A conversation, this morning, with a fellow communicator from a major public sector body in the UK.  In the end, the source of the problems he was addressing - issues of employee engagement and motivation - boiled down to the behaviour of a small and powerful group of senior managers.

This group, sitting immediately below the main board are effectively blocking all attempts to bring more transparency and involvement to the organisation. They have no concept of their role as leaders and motivators and are concerned only with being directive and authoritarian as a means of getting the job done. They are obsessed with influencing up and have only limited interest in the people below them.

'Maybe you are being cynical', I suggested, 'maybe they have the best interests of the organisation at heart'.

'In your dreams', he replied. 'They don't know how else to behave. Being selfish has got them to where they are today. Why should they change their behaviour when it has proved to be such a successful formula?'

It rang true for me. It goes right back to Arnold Toynbee's theory that history is a cyclic process in which, simply put, dominant minorities are inevitably overthrown by creative minorities. And it has always been thus.

Are these senior managers the dominant minorities, who cannot change because their behaviours are so entrenched in the survival mechanisms that secure their role and position? Could it be that they are doomed by the inevitability of the historical cycle? Does organisational life sit in tension between the power of control and the energy of innovation?

Don't follow leaders,
Watch your parking meters.................