Don’s Diary
– “Baggage”
and Statesmen
It is not uncommon these days to hear he or she is carrying a
lot of “baggage”. It does not mean that
they are carrying their luggage, rather that they have an emotional
burden. Baggage means that as a result
of their traumas of live, disappointments, the emotional consequences of their
decisions, circumstances, involvement and negative issues of the past, some
people feel a burden of their attachment to unresolved issues making it
detrimental in dealing with their current and future circumstances. They have “baggage” and find it difficult to
move on.
It is likely that the impediment of “baggage” has
organisational consequences and in some cases this is recognised. For example the Chairperson of the
Commonwealth Bank has been recently criticised for appointing the manager of
its retail business as its CEO. The
retail business has been criticised during the proceedings of the current Royal
Commission into its sector and it is assumed that this manager will bring too
much baggage with him. Almost invariably
the top public companies in Australia will seek to recruit externally to fill
their senior management roles. In my day
in the Armed Services both here and in other countries, one would never see an
officer promoted within a unit and usually a promotion involved a change of
location as well. Sometimes some
additional training also preceded a new appointment. This resulted in an appointee bringing
hopefully no baggage and would be a “new broom”. Organisations like Freemasonry do exactly the
opposite.
Within Craft lodges one can readily accept the closed
learning and promotion system which is a bit akin to that of apprenticeship
training. Where the dangers lie is when
those rising to the senior executive ranks and are promoted largely on the
basis of their performance within the lower ranks of the executive, often ritual
skills their apparent greatest attribute.
They would be inhuman if they did not feel an emotional commitment and
carry with them as they rise to eminence, some “baggage” for the policy
decisions of which they were a part, both good and bad. How many have the character to become “the
Statesmen” of our Fraternity and rise above all this?
Statesmen need strategies to move ahead. They should set for themselves key objectives
in their new role so that the “baggage” of the past becomes irrelevant. It is very easy for somebody to become
internalised: that is a lazy, easy path.
They should distance themselves from advisors who live in the past and
are closely associated with poor, divisive policies. Politically, it is getting above Party
politics for the good of the Nation.
Votes on contentious and divisive issues should be postponed and genuine
independent, no “baggage”, reviews of these matters should be initiated before
decisions are made. New senior
appointments should be made to bring as much fresh blood into the organisation
as possible, even if this upsets the “king-makers”, the elites and apparatiks
in the organisation. They should remain
aloof from the politicking among the executive ranks. They should engage with, and develop the
popular support from the rank and file, the stake holders of the organisation,
thus maintaining his political capital.
Only with strategies like this will an organisation, particularly one
which is closed and without a viable validation system such as ours, survive in
the long term.
In our future there is no place for “baggage”.
Yours fraternally,
Don Paterson