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But we tell our kids in school to "sit still, follow the rules, and behave."

Much worse. We tell them not to think. We tell them to listen to authority, to trust the "experts" and this is a mindset that we carry with us and only if we are lucky and some germ of rebellion persists in our mechnized life mutates and helps us explode the myth. The myth? Our education teaches. Our education brainwashes. Solution? Read John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. The solution is raising the issue to a level of conversation. Bring in the free markets. Allow private schools to compete with the public school monopoloy (the voucher system). The independent, thinking, passionate mind you describe as a necessary force with which to engage in the world we NOW live in depends upon education. Real education and not brainwashing, homogenization, and behavior control.

But I am preaching to the choir now, aren't I?

Posted by Jamie Fee at March 5, 2007 11:08 AM

I think Corp. Collapse is more about America's need to fill positions with those employees who can do a task and do it well. This leads to a corp. culture that rewards on staying in line and doing your task (sounds like elementary school). It goes way way back to America wanting schools like Prussia (Germany). They are great for creating drones that are rewarded for following the norm and staying no one path, but when you meet an opponent (rival corp.) that doesn't follow the same path (call it a blue ocean) corporations fail. So what eventually happens in this system is the strategic positions are filled with these drones and you starve the company. Its like an upside down funnel, nothing gets through. No risk no glory. For a case study see DELL.

Posted by Jason at March 5, 2007 12:48 PM

Many years ago,I worked for a brief while at a highly centralized and bureaucratic organization (Wang Labs).One illustration: in order to get travel approval - even for a trip on the then ultra cheap shuttle from Boston to NYC - you needed the signature of your manager, group director,group VP, and EVP (who reported to Dr. Wang).Trips were approved at 5 p.m. the evening before you were to travel.This illustration is trivial but telling. Wang was just not nimble enough to respond when their market rug was swept out from under them. Might have been different if entrepreneurial agility had been fostered as the company grew but, alas, that was not the case.

Posted by Maureen Rogers at March 5, 2007 5:11 PM

In my experience centralised organisations treat people like children and are then surprised when they get child-like reactions. The best way to gain power is to let go of power. Treat people as adults and don’t be surprised if they act like adults. This is really about trusting people isn't it? As the long suffering husband Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) said to his wife Sybil (Prunella Scales) – ‘You should go on Mastermind dear – Sybil Fawlty specialist subject ‘The Bleedin obvious’

Posted by Trevor Gay at March 5, 2007 6:01 PM

You're really bucking the corporate trend here. One of the biggest growth industries is Business Process Management - the standardization and commoditization of business processes to the point of outsourcing. The great weakness of BPM, or any such standardization, of course, is that very often there are excellent reasons why the people in Rome do it differently from the people in Cleveland. But, those Stanford MBAs have found a way to cut costs - so damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! There are, no doubt, darn good reasons to standardize processes - SarbOx, for one. But, as with so many things in life, it seems to me that local variations and local innovations, within the greater context, encourage at least the possibility of better customer interactions and better service. How else do we get the great Starbucks and Nordstrom moments?

Posted by Cary King at March 6, 2007 10:30 AM

One of the main reasons for the incremental growth of centralization is that when a process manifests a flaw (or is perceived as flawed) instead of studying the reasons for the origin of the process, we trash it and implement a process which has the appearance of being more streamlined or efficient. (Then act surprised when the results differ from the purported expectations.)

In the political realm (suggested by the mention of Jefferson and Hamilton) many of the changes which have occurred in our political process were the result of an appearance of vulnerability to abuse or a perception of inefficiency. However, the result has been that the American voter feels more disempowered now than his ancestor's did and he is right. if this were a political forum, I would list several examples of ways in which the individual's lone voice has been disenfranchised and at least one current popular movement which if successful will result in even more disenfranchisement of minorities and of niche voters.

Cary King mentioned SarbOx. This is really an example of how centralization breeds more centralization. SarbOx is artificial. A natural reason is not dependent upon legislation. Modern legislation (regardless of party) tends towards centralization.

The Republican party gave "lip-service" to the segment of their party which advocated decentralization, but as soon as they possessed a majority in both houses of Congress and the Presidency they demonstrated that the party as a whole is still run by the "blue-bloods." (A "blue-blood" is a republican because his ancestors were republicans and not for any ideological reasons. To a "blue-blood" national politics is not much different than the rivalry between Harvard and Yale.)

The last time that the Republican party had a true national political convention was 1964. The way that most national Republican's defend the centralization of the Republican party, should have signaled how they would behave legislatively from Jan. 2003 to Dec. 2006. (They actually talk as if the national Republican conventions of the last 40 years are an improvement over earlier conventions.)

Posted by J. H. Shewmaker at March 8, 2007 2:00 PM