'COLDER TIMES---?'
Cooler weather's finally arrived here at the organic eco micro-holding in the UK midlands at nearly mid October - up to now it's been pretty mild - it's as if the season has 'jumped' a month and been a month behind right the way through, it having been as mid-winter here in mid April. The swallows - there must have been over a hundred of them on the wires, before they went - have seemed to have had a good season, and again they didn't depart until the end of September, two weeks later than normal. Hardly seems fathomable that they are now on a 6,000 mile journey to their winter quarters in South Africa - such small, fragile little beings - God speed to them. What flyers they are - no need for aerobatic shows -just watch these wee performers for half-an-hour. Watching them swoop down and take in water and/or washing themselves on the wing is something too, and in rural China they apparently nest in the middle of peoples' living room ceilings - bad luck to evict them - neat example of man and animals living cheek by jowel in harmony.
Although 'late', the growing season has been quite good, and the potatoes are coming off quite well - it was later than usual when the blight struck. The white potatoes, though, have had quite a bit of slug and other wee beastie damage, from which the red potatoes seem to have largely escaped - mainly reds, then, for next year. The winter veg - purple sprouting, curly kale, second growth of spring cabbage and spinach - have survived the attack of the rampant caterpillars and have re-growth to now look ok, hopefully to supply as usual greens through the winter months. Autumn is quite a busy micro-holding time with on-going work at hedging, lopping, clearing creeper from roofs, digging potatoes, sawing wood and generally preparing for winter - apparently severe weather has been forecast for hereabouts quite early on in November, which is a reminder that a door for the new rustic porch has yet to be made. At least all the fuel - wood and gas - is gathered in, so it could be 'batten down the hatches' time.
The small sawbench is a handy tool for sawing cordwood and sundry 'small' wood, which tends to get used for the evening front-room fire, the larger wood being consumed by the fertiliser plant that is the woodstove (i.e making potash fertiiser via the woodash). Wood has been collected here from here and there for a year or two - back along no-one really wanted it with cheap oil available - and the stored wood is now available to counter the price hikes from the big, oligopolistic energy firms - looks like an 8%-9% increase here this year, whilst wages for so-called 'ordinary folk' don't seemingly go up these days.
Kevin Mcloud presented an interesting UK TV series concerning building a retreat on the south-west coast, and in the last programme got quite philosophical about it. 'Doing, making' he waxed, 'and sharing' give the opportunities for great satisfaction. That's probably a bit similar to the appeal of the freerangin' semi self-reliant type of lifestyle - there's always things to be done, often stuff has to be made or repaired, and it's a good feeling to share, even if only scribbling a few words about it all. And doing it all under 'own steam' as it were, is probably a big part of it, a sense of running one's own wee ship, deciding what's to be done and when, how long to spend at it, having the chance to rotate jobs to fend off the dreaded 'ennui', and generally and mostly, connecting to and enjoying meaningful life activities.
Some years ago, a survey of American 'small', family farmers came up with the result that a considerable proportion of them, over 40%, placed 'independent' living as their number one priority, higher than making 'mega bucks'. 'Making mega bucks' seems to have come in with the trend of 'big -'big is best, 'might is right', 'economies of scale rule', and whether those particular small farms in America exist anymore is debatable -another 'nail in the coffin' for smaller-scale, independent ,'freerange' living' - ?
'Out in the cold----?'
The words above describe a pretty different situation than that in the East on the TV the other night, with people having to do repetitive work over long hours for little reward, even to the point of not having sufficient to eat. It must feel like some sort of nightmare, a bleaK, cold sort of 'slave' existence to them, surely not one they might willingly choose - ? Even in the west, there seems to have grown up a 'control culture' in which people are managed either by 'threat' (eg. loss of work/job) or 'bribes' (eg.the use of financial incentives - Herzberg, a motivation researcher, used to call this 'jumping for the jelly beans'), both of which could be described as 'external' factors (rather than, say, 'internal' self-motivation) to get people to work. The older idea of professionalism, in which the responsibility for their quantity and quality of work lay with the individual her/his-self seems too to have withered in such a 'brave new world', in which, seemingly, people are not to be trusted - ?
One theory explanation put forward for this is that governments have got younger in the sense that those in them making decisions have become younger, and such people may not yet have had the time to get the experience relating to 'how people operate'. Another idea put forward is that there's been in the UK a 'bosses' 'kick-back' effect, prompted by the rise of union power and one in which power has then become a central pillar, and which is fed by such 'control cultures'. Such notions as 'leadership' and 'motivation' therefore don't appear to have been too much in fashion, as might perhaps be expected given such a culture. Some, though, have opined that such power-led cultures lead to imbalanced, 'cold' situtions, lacking in humanity, trust,care, and 'generosity of spirit', and that the current control culture can exhibit such phenomena ( the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for instance, has recently been quoted in the press, saying that modern society is 'imbalanced' and calling for a more 'caring' input),
'Cold thaw----'
Such a 'control culture' can seem at times to be all powerful and pervasive, which again some might argue is a current flavour, exemplified by so much emphasis on individual wealth creation and entrepreneurial affairs. Is there, though, another way, one which might promise better 'balance' and hence the promise of more stability, to a society -? Often in smaller UK rural businesses, for instance, in which managers and staff often worked side-by-side, and in which there was a strong social context, workforces often developed into well-knit self-motivated teams. An example of an advanced case of the same was as follows:
S was a competent and sociable owner and manager of a largish arable farm in the south of the UK, employing five full-time competent staff. He reached the point where he wanted to pursue activities away from the farm and considered employing a specialist farm manager. S had a strong relationship with his staff whom he valued and respected considerably and was concerned that the employment of another manager could be a negative move staff-wise. After consultation with various advisers, both official and unofficial, he made the unusual-to-some decision not to employ another manager but rather to oversee operations himself on a once-a-week basis with his staff, and with the staff themselves running operations the rest of the time, which they were keen to do. It worked well, he saved quite a bit of money, some of which he passed onto the staff for carrying the extra responsibility, and the staff were further motivated being now further involved and trusted within the business.
S's farm business thrived and such a move was in a way a natural progression of an advanced situation with well motivated staff who wanted to achieve and contribute to the business -a useful example of a 'win:win' situation. In the past, researchers differentiated between systems of people management. Frederick Herzberg, for instance, defined work done via 'control cultures' (i.e. externally prompted) as 'movement' - people 'move' on external prompting. Human motivation, though, he defined as work done via internal prompting - i.e. from within the individual, and interestingly, he also counselled that money prompts did not necessarily increase (internal) motivation. Douglas McGregor came up with a simple but useful model. He defined externally prompted work efforts as being an application of 'Theory X' management, based on workplace assumptions that people were inherently lazy, untrustworthy and irresponsible and therefore had to be 'externally prompted' to perform work. McGregor then asked the question why this was so, why people, being organisms with needs, weren't then 'naturally' internally motivated to make efforts to meet these needs - ?
His answer was that people did in fact have basic biological internal motivations, but sometimes they did not exhibit them in the workplace due to negative factors; perceiving themselves to be being exploited, for instance. Unhindered internal work efforts he labelled as 'theory Y'. The case-study above could aptly be described as having a theory y workplace situation, in which work efforts from the staff emanated from their own internal motivation, whereas ' control culture' workplaces relying on fear or bribes, are described by the theorists as 'movement '' orientated, theory x type workplaces ( one large retail chain were reported as having instituted 'anytime' bodysearches for its staff, for instance).
In practice, theory y workplaces can deliver good results in the form of both good levels of quantity and quality work, good levels of responsibility and initiatives from staff, good staff representation of the employing organisation, loyalty and conscientiousness - all productive outcomes for a business, which is why a survey of progressive rural employers - mainly farmers -showed that they employed the theory y route to effective staff management, which also delivered considerable personal satisfaction for these managers. Imagine ,for instance, a society comprising of self-motivated, self and socially responsible independently-minded 'freerangers' - could be good - ? And where you do see it, in enterprises, for instance, it's generally a pretty productive situation. In one recently reported survey of employees, they themselves are reported as placing factors such as relationships at work and decent treatment from managers/bosses considerably more important to them than, for instance, receiving bonuses.
The 'cost' side to such an application includes for instance, more management time involved with staff, getting to know their needs and levels, more time in involving staff in work decisions, for example and more effort and time on communication within the workplace, the general conclusion being that the extra input to achieve a theory y type high sustainable productivity work situation was well worth it, in both direct returns to the business and in 'humanity' type terms. In current times, though, might 'the rush for profit' inhibit the practice of such 'staff inputs', in that these would need time to effect, and their 'investment' needs to be made before the 'outputs' are there to be harvested - ?
'Un - cool-----?'
On a break, sitting on the mid-Wales coast recently, basking in an October day of blissful exquisitness - blue skies and wall-to-wall sunshine, and the salty smell of seaweed in the fresh, ozone air - the thought occurred, as it probably has to many, that life enjoyment and satisfaction could actually be only indirectly related to money, and that maybe if the approach is that it is directly related to money, such an approach could actually get in the way of life enjoyment and satisfaction - ? Money is then in actuality the 'means', and not the 'end' - ? And the same thinking could have been behind the old saying 'money is a good servant, but a bad master'. Many have undoubtedly followed this path, by 'downsizing', for instance, amd maybe it's a shame that in such a 'mass' culture as the modern 'biggist', power-based culture, there is by default not too much space for individual 'common sense' and 'life wisdom' contributions, which if there were, the same could be usefully used more to good effect - ? Presumably, in other cultures, roles were accorded to people with experience (sometimes, for instance, called 'elders') to facilitate the use of experience and 'life-wisdom' - ?
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