1 thing in common with our industry: IKON. They are a legend in our industry as a company that came from a collection of very passionate individuals and started something brilliant that become a slow, impersonal giant it is today that purposefully churns its culture.

I wonder at what you mean by “made such a difference”. I also wonder, now, what you mean when you talk about passion spreading. Am I detecting a modicum of cynicism in both your and Greg’s comments?

Large organisations are not unlike small countries. There must also be a correlation between small countries and pockets (states?) in larger countries. People are people. In large numbers they tend to behave collectively even more like people than they do as groups or certainly as individuals. Yet there are some things that spread (yes with passion) through all of those.

I think that we have an opinion of how people are (or how we think they should be) that doesn’t necessarily match reality. We get these ideas confirmed from time to time when we come across individuals that match how we think people should be. But the reality is that few people are actually how we think people should be. So when we observe the behaviour (property?) of a large group of people we think that it has qualities that are inferior to those found in individuals. I challenge that point of view.

I suggest that large groups of people can be as fickle and as capricious as the individuals themselves (and I’m not talking about specific individuals here, rather the variation in calibre as we might find going from one person to the next). And, sure, there are exceptions – this is only what is statistically expected. History has proved all that I’ve said here, which is why civilization appears not to learn from history. It doesn’t learn from history because, in the main, people don’t learn as much as we think they should – again this is perhaps our own misconception of how people are.

One of the most capricious things about the way large groups of people behave is seen in the way passion can spread through them. This phenomenon, though observed, is almost unpredictable. No, I’d venture to say that it is unpredictable.

Who would have thought that a device, such as a telephone would have taken so long to catch on after it was first invented and manufactured? For as wonderful as the telephone is today it had a slow start. Yet the invention, the cell phone, took off like a skyrocket with a short fuse. It spread quicker in as many years as it took decades for the telephone to catch on. And it spread with a passion! Web 2.0, if you are familiar with that term, has virtually exploded since it was first given the name only a few years ago. And it spread with a passion! So did the Internet before that, only to be eclipsed in the passionate way it was further spread by the advent of broadband, and that add on made it spread with a passion!

I think that there is perhaps only one trait that spreads as passionately as those I’ve already mentioned (I may be wrong) and that is fashion in clothes in western civilisation. That sort of fashion can suddenly appear with its design characteristics that are so prominent and disappear as quickly. The hat is such a fashion device that did just that. So much so, that above all other fashion features, it dictated a fixed period that any photograph of people in a crowd taken during that period would depict.

I’m not talking about passion in a group of six or twelve here. Or even a few thousand. These passions have spread through millions, nae hundreds of millions of people. But they are as capricious as the people themselves.

ka kite
from Middle-earth