of a passionate anarchy

Hi, it’s me. I’m very pleased to be guest writing on Julien’s blog. We’ve talked extensively about the topic of leadership and influence and I am quite fascinated by Julien’s ability to care and his will to make things happen, to influence people for the better. He just… cares and it’s amazing.

–

This text is archived here as a reference.

The original article is on Julien’s blog, at the address:

(article invité) Vers une Anarchie passionnelle

–

I’m going to talk to you about some ideas about leadership that is quite different from what we know. As a by product, I’ll touch on the subject of hierarchy, of intellectual alienation and individuality. As some of you might know, I’m an architect and… the field of architecture is basically in its infancy in terms of leadership. People just… suck. Literally. There’s this phenomena called “star architect” where, basically, one dude, representing 300 other dudes, is the voice of every and single design. He is the face of it all, as if he worked on every single buildings and built every single brick. Nothing can be further from the truth. Lots of people collaborate on projects and a lot of people spent their life making this project happen. Until the moment it is built and the “star architect” takes all the merit. What is this called? Yes, intellectual theft. Yes. It is legal. And no, it is not tolerable.

No offense, Rem. Just to illustrate. (He’s actually extremely good).

It is basically a dictatorship. A world where all individuals disappears under one rule, under one person. And that single person is the all mighty. And everyone agrees with it. If you’ve read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World… they are the World Controller. All the others obey rules and have no voice. We are all alphas, betas, gammas or deltas. I profoundly believe that it is wrong. In fact, architecture’s design health has been going downhill… since one “star architect” has only one signature, meaning that the world is limited to a certain “branded” design, leading it to be uniform everywhere. Take Zaha Hadid as the worst example. She sucks. And her branding sucks and it’s ridiculous. And it’s repeated all over the world because, somebody did the mistake to award her some price. People have noticed this, I know that the people of my generation know this. They are smart and they don’t agree and they’re just waiting for the next change to occur. So what’s next?

 “a gramme of Soma in time is better than twelve” – we can always take drugs and drink to remediate.

 

THE FAILURE OF HIERARCHY

First, I’d say that we should consider the idea of a form of anarchy. How many times has hierarchy slowed down decisions? I can’t count enough. How many times did we make the wrong decisions because the, as title, “superior” told to do something? How many time did we stress each other because.. you actually know much better than your “superior” and you want to kick him in his stupid face? Many times. If we don’t lie to ourselves, many many times. Hierarchy, in my opinion, worked extremely well in a mechanical situation. Take the military: order to shoot, they shoot. Better that nobody questions that, otherwise, we all die. Take the factory: order to make this part, they make it and we deliver in time. It worked extremely well in a manual, repetitive and non intellectual situation. In the case of basic functioning, hierarchy works extremely well.

TOWARDS AN HONEST CREATION

But let’s switch to intellectual work. As decision making or actually everything in life involves decision making. If you cannot “switch off” during your job intellectually, it is an intellectual job. You are basically making mental decisions. Here, if somebody makes decisions for you or you have to second guess what the other person’s will is, there is a friction. There is a huge friction. This is where hierarchy falls apart. This is where the phenomena that I call “intellectual alienation” kicks in. Fancy words to say that you are not your own self anymore. If I am your boss, you are a duplicate of my mind, except that you suck, because you are not me. Very basic example: You are my boss. I think “A”, you think “B”. I wait a day to say that I think “A” because of hierarchy friction. You get angry, tantrum complete shit, say “B”. The final result is A. We wasted a day. And got the wrong answer. And stress. Intellectual alienation due to hierarchy is the worst of them all: it changes who you are internally. And you become less than who you were. You carry it into your life. Even when you sleep.

I’m sorry, but the last time I checked, we’re all capable of making sound decisions. And… enough with this brainwash shit. Fuck that. Reason, the right ideas and the right action is the goal. The rest… egos, hierarchy, corporatism, age, sex is irrelevant.

I believe hierarchy was first created for two things: efficiency and social clarity. The need to produce, to protect, to survive. Quick orders were required. The need for social organisation and cohesion. To know one’s place. I think it is archaic and stupid. Nobody has no place. I am not superior to my friends nor to any humans, so, why, in the work or in my act of creation, am I put in a hierarchy? Non sense. Efficiency, as the industrialised definition, produce, produce, produce, leads us straight into the wall and chaos. Again, non sense.

That is a mars colony. Beautiful, isn’t it?

–

To replace the efficiency paradigm, as of now is: I give you orders, you obey and do. As quickly as possible. As I’ve demonstrated, it’s no good. People hates this. Nobody wants to work for you. Not even you. People want to work for themselves and for the service of the human community. Now, that’s not new. We all know it. But we still live in the fear that, if the boss is not there, nobody works. This is because the boss sucks. In French, we have a saying “quand le chat n’est pas là la souris danse” – “when the cat is not there, the mouse dance”. I think the mouse can dance on its own. Without the cat. The answer is simple: intrinsic passion.

We replace extrinsic pressure with intrinsic drive. Instead of the boss giving orders. You discover what you need to do and accomplish it. The “boss” is there to give you help, to assist you. You have full responsibility of your making and drive your own self to excellence. Without anybody asking. Let’s look at intrinsic passion in detail. It is composed of 5 things.

I am writing about this matter from the person achieving the task’s point of view and not from the leader’s point of view.

1. Consequence

Does it matter? Does it mean anything? Is it worth it? The answer to this question is fundamental. Something needs to be worth your efforts. There’s some condition that the consequences need to be rested on. First, it need to be intrinsical, this is the difficult part: as you feel that, beyond money, beyond all values, beyond external pressure such as success, it is worth it. It has a profound meaning. Second, it needs to be beyond your own individual interest. Of course, there’s exception to this rule. But doing deeds for only one’s profit will become self destructing, leading one to be an over inflated egomaniac (as exemplified by a lot of senile, stupid and arrogant architects, Zaha Hadid, Mario Bota, Daniel Liebeskind… just to name a few).

A short version of this is the question “why?” as in “why am I intrinsically doing this for mankind?”. It is the foundation of motivation. When something is meaningless, oftentimes, it is un-motivating. Just… don’t do it.

2. Competence

Can I do it? This is the second question and emotion that we need to solve. You need to feel competent enough to do something. Let’s try and illustrate: you can’t shoot a ball. Somebody shows it to you. You replicate. You fail. Then you do it again and you are a little bit better. The problem with this is that people rely on their degree “oh, I’m an architect! – so I should know how to do architecture” – guess what, every single little problems in life need to acquire competences. Even cutting vegetables need skill.

I believe fundamentally that acquiring new competence is dreadful. That’s why people turn in a rut and rely on their knowledge. The main key driving new competence acquirement is curiosity. And, unfortunately, I believe that curiosity can’t be taught. But beyond curiosity, there needs to be extra emotional energy of confidence, like your dad teaching you things when you were a kid. And acquiring new competence needs a huge quantity of it. I believe that we can mutually give confidence to each other. And like kids: start small. Start at mini steps. Then another, then another, then another … til mastery.

Leaders inspire people with competence by giving them paced feed back. “You’re going better than yesterday, how is it going?” – They also inspire people for more competence by demonstrating the actions. In doing so the leader and the lead discover the action together. They become mutually competent. Great leaders get their hands dirty. Great leaders are not afraid to fail.

The short version of this question is: “how?”. It is the second layer of intrinsic motivation. It involves education and training.

3. Choice

“I have to do this” – I don’t think so. I don’t think we have any obligation at all. We are all fundamentally free. Those who blame others for their absence of freedom is what I call, strictly, “cowards”. Cowards because it is entirely their responsibility to make things happen.

There is a fundamental difference between a success seeker and a failure avoider. This is, in my opinion, why our education system is a total failure. Even the ETHZ, where I graduated, at times. You feel obliged to go to the courses. You feel obliged to pass the mark, otherwise, you will fail. So a lot of people would “do the work” – work under pressure to please the system. That is so very stupid. – In architecture school, at 12pm the latest, I stood up and said “Goodnight, I’m going to sleep” – I had no obligation towards nobody.

But, it is a question of paradigm. Choice is when you’ve put yourself in a context of many activities humankind can make and you chose yours. It then becomes an opportunity rather than an obligation. An opportunity to do a scientific research. An opportunity to do an architectural project. It is only when you perceive that you had choices and had chosen the one that you’ve engaged yourself into that you see the value and uniqueness of your endeavour. Freedom of obligation leads to motivation in the activity since you, yourself, have chosen to achieve it.

Chose independently.

4. Credit

Humans all have a story. A past, a present and a future. We are all individuals. And I believe that we need to respect that. But the respect of the individuals comes with a cost: in order to have the credits, you need to take full responsibility of the task. You are accountable for its success, as you are accountable for its failure. You need to be totally engaged in the task.

I’ve seen scenarios where nobody was responsible for nothing and… frankly it was really fucked up. At the end of the task, everybody vanished because nobody gave much of a shit. If you don’t give a shit, then don’t do it. If you decide to do it, then you should either care for it in the first place or generate care in the process.

This is how we trace history of achievements: “in 1997, I did this” – and feel proud about it. Fully engaging yourself allow you to take full credits of success and failures. And believe me, embracing the happiness and the sadness in full is much better than staying in this dull edge of no individuality.

Once a person’s taken full responsibility of the task, it is up to the community to give that person full credit. Full blown, everything. There’s nothing more frustrating and more demeaning than working your ass of… only to have your work or art signed by some other people. I believe that this is a crime and it should be treated as such.

An individual belongs to a group, yes, but he/she is an individual and deserve recognition. In the near future, I will, promise, give up everything the day when I try to credit other people’s work on my name. I’ll say “stop, you’ve become a fucktard” and quit.

A proper credit looks like this: author: name —- group/brand: name.

5. Community

Fundamentally, humans are social creatures. Some tasks can be achieved alone… but I think that nothing replaces a good laugh between teamates. The sheer synergy, the sheer mutual bond that happens when people click together – I’ve seen it a certain amount of time – is priceless. Personnally, this subject is subjective and I think that it is a trial and error thing. I have been in horrible teams, in mediocre team, in good team and in brilliant team… just do yourself a favour trash out mediocrity discriminately and keep the best. I know that it sounds “inhuman” and “intolerant” but life is way too short to spend time in a community that doesn’t fulfill you. Above all: don’t try to fix people – most people don’t want to be fixed … and: why bother?

I can count on the fingers of one hand the people that matter the most to me. And we bond with an emotional and intellectual depth of beyond imagination. We achieve a finesse in communication that sometimes, we know, we haven’t said a word. That’s saying alot considering my very difficult personality.

Chose your friends carefully and wisely.

—–

 That’s a human. And the thing in the background is the earth.

–

In the end, I really believe in human intrinsic motivation. I think that the age where we rely on the stick – carrots method is over and that we’re thriving for a new age of organised anarchy. I’ve heard people giving me answers like “it’ll never work” – yeah, well, I’ll tell you this: ten years ago, I wouldn’t have thought of writing this article on a thin piece of aluminium in the suburb of Zurich either. Telling the story in a very short sentence is : “once you have a community of fully credited, competent and goal driven friends. You can achieve anything. Anything.”

Looking forward to see you on the other side.

---