A black and white cat is a regular (and, from my perspective, unwelcome) visitor to our garden. This feline is patently transfixed by something there and is constantly prowling around or patiently sitting perfectly still and peering into the undergrowth. We’ve never been able to work out whether it is frogs or mice that it are fascinating it.
On Saturday morning, however, I saw the cat fascinated by one of the yellow swingball racquets that was lying on the lawn. Shortly thereafter, it was clear that it had seized something and was now doing that grim cat thing of playing with its prey instead of instantly slaughtering and consuming it.
The video here shows the cat torturing what looks to be a tiny mouse, so skip past it if you find such scenes upsetting. It grabs it only to release, thereafter to grab it again; as a household pet – as domesticated as it is possible for a cat to be – it is well-fed and so is engaged in something vestigial as opposed as hunting in order to sate its hunger…
This instance instantly brought to mind for me the rich and expanded description of power that can be found in Elias Canetti’s superb book Crowds and Power…and that John Higgins and I cited in pur book entitled The Great Unheard at Work as a means of discussing a more nuanced view of power, especially in the workplace:
‘The cat uses force to catch the mouse, to seize it, hold it in its claws and ultimately kill it. But while it is playing with it another factor is present. It lets it go, allows it to run about a little and even turn its back and, during this time, the mouse is no longer subjected to force. But it is still within the power of the cat and can be caught again. If it gets right away it escapes from the cat’s sphere of power; but, up to the point at which it can no longer be reached, it is still within it. The space which the cat dominates, the moments of hope it allows the mouse, while continuing however to watch it closely all the time and never relaxing its interest and intention to destroy it – all this together, space, hope, watchfulness and destructive intent, can be called the actual body of power, or, more simply, power itself.’ [Canetti, E (1973) Crowds and Power. Harmondsworth: Penguin – p327]
For me, this offers insight into how the modality of power has changed over time – and hence how, even at those times where we feel free and unencumbered, power remains present and acts upon us in subtle and unexplicit ways.
We are all aware of those times when force acts upon – for example, when we are openly compelled to do something in the workplace with no opportunity to offer the limited resistance of justifiably saying “No”. But, even when that force is absent, we remain deeply affected power, in the way in which the mouse experienced the grim attentions of the cat.
Leaders in corporate life need to constantly hold at the forefront of their mind the fact that, whilst they may feel that they are acting benignly in relation to people around them and below them, those subjects will likely experience that relationship very differently.
For example, the cat keeps the mouse under surveillance even as it leaves it untouched – which in turn sees the mouse remain controlled without the instruments of that control being apparent. And we are all aware of the surveillant qualities of the contemporary workplace, particularly when leaders with weak confidence or bruised egos deliver their return to the office mandates.
Radical OD 