Unruly scenes as removalists arrive for Premier Gladys
Recent actions from NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet would suggest an imminent reshuffle aimed squarely at the Premier’s office. Despite asserting she is not leaving in March, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been elbowed out of the way by her current Treasurer, who is behaving as if he has been sworn in as the State’s 46th Premier.
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Agile management is remaking the workplace
ZDNet – “First it was Agile software development, now Agile management is remaking the workplace The most effective managers have used the past 12 months to support new remote-working practices with Agile leadership styles. This is what two digital leaders have learnt from the experience – and here’s how you can benefit. This flexible form of leadership, which involves the application of the principles of Agile software development to management tasks, relies on decentralised decision-making. It breaks tasks into smaller components and integrates planning with execution, which it’s supporters say allows an organisation to create a mindset that helps a team respond effectively to changing requirements. Agile management has proven to be a good fit for our socially distanced times, where geographically disparate leaders and their teams must respond rapidly to fast-changing circumstances. Managers – even if they want to – can no longer keep a close eye on their teams. Their employees aren’t physically close and they have a complex range of priorities to balance. Agile management produces benefits in two key ways: it gives workers the empowerment that research suggests they crave, and it frees up leaders to focus on higher-level tasks, such as refining strategy and developing new business models. Yet while the beneifts of Agile seem clear, the switch to looser forms of management will be a shock for some leaders who have tended to keep a tight grip on their people and projects. Learning to relinquish control can be difficult, says Rob Doepel, partner at consultant Ernst & Young…”
'There Is a World Elsewhere'
“For the crowd the present moment is absolute. It lacks memory.”
All of us belong to crowds, willingly or otherwise. Some are happiest in crowds. It gives them, at last, an identity. Some of us dread them: in a crowd, personal identity counts for nothing.
I found myself in the middle of an impromptu crowd on Sunday in the grocery store. Poor planning: I didn’t know the Super Bowl was scheduled for later that day. Bill paid, shopping cart filled, I was approaching the exit when I heard shrieking female voices. Two women were behaving badly just inside the front door. The scene caused a traffic jam as shoppers stopped to watch the show. I was too far back to see much. The guy with a loaded cart standing next to me laughed and said, “Cat fight!” I sensed a ripple of excitement in my fellow shoppers. Sure, I rubber-necked some. But I was impatient to get home, and crowds make me nervous, a reaction intensified during the pandemic.
A friend in New York City has been reading Coriolanus. On Sunday he copied and pasted into an email Coriolanus’ grand renunciation speech to the Roman crowd in Act III, Scene 3:
“You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still
To banish your defenders; till at length
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
Making not reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows! Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
The speech always reminds me of the comeback line every disgruntled employee keeps in reserve: “You can’t fire me. I quit!” Banished from Rome, Coriolanus replies that he banishes Rome from his presence. His pride hobbles him yet he seems oddly admirable. By nature, Coriolanus is not a team player. He is solitary. His sensibility is the antithesis of crowd-think. “There is a world elsewhere” might be the motto of anyone who cherishes his privacy and independence.
The sentences quoted at the top are from the Coriolanus chapter in W.H. Auden’s Lectures on Shakespeare (Princeton University Press, 2000). Later in the same paragraph he writes: “Most of us, if we are not careful, are members of the crowd. It has nothing to do with what class we belong to.”
[I remembered the lines from Cole Porter’s “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” (Kiss Me, Kate): “If she says your behavior is heinous,/Kick her right in the Coriolanus.”]