Of developmental advice and the nature of wisdom

This blog claims to be on ‘HR, OD and Personal Effectiveness’. However, there are only a few posts on this blog on personal effectiveness (like ‘Passion for work and anasakti’, ‘ Job and Identity‘ , ‘Personal effectiveness and wisdom’, ‘Of shibumi, areté and personal excellence‘, ‘Of career development and sublimation‘ etc.). Of late, I have been wondering why this has happened. Was it just because most of my work is more directly related to HR and OD? Or is there something deeper, like the nagging feeling that ‘words might not outperform silence’ when it comes to talking about personal effectiveness?  

So, I decided to do an exploration of the nature of 'developmental advice' (any advice that is intended to improve the effectiveness of someone at the workplace or in life in general) and the assumptions underlying most of the developmental advice. This developmental advice can be provided by anyone (e.g. managers, mentors, colleagues, team members, coaches, teachers, parents, elders etc. and sometimes, they are represented by the generic term 'teacher' in this post).

The first thing that I realized was that we need to differentiate between two types of developmental advice - one that is more 'information oriented' and one that is more 'wisdom oriented'. 

Information-oriented development advice is more like development feedback - it provides a piece of information that the person receiving the advice was not aware of. It can be internal (e.g. 'pointing out a blind-spot'  that the person was not aware of) or external (e.g. related to a developmental option that the person was not aware of) in nature. This kind of advice, so long as it is factually correct, is indeed helpful for a person to get started on a development journey though it might not have any influence on how much progress the person is able to make on the journey.

Wisdom-oriented development advice is deeper and more complex. Process of gaining wisdom often involves struggling with (and some times even unsuccessfully struggling with) the complexities in life. 

When it comes to wisdom-oriented developmental advice, the basic assumptions are 

1. that the person giving the advice has gained a higher degree of wisdom (regarding the particular aspect covered in the advice) through his/her life experience   
2. that this wisdom can be communicated and 
3. that the receiver is able to 'absorb' the wisdom and is also able to act on the wisdom

To me, the problem is mainly with assumptions 2 and 3. In general, wisdom is much more difficult to communicate as compared to information. Also, without going through the corresponding life experience, this wisdom, even though it is 'true', might not make sense to the receiver. There is a huge difference between knowing something philosophically and arriving at the same knowledge through experience! 

This brings to mind a Zen story that I came across in one of the books of Osho.  It is about the so called 'first principle of Zen'. The concept is that once you know the first principle of Zen, you become enlightened. The story is as follows:

Once, a beginner asked a Zen master, "Master, What is the first principle?". "If I were to tell you, it would become the second principle", replied the Zen master. 

Probably, it is this point (that wisdom can neither be 'stored' nor be 'communicated', in the normal sense of those words) is what limits the usefulness of most of the self-help books. Of course, self-helps books are often useful in providing hope (that there is light at the end of the tunnel) and encouragement. It is also said that the meaning that one derives from a great book often runs in parallel with or is even independent of what is written. May be, that holds true for all forms of developmental advice that we have been exploring in this post! 

It also makes me wonder if the 'wisdom-level consulting', that I was so keen to do, would really work (even if somehow I manage to 'become wise' in the future)! It is not that I haven't come across  HR consultants who are truly wise (See 'Truth and Beauty : Motivations and Elegance in HR' for an account of my interaction with one such gentleman). My concern is more about to the extent to which the clients would be able to 'absorb'  and 'apply' that wisdom. 

While wisdom can't be communicated, it can indeed be hinted at. While wisdom can't be given, it can be acquired. A wise teacher (or a wise coach or a wise manager) can 'create a field' or 'hold a space'  that maximizes the possibility that the learner is able to derive more understanding or even wisdom from the learner's own experiences (See 'Remarkable Encounters - Part 1: Teacher' for an example from my personal experience). Of course, we can't assume that the person giving the development advice is always correct or that the advice is the right one at the right right for the learner. This highlights the need for the learner to be discerning when it comes to accepting and absorbing developmental advice. This is a bit tricky as this discernment needs some kind of wisdom!

It is interesting to speculate what happens to this 'teacher-student'  relationship (that is so essential for the the above 'learning space' to materialize) when the teachers (or coaches) become (highly-paid/expensive) 'service providers' instead of being 'gurus'! Can the learners (especially when they are paying for it) hold the teachers/coaches accountable for results, and if yes, would that make the outcome (or Key Performance Indicators) move away from 'wisdom' towards 'information and skills'? Can this also lead to conflicts of interest between the teacher/coach and the learner?

While one can learn from the experiences of others, wisdom requires additional work in terms of 'personalization' before it can be absorbed and integrated. Yes, a certain degree of 'readiness' on the part of the student is required for welcoming the wisdom. If 'the teacher appears before the student is ready' the teaching (or coaching) is unlikely to work! When the learner is ready, wisdom might even appear unaided, like the proverbial butterfly that comes on its own and sits softly on one's shoulder. Now, developing this readiness is probably not just a matter of effort (and there is no algorithm for it), and, may be, some sort of 'grace' is involved in this process. Again, wisdom is more a matter of  'being wise in the moment' as compared to that of 'becoming wise for good'! 

Any comments/suggestions?

Note: It can be argued that there is another category of developmental advice called 'knowledge-oriented developmental advice' that comes somewhere in between the 'information-oriented developmental  advice'  and the  'wisdom-oriented developmental advice. This depends on how exactly do we define these three terms (e.g. information as 'processed data', knowledge as 'useful information gained through learning and experience' and wisdom as 'the discernment  to apply the appropriate knowledge to a particular situation'). Even if we bring in this additional category, it can be said that 'knowledge is useful only in those situations where it is almost superfluous'! Please see 'Driven to insights!' for more details.  

Truth and Beauty: Motivations and Elegance in HR

“I am an old man. I don’t have time for these kinds of HR interventions now”, said the senior consultant.

We had requested this gentleman to come to our office for an exploratory meeting – to identify possible HR initiatives to improve organizational effectiveness. He came for the meeting ‘unarmed’ - he did not bring any of the typical consultant weapons like brochures and presentations. He did not even have a laptop with him!

He listened to us for a long time while we were giving him a detailed account of the organization context & the challenges we were facing. Then he asked a few questions and we had a discussion on the same. Then he went to the whiteboard and in a simple diagram he captured his understanding of our situation and the levels at which interventions can be done and the basic details of those interventions. After that he asked us what we wanted to do and we gave our opinion. That was when he made the above statement.

The way he said it shook me. He was not just saying that he was busy. He meant that he no longer had the time to do these kinds of work (interventions at ‘not- so- deep’ levels) regardless of how much value the organization saw in them, how good he was in that kind of work, or even how much he will be paid. At that stage in his life, he wanted to work only on those projects that he found to be personally meaningful. Of course, this does not mean that other types of interventions do not add value. It was just that he did not want to get involved!

I recall this encounter quite often. Apart from making me think about the kind of work I really want to do, it also prompts me to think about the 'basic motivations' for HR professionals.

It does not make sense to do ‘HR for HR function’ (taking up initiatives to make the HR function look good) or to do ‘HR for HR professionals’ ("I want to do some HR interventions and I will somehow convince the business for it").  HR exists to support the business and hence HR has to be aligned to business. But the issue of business alignment of HR is a complex one (See 'Paradox of Business Orientation of HR'). After all, most of us want HR to mean something more than ‘making people do more work without paying them too much and without risking disruptions to the business operations’!!!

One way to think about ‘what motivates HR professionals’ is to take the approach that HR professionals are human beings first and hence what motivates them can be understood in terms of theories of human motivation – as they play out in the context of the roles in HR/careers of HR professionals.

For example, if we assume some sort of need fulfillment (say based on a hierarchy of needs like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs/'Existence-Relatedness-Growth' needs in Alderfer's ERG framework) is the basic driver for motivation, we can easily explain the behavior of the senior consultant featured at the beginning of this post by saying that as his lower order needs had been fulfilled and hence what motivated his behavior in that situation was the urge to find opportunities for fulfilling his higher order needs (growth/self-actualization needs). While this looks like a very neat explanation, it might be a rather simplistic one (see ‘The power of carrot and stick’). Similarly we can look at the motivations of HR professionals in terms of other frameworks like personality profiles/types (e.g. OPQ, MBTI etc.), Talents/Strengths, Career Anchors etc.

Another set of motivations can result from the alignment to (or belief in) a particular 'philosophy of HR' (See ‘Towards a philosophy of HR’). Of course, individual vision, mission and values of the HR professional can also be sources of very strong motivations. Since these can be very individual specific, we can get a wide range of dimensions here (see 'Daydreams of an OD Mechanic' for a personal example). Finding meaning in their work (see 'Do we need a new defining myth for HR?') is important for all professionals - including HR professionals! Actually, I would go one step beyond and suggest that considering the role of HR managers as 'architects of meaning' (See 'Architects of meaning : From CHRO to CMO'), this becomes even more relevant for HR professionals from a professional integrity (in the sense of achieving integration/alignment between one's thoughts/feelings, speech and action) point of view. Also, talking about food (including 'food for the soul' that can be called 'meaning') often makes one more aware of one's own hunger - unless this 'talking about food/meaning' is more of a 'displacement activity'!!!Again, as I have said earlier, 'hanging around in HR for too long' without a compelling reason, can be a risky business - especially for personal happiness!

HR professionals who have taken their behavior science education seriously (see ‘HR professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder’) might suffer from some of the ‘motivational complications’ that social scientists suffer. For example, many social scientists suffer some sort of ‘physics envy’ and this along with other things might create a compulsion for them to work on those initiatives that are research based. However, as I have said earlier (See 'Research and a three-year old' &  'Truths stretched too far' for the details), this might not be possible in HR the way it is feasible in physics. We can still derive a lot of value from these research findings (and behavior science principles/theories), if we look at them mainly as a source of ideas (and not as absolute objective truth)!

Going back to our discussion on business alignment of HR, it has to be noted that there exist significant differences across organizations when it comes to the ‘picture of success’ (See ‘On what good looks like’). Hence it makes sense for an individual (HR professional) to work for organizations where there will be a good degree of agreement between the definitions of the organization and that of the individual (on what is required/what good looks like).

This leads to an interesting situation. If the choice of the HR interventions can’t be made in an algorithmic manner (or based on conclusive evidence), then the choice will be governed by ‘some sort of judgment’ made by the HR professional. Often, the choice becomes a matter of aesthetics (and that is where beauty and elegance comes in). The beauty we are talking about is a special kind of beauty – that manifests in terms of fit (with the context) and coherence (internal consistency among the various dimensions of the intervention), parsimony of unproven assumptions (Occam's razor), parsimony of effort (understanding and using 'leverage points' - where the application of a small input can lead to a high output) and of course 'Simplicity on the other side of Complexity' (See 'U-curve and simplicity at the other side of complexity').

While the biological evolution has given us the natural ability to make high quality judgments about aspects in the natural environment, some sort of a professional evolution  of the HR professional (based on years of struggle with the paradoxes in the HR domain)is required to make the type of high quality judgments that we are talking about here (See ‘Wisdom-level consulting’). Yes, often ‘less is more’ and sometimes, the best HR intervention might be to do nothing for the time being (remember - 'first do no harm')! One of the useful 'side effects' of the 'struggle with the paradoxes in the HR domain' mentioned above is that the HR professional develops a better appreciation of  'what won't work' in a given situation and this can be a great help in dealing with the common temptation for HR managers 'to try too many things' !!!

So, my fellow HR professionals – What are the factors that motivate you?!! What role does elegance/beauty play in your HR related decision-making?!!!

Note: It can be argued that the title of the post itself is a case of physics envy as it is similar to the title of a book by S Chandrasekhar (the famous physicist). While I do admit that Physics was my first love, I am quite sure that I had grown out of it when I realized years ago that, at advanced levels, the exploration of physical reality becomes a highly mathematical exercise. Hence I would like to think of it more as a case of ‘inspired by Physics’ and not that of ‘Physics envy’!!!

Do regional and global roles always make sense?

"Do you know why am I staying on in this organization? It is because if I hang around here for another ten years, I will be in a global role where I can make 25 people in 20 different countries run around doing absolutely meaningless work", said the frustrated HR professional.

I had heard this statement about 7 years ago. It popped up in mind recently, possibly because of my current 'obsession' with 'sense-making'/'meaning creation' process in organizations (see 'Architects of Meaning - From CHRO to CMO' for details).

This post is primarily about regional and global roles in the context of careers in HR. Similar to what we did in 'Career Development and Sublimation' let us define 'career' as 'pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement where one takes up positions of increasing responsibility, complexity & contribution'. Going by this definition, regional and global roles seem to make 'career-sense' for HR professionals as they can provide a natural progression from country level roles in terms of geographical scope of the responsibilities. These roles also make 'organization-sense' as the HR structure that includes regional and global roles often mirrors the organization structure of the business.

So what (if any) can be the possible problems with moving on to regional and global roles in HR?

The first is that while comparable regional and global roles are usually at a higher organization level as compared to country level roles, they might not necessarily be more complex. Also if there are basic problems with the HR operating model of the company (e.g. in terms of definition of roles, nature of the responsibilities, feasibility of carrying out those responsibilities, buy-in from business leaders at various levels etc.) progressing from country to regional roles might not enable the HR professional to solve (or even to 'grow out of') the problems' that he/she has been struggling with at the country level.

Another set of problems arise because of the nature of regional and global roles. Because of the large geographical scope, role holders in these roles will have to influence indirectly and/or focus very narrowly. This might lead to 'diffusion' of responsibility and/or 'marginalization of the role' (in terms of not being able to create a tangible impact on the business). This create difficulties with the 'taking up roles with increasing contribution' part in our definition of the term 'career'. This bring us to another type of 'sense' - in terms of the role change being 'personally meaningful' for the HR professional concerned (the 'sense-making' or 'meaning-creation' process that was mentioned in the second paragraph in this post).

Again, since these roles have to look at multiple territories each with different contexts, the role holders will have to work mainly at the level of guiding principles, guidelines and targets that will have varying degrees of relevance in particular territories (and to the HR professionals who are implementing them in those territories). The impact will depend on the extent of centralization/ monitoring/ enforcement, degree of detail and the flexibility (or lack of it) to make modifications at a territory level. This can create situations where HR professionals at local level get frustrated (as these inputs/interventions/demands from the role holders in regional/global roles do not make sense to them)- leading to statements like the one with which we started this discussion/post. May be one of the key responsibilities of regional/global HR roles should be to actively help in (influence!?) the sense-making process in the minds of the HR professionals at the country level!

This inference is not without irony. Earlier in this discussion, reference was made to a previous post which said that HR professionals should become 'Architects of Meaning' (and even that the 'Chief Human Resources Officer' should become the 'Chief Meaning Officer'). Now we are saying that HR professionals need a dose of their own medicine. May be, there is no irony. It might just be that Human Resource professionals are also human!!!

Over to you for your comments/ideas!!!

The power of ‘carrot and stick’

It seems rather ‘regressive’ for someone who calls himself an ‘Organization Development Professional’ to write a post on ‘the power of carrot and stick’. Haven’t we transcended the ‘carrot and stick’ method of motivating employees a long time ago (at least after Frederick Herzberg came up with the ‘two-factor'/'motivation - hygiene’ theory almost 50 years ago)?

The objective of this post is not to recommend or to praise the ‘carrot and stick method’. It is just to examine the actual situation in this domain (in terms of both theory and practice) and to explore the possible reasons for the 'power of carrot and stick'. We will also look at possible responses to this situation - from both the employee's and the employer's points of view.

While today's organizations are unlikely to talk about the 'carrot and stick method', if we analyze the methods that are actually being used by organizations to 'motivate' their employees, we are likely to find a high amount of ‘carrot and stick’ element in them. Of course, the ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’ have become more sophisticated. But, in time of ‘organization stress’ (e.g. the recent economic downturn) some of this sophistication often disappears and more crude forms of ‘carrot and stick’ (that were thought to have become extinct) reappear!

Let us come back to Herzberg. Technically speaking, the ‘two factor’ theory of Herzberg is primarily about ‘satisfaction and dissatisfaction’ – and not exactly about motivation (as job satisfaction might not necessarily lead to motivation or productivity). So it seems possible that the ‘carrot and stick’ method of 'motivation' might be very much alive – both ‘in theory' (more about this later in this post) and ‘in practice'.

Now, let us examine why the 'carrot and stick method' works so well. I think that the power of ‘carrot and stick’ emanates mainly from the fact that it takes advantage of two of the most basic human emotions -‘desire’ and ‘fear’. To be more explicit, ‘carrot’ scores a direct hit on ‘desire’ and ‘stick’ does the same on ‘fear’. It can be argued that if we use the terms ‘desire’ and ‘fear’ in a broad sense, most of the human emotions (and hence most of the human behavior and motivation!) can be ‘modeled’ in terms of these two (and the human responses to them).

If we push the above argument a little further, it can be deduced that the so called ‘content theories’ of motivation (especially those that talk about fulfillment of ‘needs’ – e.g. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, ERG theory, McClelland’s theory of needs etc.) can’t distance themselves too much from ‘desire’ element (and hence from ‘carrot and stick’). Similarly, if we take a close look at some of the ‘process theories’ of motivation (e.g. Expectancy theory) we might be able to detect elements of ‘carrot and stick' in them also (e.g. especially in the 'valance' part of the 'expectancy - instrumentality - valance' chain/of the cognitive process that leads to motivation, as per the Expectancy theory).

If we consider motivation as a 'state of mind' (i.e. something that happens in the mind of a person), 'carrot and stick' (or anything external to that person, like what the manager/ employer does) can't directly cause motivation to occur - it can only create a situation where motivation is likely to be 'triggered'. Again, the method for applying carrots and/or sticks for maximum effectiveness (especially if we take the sustainability of the effectiveness account), can become quite complex. There have been quite a few studies on the effectiveness of various types of positive and/or negative reinforcement strategies to elicit desired responses. So the 'power' of 'carrot and stick' does not imply that the application (of 'carrot and stick') is always easy!

Now, let us look at this situation from the other side – from the point of view of the employee who is at the ‘receiving end’ of these motivation strategies. From the above discussion, it can be seen that if an employee wants to be immune from the power of ‘carrot and stick’, he/she should develop immunity from ‘desire and fear’ – at least those types of desires and fears that can be leveraged/manipulated by the employer. Easier said than done – I must admit - for most of the 'real' people in 'real' organizations! By the way, in the novel 'Siddartha' by Hermann Hesse, there is a beautiful description of how this method of motivation (implemented through an incentive scheme - with a significant upside and downside for the employee) attempted by an employer (Kamaswami, the rich merchant) fails to have any impact on an employee (Siddartha) who had transcended 'desire and fear' ("Siddartha can think, Siddartha can wait, Siddartha can fast"). It is also interesting to note that this novel was first published in 1922 - much before 'HRD' (in the current sense of the term) came into existence.

My point is not that most of the human beings are nothing more than bundles of ‘desires and fears’. We are capable of other emotions (like love, sense of pride, sense of duty, quest for purpose/meaning etc.) that might go beyond ‘fear and desire’. So it should be possible to find ways of motivation based on these 'higher' emotions. However, these higher emotions might not be very easy to ‘manipulate’ in an organization setting. Please see 'Passion for work and anasakti' for a more detailed discussion on this.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about incident that triggered the thought process that resulted in this post. One of my friends asked me to comment on an article which argued that ‘Leaders should inspire people as opposed to motivating them’. When I thought about this, I felt that the situation was a bit more complex than what it appeared to be – when we look at what really happens in many organizations. Most of the organizations have an essentially top-down goal setting/goal cascade process. While individuals might have some degree of freedom to shape their roles/deliverables, individual goals must add up to the corporate goals. Also, organizations usually hire people to do a particular job (which might even have a formal job description that details the job responsibilities). These factors can lead to a situation where a large part of what needs to be done by a particular employee has been 'fixed'/‘mandated’ or even 'imposed'. If what you need to do is fixed, then whether the leader ‘inspires you’ or ‘motivates you’ to get the same thing done can become essentially a matter of semantics!

I also feel that ‘inspiring someone’ (creating a situation where someone might become inspired- to be precise) is a more unpredictable process (in terms of outcomes) as compared to 'motivating someone' (to do a particular task – say through carefully applied positive and/or negative reinforcement - including the promise/threat of applying/withdrawing positive and negative reinforcement or ‘carrots and sticks’ !). No, I am not endorsing the 'morality' of these 'motivation' techniques. I am just saying that they are possible. I must also mention that there could be situations where these techniques might fail. For example, it is easy to create 'incentives' (financial and non financial) for someone to write a book. But, whether this can result in a 'great book' (if the author is not really inspired to write the book) is debatable. However, the fact still remains that 'inspiration' is often a complex (and elusive!) phenomenon.

While, your manager can 'inspire' you, what you will end up doing based on (triggered by) that inspiration can’t always be predicted accurately. So, if the objective is to get you to do a particular task, I am not sure if the pure inspiration route will always work. Any attempt to make the inspiration more controlled, will bring in the element of manipulation that this inspiration approach is trying to avoid. Of course, if we are talking about a community with no predefined goals (as opposed to organizations that usually have predefined/ mandated goals) then this inspiration approach might work – though no one can predict what will exactly will the outcome be (at the individual and at the community level – considering ‘interaction effects’ and ‘emergence’)!!

Well, it can be seen that the post that I ended up writing (based on the above trigger) went much beyond a response to the immediate ‘provocation’. May be I was inspired (as opposed to just being motivated)!!!

Now, over to you for your comments!

Note 1: It might be possible to make a distinction between actions that we take because of some sort of compulsion and those we take because we really want to do so (e.g. between compliance and commitment). The problem here is that compulsion does not necessarily mean coercion (at least not in the usual meaning of the term 'coercion') - any sort of 'inducement' can also imply compulsion. In a way, all we can observe is the action and the reason behind the action is some thing that we infer - especially in the case of other people. Even if we are talking about our own actions and the reasons for those actions there is the problem of rationalization (e.g. we can attribute the 'good' actions to intrinsic motivation and the 'not so good' actions to external compulsions). Hence the distinction between the two types of actions can get blurred.

Note 2: In this post, the term 'desire' has been used in a broad sense. This makes it easy to link 'needs' and 'carrots' to this term. But it can also be argued that if we use broad definitions for fear and desire, even the 'higher order' emotions mentioned above (like love, sense of pride/ duty/ purpose/ meaning etc.) can be mapped to/'reduced to' (at least, in the 'factor analysis' sense) the core emotions of fear and desire. To deal with this, we need to define these terms (terms like desire, fear, love, sense of purpose and of course the terms action/ motion/ movement, motivation, and inspiration) more precisely and in a manner that has internally consistency/ coherence (at least 'arbitrary coherence' -as Dan Ariely says in his book 'Predictably Irrational') . But that involves too much work (may be even a lifetime of work!) which is beyond the scope of this post.

Note 3: Now, that I have mentioned the name of Dan Ariely, I must also say that I am fascinated by the work that behavioral economists (like Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler & Dan Ariely) have done in exploring the domain of human motivation and decision-making - and the predictable irrationalities in the same. Their studies have also shown that 'relational rewards' work better than 'monetary rewards' in many circumstances, though relational rewards have the disadvantage of raising relational expectations. Please note that this does not negate the 'power of carrot and stick' . We can always say that while relational rewards ('relational carrots') and different from 'monetary/transactional rewards' ('transactional carrots') - they are still 'carrots' - carrots that appeal to higher order needs (say in Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Again, it has been suggested that monetary incentives work best in the case of simple tasks (tasks involving straight forward physical or mental activity; i.e. tasks that don't require creativity) where higher performance is just a matter of trying harder and where the performance can be measured accurately. This also need not necessarily create problems for the 'power of carrot and stick theory' as this is more about the relative effectiveness of carrots. We must also note that there is an intense debate going in between 'rational choice economists' and 'behavioral economists' - regarding the applicability of the findings from behavioral economics experiments. It has been argued that we are quite rational in most circumstances (i.e. in our natural habitat/ in familiar situations) and these predictable irrationalities surface mainly in in unfamiliar circumstances and that the conditions created in some of the behavioral economics experiments are quite unnatural (i.e. not representative of the conditions faced by most people most of time in the real world). Even the very definition of rationality is open to debate (e.g. rationality can be defined narrowly - just as a consistent system of preferences/consistent response to incentives - even if these preferences might not be 'good' for the decision maker - as judged by the society)!

Note 4: It can be argued that all the leadership/management actions involve influencing and hence some element of manipulation (as it involves getting a person to do something that he/she would not have done otherwise). Now, whether this manipulation is for a ‘good’ cause (and for whose ‘good’) will bring us close to the domain of ethics (and the tricky terrains of situational ethics vs. code ethics, individual good vs. collective good, good of one collective vs. good of another collective etc.). For example, if my manager gives me some information that opens my mind (e.g. by enabling me to see some possibilities that I was not able to see before), I might get inspired (and do something that I might not have done otherwise). But if my manger gives me the additional information selectively, so that I will see only those new possibilities that he/she wants me to see (e.g. so that I will take some particular action) then the element of manipulation creeps in. Yes, the line between 'management and manipulation' or that between 'influencing and manipulation' can be a very fuzzy one!