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State Phobia

Overview

Second is our affective state phobia argument turns the caseunder conditions of affective
state phobia the population is effectively walled off from the government, as civil society
generates its appeal from being separated from the governmenteven if the aff can
momentarily produce some sense or concept of radical freedom, that sense stokes broader
cultural discourses that reproduce conservative fears of the state that are linked to broader
antipathies against different personsthe state is the entity that wants to socially engineer
racial equality, the state brings culture into politics by allowing for abortions, and so on
and so forth
Lilla 2010 (Mark, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, The Tea Party jacobins in The new
York Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/tea-partyjacobins/?page=2)
the Jacobin spirit could shape our politics for some time, given how well it dovetails with
the spirits of Woodstock and Wall Street, and given the continuing influence of Fox News and talk radio. (Rush Limbaugh alone has
millions of daily listeners.) It is already transforming American conservatism. A wise man once summed up the history of
colonialism in a phrase: the colonized eventually colonize the colonizer. This is exactly what is happening on the right
today: the more it tries to exploit the energy of the Tea Party rebellion, the cruder the
conservative movement becomes in its thinking and rhetoric. Ronald Reagan was a master of populist rhetoric, but
Still,

he governed using the policy ideas of intellectuals he knew and admired (Milton Friedman, Irving Kristol, George Gilder, and Charles Murray among them). Todays

conservatives prefer the company of anti-intellectuals who know how to exploit


nonintellectuals, as Sarah Palin does so masterfully.16 The dumbing-down they have long lamented in our schools they are now bringing to our politics,
and they will drag everyone and everything along with them. As David Frum, one of the remaining lucid conservatives, has written to his wayward comrades, When
you argue stupid, you campaign stupid. When you campaign stupid, you win stupid. And when you win stupid, you govern stupid. (Unsurprisingly, Frum was
recently eased out of his position at the American Enterprise Institute after expressing criticism of Republican tactics in the health care debate.) Over the next six
months, as midterm elections approach, well be hearing a lot from and about the Tea Party movement. Right-wing Republicans hope to lead the movement by
following it. Establishment Republicans will make fools of themselves trying to master a populist rhetoric they dont know and dont believe in. Democrats will take
cover, hoping that their losses wont be too great and that theyll pick up seats in places where Republicans are slitting each others throats. In the end we will likely
find ourselves with a divided and irresponsible Congress even less capable of gaining public trust by governing well. Confidence in government will drop further and
the libertarian commedia of American politics will extend its run. But the blame does not fall on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or the Republican Party

We are experiencing just one more aftershock from the libertarian eruption that we all,
whatever our partisan leanings, have willed into being. For half a century now Americans have been
rebelling in the name of individual freedom. Some wanted a more tolerant society with
greater private autonomy, and now we have it, which is a good thingthough it also brought us more out-of-wedlock births, a soft pornographic
alone.

Others
wanted to be free from taxes and regulations so they could get rich fast, and they
haveand its left the more vulnerable among us in financial ruin, holding
precarious jobs, and scrambling to find health care for their children . We wanted our

popular culture, and a drug trade that serves casual users while destroying poor American neighborhoods and destabilizing foreign nations.

two revolutions. Well, we have had them. Now an angry group of Americans wants to be
freer stillfree from government agencies that protect their health, wealth, and well-

being; free from problems and policies too difficult to understand; free from parties and
coalitions; free from experts who think they know better than they do; free from politicians
who dont talk or look like they do (and Barack Obama certainly doesnt). They want to say what they have to say without fear of
contradiction, and then hear someone on television tell them theyre right. They dont want the rule of the people, though thats what they say. They want to be people
without rulesand, who knows, they may succeed. This is America, where wishes come true. And where no one remembers the adage Beware what you wish for.

Race
Neoliberalism targets, removes, renders invisible, and eradicates Americas populations of
color
Henry A. Giroux, Professor at McMaster University in English and Cultural Studies
Department, Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability,
College Literature 33.3 171-196 2006

The Bush administration was not simply unprepared for Hurricane Katrina as it denied that the federal government alone had the resources to
address catastrophic events; it actually felt no responsibility for the lives of poor blacks and others marginalized by poverty and relegated to the
outskirts of society. Increasingly,

the role of the state seems to be about engendering the financial


rewards and privileges of only some members of society, while the welfare of those
marginalized by race and class is now viewed with criminal contempt. The coupling of the
market state with the racial state under George W. Bush means that policies are
aggressively pursued to dismantle the welfare state, eliminate affirmative action, model
urban public schools after prisons, aggressively pursue anti-immigrant policies, and
incarcerate with impunity Arabs, Muslims, and poor youth of color. The central
commitment of the new hyper-neoliberalism is now organized around the best way to
remove or make invisible those individuals and groups who are either seen as a drain or
stand in the way of market freedoms, free trade, consumerism, and the neoconservative
dream of an American empire. This is what I call the new biopolitics of disposability: the
poor, especially people of color, not only have to fend for themselves in the face of life's
tragedies but are also supposed to do it without being seen by the dominant society.
Excommunicated from the sphere of human concern, they have been rendered invisible,
utterly disposable, and heir to that army of socially homeless that allegedly no longer
existed in color-blind America.
AND solving neoliberalism solves social deathbut solving social death is insufficient to
address broader relations that engender poverty
Henry A. Giroux, Professor at McMaster University in English and Cultural Studies
Department, Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability,
College Literature 33.3 171-196 2006

that neoliberalism, privatization, and militarism have become the


dominant biopolitics of the mid-twentieth-century social state and that the coupling of a
market fundamentalism and contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of
capital accumulation, violence, and disposability, especially under the Bush administration,
has produced a new and dangerous version of biopolitics.4 While the murder of Emmett Till suggests that a biopolitics
I want to further this position by arguing

structured around the intersection of race and class inequalities, on the one hand, and state violence, on the other, has long existed, the new version of biopolitics adds

The new biopolitics not only includes state-sanctioned


violence but also relegates entire populations to spaces of invisibility and disposability. As
William DiFazio points out, "the state has been so weakened over decades of privatization
that it . . . increasingly [End Page 181]fails to provide health care, housing, retirement
a distinctively different and more dangerous register.

benefits and education to a massive percentage of its population" (2006, 87). While the
social contract has been suspended in varying degrees since the 1970s, under the Bush
Administration it has been virtually abandoned. Under such circumstances, the state no
longer feels obligated to take measures that prevent hardship, suffering, and death. The
state no longer protects its own disadvantaged citizensthey are already seen as dead
within a transnational economic and political framework. Specific populations now occupy
a globalized space of ruthless politics in which the categories of "citizen" and "democratic
representation," once integral to national politics, are no longer recognized. In the past, people who were
marginalized by class and race could at least expect a modicum of support from the government, either because of the persistence of a drastically reduced social

This new form of


biopolitics is conditioned by a permanent state of class and racial exception in which "vast
populations are subject to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead"
(Mbembe 2003, 40), largely invisible in the global media, or, when disruptively present,
defined as redundant, pathological, and dangerous. Within this wasteland of death and
disposability, whole populations are relegated to what Zygmunt Bauman calls "social
homelessness" (2004, 13). While the rich and middle classes in the United States maintain
lifestyles produced through vast inequalities of symbolic and material capital, the "free
market" provides neither social protection and security nor hope to those who are poor,
sick, elderly, and marginalized by race and class. Given the increasing perilous state of the
those who are poor and dispossessed in America, it is crucial to reexamine how biopower
functions within global neoliberalism and the simultaneous rise of security states organized
around cultural (and racial) homogeneity. This task is made all the more urgent by the destruction, politics, and death that followed
contract or because they still had some value as part of a reserve army of unemployed labour. That is no longer true.

Hurricane Katrina.

Heres comparative evidenceinstitutional actions worthwhile to fight racism even despite


the risk of a link to your arguments
Their critique of the state ignores worse forms of imperialism and the catastrophic effects
of collapse of the state system for oppressed groups
Pasha 96 [Mustapha Kamal, Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen,
Security as Hegemony, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 21, No. 3 (July-Sept. 1996), pp. 283-302, JSTOR]

An attack on the postcolonial state as the author of violence73 and its drive to produce a modern citizenry may
seem cathartic, without producing the semblance of an alternative vision of a new political
community or fresh forms of life among existing political communi- ties. Central to this critique is an assault on the
state and other modern institutions said to disrupt some putatively natural flow of history. Tradition, on this logic, is uprooted
to make room for grafted social forms; modernity gives birth to an intolerant and insolent Leviathan, a
repository of violence and instrumental rationality's finest speci- men. Civil society - a realm of humaneness, vitality, creativity, and harmony - is
superseded, then torn asunder through the tyranny of state-building. The

attack on the institution of the state appears to


substitute teleology for ontology. In the Third World context, especially, the rise of the modern state has been coterminous
with the negation of past histories, cultures, identities, and above all with violence. The stubborn quest to construct the state as the fount of
modernity has subverted extant communities and alternative forms of social orga- nization. The more durable consequence of this project is in the
realm of the political imaginary: the constrictions it has afforded; the denials of alternative futures. The postcolonial state,

however,
has also grown to become more heterodox - to become more than simply modernity's
reckless agent against hapless nativism. The state is also seen as an expression of greater
capacities against want, hunger, and injustice; as an escape from the arbitrariness of
communities established on narrower rules of inclusion/exclusion; as identity removed somewhat from

capri- cious attachments. No

doubt, the modern state has undermined tra- ditional values of tolerance and
pluralism, subjecting indigenous so- ciety to Western-centered rationality. But tradition can also conceal particularism
and oppression of another kind. Even the most elastic interpretation of universality cannot find virtue in attachments re- furbished by
hatred, exclusivity, or religious bigotry. A negation of the state is no guarantee that a bridge to
universality can be built. Perhaps the task is to rethink modernity, not to seek refuge in a blind celebration of tradition. Outside, the
state continues to inflict a self-producing "security dilemma"; inside, it has stunted the emergence of more humane forms of political expres- sion.
But there

are always sites of resistance that can be recovered and sustained. A rejection of
the state as a superfluous leftover of modernity that continues to straitjacket the South Asian imagination must be
linked to the project of creating an ethical and humane order based on a restructuring of the state system that privileges the mighty and the rich
over the weak and the poor.74 Recognizing the constrictions of the modern Third World state, a

reconstruction of state-society

re- lations inside the state appears to be a more fruitful avenue than wishing the

state away , only to be swallowed by Western-centered globalization and its powerful


institutions.A recognition of the patent failure of other institutions either to deliver the social good or to procure more just distributional
rewards in the global political economy may provide a sobering reassessment of the role of the state. An appreciation of the scale
of human tragedy accompanying the collapse of the state in many local contexts may also
provide im- portant points of entry into rethinking the one-sided onslaught on the state.
Nowhere are these costs borne more heavily than in the postcolonial, so-called Third World, where
time-space compression has rendered societal processes more savage and less capable of ad- justing to rhythms dictated by globalization

**General Culture Shifting Must Read**


Centralized institutional action key to culture shiftingstate action can move normsthe
point is not TOTAL elimination of discriminationthats not possiblebut legal action
changes norms in ways individual action cannot
Stoddard 1997 (Thomas B., Professor of Law at NYU, Blleeding Heart in NYU Law Review,
http://law.ubalt.edu/downloads/law_downloads/Stoddard.pdf)
Lawmaking has at least five general goals: (1) To create new rights and remedies for victims; (2) To alter the
conduct of the government; (3) To alter the conduct of citizens and private entities; (4) To express a
new moral ideal or standard; and (5) To change cultural attitudes and patterns. The first three goals comprise the
traditional role of the law in expressing the formal rulemaking function for a society. The law sets and alters rules; if it is effective, it also
enforces those rules. I will call this the law's "rule-shifting" capacity. But lawyers of my generation, inspired by Supreme Court decisions like
Brown v. Board of Education, Baker v. Carr, and Roe v. Wade, and by the success of the African American civil rights movement and companion
movements for political change, have sought to do more with the law than make rules. We have, in the last half of this century, adapted the law's
traditional mechanisms of change to a newfangled end: making social change that transcends mere rulemaking and seeks, above and beyond all
the rules, to improve the society in fundamental, extralegal ways. In particular, we

have sought to advance the rights and


interests of people who have been treated badly by the law and by the culture, either
individually or collectively, and to promote values we think ought to be rights. I will call
this concept the law's "culture-shifting" capacity. The fourth and fifth items on my list of lawmaking's aims reflect
the conception of the law as a "culture-shifting" tool. The law has always been an instrument of change, of
course, but in recent decades it has become, through the deliberate, indeed passionate,
efforts of a new breed of lawyer-activists, a favored engine of change. The law has thus
become increasingly "culture- shifting." The Civil Rights Act of 1964 , enacting probably the most
famous reform statute of the twentieth century, may be

the statutory paradigm of legal reform intended to

make social change . The Act established new rules of law, but it accomplished much more, and its full effects are still being felt-and I do mean "felt"--throughout the society. The new rules were simply stated. The Act banned "discrimination or segregation" in the provision
of goods and services, even by private entities, on the basis of "race, color, religion, or national origin," and outlawed discrimination or
segregation in employment because of a person's "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." It also forbade discrimination by the federal
government on the ground of "race, color, or national origin" in any of its programs and activities. The

new law did not

represent a simple recrafting of the applicable rules and remedies. It did not merely rewrite the canons of
employment law. It did not mean only that in the future, employers, merchants, and the government (if law-abiding) would have to adhere to a

The Act brought into being a whole new model of conduct that,
consciously and deliberately, overturned doctrines embedded in American culture-and, more widely speaking, European culture--for several centuries. These
doctrines carried different articulations and emphases over time--black inferiority,
"separate but equal," and "states' rights" are but three--but, when reduced to their
essentials, they resulted in the basic notion of white privilege . Enactment of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 constituted a formal, national rebuke of this detestable, but timehonored concept . The Act was, as already stated, far more than an employment manual or sales guide. It put forward new ideas

new set of guidelines.

about everyday relations between individuals-- not only in the workplace or in stores, but, implicitly, in all aspects of human interaction. The
ideas were essentially two: (1) that each human being has rights equal to any other, at least in the public realm, and (2) that segregation by race is

The Act, put into its full historical context, constituted "culture-shifting" as
well as "rule-shifting," attaining simultaneously all five aims of legal reform. It gave
victims of discrimination new rights and remedies. It instructed the government to

wrong.

promulgate and enforce new rules of conduct for itself. It altered the conduct of
private entities and citizens--dramatically, in the South . It expressed a new moral standard. And--I
believe, although I cannot easily document my belief--it

changed cultural attitudes. There is no sure way to


measure changes in cultural attitudes. Legal and economic statistics about jobs and income may help somewhat, but they
reflect external rather than internal realities--formalities rather than conceptions. Even opinion polls are not especially instructive, because
respondents to such polls often are not truthful, especially when the subject is race. I offer merely my own sense of things. But I

see signs

of the change all around me. Perhaps the most credible monitor is television--the cultural medium that binds together more
Americans than any other. On the American television screen of 1996, black and brown faces [FN15] are everywhere: on situation comedies, in
dramas, on talk shows, on sports programs, at news desks, and in advertisements; in 1966--when I was in high school-- integrated depictions on
television were exceedingly rare. Many forces have helped to integrate the world of television--and the world of television is admittedly not an
imitation or reflection of the day to day experiences of Americans off the screen--but the

change does seem attributable, at


least in part, to changes in the law that sent new cultural signals, primary among them the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Americans may not yet live fully in a world of equal opportunity
and integration, but their principal cultural medium suggests that they have at least
embraced the ideals--the desiderata--of equality and integration. "Chicago Hope" depicts an integrated
world, even if the real Chicago does not. I cannot, as I said, prove my point about cultural change, and I realize that there is plenty of evidence to
show deterioration rather than improvement of relations between blacks and whites in the United States, such as the increase in rates of poverty
among African Americans. I would

never contend that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even three
decades after its passage, ended discrimination or racism. (I am also, admittedly, neither a sociologist nor an
historian.) But this point seems instinctively right, at least to someone who has seen the evolution of American culture over the past fifty years:

cultural ideals have changed, even if cultural realities still lag . At least in part because of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 [FN16]--the most important statutory embodiment of the ideal of racial justice--American culture, American government, and
the American people have absorbed the concepts of equality and integration embodied in the Act as the proper ethical framework for the
resolution of issues of race. Outright segregationists like David Duke, and genetic supremacists like William Shockley, are remarkable for their
contemporary scarcity; in 1954, views similar to theirs were widely held and admired, both within and without government. [FN17]

A2: State Bad


Your essentializing of all state phenomena as the sameand badis the prime example of
neoliberalisms coup over our existenceand each of our state good arguments disprove
your deductive reasoning about the state
Patton 2013 (Paul, Professor of Humanities at New South Wales, Foucaults Critique of
Neoliberalism: Rawls and the Genealogy of Public Reason in new formations 80/81)
Foucaults avoidance of questions of legitimation and justification in favour of a focus on the question of how power is exercised does not mean that normative
concerns play no role in his analyses. Another justification that he gives for studying neoliberal governmentality is what he calls a reason of critical morality that

an explicit
challenge to the state phobia that regarded state power as a phenomenon with its own
essential characteristics and dynamics. At the heart of this state phobia is an essentialist
conception of the state that enables administrative, welfare, bureaucratic, fascist and
totalitarian forms of state all to be regarded as expressions of the same underlying form, such
that there is a kinship, a sort of genetic continuity or evolutionary implication between different forms of state (Birth of Biopolitics, p187). Foucault
objects, firstly, that this essentialist conception of the state allows its protagonists to deduce
a political analysis from first principles and to avoid altogether the need for empirical and
historical knowledge of contemporary political reality. Secondly, he points out that state
phobia is not confined to the left and that the versions current in his intellectual milieu
overlook the long tradition of suspicion of the state from within twentieth century liberalism. His analysis of the origins and
relates to the intellectual and political context in which these lectures were written (Birth of Biopolitics, p186). The lectures included

emergence of German neoliberalism seeks to show how this kind of critique of the state and its intrinsic and irrepressible dynamism was already formulated during
the period from 1930 to 1945 in the context of efforts to criticise the whole range of interventionist policies from Keynesianism to National Socialism and Soviet state

the influence of anti-state liberalism in the post-war period


meant that all those on the left who participate in this state phobia are following the
direction of the wind and that in fact, for years and years, an effective reduction of the state has been on the way (Birth of Biopolitics, p191).
Foucaults efforts in the course of these lectures to distance himself from state phobia imply that
he had no fundamental objection to government or to the institutions and policies that this entails.
planning (Birth of Biopolitics, p189). He argues that

He was not an anarchist. On the contrary, during the period in which these lectures were written, Foucault was at the very least a willing observer of efforts to rethink
the political orientation and strategies of the French left. Recent commentators have made much of his association with elements of the so-called Second Left, a
minority current within the Socialist Party with links to the CFDT.11 The anti-statist self-management approach of the latter shared some of the concerns of
neoliberals. It may or may not be true, as Behrent claims, that Foucaults interest in neoliberalism appears to owe much to his attraction to the Second Left.12
However, it is against the background of such debates, and electoral failure of the Left in 1978, that he raised a question about the nature of socialist governmentality
at the end of the fourth lecture: What would really be the governmentality appropriate to socialism? Is there a governmentality appropriate to socialism? (Birth of
Biopolitics, p94) His answer was that if there is such a thing as socialist governmentality, it remained to be invented

Dont conflate all statism with tyrannythe task is not to decenter the state
Villadsen and Dean 2012 (Kaspar and Mitchell, Associate Professor of Sociology at
Copenhagen Business School and Research Professo or Sociology at Newcastle University,
State-Phobia, Civil Society, and a Certain Vitalism, Constellations 19.3)
While there undoubtedly are many other aspects to the political context of these lectures including Foucaults growing involvement with the events in Iran and his

: the illocutionary force, as Skinner


puts it, of at least some of Foucaults significant statements is as an intervention in
contemporary political concerns. Thus, it is possible to distinguish broadly between three kinds of statements in these lectures: an
later journalism on the revolution there37 we have explored it enough to make our central claim

intellectual practice of the exegesis of primary texts (and the use of secondary sources) that forms the main body of the lectures; the occasional methodological and
heuristic statements that often appear as a summing up and as an attempt to define the possible analytical path Foucault proposes to take; and those statements that

These three types of statements are distinct yet


related, and we cannot understand them in isolation. If we detect an analytic concern to
decenter the state, its objective is not to overcome the state but to analyze it in a fashion
that checks the pervasive tendency to denounce the state in its everyday operation.
address themselves most clearly to the present and to his interlocutors.

A2: Individual Performance/Radical Speech Good


Nothing about our argument precludes radical speech or performanceour alternative
allows for radical speech with the caveat that such speech should not simply reject the state
or understand the state as a point of pure opposition in the first instanceif this is a debate
about producing good scholarship, our argument is your scholarship would be better if it
were revised and resubmitted shorn of its antipathy for the state

Framework

2NC Overview

A2: Topical Discussion

Limits Good
Our version of debate centers on A STABLE point of discussion two internal links to
advocacy and decision-making

1. Clash we force students to argue over points of action their interpretation kills a stable
point of clash because there is not equal starting ground that is functionally the same as
playing tennis with no opponent means we hit the ball into their court and nobody can hit it
back which means we cant process info or go in depth on issues

Real world politics proves we are right if there is a general agreement and a lack of specific
proposal to remedy the problem, it causes political gridlock this is proven by the immigration
debates everyone agrees about the state of the problem and that it needs to be changed, but a
lack of specific proposals eliminates the possibility for change only a stable point of clash
allows for specific proposals which resolve gridlock and violence that occurs due to it

2. Creativity We agree that a debate where the aff has to say the exact same thing every time
would be bad what makes debate with a resolution awesome is that the aff can take a variety
of creative perspectives toward defending a topical plan without leaving the negative in the
dark they go too far and allow the aff to talk about anything which eliminates the value of
debate because it becomes 2 ships passing in the night explained above by the tennis example

Finding a way to be topical increases creativity and problem-solving ability finding a way to
be creative within the resolution is more real world whenever you face a problem in life there
will be certain constraints that you have to operate within

Effective decision-making outweighsonly learning how to evaluate actions based off of


arguments for and against enables us to make superior daily decisions due to skills acquired
about evaluating non-truth-based claims also spills over to governmental policy because we
have the ability to advocate effectively that means our interpretation solves the violence they
describe
EVEN IF there are still things we can stay against their AFF, their model still shuts down
dialogue, absent well researched positions and through preparation discussions devolve into
ideological assertions.

2NC Decision Making


Organizational decision-making solves the AFF allows for people to generate the ability
to produce effective campaigns because we can determine how many people a group needs
to achieve the goals instead of sitting around identifying problems with squo policies,
engageing the government via reading a plan text allows us to actualize change in the real
world only understanding specific tradeoffs within the government resolves that thats
De Vita and Algoso
Debating institutional problem solving by advocating government action engenders vital
organizational decision skills. This capacity must be consciously engendered to ensure its
development.
Davenport & Manville, 12 (Thomas H., Presidents Distinguished Professor in Information Technology and Management at
Babson College, Director of Research at the International Institute for Analytics and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics, and Brook, Principal
of Brook Manville LLC, a strategy consulting and organizational development practice, serving socially-minded enterprises, Organizational
Judgment Is the New Decision Making, excerpt from Judgment Calls: 12 Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams that Got Them Right,
http://www.fastcompany.com/1842667/organizational-judgment-new-decision-making)

Good organizational judgment is often created by leaders--not as great "deciders" themselves, but as more egoless
developers of the right context and structures to allow their organizations to nd solutions more
collectively. Organizational judgment usually involves reframing decisions as a participative

process of problem solving . It takes advantage--and often considerable advantage--of the widening array of
data now available in the world, and the advancing technological and analytical tools to interpret it. It is shaped by, and often itself
shapes, powerful organizational culture based on values such as participation, deliberation, diversity of thought, constructive
challenge and debate, and the like. But armed with more and better information, decision makers in
turn face even more choices and nuances about what they must decide and why. Another aspect of the new complexity
is the ongoing knowledge revolution. More than just information, knowledge--in the heads and hands of professionals--is increasingly
appreciated as the source of value creation for businesses and enterprises. How can organizations mobilize that in order to make better decisions?
Part of this same revolution is that organizations are (to use the now popular vernacular) "getting atter"--meaning, in varying ways, leaders have
broader spans of managerial control, and structures

and values are less hierarchical, with more authority


for decisions more widely distributed in enterprises. This shift, chronicled for the last several decades, has allowed
businesses to "get closer to customers," improve productivity, solve problems more quickly, and innovate more rapidly. But here again, another
dimension of complexity enters the fray: when the knowledge needed for a good decision is more decentralized, together with the authority to
apply it, how can organizations mobilize this knowledge in a rationale and practical way? Begin by Recognizing the Need and Opportunity Every
case, in one way or another, exhibited an organization whose leaders understood that they needed to go beyond their own limitations and take
advantage of a broader set of ideas, concepts, and wisdom. They took on the challenge of letting go of at least some of their own power and
prerogative, at some level, in exchange for the deeper set of resources that comes from engaging and authentically collaborating with, and
learning from, others to get to better decisions. They did so also believing that such an approach promised better outcomes and more chances for
future success in all that their organization strives for. Be Intentional and Invest in Capability In

no case did we see an enterprise

that had or was developing this kind of judging capability by accident. The capability for an organization to perform
in this way is invested in, built, and earned, rather than resulting from luck or a little bit of tinkering here or there. Even the ancient Athenians and
McKinsey & Company, which had well-established processes and values within which decisions developed, reect organizations in which the

capability was deliberately built over time. Consider the "Architectural Elements" Within the Cultural and Market Context
Whether using analytical software, blogging across the enterprise, embracing more democratic approaches to employee or managerial
participation, employing a new problem-solving process, changing how to engage a leadership team, or using a different organizational design,
our cases show enterprises that built judgment by assembling and combining different pieces of infrastructure and process into a new kind of
"system" to better nd solutions to problems. Though not always done consciously, in the end they all created a mechanism that embraced more
collective intelligence and understanding. If perhaps too fancy a word, an architecture can still be seen among the different dimensions of people
working together that, as constructed and operated, provided a better way of coming to a decision. That architecture, however, varies from
organization to organization based on a variety of variables. These might include the cultural traditions of the enterprise, the particular market

conditions in which it operates, and the stage of development and sophistication about decision making it aspires to. Context must guide which
pieces are assembled and how. There is no one-size-ts-all blueprint, but some kind of blueprint (implicit or explicit) is nonetheless visible in
every case. Be Ready for Change As the previous themes would naturally suggest, taking

steps in the indicated directions


will change the status quo. Power is redistributed, values are reinterpreted, people not used
to giving their opinions or being listened to are suddenly invited to center stage. New technology comes in with
more and new information, old prejudices are made visible, former reporting relationships are muddied by a mandate to share more knowledge
across boundaries.

Building organizational judgment is transformational , not just a new set of practices

"bolted on" to the old way of working. And, as mentioned already, it will be transformational not just for your organization, but also very likely
for you as a leader. Understand That, Like Health, Organizational

Judgment Needs Exercise and

Continuous Maintenance We would argue that organizational judgment is, in fact, one other dimension of
organizational health--as a capability, it offers

the potential for better future decisions. And what capability


could be more important than that? Like any capability, and like health itself (organizational and human), it must be

exercised and maintained . Organizations that build judgment do so with a journey of continuous
improvement, and are constantly learning through practice , both how to improve it and how to
maintain it for the future. In every case of our study, we see judgment that has been built to be sustainable, and used
repeatedly to improve decisions on the horizon beyond the challenge of the immediate
moment .

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