I have exercised power myself. I was married to power. Having power feels good.
In the boardroom, it is very quiet. Hardly anyone still warns you when you feel too safe. Look at who advises today’s tech elite psychologically, and you see: they get themselves confessors, substitute mommies and readers of the future.
Classical executives do not want surprises. Confessors, substitute mommies and readers of the future cannot surprise. All three live off the fact that executives feel better after the visit. All three glorify the executives’ existence: their sin is great, their pain is great, their future is great. They warn of what could become dangerous to power.
The executive soul’s house staff:
The confessor interrogates like the Inquisition, has executives confess and holds them to the norm. Warns of the guilt that could come to light.
The substitute mommy is always there. Executives come to lick their wounds and cry it out, and get wrapped in cotton wool. Warns of the others who do not mean well, and of exhaustion.
The reader of the future, once the fortune-teller, today the visionary, looks into the crystal ball without having to answer for it. Warns of what is coming and could overtake.
The three depend on the executives’ power, through the fee, the closeness or the importance it lends them. Executives can steer them like everyone else. Absolution, comfort and forecast run according to plan.
It takes other counterparts to keep executives from turning cynical and, with that, out of touch with the world.
Executives ask for an encounter that is never meant to last. That is how I stay clear of temptation, which is not easy. It does executives good to meet someone who is close to power and not held by it: they see that it can be done.
My Dada fools with the power of certainty and tickles out the unknown. Executives scratch at their own power of their own accord. They gain a short, healing distance from it and see the absurdity of their own position, without giving up their authority. Self-irony gives power somewhere to slip.
A surprise cannot be steered. It does not run according to plan. And it gets executives to laugh at themselves.