Iain McGilchrist on control

The following quote is from a conversation between Iain McGilchrist and Ameer Shaheed in May 2023. It is part of a series of conversations exploring McGilchrist’s philosophy as laid out in The Matter with Things. (My emphasis in italics.)

I would go so far as to say that control, which is the single value of the left hemisphere…, is not a good thing. It’s something that one sometimes must have, but it always carries a price … in many times, in many ways. It carries a price in alienating people from one another and just distancing the whole attempt to understand from its roots. … It also is deadening for those who are working in the organization. … I always think that the best principle for an organization is to have a very very light hand on the tiller and evolve down the hierarchy as far as you can enough initiative to allow people to be creative, because … I think people are inherently imaginative and creative… You will have no difficulty in finding such people and…they will be able to resolve problems with much less waste, much more…rapidly.

–Iain McGilchrist https://youtu.be/CJ4IzdzZMgo?t=2285

Related posts:
Two work perspectives
Dee Hock on control
Harrison Owen on control
Fritz Perls on control


by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply