Saturday, August 02, 2008

The Followers and Leaders, the Pew and the Pulpit.

After so many years of intellectual development what has changed?. Nothing in my opinion. We are still a global culture of Followers and Leaders, the Pew and the Pulpit, the Soap box and the on lookers. Need I continue.

The age of electronic media has changed how we follow or Lead perhaps. The Pulpit is no longer a physical object and the Soap box in Hyde park is no longer just that. But this article is not about leaders or the elite or the trickle down goodness that we have all faithfully condoned and accepted for so long. It is about the faithful, about the followers and the listeners in each of us and how potent the collective consciousness can be.

So what does this all mean? Can we get to a point where there are no leaders, no pulpit and no soap box?. Can the listeners and the followers and the innocent bystanders become a collective whole. How much more effective would we be if the Leaders were just Data Miners and Knowledge experts who provide us the message without imparting their subjective spin on the collective thoughts?. Leadership today is sustained by the power it brings them. Can we change this model. I would like to see our future leaders become leaders not for the power it brings them, but for total selflessness. If not get out of the business.

The Open source model starts out with this selfless concept, but then quickly gets swallowed up by how much power the concept of giving stuff away for free can bring us. So much so today we give away for free and when we have enough followers, we Sell out.

We have always been people centric. We adore and worship the person(s) who deliver the message and deliver it well. In short the message takes a secondary role to the messenger. So much so, even if the the message is bad, as long as it is delivered by our favorite messenger, all is well. We are okay with it. Conformational BIAS is what it all amounts to. But it is driven by our model of Leaders and Followers. Until we break away from that, we will forever be defined by our MESSENGERS and not the MESSAGE.

With that I end my Saturday morning Rant.

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