The Prophet Role LO20668

BirreD@mail01.dnr.state.wi.us
Mon, 15 Feb 1999 14:24:56 -0600

Replying to LO20642 --

Doug:

Thanks for the pithy reply. I suspect that status comes into play during
the transition of external-to-internal consultant. When the formerly
external person becomes a member of the organization, he or she also
becomes subject to the hierarchy and all its sociological dynamics, which
I believe are founded on status differences. Now an employee, the
consultant is no longer a magician and is subject to the same rules as
everyone else in the organization, the first of which is usually "don't
rock the (cultural) boat."

Dave
------------------------
* David E. Birren
Project Manager and Consultant, Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources
(608) 267-2442
"Teach your tongue to say 'I do not know' and you will progress."
-- Maimonides

> From: Doug Merchant[SMTP:dougm@eclipse.net]
>
> I suspect a more fundamental force is at play:
>
> "Most managers, aware of their own inadequacy in dealing with the more
> esoteric topics of management theory, are as ready as the primitive
> tribesman to ascribe superior power to strangers - privately if not
> publicly. Most bosses will assume that outside specialists command more
> powerful medicine than their own subordinates, for no other reason than
> that they are from the outside. The mechanism is best seen in action when
> a consultant is invited to join a company full-time. It is rarely more
> than six months before his new superiors are again feeling a nagging need
> for 'outside' advice. Their vague and ill-defined sense of something
> missing is an infallible indicator that a magicoreligious principle is
> involved."
>
> "Finally, the more distant the origin of the consultant, the stronger his
> medicine is supposed to be. Any consultant is more powerful than one's
> own staff. An American consultant working in Europe (or a European in
> America) is more powerful than his native -born rivals. An American who
> is specially flown in is more powerful still. ...All magicoreligious
> systems have the same law. Foreign magic is mysterious
> and therefore more powerful than the domestic variety."
> --- Managers and Magic, by Graham Cleverley, 1973, E.P. Dutton & Co.,
> Inc.

-- 


BirreD@mail01.dnr.state.wi.us


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