>From Sunday 13Jan02 New York Times
Not long ago, the Enron Corporation's name was
part of the lexicon of corporate and political
power.... But in a matter of weeks, Enron has
been transformed into shorthand for a corporate
scandal.... "The woods were filled with smart
people at Enron, but there were really no wise
people, or people who could say 'this is enough,'"
said John Olson, a veteran energy industry analyst....
As I think I quoted Peter Drucker, yesterday:
Cleverness carries the day,
but wisdom endureth.
In today's environment of
"shrinking time and space" [the black hole, sic...],
it seems to me that we need, as the NYT quote says, to
create in our psyches an introjected equivalent of
the Julian Jaynesean voice of the goddess Athena, who, in Homer's
_Odyssey_, says to Odysseus as he is getting
wound up in a murderous frenzy: "This is enough."
Since, as Aristotle said, if one would become a virtuous
person, one should start practicing virtuous acts, and
the feelings will follow, I think we can start by
institutions issuing rules that, in all non-crisis
situations, would require delays before responding to
email. This could be enforced by computer software
which would not permit a person to respond to an
email unless a certain number of minutes had expired
since they read the email. A copy of any email sent before
the wait period expired would go to the employee's
manager's manager (or to the Board of Direcors for
CxOs), thus making sure that it would inconvenience
somebody at the top.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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