Hey, people, look what a reader sent in:
Rao postulates three groups in any organization: the Clueless, the Losers, and the Sociopaths. The Clueless mistakenly believe that the organization is actually supposed to do whatever it pretends to be for: selling widgets, saving endangered herons, or educating school-children, for instance. They are dedicated to this mission and work hard, and creatively, to further it. The Losers have a job because they need a paycheck; their motivation is to make work reasonably pleasant in exchange for minimal effort. The Sociopaths recognize the reality that the organization is just the setting for a power game played among themselves.
I’m a total Loser in this classification. I’d be glad to be somebody else but, unfortunately, my institution doesn’t have a mission I can support. Plus, my individual mission is at odds with that of the institution, as I only recently started to realize.
With enough self-delusion about my institution I can be a Clueless. But if I allow myself to realize that my institution is Sociopathy writ large, then I’m a Loser.
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I’d like to be Clueless but I’m more of a Loser (though I believe in the mission – I just realize the institution is a very blunt tool for achieving it).
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Ah, that feeling when you find mention of your favorite blog on another one of your favorite but unrelated blogs. 🙂
Under Rao’s scheme, being a Loser isn’t a bad thing. Only the Sociopaths and the Losers are guaranteed some level of self-actualization – Sociopaths by exploiting other people, and Losers by ‘exploiting’ institutions. The Clueless are forever condemned to slave at the alter of the institution or values or whatever.
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I don’t mind being a Loser at all. 🙂
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