Barry,
Delightful!
However, all this is about the
producer, when the important part of the economy is the consumer – who is
all of us.
If they want to beat their brains out
to find something we like – so be it.
“Ain’t no skin orf my
nose” – as someone must have said.
Professional hockey is a product, as
are football, baseball – even golf. Note how they are trying to make
Ladies golf more glamorous.
The ‘stars’ of sport are
written up in newspapers, they give interviews in magazines, they are welcomed
on television as celebrities.
Yep, they have a good product to sell
– or many of them do.
Does me no harm as a consumer.
Harry
*******************************
Henry
George School
of Social Science
of Los Angeles
Box 655
Tujunga CA
91042
818 352-4141
*******************************
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Barry
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 12:14
PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Business has
taken over culture
The sadly disturbing
aspect to me about the following article is it's apparent accuracy in
describing the commoditisation of all aspects of our culture.
Barry
The decline of public language
By MARGARET WENTE
Saturday, August 13, 2005 Updated at 1:29 AM EDT
>From Saturday's Globe and Mail
After they settled the hockey lockout, I heard one of the players on the radio.
He was saying that he welcomed the new rules that are supposed to make the
action on the ice more exciting. "These changes will improve our
product," he said.
Silly me. Sure, the NHL is a commercial enterprise with a bottom line in a
competitive marketplace. But it was depressing to hear a superb athlete call
his game a product. Who's going to get emotionally invested in a product? If
hockey is a product, then what are fans? Do parents take their kids off to
hockey practice at 6 a.m. so that the little tykes can sharpen their product
skills? Maybe so. These days, it's not whether you win or lose. It's how you
improve the product to capture greater market share.
No area of public life is safe from the language of the marketplace. Politics
succumbed long ago. We no longer have political parties. We have brands, which
have images to be either polished or tarnished, and policy platforms that, like
toothpaste, are carefully tested beforehand on focus groups. Citizens are
treated as consumers who either do or don't like the flavour of the candidate, also
known as product. Stephen Harper is
said to be lousy at retail, which is why the poor man is being made to spend
his summer hawking his wares at every small-town barbecue and Dairy Queen. Joan
Rivers shilling cubic zirconium on the Home Shopping Network has more dignity.
You might not expect better from politics. But what about good works? The
charitable world also has a terminal case of management-speak. The new global
CEO of Foster Parents Plan (now known as Plan, for marketing simplicity) likes
to talk about the importance of "brand awareness" in the voluntary
sector. He's got ideas for better ways to "leverage dollars" and
"compete for market share." As someone whose market share has been
successfully captured by this group, I was relieved to learn that the little
girls I sponsor in far-off lands are not simply passive recipients of aid. They
are "development actors."
Every civic institution, arts organization and charity is obliged to use
management-speak nowadays. That's because they need to reassure their multiple
stakeholders that they operate on a businesslike model. They must demonstrate
that they are effective and efficient, as well as accountable and transparent.
It's not enough to help kids who live in poor countries, or treat sick people, or
teach students. Every homeless shelter and hospital, every museum and
university and branch of the civil service must have a vision, a mission, and a
strategic plan. Their managers are made to go on long retreats with
professional facilitators in order to come up with these things, which are then
enshrined on plaques, highlighted in the annual report, and hung prominently in
the main entrance of the institution for everyone to see.
Since everybody's vision and mission statement winds up sounding pretty much
the same, this exercise may strike you as a phenomenal waste of time. But
there's more. Everyone must also come up with tangible deliverables that have
measurable outcomes. They must commit themselves to partner with their donors.
They commit themselves to empower their clients, customers and, presumably,
development actors. Above all, their institutions must be leaders, preferably
world-class ones.
The decline of public language into sludge is the subject of a passionate
polemic called Death Sentences, by Australian writer Don Watson. Anyone who
cares for words should read it. Mr. Watson thinks words ought to matter. He
argues that the narrow, cliché-ridden vocabulary of managerialism has robbed
the public language of elegance and gravity. "We use language to deal with
moral and political dilemmas, but not this language," he fumes. "This
language is not capable of serious deliberation. It could no more carry a
complex argument than it could describe the sound of a nightingale. Listen to
it in the political and corporate landscape, and you hear noises that our
recent ancestors might have taken for Gaelic or Swahili, and that we ourselves
often do not understand."
The language of management-speak has created a dark and impenetrable thicket.
And once it gets into a place, it spreads like duckweed. "All kinds of
institutions now cannot tell us about their services, including the most
piddling change in them, without also telling us that they are contemporary,
innovative and forward-looking, and committed to continuous improvement,"
he points out. Much of this abuse originates with management consultants, who,
far from being jailed or sued for it, are richly rewarded. By far the worst
offenders are HR practitioners, followed by those people who concoct recruitment
ads.
"As President and CEO, you will provide vision, direction and
inspiration," says an ad I saw the other day. They were looking for
someone who could build market share for either soup or starving children; I
can't remember. "A consummate communicator, strategist and leader, you
have galvanized support for whatever corporate or charitable cause you've
undertaken. Now you can leverage that presence and energy."
Like mission statements, all job ads sound the same. Everybody wants a
"leader" who is "strategic," and preferably
"visionary."
"You are highly strategic, analytical and collaborative in approach,"
reads another ad. "You are a visionary who is forward-looking with an
innovative flair and a proven ability to move ideas from paper to practice. With
well-honed leadership skills, [you will] execute a team-driven plan that will
position this key functional area as one of excellence." What's the job?
Well, it's CFO for a university. But it could be anything, really.
Anyone who cares about language, about meaning, about clarity, should revolt.
Citizens are not customers, and democracy is not a product. If Barbra Streisand
had sung "Customers . . . customers who need customers," would anyone
have cared? If Martin Luther King had said, "I have a vision
statement," would anyone have listened? Words matter more than we think.
We need them to express our deepest values. As a wise man once said, what does
it profit you if you gain market share but lose your soul? Or something like
that.
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