When Kian took his MBA classes 10 years ago, one of the keywords he heard a lot was “equilibrium”. Besides those formulas and math the professors usually found fascinating at lecture halls, he was puzzled at his seat thinking of a bigger life question: Were there really the kind of counterpoise and balance like what economists upheld?
Back in the days at graduate school was always romantic because students got the most time and space to ponder philosophical issues in life. After that, Kian was an strategic adviser of 5 different offices across East Asia. Just lately he recalled some of his old thoughts that might relate to his present situation.
A case in point would be the “bottom-up” or “top-down” models. When these terms stood alone, they had not so much meaning by themselves. But if we put them into the context of the boss-and-subordinates relationship, the entire understanding became clear and succinct. Why? Because we were involved in some eternal interactions that it could take centuries for us to get out of them.
Due to some personal connections, Kian landed at a workplace where people had their minds clouded with the bottom-up concept. He heard that it was a lengthy discussion throughout all tiers at the organization for about 10 years. In the end, the conclusion was made with a new era of decentralization. It was seen as the liberation from the previous centralization approach.
Up to this point, perhaps some people started leaving this contemplation because it’s understandable that not everybody liked abstract thinking. Only when we were affected by certain conditions, we wouldn’t stop mulling over some topics. For Kian, he encountered the latter. His colleagues and bosses’ automatic belief of people power confused him.
Don’t get him wrong, however. The part that Kian wanted more clarification was on “automatic”, instead of “people power” per se. After being a journalist for more than a decade without a common practice of showing sides, the conformity of different groups that looked upon certain ideologies as the mental and moral support without questions always amazed him.
At the end of the day, human beings in general were lonely. We needed companions to bind us together. In order to last this connection, thoughts mattered. The other important element was passion. Without it, everything would be cooled down and became tasteless one day. The combination of physical, emotional and spiritual facets seemed to provide a full circle of sentience.
The discussion went a bit far by now, especially for those that went after profitability every day. Their goal was simple and concise. But when one’s job was on the consistent search path of values, the above entangled mind maze kept coming back and forth. In that case, the work life was all about complication and euphemism.
When business wasn’t just about the straightforward business, it boiled down to numerous issues related human beings. First of all, one had to wear a fake smile and a fabricated friendly attitude. Further to some acting, the pretense of being eager to help one another brought triumph. Last but not least, it’d be helpful if one had the quality of being a counsellor. The power of listening to stories, be them sensible or not, would attract the likes of colleagues.
An advocate of “people power” that exemplified LOVE among living souls to achieve the same objectives would be a well-fit. In this no-man’s land, it’s not necessary to mention bosses. An utopia. Nonetheless, the tale of bottom-up didn’t end right there because the entire narrative was turned upside down when it came across accountability to donors -- the source of incomes. In short, money.
Scurrying through the concepts of bottom-up and top-down, there was another conflicting supposition to deal with. Could LOVE and money really coexist with serendipity? For the 1%, the answer may be a yes. For those working on the frontline to meet KPIs, LOVE was way luxurious even if they spent 2 seconds to have a glimpse of it.
Back to the practical issue, accountability to donors meant constant outputs that could impact all relevant stakeholders to make changes by using funders’ money. In one word, efficiency. Therefore, a narrow definition of bottom-up was delivering the homework through working together with no hiccups while seeing results in a measurable way.
But the truth was human beings were imperfect. The seamless cooperation between people itself could be a hard KPI in itself. In order to fulfill the requirement of income sources, the top-down outlook got to infiltrate the scene again because directions, management and leadership were crucial components to help drive down that path. Up to this stage, some people might have already given up and returned to the plain road of making profits. Others that couldn’t do an easy change in the course might stay on and wander around.
Kian didn’t pick any of the usual routes, instead he reviewed the true purpose of where he was now. Without putting himself at the throttle of the bottom-up versus top-down rhetoric, he remembered the enlightenment from his MBA classes. There was nothing called “equilibrium”. The pendulum often swung to one side or another. But a person with a pellucid aspiration would propel him to ride on every platform and continue the journey.