Why Sheep Need Pigs in Sheepdog’s Clothing

Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas. In that order. (Patrick Winston)We humans have norms that are anti-domination, but pro-prestige, and it is often hard to tell the difference. So even though we give lip service to egalitarianism, we often strongly promote inequality. One key way is that we insist on our leaders being elite. That is, on their having many status markers of eliteness, such as looks, money, fame, family, connections, charisma, wit, degrees, and other elite affiliations.In fact, the main function of management is plausibly to seem high enough in prestige to make workers feel okay submitting to their actually dominating by giving orders. Org decisions can often be decentralized; but focal prestigious leaders cannot. We require eliteness not only of our managers and folks high in our organizational hierarchies, but also of those who lead us in politics, culture, ideas, and…