Monday, May 14, 2007

SL BDSM as a lab exercise for a RL management training

During a casual conversation with someone I respect quite a lot for the wits and smartness (besides the other observable good qualities :-), kiddingly I've dropped in an attempt of a joke that being a dominating person in the BDSM is like being a manager in love.

Upon further thinking on this topic, I think BDSM could be used precisely as a practical lab in management/leadership courses of what is NOT to be done.

Disclaimer: all of the musings below are based on my very limited, shallow, and narrow-minded theoretical knowledge of both positions, so should not be treated any seriously, besides, the lack of exposure to both of the opportunities will almost certainly result in some gaping inconsistencies, which you are very welcome to correct. The opinions described here are merely personal opinions of the Second Life avatar, and as such, do not exist in real world, so if reading this causes you to spill your hot coffee on yourself, the computer to crash, the sun to stop shining, I decline any and all responsibilities for the mental and any other possible and impossible damages caused (after all, the coffee is supposed to be HOT - so predicting the results of spilling it is the responsibility of any thoughtful reader and NOT mine!). Besides, any correlations and similarities to anything are fully random and are the sole result of reader's too wild imagination.

In any case, lets start this largely anti-scientific fun exercise...

1) B.: No-No. Tying the people up makes them feel small. The "Small person" syndrome creates discomfort and kills motivation.

The manager should create a sense of responsibility and empowerment in the employees, which is hard to do if you put the handcuffs on them and stick something into the mouth so they do not whine too much :-)

2) D.: Well, this is a lesser evil, in a sense that in any hierarchical structure there is a natural set of "precedences". However, again, the domination carries the sense of free will suppression. Even in the case of conveyor belt - you might want your employees to be proud of their work.

A good manager would make the employee think that it is all the employee's results that are achieved and the employee would not notice the actual efforts behind this(disclaimer: most of the results are the persons' achievement anyway, however, meta-results that result in those results are not necessarily)

3) S.: The affection of persons towards this item could be considered dually. If the said activities do not bring any achievements to the one being tortured - then this is a wasteful torture, and the manager who finds the joy in such, maybe should reconsider the career aspirations.

However, the only well-remembered things are the ones you learn while spilling a bit of your blood - so a little bit of torture which leads to the person's growth should be considered as a very positive ingredient of a leader.

4) M.: is an opposite of S. and practically always coexists - just in different hemispheres. So, too much of S. is also not too great - it means there is a great potential for useless tortures.

However, if one to understand M in a sense of being willing to listen to others' input, react, and improve accordingly - then indeed that is an immensely useful quality and should be observed in all the candidates of the lab.

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