False consciousness: the new opiate of the desperate - a sort of rant!

‘Instant gratification…No it takes too long’ (Woody Allen) 

‘To think effectively we all need an inbuilt crap detector’ (Teaching as a subversive activity)

 In the current economic climate many people want to start their own business even though the failure rate is around 90% and of survivors, many barely make ends meet.[1] Now there are good sources for starters, like Business Model Generation and The Lean Startup;[2] or, advice from my own business development and consultancy experience: get yourself and your ideas over the wall into your market soonest, test them, and increase your rate of learning, the indispensable fuel for success. (Developed in Managing Value in Organisations)       

 But is this how most do start? A major source stridently inserting itself into the market is the Personal Development Industry (PDI, or self-help, or as in my local Waterstones a ‘Think smart’ sxn). Clearly, there are some excellent ideas here. BUT be careful – this is an almost entirely unregulated sector and what you get may turn out to be what Brendan Behan said about the function of alcohol: ‘To turn your wages into wind and piss’.

 In this sector there is little accountability. Claims of success in one area, for instance just starting a business (regardless of success or sustainability) soon mission-creep into others:  eg leadership, enterprise, business development, ‘inspirational speaking’, being an author (usually self-published regardless of quality), property/beauty/deportment, and for good measure, creativity and innovation.  Many exponents seem to believe that their claims are enough to get them business. Their view of customers is that they are easily led.

Reading on PDI courses is strictly limited to provider selected texts, with little countering intelligence; broader reading is discouraged if not seen as a form of treason. Titles are invariably mental fast-food: ‘The secret of XX’ (invariably it’s not); ‘How to be a success in XX’ (‘How to’ titles unlock more wallets than solutions); ‘How to multi-hug your inner tart’ (made that up but how would you know?)  or ‘Things they didn’t tell you at XX’ (usually available in a standard business text at any library). Under the guise of ‘development’ only one kind of thinking is encouraged –what we tell you. Expensive ‘training’ is offered, though few ‘trainers’ seem teacher-qualified with an awareness of how adults learn and, crucially, how to develop independent learners –this latter separating the effective thinkers from the damaging amateurs. ‘PD’ easily becomes Personal Dependence: critical reflection on customers’ own experience –usually a value-mine, and independence-maker, and on their materials is as rare as a gracious response from Liam Gallagher. Critical questions are seen as casting doubt rather than extending thinking. And when intelligent questions meet advocates with low intellectual confidence in anything other than their mantras, the response is commonly at the level of pre-teenage girls where sensible disagreement is greeted with ‘Why, are you jealous?’ 

PDI is a land where experience (however shallow) becomes ‘expertness’, claims become facts and my way is the only way. Many PDI events, far being an open exploration are a sales blitzkrieg, near to indoctrination. And where (customer) desperation meets (provider) conviction, sales occur. Providers rarely (ever?) publish success or attrition rates, and when the whole system doesn’t work, customers are told that the problem is usually them and are ‘invited’ to do the next (more expensive) course.

For experienced coaches and consultants (usually well qualified) enabling sustainable change in individuals and organisations, they are aware that it is not instant, easy and effortless –as much PDI offers. What, of value, comes that way? Instead, for a more balanced approach try something like Oliver Burkemann[3] with his invite to ‘The happiness in hard working’ –he means the enjoyment of thinking, successfully employed in pursuit of hard problems (like starting a business). But then that’s the one requirement surely of any decent writer (teacher, facilitator, trainer): they make you think not offload it to someone else who now charges you for it.    

 Some PDI customers it should be said, are struggling on the actual cusp of success in their own marketplaces and if they used the indispensable fuel above, would be successful. 

What do you think? 

Next: Some PDI mantras – half grasped ‘truths’ conveyed like a bag of money on a pauper’s grave