Oomphalism is a mode of perception characterised by fixation on near-term goals, mandatory optimism, and the erasure of individual variation in service of the team. It arises naturally and simultaneously on every floor of the building, in consequence of the relation between those in supervisory roles and their direct reports.
In the dry, clinical description that follows, it is important to remember that Oomphalism is not “bad”; indeed, it may be a best-case cultural outcome for a high-coordination, achievement-oriented society. But it is also necessarily silly, because its actors stand in absurd positions. The felt unseriousness of Oomphalism is one of its most distinctive features.
Dynamic
Oomphalism appears wherever managers must continually motivate the Team towards achievements from which they will not directly benefit.
The better managers know that it’s easier to motivate when morale is high than when it is low — they would rather use carrots than sticks. But they cannot offer meaningful carrots: at the highest levels of leadership, doing so is understood to conflict with the very goals towards which all must drive. So the mission itself becomes the carrot. The strategy, the tactics, and the task become the carrot. The carrot is therefore not a carrot, but the certainty that the right-thinking person requires no carrot.
The power assymetry between the manager and the individual generally suffices to prevent this from being noticed out loud. Individuals understand that they must remain outwardly positive in order to be hireable. Oomphalism does not demand belief, only accord.
Devices
The language of Oomphalism is entirely task oriented — KPIs, bottlenecks, deadlines back-solved from arbitrary milestones — and has no register for any experience that isn’t transactional.
Oomphatic tactical devices include the compensatory pizza party; the keynote speech at a corporate event; the order to go over the top at sunrise, and the rallying speech that precedes such an action.
Oomphalism does not imply incompetence: an organization can be both well-run and highly Oomphatic. But the instinct to respond to failure with symbolic gestures is Oomphatic. The pizza arrives. Key takeaways are posted on LinkedIn. The fossils are seated in the rock. There has always been morale here.
Antithesis
Oomphalism has an antithetical mode of perception which it has no words to describe. When this antithesis is encountered within an Oomphatic culture, it is ignored or repackaged as motivational material.