How about people who genuinely want to have something done? For example, if my dream is to create a great computer game… and I happen to be a boss of a company that succeeds to make a great computer game… I don’t think I would need an opportunity to rub my power in people’s faces to be happy. I would be simply happy that my dream became true.
Obviously this does not work for people to whom “being the boss” is the real goal. But that explains why they do it, not why I should desire to work in an environment optimized for them. (I work in such environments simply because I do not have the necessary skills to create my own environment, and all the environments I know are optimized for this type of people, usually because they are the ones who designed them.)
But how is that sort of power crushing? In your example, every employee with the same dream likes you having that kind of power, most people are indifferent, and maybe some cometitors are pissed. You are thinking more among the lines of boss and employees sharing the passion but would make it differently (say turn-based vs. real-time strategy), and power can be crushing in the sense of employees seeing their dreams thwarted?
This may seem like a small difference, but in some companies employers can give inputs into the process, and in other companies they are just told to shut up… or maybe they are asked to voice their opinion, but then their opinion is completely ignored in a completely obvious manner.
I am talking here about autonomy, as one of the conditions for “flow”. Some workplaces have it, some don’t.
For example, as the boss of the computer game company, I could be micromanaging my employees and on a random whim override their best work with my half-baked ideas for no good reason… or I could be not doing this. Like, I make the decision about whether we are making a first-person shooter or a turn-based strategy, but my graphic people decide how long teeth will the ogres in the game have, because that is their competence.
The crushing form of power is if I start walking around, ask my graphic people to show me the pictures they made, and (despite having zero graphical talent) tell them to make this or that random change, throwing their ideas out of the window, wasting a lot of their work, ruining the consistency of the style, etc., simply because I am the boss and I can show them how little their opinions, skill, and lifelong experience matter in face of the power structure.
(Is this similar to what you called “rubbing the power in people’s faces”, or did you imagine something completely different?)
Hmmm… is it sure autonomy is a condition for that? It seems to me Zen monks train for something like the flow all the time and they don’t have much of it.
Also, there is the personal kind of autonomy of doing your own work without others bothering you, and the democratic kind of autonomy when having input into what the company as a whole does, the project as a whole, and I think this second cannot really be relevant to it → the boss will not distrupt flow if he makes all those decisions alone, and leaves autonomy for people to work out the details in the bits and pieces they work with.
No, I meant something far worse than that by rubbing. Intimidation, status symbols, belittling, inequal titles (i.e. calling employees on first name terms but expect to be called back on surname terms) and so on. But yes, this also sounds kinda bad too. This is only bad if employees care about their work and not working just because they must. The other kind of bad is always bad.
How about people who genuinely want to have something done? For example, if my dream is to create a great computer game… and I happen to be a boss of a company that succeeds to make a great computer game… I don’t think I would need an opportunity to rub my power in people’s faces to be happy. I would be simply happy that my dream became true.
Obviously this does not work for people to whom “being the boss” is the real goal. But that explains why they do it, not why I should desire to work in an environment optimized for them. (I work in such environments simply because I do not have the necessary skills to create my own environment, and all the environments I know are optimized for this type of people, usually because they are the ones who designed them.)
But how is that sort of power crushing? In your example, every employee with the same dream likes you having that kind of power, most people are indifferent, and maybe some cometitors are pissed. You are thinking more among the lines of boss and employees sharing the passion but would make it differently (say turn-based vs. real-time strategy), and power can be crushing in the sense of employees seeing their dreams thwarted?
This may seem like a small difference, but in some companies employers can give inputs into the process, and in other companies they are just told to shut up… or maybe they are asked to voice their opinion, but then their opinion is completely ignored in a completely obvious manner.
I am talking here about autonomy, as one of the conditions for “flow”. Some workplaces have it, some don’t.
For example, as the boss of the computer game company, I could be micromanaging my employees and on a random whim override their best work with my half-baked ideas for no good reason… or I could be not doing this. Like, I make the decision about whether we are making a first-person shooter or a turn-based strategy, but my graphic people decide how long teeth will the ogres in the game have, because that is their competence.
The crushing form of power is if I start walking around, ask my graphic people to show me the pictures they made, and (despite having zero graphical talent) tell them to make this or that random change, throwing their ideas out of the window, wasting a lot of their work, ruining the consistency of the style, etc., simply because I am the boss and I can show them how little their opinions, skill, and lifelong experience matter in face of the power structure.
(Is this similar to what you called “rubbing the power in people’s faces”, or did you imagine something completely different?)
Hmmm… is it sure autonomy is a condition for that? It seems to me Zen monks train for something like the flow all the time and they don’t have much of it.
Also, there is the personal kind of autonomy of doing your own work without others bothering you, and the democratic kind of autonomy when having input into what the company as a whole does, the project as a whole, and I think this second cannot really be relevant to it → the boss will not distrupt flow if he makes all those decisions alone, and leaves autonomy for people to work out the details in the bits and pieces they work with.
No, I meant something far worse than that by rubbing. Intimidation, status symbols, belittling, inequal titles (i.e. calling employees on first name terms but expect to be called back on surname terms) and so on. But yes, this also sounds kinda bad too. This is only bad if employees care about their work and not working just because they must. The other kind of bad is always bad.