Harakiri

hara = stomach
kiri = to cut

To preserve honour Japanese warriors chose to commit suicide if disgraced in order to restore it.
Furthermore they chose an incredibly painful way to self inflict their own demise. Excruciating drawn out and utterly pointless.
I mean it wasn't pointless some samurai could avoid bringing disgrace and ruin down on their families and shit, but you know some romantic teenage samurai's might all to readily commit suicide to impress a girl.
As it became popular it started to lose meaning. It started to border on the ridiculous and interestingly

samurai = to serve

many samurai ended up concluding that they could almost never serve anyone in death. The samurai government started outlawing the committing of suicide when your lord died. What's this got to do with anything? everything.
I envision a future where our descendants (ascendants?) will look at the kind of office jobs we work and be filled with as much amusement and horrified fascination at the cultural peculiarities that where religious sacrifice, honor killings and ritual suicide.
But alack so many work jobs that can only be called bleak. How cruel the world is for a country boy or at least migrant from a fairly pedestrian town to find many of the most lucrative jobs here are uninspired.
The original companies, corporations and wall street brokers where exciting because they were as much anthropological experiments as they were a means to an end.
Yet at some point the organizations settled upon structural norms, often called 'worlds best practice' and legislative beurocratic burdens. One because there's a little bit of that fuck other's needs before my own attitude in everyone and also because if governments didn't constantly legislate they would have nothing to do but think and plan.
Not every organization has access to creative risk taking leaders who will attempt to reform and innovate. Furthermore that strong group/gang mentallity, that primative tribal need to affiliate means most people are highly uncomfortable differing from norms, feeling not just vulnerable but invalid targeted.
So it seems the best thing to do is obey conventional wisdom, which has more interest in preserving the status quo than moving us towards enlightenment.
This is my sixth or seventh attempt to structure this arguement into a coherant blog post so bare with me.

The drive to ascend: Success too often is relative. People want to feel valid, and the most valid member of any organisation is a leader, simply because from the viewpoint of a vassell the leader is in control, unquestionable. Not realising the questions you ask yourself don't stop out of deferance once you too become a leader. You want to be the big fish in a small pond, not the small fish in a big pond. So of course power is desirable, the way power is created though is not through the organisational chart. Power is given not produced in almost every circumstance, people want to give over their personal power to another individual and thus create a leader. This giving is an individuals choice otherwise known as cooperation.
It's hard to see and observe how often this cooperation will flow in complicated directions to varying degrees, it's perception, and preference.
A much easier way is to see how the power should flow by observing an organizational chart. It shows who cooperates with who and in which direction the power flows.
It has two major faults - 'who cooperates with who' and 'which way the power flows'.
The difference between an organizational chart and the actual power structures is known as organizational politics, this has common occurances such as one executive having undue influence over the director, a subordinate that manages on behalf of someone else, a person of equal rank that other members of the department treat as a superior.
Blah fucking blah, every organization, so people take on informal roles and others become men of straw (occasionally a woman of straw may occur often to disguise a sexist male dominated organization). That is the people that should be high up on the chart probably don't need to actually do anything to qualify themselves for a higher position on the chart, they possess leadership. Their peers given the choice of alternatives will elevate them naturally as they often already do albeit informally. A good director should just be able to recognize this and pick them out as they float to the top.
But their are other things going on too. Namely problem numero B the way the power flows, power being given not taken should flow up, like ions building up a charge to make an object more attractive for a lightning strike, a natural leader would most likely achieve this, so similar to Karl Marx's 'the workers control the means of production' the base of the pyramid is what should make the top great. But what tends to happen is the organisation gets created top down rather than bottom up. Management often attempts to take power, that is 'legitimately' reinforce their position, with policy, laws and procedure. They instruct and expect the organisation to change to it's whim, consulting few below and instead relying on their goals and whatever they read is trendy in BRW or Fortune Magazine.
But if power is taken not given how does this work? well it is given albeit in a negative way, through the requied submission of will, once we submit to pressures (often now placed on ourselves by ourselves) we give the power away not voluntarily but through sheer necessity.
We tolerate a bad boss through fear of the mortgage, we tolerate bad policy for fear of judgement by our peers, we tolerate blaim for fear of further reprimand.
And furthermore a status quo is reinforced with status symbols.
If I do something nice for someone they may bake me a cake, one should conclude is if you do something nice for someone you may get a cake. Leaders get these kinds of rewards and gifts all the time as they are genuinly appreciated. They give a leader status, the cake becomes indicative of one's leadership abilities. Successflly steering a company may result in a windfall of cash, share options etc with which you can buy things.
However if I do something nice and get a cake, and you consider yourself my equal, then you might reasonably demand a cake, to indicate you are my equal in leadership ability.
So the indicator not the cause suddenly gets important. Hence the birth of the status symbol, indicators of leadership, often given unearned. These then become 'a given' fo a position or role. So you are promoted into someone's footsteps and recieve the same accolades for commencing their job as they have for completing it.
From this is born the desire of promotion, to be a leader without your necessarily possessing the qualities.
Organisational charts really just indicate one's entitlement to status symbols, the projection of status rather than reality.
After all management is it's own school, it's on skillset and differs greatly in style between individuals but not so between contexts.
In this regard I have a rather bleak conclusion for you, no matter how hard you pursue 'success' and to be a leader in your organisation, you may never achieve it.
And most organisational charts reinforce this.
Above all other faults think of the classic organisational chart:

It's a pyramid. It's the simplest and most stable power structure it ensures the leaders influence is felt all the way to the bottom. If you were to draw the powerflows of any real organisation you would end up with some pretty interesting shapes. Shapes that could still work well but are constantly constrained by the charts impositions on reality, trying to herd the sheep into a triangular pen.
But don't think of it as a pen...

Think of it as a highway this really helps a lot. Imagine wherever you are in your career imagine you are in a car, when you start out there are a lot of lanes. However this highway is triangular, by the time you reach your destination there is one lane (and one sweet car park space) so you look to your left and your right, there are a lot of young people on this highway in the 30 lanes next to you, some are timid and meekly give way as the lanes narrow down to 25, others brashly and arrogantly try and knock others out of there way and some just get off. You cruise along feeling successful and discover the lanes narrow again to 15 lanes...
and so on you can see if you were having to drive in this traffic you would be expecting numerous shit fights along the way and the further you get the higher your stakes for the more time you have invested in reaching your desired destination.
But this is how most organizations and conventional wisdom work.
And there's no deferance for your natural merit among those sharing your prospective laneways, for the goal is equally desirable even if the reasons for pursuing it are not all as equally valid.
Such a contest will certainly deliver a leader that has strengths, but by no necessity the best one.
If you were driving in this highway you would want to be in a humvee or at least a ferrari enzo.
The humvee is armoring yourself against your pears, this is dirty politicking and empire building, making yourself indespencible, rallying support, trying to muster as much clout and bullying and intimidating your peers. A popular and oft rewarded strategy. The ferrari is working harder and harder trying to fast track promotion. Equally bad, a popular strategy that is often not as effective as the humvee.

KPI's: Rudy Juliani claimed Compstat lead to a reduction in crime in all 5 burroghs of New York. I don't understand the New York system but the Compstat system perhaps had more merit for the way it determined KPI's rather than constantly monitoring and pushing improvements in the KPI's. It asked each department to determine their own Key Performance Indicators (KPI's).
An obvious KPI is sales measured in both unit quantity (000's of toothbrushes) or dollar value ($k's revenue).
KPI's are indicators. Not causes. And there they are useful and there they fail. KPI's are what push people to simply try harder.
As economics is a philosophy more than a science, the Macro agenda is often flimsy in principle, for example what we measure the success of our governments on is GDp. In the first Macroeconomics lesson anyone ever takes ever anywhere in the world is that it has major flaws eg. pollution is good for GDP, disasters are good for GDP. One billionaire and millions of poor looks as good as millions of relatively middle income people etc.
GDP is an indicator and like a bikini what they reveal is important and what they cover up is vital. So are most KPI's. For example, one can rack up large unit sales by discounting heavily. A person can look good for no real reason at all. Hundreds of ways exist to cook the books on this front.
In the case of a runner, it's simple to adopt the hard work theory - all you have to do is run faster than other people in the race. You can guaruntee more wins in your career by reducing the time it takes yoiu to run a certain distance.
What a runner doesn't ask is - why run? why run at all, what are you running from? a fucking lion? once, or enemy soldiers, but just to run to beat other runners is not really meaningful at all.
So why try harder and harder to run faster and faster.
In many ways we work harder and harder to sell more and more toothbrushes and thats where you start - encouraging people to change tooth brushes more frequently than they need. - reducing the useful life of the product (Eddison's light bulb still works I'm told) etc.
A bad leader clings to the KPI's because they can't produce a broader vision (exactly the only thing a leader should provide) so they cling to something that is readily identified as a measure of success. But it is an indicator of what? precisely what it is. It may be one but not enough of an indicator of good leadership.
So many people seeking advancement push and push the KPI's and as a result create unenjoyable work environments. They don't even enjoy it themselves, the irony being everyone is actually in business to produce something for society that makes lives easier and more enjoyable.
Conventional wisdom though idolises self sacrifice and hard work, conventional wisdom advocates we hollowly pursue KPI's.

Kids who live in houses with lots of books tend to do better in school than kids who don't - therefore if you buy heaps of books and put them in your house your kids will become smart.
No.
The books in the house of the kids indicates the parents enjoy readng and are possibly smarter than average. As such the kid has probably genetically inherited their intelligence.
A good manager creates a synergistic free flowing and inspired work environment, good sales follow. His successor desperate to establish himself, increase the work hours, reduces recreation times, cuts costs, monitors socialisation closely and pushes his sales force monitoring and dogging them constantly. His sales exceed his predecessors and he get's promoted.
However - other indicators tell a different story, on his promotion three of his senior staff resign or transfer. Staff turnover increases, sales decline. He fires his replacement and eventually he himself is fired by his board.
In other words the KPI of unit sales appears to indicate he is an even better manager than his predecessor. But he simply inherited his predecessors managerial fruits and sucked all life out of them. A shortterm boost, but in the longterm dramatically destructive. It's why it happens so often.
High sales indicate a good manager but they are never explicitely the indicator.
A bad manager can acheive a better KPI.

Long term vs Short Term thinking: One thing can be said about Saddam. Back in '91 he probably wasn't thinking he would eventually be hung. And he should have. He should have because that was the only possible way he could get himself removed from power. To piss off someone capable of removing him.
Of course he didn't really.
He carried on as he had done for pretty much 10 years. He never aggravated anyone enough to come topple his regime, an indicator of long term planning. But some other dude flew a plane into a building in America which pissed off an incompetent short term thinking leader. He was incapable of catching the actual culprit and so in an extraodanary logical leap Saddam found himself at the mercy of this short term thinker.
In dying a martyr Saddam won the war on terror, he was killed by an Enemy whom before his execution had been brought to admit that their causes for war were based on faulty evidence and were being punished sorely for their short sightedness.
I don' believe in any cause of Saddam's but the contrast between a leader with ongoing responsibilities and a long term need to preserve power and leave a legacy vs. a fixed term president that merely has a window of opportunity to push through as much self interested policy as possible. Otherwise live it up while the times are good.
I don't know how Moderate any dictators are - frankly I don't give a shite what goes on in the middle east just so long as I never have to go and fight any of those crazy fuckers whether they be a muslim, catholic, christian, jew or gentile or terrorist.
But in the end most western institutions encourage short term thinking, because they feel it is safer to install power in limited installments. We want a leader to be powerful and command however not to go too far.
So we don't limit their powers, just their time frames. But enough about governemtn, the office! Laws thankfully prevent us from adopting a fixed term style of management where one has the power to ask for blowjobs from any inferior employee (which is to say he can't take one legally but you might give him one you suck).
Instead the opposite, employees have rights but a manager is employeed in turn by people more powerful than him rather than people whose managerial skills he will actually effect. They have rights too, and powers though limited and if they can deliver they can stick around as long as they want. In between every slot on the rung becomes a short term goal. A distraction from the overall vision of the nature of the organisation and what it gives to society being the broader wider reason as to why you are at work. Why get a mortgage on a place to live if you don't enjoy living?
That's because short term goasl require far less thought, consideration, creativity and discipline. Often just a fair bit of mindless effort is all you need to achieve.
As warren buffett said - 'too often managers shoot the arrow of managerial excellence and paint the target around where it lands' that is managers define the own terms of their success.
SO what we have is most of the worlds energies being channelled into inefficient mindless machines which are incapable of providing most people with a decent chance of succeeding.
Pretty depressing, but I must note this isn't the fault of managers. Because manager in itself is a status symbol as much as it is a societal symptom - an indicator. A manager is someone we have given over the responsibility for deciding what we do day in day out.
A real employee DOES NOT NEED A MANAGER AT ALL, ie they don't need to be told what to do. Maybe just a leader to follow. This in anarchy ridden times like fuedal japan's warring states period tend to rise to the top naturally because the short term goals of the multitudes require them for survival.
Now if there's someone at your work or a teacher at your school that you wouldn't trust with the petty cash box or to do what they are supposed to do without supervision clearly managers are still necessary. But they could just be leaders, in the confucian ideal of leading by example in matters of principle and virtue whilst staying clear of the micro management level.
Organisations where created by the mediocre, the average in it's desire to change it's fate. For the worker controlling the means of production to ascend to a leadership position it has not earned.
It wants it's power to be handed down by a real leader unearned. Most orgnisations are riddled with these people the self same people who when younger made it unsafe to drive, and make it unsafe to drive still.
Anyway it's all those primal needs that keep organisations around by people with no sense of purpose after they have lost the power to inspire but not motivate. Maybe we would be better off if a few people admitted defeat and sliced open their own abdomens.

The 'Big three' of the warring states period met the following fates:

1. Oda Nobunaga abolished the ineffective and corrupt Ashikaga Shogunate was stabbed in the back by a traitor.
2. Toyotomi Hideyoshi his successor unified Japan and died of dimensia a revered Samurai who had risen from the lowest ranks)
3. Tokugawa Ieyasu became Shogun and the founder of a rule that lasted 200 years sparking the renaissance from which Geisha, Kabuki and most artwork emerged dying in retirement a happy old man.

None committed suicide).