(by Alessandro Capezzuoli, ISTAT official and head of Aidr data observatory professions and skills) Schrödinger's cat paradox is one of the best known modern paradoxes. It was born with the intent to demonstrate the inapplicability of quantum mechanics to the macroscopic world, coming to the conclusion that, in a state of quantum superposition, a cat could be both alive and dead at the same time, if linked to a random subatomic event.
Over the years, Schrödinger's cat paradox has been metaphorically extended to many real-life situations because reality has amply demonstrated that strange occurrences can occur at least as much as the cat's dual quantum state. In this game, the paradox of Schrödinger's manager cannot be missing, the one that takes into consideration a state of “quantum social dystopia” in which managers can be too many and few at the same time.
There are too many, it is evident, because the system and the pyramid of power, in order to function, need an army of managers trained by the gymnastics of obedience, who in turn surround themselves with willing and uncritical collaborators. It is a new form of slavery regulated not by lashes but by the hierarchical distribution of privileges and crumbs of power. Just be part of the right consortium, to quickly climb the pyramid and achieve some kind of success. The cultured libertarians might think that this is an ephemeral glory effectively summarized by Francesco Guccini, in the Poisoned, with three very effective words, but, as they say, only the ignorant are sure of what they say and of this I am sure ...
For the climb, in addition to acting openly or not in the name of someone more powerful, you also need a good dose of cynicism and arrogance, or, better, hubris. Capacities are often optional, indeed, they penalize. Instead, a curriculum full of apparently prestigious goals, which are often artfully constructed or are the result of the misappropriation of the work of others, has proved to be an excellent tool to undertake the climb. Knowledge and awareness, in the selections, represent a minus, since a free, thinking and independent head annoys, hinders the objectives of the system and, above all, compromises the proper functioning of the pyramid.
Precisely for this reason, the public administration in many cases has come to the paradox of selecting managers through superficial procedures, which, deliberately, do not delve into real skills, but merely ask candidates for a resume and an embarrassing motivational letter. On the contrary, the competitions aimed at the recruitment of non-managerial staff follow diametrically opposed orientations: the selections of the "inferior" often involve complex multiple tests, titles to be assigned scores on the basis of imaginative and improbable rules and a series of safety measures for each type to guarantee, so to speak, a certain transparency.
The main obstacle, in the implementation of digital transformation, is essentially this: every type of change passes through the choices of managers and collaborators who have every interest in leaving things unchanged or who, Leopardian speaking, change everything so that it does not change nothing. In all this, Schrödinger's cat is a precious ally because it allows those who act in bad faith to confuse quantum states and to replace the sense of duty with the sense of power, or the word direct with the word command. Although the CAD provides for a set of well-defined tasks and one and only one Responsible for the Digital Transition, who is required to have a precise strategic vision and who is given ample decision-making power, public administrations tend to neglect the guidelines, to belittle the figure of the RTD, and to give free space to free interpretations. This orientation would not even be wrong, if free interpretation were supported by awareness and knowledge. But who controls the work of the RTD and the evaluation committees? Also in this case, there are procedures for evaluating executive performance, which unfortunately are managed by the same management and provide for a ridiculous evaluation of the objectives aimed exclusively at the self-attribution of a cash prize given more or less democratically to everyone, deserving or not.
Of course, if the objectives were something other than the pursuit of personal interests and the maintenance of privileges and the leadership position, the evaluation would have a different value and the community would benefit from it. And if the evaluation were guided by the "inferiors", and not the pyramid, the workers would also benefit. In support of this convoluted social structure, there are absurd rules and convoluted dynamics that protect the interests of caste and damage the weaker groups, rules that can only be accepted in a country without identity and critical sense. First of all, the absurd rule, written for some areas, implied for others, which provides for the rotation of management positions. This means that a manager of the legal area is very difficult to be replaced or demoted due to manifest inability: the maximum punishment he can face is the transition to another position, perhaps in other administrations, to deal with topics he does not know. nothing, for example of digital transformation. So, in public administration, what Jhonatan Franzen has masterfully summarized, in the book The Corrections, happens in these words: “its leaders had been replaced like the cells of a living organism, or like the letters in a Substitution game in which shit became merla then pannier and then pearl ".
Fortunately, this is not always the case and not everywhere. There are managers who are free, independent and with the ability and the propensity for change, but unfortunately they are few and have an extremely difficult life. Their brilliant ideas go through the evaluation of evaluation committees made up mostly of dinosaurs close to retirement, who have always worked in the same way and have no interest in changing things because the only interest they have is to maintain a leadership position. Consequently, the digital change advocated by politics is, in most cases, an extremely slow obstacle course, which completely escapes any kind of rule and control. To accelerate this process it is necessary to transform the management, selecting competent and capable managers.
The word competence, as I have been able to specify in other articles, must be used sparingly because, if it is not associated with a specific definition, it risks not having a real meaning. The evidence shows that the best managers are not selected exclusively on the basis of (real or presumed) technical "skills", but mostly through the verification of a set of characteristics, difficult to identify, which deepen the cultural and character aspects of the candidates. Contrary to popular belief, the ability to achieve goals, although an important characteristic, often subordinated to technical skills, is not the main characteristic of a manager. The main characteristic is the ability to create the conditions and the working culture to allow a group to achieve objectives. It is a rare ability to find because it includes a jumble of personal characteristics, which can be enhanced or diminished by internal dynamics and which could conflict with the entire organization.
For example, there is evidence that staff empowerment and the reduction of control and oppressive measures, in the long run, pay off much more than an oppressive and terrorist regime. Unfortunately, if the corporate orientation includes a work culture based on fear and punishment, this kind of trait may not emerge easily or even prove counterproductive to that particular situation. The same goes for those managers who tend to favor well-being, inclusion and sharing of knowledge. In a highly competitive system, in which selfishness and personal interests almost always prevail to the detriment of collective well-being, sharing is counterproductive: you cannot always boast of a team made up of Newtonian minds that look far, climbing on the shoulders of giants. It is evident that some distorted logics can only be changed with a different narrative of the work and through a different culture. If in some respects the collective well-being is considered a Marxist utopia, the results of the collective malaise, perpetrated by the pyramidal, hierarchical and clientelist system, are a real dystopia that is difficult to subvert. Decision-making power and strategic vision are, on the other hand, fundamental for achieving any objective.
Unfortunately, the word objective is abstract and smoky at least as much as the word skills: while it is very clear, for a private company, what is the goal to be achieved, that is, profit through the sale of products or services, for public administrations the objectives they are often pure inventions of the imagination without any kind of value or practical confirmation. A goal can be the study of neutrinos through LHC (the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator), but it can also be the compilation of a spreadsheet or the creation of useless documents: to all objectives, for an inexplicable and obtuse logic of equality of thought, which continues to be perpetrated by the diabolical combination of administrations and trade unions, is given the same importance for career and remuneration purposes.
This means that, while the population is well aware of the difference between the benefits deriving from the discovery of a machine for the treatment of tumors and a spreadsheet on which x are manually entered, for managers, closed within the walls of a public whatsoever administration, lacking a true strategic vision, the objectives of the personnel are confused with absolutely useless and routine activities to be used exclusively to demonstrate the achievement of their objectives and grab an appropriate cash reward. And we return to the beginning of the article and to Schrödinger's paradox of objectives: an objective, in a quantum state dependent on managerial management, can be both prestigious or useless at the same time. In this case, however, the randomness of quantum events has very little to do with it: it all depends on the causality with which the managers are chosen.