Hugh nibley leaders and managers download

Jeffrey Pfeffer, Robert I. Sutton, Yet, rhetoric played a substantial part in producing the Industrial Revolution and the modern economy. See Thomas C. Patricia G. McLaren, Albert J. Clayton M. Peter F. Neuroeconomist Paul j. Drucker, , While monetary incentives are powerful motivating factors, they are not the only ones or even the most potent.

See Daniel H. Rajendra S. Sisodia, John P. Schmidt, Sara L. Interesting post, Walker. I agree, Chris. Check out footnote We would all become more well-rounded managers and intellectuals alike. For a visionary who had achieved total power in a country possessing the best-trained army in the world, the sight induced a sense of invincibility. This armchair strategist never possessed the qualities for true generalship, because he ignored practical problems. During the brief campaigns in Poland, Scandinavia, France and the Balkans, resupply had at times been difficult, but never an insuperable problem.

In Russia, however, logistics would be as decisive a factor as firepower, manpower, mobility and morale. In hindsight, it seems more like the act of a compulsive gambler, subconsciously striving to increase the odds. The horrific consequences for millions of people seemed only to strengthen his megalomania. I love Nibley but, yeah, he was a Berkley brat.

There are more than a few lawyers who are outstanding amateur historians. As a lawyer you pretty much deal in complexeties and ambiguities every single day. Same goes for doctors and businessmen.

I find it rather ironic that the literature student did not consider that more than one writer was first a doctor. Conan Doyle, Somerset Maugham, and Bulgakov are three examples that come to mind. By being exposed daily to suffering, and needing to inflict some degree of pain to alieviate such can train the mind to analyze and relate things dispassionately.

They are also able to go beyond the surface of the problem, and find how it relates to everything else. All of these are fine qualities in a writer. As Jack Beatty notes in his biography of Drucker,.

The Druckers raised an intellectual, not an academic. For sixty years Drucker has taken on a new subject every three or four years and read up on it to the capacious limits of his curiosity.

One year it might be Japanese art, which he taught on the side for six years at Pomona College; another year it could be sixteenth-century finance; yet another the history of technology or of work—or of American statesmen or of British rule in India.

He recommends intellectual omnivorousness as a form of self-renewal. Andrus hinted at the managerial complexity that even the agrarian vision of Zion entailed. By instituting reclamation projects funded by the central storehouse, for instance, new areas could be developed in which cities of Zion could be built and new stewardships be made available in an expanding society.

Third, centralization of the economic order made it possible for the movement and transfer of stewardships within the entire system. A steward who wanted to move from one area to another could turn in his stewardship in one city and take out a stewardship in another. The administrative details of the transfer would be coordinated through the central storehouse. Fourth, in addition to the above benefits, the administration of the Central United Order Board made it possible to achieve all the objectives and blessings of a planned society while retaining the basic essentials of a free economic order—individual freedom, dignity, and incentive to progress.

For example, in coordinating the over-all program of allocating stewardships, attention could be given to the needs of the market so that surpluses would not be created in some commodities and deficiencies in others. Again, by conducting studies to determine the changing needs of the market, the central board could keep the several communities advised on current demands and opportunities so that the stewards in the several communities could plan their production accordingly.

Good leadership and good management go hand in hand and an organization will not do well in the long run without both. A really great leader can get his or her followers to charge hell with a bucket of water, but hell will win that one every time. A really good manager can organize everything to the nth degree, have all of the tools and water to quench the fires of hell, but, if unable to get the folllowers to use those tools, hell still wins.

I have seen both extremes. The best ones I have seen are those who have developed both qualities in balance and know when and how to lead and manage and when and to what degree those qualities are needed. Allen: I only discovered Drucker a few months ago and have gone through a couple books and multiple articles by him as well as a biography and multiple articles about him.

His view of the organization is almost theological in nature one article saw German theological roots in his views. We need more of that in modern business. The fundamental dichotomy was task oriented. Leadership is figuring out where to go, management is knowing how to get there. There may very well be some distinctions between leadership and management. She sees herself as the eccentric tragic heroine, and it would be a grave wrong for us to take away her uniqueness and sense of romantic isolation by surrounding her with more people like her.

The Academy of Management Review had a recent issue Oct. Thought it was worth mentioning. No need to jump to conclusions or be rude to Allen. Nice discussion, Walker. Now the same businesses either hire business or accounting undergrads, or any undergrad with an MBA.

It is very hard to take seriously a psychological analysis which gets basic, fundamental issues such as gender completely wrong. Also, was there a question in there? So why am I even defending it? I find this piece to be of little value. What is it actually trying to establish? Does HN engage in rhetorical flourishes? So what? Is that not a common style in commencement speeches and many other places, like political pulpits? In fact, the distinction remains important and common in business schools and ed schools.

Several major ed schools changed the name of dept of Admin to Leadership over past decade. It remains alive and well — for sufficient reason. Of course there is no bright, sharp line — where in social science is there? But ldrshp as setting direction, etc. It is not an issue of who uses rhetorical flourishes, it is an issue of false dichotomies and the damage they can cause.

Personally, I find this one of the more valuable blog posts written recently. And its widespread use by specialists in management and leadership attest to its usefulness. Thanks for dropping by and for the critique. I hope this last one will help clear it up a bit. I shall return in a few days when I have my laptop again. I think this is incorrect and needs to be clarified.

Kotter, an expert in leadership, distinguishes between the two in footnote 7. However, as I say there, he is more nuanced than Nibley. Nibley also seems to think that leadership is inherently moral. I do not even think that a relevant way to look at his purpose, articulation, and context. Your claim is hardly new. I have been researching and writing on ldrshp and management since and knew HN both in and out of class, personal letters, and familiarity with his corpus.

I understand it was originally a commencement speech, but it was published in Dialogue. If it had remained a speech, I doubt I would care. However, his view of mgmt and business in this article seems similar to the views expressed in Approaching Zion which I also have problems with. The debate over leadership vs.

But plenty are familiar with and highly respect Nibley as they should. I wanted to point out where I thought Nibley gets carried away in this case. I find this problematic, especially in a church with many business managers. Being published in a Mormon oriented journal does not make the HN speech an academic exercise.

It was a fun speech, a piece of rhetoric for a particular setting, pure and simple. It would be the rare Mormon who would give so much analytical attention, or care. To what purpose? For whose benefit? I found the speech to paint management in a very negative, if not sinister light.

I think this is not only wrong, but inappropriate even for a commencement speech. But to me, it was the equivalent of getting up there and saying humanities majors are unproductive members of society: both wrong and inappropriate in a university setting. I specified what I disagreed with. Read more carefully. You are not even in the same universe with your analogy. When you paint a picture of managers as Amalickiah or businessmen as Cain, I admit that fail to take that as anything but negative.

I can understand why an MBA student or business professional would write this. One of the few respected voiced of the LDS Church who has articulated disapproval about issues that touch on their choice of profession and livelihood, and the natural reaction is either to rebut or interrogate his position.

I am grateful that this has been done in such an informative and thought-provoking way. Nibley was a self-avowed socialist, and he viewed early Mormon economics through that lens. So, it simply does not do, and, in fact, it is more than a little misleading if unintentionally so , to attack this one piece of his on the point of theories of leadership and management without taking his economic philosophy into account.

Simply put, Nibley sees capitalism and divine economics as fundamentally irreconcilable. He sees capitalism as unavoidably corrupt, abusive, and destructive for many, while a small number of people benefit in wildly disproportionate ways.

Nibley, speaking in what I think was an authentically prophetic voice, did not flinch at what he felt was his obligation to call people to repentance.

It is especially important to remember that Nibley had a front row perspective on the transformation of the LDS Church into an organization that is structured as a giant corporation and adopts corporate culture enthusiastically as its own. Very few have stopped to ponder the implications of these decisions and weigh in on whether embracing such a structure and culture was ultimately compatible with scripture and LDS doctrine—Christ, really.

The transformation simply occurred. Nibley is one of the few voices that ever raised public criticism in a way that has inspired guys like Walker to respond. Why is that? I think the answer is simple. Business has become the first god to which most people give their unquestioned loyalty. And, it does not matter how many people suffer because of the abuses of the prevailing system, the hegemony of the culture of business and finance reign supreme even after the near destruction of the world economy.

Nibley has to be wrong, or he has to be madman, not to see how salvation is to be achieved, how the Zion he dreamt of can only be realized, through the very mechanisms he so thoroughly abhorred for reasons that Walker has conveniently left altogether opaque. Again, I think this is a fabulous piece of writing. And I do not impugn the talents, intelligence, and good intentions of the author.

At the same time, I fundamentally repudiate the culture that informs his views. I think it is ultimately destructive and exploitative. Caesar may no longer kill his millions with legions so that he may be great.

He just leverages the economies of entire nations and leaves the people starving, working their fingers to the bone, and suffering in agony for the short duration of their pitiful lives.

It is a way of life that is so blatantly and obviously anti-Christ that no one should question the factual observation, and yet to suggest as much in an LDS chapel will almost inevitably render one a social pariah. Professor Christensen is a fine example. His book on innovation in higher education is methodologically problematic, and is likely hastening the demise of the liberal education that was intended to inform the electorate.

Meanwhile he tells us to disregard the distinction between Mormon priesthood and corporate leadership. Thanks, but no. I think we have been doing that far too long already. Trevor, I am a socialist.

When I was a little kid, one of our family friends was an old man, the son of two prominent Russian Jewish revolutionaries. Later I attended school near the site of the first hydro-electric power plant in Israel.

It was built by Pinchas Rutenberg, another prominent Russian Jewish socialist revolutionary albeit anti-Bolshevik. As part of the Jewish national effort in Mandate Palestine, Rutenberg founded an electrical company, and set about building a power plant.

Rutenberg was an inspiring leader, but just as importantly, he was an inspired manager. Where he one but not the other,it is doubtful whether the company would have succeeded, let alone become the leading force in the industry there. For example, when in a flood hit which caused considerable damage to the plant and threatened to set back significantly the opening of the plant, his workers volunteered to repair the plant for free.

Rutenberg, however, exerted every effort to ensure that his employees were paid for their labour. So, as a socialist, I have some good examples of where leadership and management go hand in hand.

There are good leaders and good managers and people who are good both, just as there are poor managers and poor leaders. Leadership and management are not moral categories. From my conversations with Walker, I would say that his biggest issue here is that the mechanics specifically management are dismissed as antithecal to a particular, IE, building Zion.

Both the black and the white robes proclaim a primary concern for things of the mind and the spirit, sobriety of life, and concentration of purpose removed from the largely mindless, mechanical routines of your everyday world.

Cap and gown announced that the wearer had accepted certain rules of living and been tested in special kinds of knowledge. What is wrong, then, with the flowing robes? For one thing, they are somewhat theatrical and too easily incline the wearer, beguiled by their splendor, to masquerade and affectation.

In the time of Socrates the Sophists were making a big thing of their special manner of dress and delivery. That was the classical education which Christianity embraced at the urging of the great St. At the beginning of this century scholars were strenuously debating the momentous transition from Geist to Amt, from Spirit to office, from inspiration to ceremony in the leadership of the Early Church, when the inspired leader was replaced by the typical city bishop, an appointed and elected official—ambitious, jealous, calculating, power-seeking, authoritarian; an able politician and a master of public relations—St.

At the same time the charismatic gifts, the spiritual gifts, not to be trusted, were replaced by rites and ceremonies that could be timed and controlled, all following the Roman imperial model, as Alfoeldi has shown, including the caps and gowns. And down through the centuries the robes have never failed to keep the public at a respectful distance, inspire a decent awe for the professions, and impart an air of solemnity and mystery that has been as good as money in the bank.

Housman, H. Mencken, and others. What took place in the Greco-Roman as in the Christian world was that fatal shift from leadership to management that marks the decline and fall of civilizations. At the present time, Captain Grace Hopper, that grand old lady of the Navy, is calling our attention to the contrasting and conflicting natures of management and leadership.

No one, she says, ever managed men into battle. She wants more emphasis in teaching leadership. But leadership can no more be taught than creativity or how to be a genius. The Generalstab tried desperately for a hundred years to train up a generation of leaders for the German army, but it never worked, because the men who delighted their superiors, i. Leaders are movers and shakers, original, inventive, unpredictable, imaginative, full of surprises that discomfit the enemy in war and the main office in peace.

For managers are safe, conservative, predictable, conforming organization men and team players, dedicated to the establishment. The leader, for example, has a passion for equality. We think of great generals from David and Alexander on down, sharing their beans or maza with their men, calling them by their first names, marching along with them in the heat, sleeping on the ground, and first over the wall.

A famous ode by a long-suffering Greek soldier, Archilochus, reminds us that the men in the ranks are not fooled for an instant by the executive type who thinks he is a leader. For the manager, on the other hand, the idea of equality is repugnant and indeed counterproductive. Where promotion, perks, privilege, and power are the name of the game, awe and reverence for rank is everything, the inspiration and motivation of all good men.

Where would management be without the inflexible paper processing, dress standards, attention to proper social, political, and religious affiliation, vigilant watch over habits and attitudes, and so forth, that gratify the stockholders and satisfy security?

In short, while management shuns equality, it feeds on mediocrity. On the other hand, leadership is an escape from mediocrity. All the great deposits of art, science, and literature from the past on which all civilization is nourished come to us from a mere handful of leaders. For the qualities of leadership are the same in all fields, the leader being simply the one who sets the highest example; and to do that and open the way to greater light and knowledge, the leader must break the mold.

True leaders are inspiring because they are inspired, caught up in a higher purpose, devoid of personal ambition, idealistic, and incorruptible. There is necessarily some of the manager in every leader what better example than Brigham Young? Speaking in the temple to the temple management, the scribes and Pharisees all in their official robes, the Lord chided them for one-sidedness: They kept careful accounts of the most trivial sums brought into the temple, but in their dealings they neglected fair play, compassion, and good faith, which happen to be the prime qualities of leadership.

So vast is the discrepancy between management and leadership that only a blind man would get them backwards. Yet that is what we do. In that same chapter of Matthew, the Lord tells the same men that they do not really take the temple seriously while the business contracts registered in the temple they take very seriously indeed see Matthew History abounds in dramatic confrontations between the two types, but none is more stirring than the epic story of the collision between Moroni and Amalickiah—the one the most charismatic leader, the other the most skillful manager in the Book of Mormon.

At the slightest sign of weakening by an enemy in battle, Moroni would instantly propose a discussion to put an end to the fighting. The idea of total victory was alien to him—no revenge, no punishment, no reprisals, no reparations, even for an aggressor who had ravaged his country. He would send the beaten enemy home after battle, accepting their word for good behavior or inviting them to settle on Nephite lands, even when he knew he was taking a risk.

Even his countrymen who fought against him lost their lives only while opposing him on the field of battle—there were no firing squads, and former conspirators and traitors had only to agree to support his popular army to be reinstated.

And, like Helaman, he insisted that conscientious objectors keep their oaths and not go to war even when he desperately needed their help. Always concerned with doing the decent thing, he would never take what he called unfair advantage of an enemy. If all this sounds a bit too idealistic, may I remind you that there really have been such men in history, hard as that is to imagine today.

Yet he could apologize handsomely when he learned that he had been wrong, led by his generous impulses to an exaggerated contempt for management, and he gladly shared with Pahoran the glory of the final victory—the one thing that ambitious generals jealously reserve for themselves.

But if Moroni hated war so much, why was he such a dedicated general? His object in life was to become king of both the Nephites and Lamanites, using the one to subdue the other see Alma He was a master of dirty tricks, to which he owed some of his most brilliant achievements as he maintained his upward mobility by clever murders, high-powered public relations, and great executive ability.

His competitive spirit was such that he swore to drink the blood of Alma, who stood in his way. It is at this time in Book of Mormon history that the word management makes its only appearances three of them in all the scriptures.

All this took place in Central America. Such was the management that Moroni opposed. Even at the risk of running overtime I must pause and remind you that this story of which I have given just a few small excerpts is supposed to have been cooked up back in the s somewhere in the backwoods by some abysmally ignorant, disgustingly lazy, and shockingly unprincipled hayseed.

Aside from a light mitigation of those epithets, that is the only alternative to believing that the story is true; nobody made it up, for the situation is equally fantastic no matter what kind of author you choose to invent. That Joseph Smith is beyond compare the greatest leader of modern times is a proposition that needs no comment.

Brigham was certainly a better manager than the Prophet or anybody else, for that matter , and he knew it, yet he always deferred to and unfailingly followed Brother Joseph all the way while urging others to do the same, because he knew only too well how small is the wisdom of men compared with the wisdom of God.

But exactly what are the things of the world? That is what makes the whole thing manageable —money is pure number; by converting all values to numbers, everything can be fed into the computer and handled with ease and efficiency.

Look around you here. Do you see anything that cannot be had for money? But hold on! I have always been taught that those are the very things that managers are looking for—they bring top prices in the marketplace. Does their value in this world mean, then, that they have no value in the other world?

It means exactly that: such things have no price and command no salary in Zion; you cannot bargain with them because they are as common as the once-pure air around us; they are not negotiable in the kingdom because there everybody possesses all of them in full measure, and it would make as much sense to demand pay for having bones or skin as it would to collect a bonus for honesty or sobriety.

It is only in our world that they are valued for their scarcity. The group leader of my high priests quorum is a solid and stalwart Latter-day Saint who was recently visited by a young returned missionary who came to sell him some insurance. Cashing in on his training in the mission field, the fellow assured the brother that he knew that he had the right policy for him just as he knew the gospel was true.