Page 132 - The Resilient Organization

Sisu: Resilience as Inner Strength 119

Jesters mediate the historical battle of power between ideas and humans
[and this is one of the reasons for their universal prominence as an institu-
tion in human history (see Otto, 2001)]. The mediation is particularly visi-
ble in the case of court jesters and kings. To be able to jest, the first step is
to remind the king of the fragility of his position. The jester “becomes the
person who through various means reminds the leader of the transience of
power. He becomes the guardian of reality, and in a paradoxical way, pre-
vents the pursuit of foolish action” (Kets de Vries, 1990: 757). The jester is
thus a useful antidote for the persuasions of power that tend, over time, to
diminish a person’s ability to judge his or her own performance and capa-
bilities objectively (Kets de Vries, 2003).
Thus it is in companies also. The role of the jester, first and foremost,
implies the right and skill to make people to see themselves and their
actions more clearly. Paul Birch, now a former British Airways’ corpo-
rate jester, has been quoted as saying: “Fools pinpoint absurdity by
acting out the absurd. They act as a mirror in which people see their
mistakes without having to admit to them. This enables Fools to chal-
lenge accepted wisdom and create new alternatives. As such, they’re
entrusted with the sensitive task of managing and controlling change.” 7
A jester can thus be a key player, the master interpreter, in the power
struggle for the definition of the firm’s strategy, for example. Kaplan
(2004) has documented strategy making as such a framing contest—a
battle of whose view will prevail in directing the firm’s future. The func-
tion of a jester, and that of humor more generally, is that of an aid to
such contesting, familiar in the courts of kings. It can also be important
in corporate strategy making.
A jester may be a role, played by someone like Paul Birch at British
Airways, or it can be the frequent collective referencing to a cartoon like
Adam Scott’s Dilbert in corporate presentations. A jester may be an outside
consultant too. But jestering is an important social institution we should
recognize. Many people my coauthor Guje Sevón and I have talked with
claim themselves to be jesters in corporate life. Thus we should include
jestership in our accounts of organizations and leadership not only because
such jestery is probably common but also because one of its distinct bene-
fits is that it is one of the few defense mechanisms humans, and managers,
have against the power of possessive, sometimes obsolete, occasionally dan-
gerous and destructive, ideas.