Nobody in Charge
Essays on the Future of Leadership
Chapter One
The Get-It-All-Together Profession
Paradox of Participation
There was a time, celebrated in song and story, when leadership was
entrusted to people called leaders. Their numbers were tiny, their
information scarce, their expertise primitive, the range of their
options narrow, the reach of their power marginal, the scale of their
actions limited. But they were at least presumed to be "in charge."
In those days it was possible to believe that policy was actually
made by people others called policymakers. The policymaking
few made broad decisions, it was said (and even taught in
schools). A much larger group of unsung experts, civil servants, and
employees converted these principles into practices. The obligation
of most people was to comply with the regulations, pay the taxes
and prices established by the few, and acquiesce in the seizure of
power by divine right, coup d'etat, corporate takeover, or elections
sometimes bought or stolen.
In Aristotle's Athens, Confucius's China, Cicero's Rome,
Charlemagne's Europe, and Jefferson's Virginia, the educated and
affluent few did th ... read full excerpt from Nobody in Charge: Essays on the Future of Leadership ebook
